Is Social Media affecting "Willingness to Recommend"?

With the inception of Google+ currently going through its testing, has social media reached the point where every part of our life is documented, and blasted out into the public space (or at least to all are friends or followers). For some this may already be the case, as on sites such as Facebook you can check in to various locations within a city or country, or loyal Twitter users tweeting out there every move. But what does this mean for customer feedback, and perhaps more importantly how does this affect customers Willingness to Recommend (WTR) products and services? I think there are a couple of key points to be made:

Social media can be a powerful tool, not just for promoting a product, but also for detracting. Positive comments on Facebook or tweets arguably publicise a customer’s love of a product much wider than it normally would do so. On the flip side of this social media coin a negative experience is also shared to many more people.

The rise of celebrity followings on social media sites (I'm referring mostly to Twitter now) has created a hierarchy of customers within a customer base. Let me explain, Lady Gaga with her 11.73 million followers tweets about a poor experience a friend of hers had on the phone to company x gives all those followers (at least those who were online) a bad impression of company x's brand. Even someone with only a couple thousand or followers could create real loss of revenue for a company.

Yet it is worth highlighting the nature of friends or followers on social media compared to your close group of friends and family. On many people’s social networks they will not just have close friends and family but also old acquaintances from school, university and work plus a whole host of other casual “friends”. It is fair to assume that you will take the advice of a close friend over someone who you haven’t seen in recent years. 

Another point to take note of is a recent study by Forrester Research and GSI Commerce stating that social media has almost no effect on online purchasing. But I believe this research is too narrow in its definition of social media. The term is not just the realms of Twitter and Facebook, it is also in the form of online forums and customer reviews on sites like Amazon as well. A whole host of positive reviews is undoubtedly going to make one product more popular than one with large numbers of negative reviews.

The growth of social media has and will have a profound effect on feedback and managing the customer experience and much is still unknown on the topic. Whatever the effect, companies must engage with their customers before the customer has the chance to publish their frustrations. Social media has vast capabilities to share thoughts, companies need to ensure those comments and tweets are positive and not negative.  

Tom Lynam

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