Trust Agents What are the first steps for helping a business understand why trust is important to its customers?
And he got a number of comments on the FB page about it with people answering his question and giving advice about how to get businesses to understand that trust is important to its customers. Some very thoughtful comments there and probably some things that could certainly help a company deal with the trust issue.
In March of 2008, I wrote a post called Why Advertising Will Destroy Social Media that was triggered by a study that had been released that used this headline, "Revolutionaries focus more on listening to consumer and bloggers’ points-of-view." Here's a quick little piece from that blog post:
What is amazing to me is that our industry has so lost touch with the consumer that we think listening to the consumer is a revolutionary idea! Engaging the consumer isn't new, companies have been doing that for centuries! Listening to the consumer certainly shouldn't be new. And it sure as hell shouldn't be considered something that's only done by revolutionary companies!
And this question about trust just once again shows me how far off our entire industry has become. Should we really even be having a conversation with a client about why it's important to have the trust of your consumers? As I replied back to Chris, dare i say that any company that doesn't understand the importance of trust shouldn't be in business?
I think it's tragic that companies have become so dysfunctional, so incredibly out of touch with the real world about them, that we feel the need to congratulate them for listening and teach them about trust. Look around at the companies you use. Do you have to teach them about trust? Do you consider it revolutionary when they listen?
And here's where it rubs up against everything that the social media folks stand for. No amount of Twittering, cool iPhone apps, pages on Facebook or any other use of whatever new tools we can come up with can fix a company that people don't trust or that doesn't listen to its customers. These tools can only enhance a company that's doing the right thing to start with. And it will only piss customers off when their fake or misguided use of SM shows how little they actually care about their customers.
If you're not creating compelling, authentic and relevant brand experiences to begin with, SM will only be a short-term fix at best.
via www.facebook.com
Experience Manifesto: Why Advertising Will Destroy Social Media