In contrast to the Dell Hell and Dell Hell 2 postings, it appears Land Rover in Britain is attempting to engage with consumers who’ve bought their new Discovery model and are dissatisfied with it.
Adrian Melrose has been cataloguing his troubles with two successive Discover models at his site www.haveyoursay.com. Apparently the site gets 700 visitors a day, and built up quite a head of steam amongst consumers via the blog. He eventually had his faulty motor replaced.
Neville Hobson has followed the saga and reported that Land Rover were planning to use the www.haveyoursay.com site as a forum for consumers – to engage them in a dialogue about issues. Land Rover’s Customer service chief, Mike Mulholland, said that the company had not been across online issues, but now customer feedback can be found here.
It’s a big move for a company to tackle criticism head-on – and is a brave move. It’s also a great opportunity – they have an audience of bloggers out there, and if the company listens to them they will have converted them from being detractors into brand advocates. The company can start a corporate blog and also start a genuine two-way dialogue.
But these new instances of consumer campaigning raise new issues around the role blogs can play in forcing a poor customer service issue into the public eye. Is it ground breaking citizen journalism, or a case of one consumer with a gripe being able to hold a company to ransom?
However, now that Land Rover have the ear of thousands of interested and connected customers, they have un unrepeatable opportunity to change the climate of opinion about them, as they have started doing with Mike Mulholland’s response.
Matt
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