The Rise of the Social Customer

With a tip of the hat to Paul Greenberg (PGreenblog) and Chris Carfi (Social Customer) for a brilliant workshop on Social Media and the Age of the Customer held in San Francisco this week.

The huge take-away: The Social Customer is here.

Imagine what your worse nightmare customer might say if they had an audience of millions.

Well, they do, thanks to the Internet.


Take 3.5 minutes to view a song video which has been downloaded over 1 million times since it was published late February 2006 (updated April 10) : a proud Brand with millions of loyal customers (and thousands of employees) stunningly devastated by a song The lyrics for the song are adapted from the original song Save a Life by The Fray



A powerful 3 minutes that will change any illusion of control we might have over customers.
http://www.davidairey.com/blog/how-sony-killed-their-brand-a-case-study/


Who is the social customer? Chris nailed his manifesto up on the Internet portal August 2004:

The Social Customer Manifesto - Chris Carfi

• I want to have a say.
• I don't want to do business with idiots.
• I want to know when something is wrong, and what you're going to do to fix it.
• I want to help shape things that I'll find useful.
• I want to connect with others who are working on similar problems.
• I don't want to be called by another salesperson. Ever. (Unless they have something useful. Then I want it yesterday.)
• I want to buy things on my schedule, not yours. I don't care if it's the end of your quarter.
• I want to know your selling process.
• I want to tell you when you're screwing up. Conversely, I'm happy to tell you the things that you are doing well. I may even tell you what your competitors are doing.
• I want to do business with companies that act in a transparent and ethical manner.
• I want to know what's next. We're in partnership…where should we go?