You Talk, Chrysler Listens
First there was Dell, then Starbucks and now there is Chrysler.
Chrysler is preparing to launch a private, online discussion forum to gather customer’s opinions on everything from product design to marketing. The forum is set to launch next month, and Advertising Age reports that with the new site,
Chrysler expects to have an advisory panel of some 2,000 people willing to participate online once or twice weekly, VP-Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl Meyer told Advertising Age. “It’s a different way to be close to our customers and our future customers” without doing physical focus groups, she said. “We call it on-demand customer collaboration.”
Chrysler clearly understands they need to bridge the disconnect between their company and what their customers want. I applaud Chrysler for taking this step; but keeping the discussion limited and private seems to be a missed opportunity. Unless this is the first building block of constructing a larger social media initiative, they may end up selling their own efforts short.
Nevertheless, score one more for the big brands coming around to realize that the web is a powerful listening tool.
my question is, what are these companies “promising?” my hesitation with these “open forums” in some big brands is that they’re working only to spin a web of their caring for social media, when in actuality maybe my suggestions aren’t being considered at all. i have a hard time understanding how a gigantic company like this actually PROCESSES the dialogue they’re working to encourage, from suggestion through testing through potential implementation…
I think you’re right to be skeptical. These initiatives will fall flat on their face if customers don’t see any action taken by the company. But Dell is a good case study to review - they did a decent job implementing ideas where they could. Starbucks will have real challenge, though, since one of the top suggested ideas (a frequent drink card) was a plan they scrapped long ago. Where Starbucks is at least showing potential for delivering results based on customer’s input, is in their Ideas in Action section of the site. They know they need to show results based on listening. One of the other top ideas is free wi-fi, and they are blogging about their plans to make wi-fi more freely available. Slowly but surely, I think they’re taking the right steps to show some of that process on responding to their customers.
I think Chrysler would serve their customers better if they would have a real customer service department in this country (not India), and also get people who care about people and the problems they have with Chrystler products. Then, give them the power to help. It’s not good enough that Chrysler listens, it needs to do.
@Jerry Curtis - You’re absolutely right, it’s worthless if customers don’t see a helpful response from Chrysler. The Boston Globe had a great story this morning of how more and more companies are using social media tools to do a better job of listening to their customers and then rapidly responding to their needs: http://tinyurl.com/5sufyj. Hopefully Chrysler is working just as hard to take action on what they are learning.
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