I remember my time in corporate marketing when we spent a fortune on customer research. How did customers regard us and our products and services? What issues did they have? How did they rate the competition? What did they like and dislike about our product and services? 

We spent time and effort setting up and supporting user groups and incentivised the return of warranty cards to get input. We never seemed to have enough. The Customer Services teams had feedback that was incredibly useful to product development. Our Market Research and Ad Agencies organised focus groups to get feedback. Now just how valuable having 6 people each in Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain - 30 people in total - help guide a multi-million £ campaign I am not sure? Ofcourse we wanted more - many more people - but the expenses were huge!

Senior management was always pushing to set up customer visits for them to ensure we were 'on the pulse' of what was happening. Did they not realise how carefully the customers were selected? No sales person when asked to nominate a name would put foward someone who would be brutally truthful. Would they really risk having a customer 'rant' to senior management? Even if they had said they wanted to hear it - 'warts and all' - very few people would be brave enough to do just that.

Fast forward to today. The internet and now blogging and social media tools like YouTube have changed forever the relationship between customer and manufacturer or supplier.

Whether you want it or not people will voice an opinion - good or bad - on your product and service. Others will join the conversation and within short order you will have a group of people providing far more comment than years of research will have ever provided. If the customers feel ignored or worse still somehow dismissed thenyou had better be prepared for 'rants'. 

What can companies do?

1. Ignore it and hope it will go away. (It won't)

2. Fight it and hope it will go away (It won't)

3. Join in the conversation

Those that have joined in have had their moments but overall the experience has been beneficial for everyone.

For an interesting comment on this whole area check out the Church of the Customer Blog and see an interview with Ben Mcconnell on YouTube.