Business and Blogging

Business Blog Case Study: Correcting a Misperception About Your Company

by Laura Spencer on January 24th, 2008

(businessandblogging.com) Liz and I noticed this post at Behind the Buzz, which describes a scenario in which a business, Vodafone (a mobile phone network in the United Kingdom), had to deal with a customer service problem.

The scenario is this:

Vodafone was trying to contact customers by phone, but customers were not sure whether the calls were genuine or fake, because the caller was asking for personal information. To complicate matters, some bloggers were referring to the calls (by specific phone number) as being scam calls when they were actually genuine.

The Behind the Buzz blogger, Rachel, proposed four solutions for Vodafone to get the word out that the calls were real. The fourth solution that she proposed involved blogs:

Get more people like Andrew out on the blogs and boards answering questions and connecting with the customers who are confused by your use of this service.

To me, the most exciting thing about the whole post was that Vodafone responded and agreed with Rachel. Here are the word of Edward Peter from Vodafone:

Finally, your comment about more advisors posting on forums and blogs is bang on; we’ve recently increased the size of the team who do this, and wherever possible we’ll be on hand to help you with any queries you have in the future.

The response is exciting for two reasons:

1. It means that Vodafone understands the role that blogs can play in developing customer relationships and providing a channel for communication.
2. It means that Vodafone is in tune with blogosphere and was able to pick up on the fact that their company was being discussed.

As companies begin to realize the power of blogs, I think that we’ll see more and more instances of companies using blogs to communicate.

Has a blog changed your perception of a company recently? If so, how?

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POSTED IN: Blogging, Public Relations