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In the old days we only heard customers when we chose to.
We had to decide to listen, and even when we did, to really hear them we had to listen hard.
We heard them when we held expensive, small scale and very tame focus groups.
We heard them when we allowed the call centre operatives to eventually escalate something they and the customer base had known about for weeks or months or years or decades.
We filtered, selected, and avoided.
As organisations we suffered from selective deafness, like that old grandmother in the corner, deaf to everything but the bits she wanted to hear. Smart with it. Deaf to the bad. But noisy.
Inbound, it was all optional.
Our input mechanism was mainly a dumb terminal, a slave to the beast, feedback filtered at every stage on the way to the top: 'everything is fine', the most default finding.
Yet our output was non-optional: we broadcast and blared out. Interruption.
Importantly, they - consumers, clients, buyers - were loyal because it was hard to find alternatives.
That was The Age of 'Control' (in inverted commas).
[It felt like control. And it probably was, of sorts. Consumers were isolated and media channels were intermediated and finite. But real total absolute control never existed. See Ceauşescu, non?]
Flip forward not one but two steps from here, The Age of Control, and we find that in the new world we will have neat, simple, usable tools that flow feedback between supplier and client like stock price data in a live marketplace.
In this happy sunshiney world:
Listening will be a minute-by-minute task, not a daily check, not a monthly clippings report or quarterly customer service review.
Like it is already at the major news organisations websites, where live analytics on what's hot and what's not drive the news agenda and business behaviour.
Like it is already at smart online retailers where merchandising decisions are truly dynamic and flow in realtime.
Like it is already at the fewest of the few digital PR agencies, where the finger really is on the binary pulse.
Blurred organisational edges will permit and even welcome the effortless osmosis of information betwixt and between. Solutions, ideas and innovations marketplaces will be the norm - Dell Ideastorm will look like the simple early prototype it probably is.
APIs, affiliate programmes, widgets and other shades of distributed goodness will be givens, seeding a thousand minnows and cuttlefish around the core service/site, distributing life beyond the original source: the reef, the brand, the site, the centre of that ecosystem.
Importantly, loyalty will return because time poor clients will be happier with mature service-led organisations that truly walk the customer-centred talk.
This will be The Age of Dialogue...
But right now we are somewhere betwixt the two.
Not yet in the dreamlike sunny paradise of Dialogue, yet not any more in the similarly comfortable Age of 'Control', instead we are in the turbulent transitory rolling seas of a different age.
A temporary age, thank god.
A painful, confusing changed ocean away from this Utopian destination where instead we are caught with rudimentary and dated Age of Control ways of working, processes, tools, people and expectations from our publics, but where the feedback we receive is entirely different, entirely unmanaged and unmanageable by our current systems, entirely uncontrollable.
Today is pain and confusion, fear and loathing.
Today's business is badly equipped for the world today...
So welcome, friends, to The Age of Snark.
Like boiling bilious lava, white-hot furious consumers vent wherever they find an outlet - spraying burning fluorescent looping lances of aggregated, unified rage.
Customers like me and you are disloyal and resent having to be so for the time and hassle it costs them.
At conferences with an internet savvy gamut, audiences pour into public and private online spaces to poll one another and quickly establish consensus before the speaker has finished, long before she has left the platform, and an age before the tired organiser has collected the lies and gladhanding half-truths scrawled on yellow paper questionnaires.
See Innovation Edge, Future of Web Design or Chinwag Measuring Social Media. All well respected events produced by well loved people. All now exposed to the ruthlessness of public, immediate feedback.
Worse still, our inner cowards prevail in such circumstances: it's easier to leave a nasty review than ask for the manager; to snark at the back of the conference rather than find the organiser and feedback face-to-face.
What will change and when?
My view is that right now we're in a unique point in this transition, at the very fulcrum of change, where the consumer conversations have flooded online but the organisations don't yet have the infrastructure and time to tap into and address those conversations.
Only 10% (at most) of the people in groups I work with at major brands have even Google Alerts set up. Online monitoring, umm, hmmm, ahem, yeahhh.
Very few major brands have yet invested in proper buzz monitoring solutions so they simply don't yet even have an ear to the networked chatter. Or a regular, known presence on places of online congregation (such as consumer forums).
And until they do, they won't think about how to respond, who should respond, and what to do with that new incoming knowledge within the business.
This is The Age of Snark (complete with capital letters).
As those things (the listening devices, the community engagements, the processes and skills, and so on) change my expectation and hope is that we will enter a more harmonious time where the flow of dialogue between the players in every marketplace will be frictionless, will be immediate, will be transparent and open and available.
The truth will out.
And consumers will act more respectfully and more maturely, because service providers will be listening to them (really) and responding to them, often publicly, transparently, and rapidly.
How long will this take? I have no idea. When you look at mature disciplines or principles in online such as usability, accessibility or even search engine optimisation, it is normal to find very patchy awareness let alone regular and consistent use of these core services amongst leading brands. So I must temper my natural optimism with the practical experience gained and guess that this will be years. Years and years, for the laggards.
In the interim, don't expect too much level-headedness, maturity and decency from the great unwashed masses (that's me and you, as consumers) online.
Do expect big-talking anonymous cowards, raging frustrated unheard ex-customers, playground social dynamics with polarised opinions and cosy cliques and gangs, and lots of Godwin's Law.
The Age of Snark is fatiguing, depressing, polluting, childish, unreasonable, bitter, cowardly, and in the main, absolutely deserved.
Great post - even if I wish there was a way to quickly and effectively get from stage one to three.
But the bright side is that the companies and individuals who lead the battle through the second stage will have a major headstart when the dust settles...
Posted by: Dan Thornton | June 23, 2008 at 17:14
Interesting thought. From a online retail perspective negative reviews have actually been shown to reinforce authenticity. And I did read somewhere about human nature being more wired towards giving positive feedback publicly but keeping negative views to themselves more often than not. no numbers to back it up sorry.
Posted by: eaon pritchard | June 24, 2008 at 15:46
Eaon - thanks for chipping in.
I'm a huge fan of brands harnessing the power of online transparent feedback (such as in retail environment, as you mention) for its proven and measurable impact in improving conversion rate, reducing returns rate (by consumers setting one another's expectations) and other good stuff. I train big brands in this knowledge, and believe in it passionately.
But this isn't that.
What I'm not writing about is the normal balance between people who like and dislike something (and we know that can vary - for example, there's nothing wrong with being loved passionately by a tiny hardcore loyal group of consumers, and thought of indifferently or hated by everyone else).
What I am writing about here is the huge lack of synchronisation between the volume of people expressing their disatisfaction online, and the the number of brands listening at all in a professional and comprehensive fashion.
I haven't heard of this idea that we are wired to keep negativity inside and give positive feedback publicly more easily but it's certainly in keeping with how most of us feel, i'd guess - especially the British.
Posted by: Will McInnes | June 25, 2008 at 14:46
Great post, "The Age of Snark" has become my new pet meme.
I'm surprised by how well some organisations are doing with monitoring online conversations (mainly in the tech-industry unsurprisingly). I've had occasions recently when I've both criticised and praised certain companies on various platforms and they've got in touch sometimes within the hour. As a consumer, that level of attention really makes me warm to a company.
Posted by: Dave Kinsella | July 01, 2008 at 14:54
Very interesting observations, and I hope too that stage 3 won't be too long in coming. I wonder if some of this 'style' of online complaint isn't just an extension of face-to-face dissatisfaction with a product or service that is being paid for. You could argue that this is all part of customer service and ensuring satisfaction.
What I think is more damaging is that often the inflammable style of communication you describe as "fatiguing, depressing, polluting, childish, unreasonable, bitter, cowardly" creeps into situations, communities, politics, schools etc, where the more effective method would be one of dialogue and mutual understanding - this requires a two-way conversation where both parties are essentially benign.
Posted by: Tessy Britton | July 02, 2008 at 08:44
Love this post (tracking back if you don't mind).
It's been a while since a post has actually resonated with me - ironic that the author's down the road in Brighton!
Anyways, couldn't agree more. Brand management in the web today is crucial - more and more proles have access to what I call 'soapbox tools' - free blogging, forums, and other ways to speak out and to other like minds. They'll talk no matter what, but brands who don't bother managing feedback about their product (good and bad) risk losing a key connection with their audience. Engage, respect and show love to your customers (and/or lurkers) and you'll be rewarded. Age of Snark indeed.
Posted by: Jon Aizlewood | July 09, 2008 at 17:34
Thank you all for your comments. I'm glad this worked for you - and like you, I hope and believe we can get to the other side, where better dialogue flows between big business and its consumer.
Posted by: Will McInnes | July 15, 2008 at 10:08