The Anonymous Widower

Do Large Organisations Cut Themselves Off From the Internet?

I sometimes criticise (and praise) companies and organisations on this blog.  Here are a few examples.

• Dixons
• First Great Western
• John Lewis
• Leon Restaurants
• Runners Need
• Towneley Park and Hall
• Virgin Trains

Most of those comments are positive, as I don’t want to get a reputation for not being fair.  However, the really interesting one is about John Lewis, where I didn’t hold back in criticising their performance. If you read the comments on the post, you’ll see that Customer Support at John Lewis found it and asked me to e-mail them. The problem I had been having was resolved.

So if say you are the manager of the Islington Upper Street branch of the Midland Bank, other than being immortal, do you check what is being said about your branch on the Internet?  And if you do, do you check blogs and forums?

I have a feeling that John Lewis might be an exception here.  But surely, any business interested in what its customers think about it should be searching what is on the Internet, even if some of it is perhaps abusive or badly-written. To take my bank example, it is very easy to set up a Google Alert for Midland Bank, Upper Street, Islington.

I have a feeling that companies often spend fortunes on market research finding out what customers and others think of them.  But do they need to, when with a bit of training and perhaps some affordable software, of the sort I can write, it’s all out there waiting to be delivered?

April 12, 2011 - Posted by AnonW | Computing | Google, Internet