Tony Perkins, creator of Red Herring magazine, has forgone the “one-way” communication of the print world and is debating with his readers online in real time. He makes a lot of typos while doing so.
Microsoft customers are spending their own time and money making unsanctioned and unsolicited videos featuring Microsoft brands and sending them to Redmond. The funny thing is, Redmond doesn’t mind.
Customers are starting to get their say. They are doing so in public forums. Their comments are unfiltered. And, more surprisingly, so are the responses of the individuals representing the companies. No PR flaks. No spin. No highly-sanitized, focus-group-approved, completely meaningless Dilbert-speak.
In other words, real people interacting with real people.
Weblogs (or blogs) were the first salvo in this new era of the “social customer.” Blogs enabled a one-to-one dialog between an individual representing an organization and a constituency of readers, as well as interactions between the readers themselves.
Blogs are one of three emerging technologies that have the potential to break down the walls between companies and their customers, enabling the creation of communities and resulting in significant benefits to all involved. The other two are wikis and social networking systems.
By listening to the social customer, companies have the opportunity to create the tightest relationships between vendor and customer we have seen since the days of the corner store.
Click here to read the entire article: Social Networking Systems and Wikis Engage The Social Customer