The Web is a churning ocean of endless information. That is hardly news. Insightful companies have posted some pretty telling numbers about what people think and what we’re doing about it. Edelman’s Trust Barometer alone is enough to make you wonder if your customers will be your customers tomorrow.
What you say is picked up and reposted and spread like the flu on a subway. What you do is passed from friend to blog to Facebook to Twitter to your bottom line. People believe people, especially their friends. Social media has not just leveled the playing field of credibility, it has plowed it up and planted a whole new crop where your brand used to grow. A new farmer is tilling the land: your customer.
If you are a great plumber, someone will Tweet or blog about you. If you are a jackleg carpenter, they will do the same and tell their friends on Myspace. If a quarterback is cocky before a game and predicts a big win for his team, then goes out and throws 5 interceptions and loses by 4 TD’s, it carves a little shine off of his credibility.
When CEO’s of investment and mortgage firms take government bailout money, give themselves fat bonuses, then foreclose on homeowners who basically did the same thing as they did with derivatives, credibility takes a beating. The entire economy gets a cheese grater run over it.
To barely survive these days, you have to deliver at least what you promise. To win, you have to deliver more than you promise. The cynical shell of unbelief is ten feet thick. Oddly, many companies worked hard to earn their uncredible reputations.
We cut the quality of the product to make a few more cents on each transaction. We followed that with slacker customer service. We finished it off with a successful advertising campaign that drove millions of people to buy and then hate our product even more. Then we raised the price just as people were leaving us behind on their way to a better experience.
Credibility has value. Talking about it doesn’t. So read the research readily available on the Web. Read the obits of businesses every day. Then ask yourself, “Are we credible with our customers?”
Your customers have already answered the question.
