User Generated Content

People have opinions.

People have experiences.

Experiences may lead to an expression of an opinion. Depending on the experience, this opinion can be negative or positive.

Take, for example, my own personal experience of TalkTalk. When I moved my life over to the UK, I immediately began hunting for the best broadband and international call package deal with the phone providers. TalkTalk was the cheapest. Hands down – BT was incredibly expensive, and other providers had shoddy deals, so it was TalkTalk who prevailed.

Friends around me were of the opinion that TalkTalk should be avoided at all costs because of X, Y and Z.

I ignored them, I wanted to form my own opinion. Besides, money was tight, and TalkTalk were giving us a Go-Live date of three weeks time. 4 weeks, still no broadband. 8 weeks no broadband, but phone line had been set up. TalkTalk telephone customer service (outsourced to India) were so difficult to understand, and difficult to give any clear, solid answer. They skipped around the topic without confirming anything. Boy, was I regretting the choice to move to TalkTalk.

Then I discovered http://www.talktalkmembers.com/

A no-hold-back customer frequented Help forum, with official TalkTalk staff moderating and dealing with the queries. 150% more effective then actually talking to someone on the phone. Replies would generally be within an hour, you would receive clear feedback and understanding, and apologies, and the offer of compensation (as long as it was TalkTalk’s fault). Each initial first post would usually start with:

“TalkTalk customer service is appalling I have been let down repeatedly, I am never extending my contract and I will pay the cancellation fee to move to BT”

And the final post would usually be along the lines of:

“Oh thank you SO much, you provide an amazing service, so efficient thank you.”

I found out within 24 hours why my broadband would be delayed by another 3-4 weeks, that I would be offered compensation, and they were very sorry.

Fantastic.

It’s a relatively dangerous thing which TalkTalk are doing. The forums are open to public, so the faults in their services are wide open for any potentially new TalkTalk customer to see, and run away from. But TalkTalk have so much faith in their staff, that they know each issue will be resolved to a satisfactory level, and although their dirty laundry is aired for the world to see, it gets clean pretty damn quickly.

I would say 90% of people come away from the forums far happier then when they arrived.

Other companies aren’t so sure of the idea.

I’m currently working with Company X (a rather large world-wide corporation) on the idea of user generated content, and whether the potential installation of a forum would be a beneficial idea or not. Then, there’s the topic of moderation of the forums. By “moderated” they mean: 24 hours a day moderation – with a huge amount of censorship. If any contributor even breathes something negative about Company X then it will be deleted. Freedom of speech is not allowed, and propaganda is rife.

Being the “social media expert” I informed them that this would be social media suicide. Not allowing forum members to voice their opinion would anger us mere mortals, and it would rapidly spread across the internet that “Company X” is not allowing members to post freely and openly on a public forum. Instead of being afraid of what users would post about them, they should embrace this chance to swiftly and easily connect with their users, allowing them to tackle and solve issues head-on.

This, by itself, would spread the word quickly across the internet how efficient “Company X” are in their customer relationship management.

Currently “Company X” hire two individuals to sit at computers all day, trawling through the internet for any mention of “Company X”. If this mention is in anyway negative, these people find a way to respond, or remove the offending comment. Really, they are that scared of their users.

To cut a very, very, long story short. “Company X” opted out of the forum, and any ability to add comments to blog posts, content that would be user generated was strictly prohibited from any part of any of “Company X”‘s multiple websites. It wasn’t worthwhile, they said, to spend time and energy to follow up with any of their millions of customers who may post comments or posts on their websites.

If they could censor free speech and opinions they would.

All I have to do is turn to any one of my friends and ask their opinion of “Company X” and whether their experience would lead them to recommend their services to me (I can sure that they have had some kind of experience with them). I don’t need to go on a website to find that out.

User generated content on a corporation’s website is not something to afraid of, but only include it if you can afford the time and man-power to moderate and respond. Do Not Censor.

People have an opinion as a result of an experience. Take this chance to change that negative opinion by giving them a positive experience.