Who's that bleary-eyed chap in the corner? Why, he's the CMO who stayed up all weekend conducting WOM (word-of-mouth) damage-control—after one bad Saturday-morning customer tweet.
Welcome to the new downside of 24/7.
"Buzz isn't scheduled, especially bad buzz," says Jackie Huba in a Church of the Customer blog post. "Thanks to Twitter, it can snowball into an avalanche of angry buzz after-hours or during a weekend, just in time for the Monday-morning news, as Amazon and Motrin recently learned."
So, what's a trendy company to do? Huba put out a call to her loyal readers to find out. "Who's monitoring your brand Friday night to Monday morning?" she asked. As you might have guessed, the responses covered a range of perspectives.
Some questioned the need for weekend WOM-monitoring. "[T]he hot-spot of buzz is a small percentage of people." "[A] well-thought-out response is better than a lightning-quick response."
Others felt it was imperative. "When sites like YouTube can rack up a million views in a matter of hours, monitoring is a must." "Bloggers and Twitterers measure response in minutes and hours, not days and weeks."
Huba sums it all up: "I don't think every company in the world needs 24/7 monitoring," she notes. "But the bigger the brand, the more [it's] needed. Just ask Domino's."
The Po!nt: Go ahead and check. It's probably best to have someone, whether the summer intern or the CMO, checking your weekend customer WOM—just in case.
Source: Church of the Customer. Read the full post here.
by Christina "CK" Kerley
