Real Time Customer Reviews Top 2010 Trend

Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on January 5, 2010 under Connecting Moments, Resolving Conflict, Websites, social media | Read the First Comment

According to Trend Watching – one of the top ten trends for 2010 will be customers leaving tweets about your business.  What will they say?

Real Time Reviews takes into account that people around the globe are jumping on the band wagon of telling anyone who will listen what they are doing right now. Whether they are using the status updates on LinkedIn, Facebook or tweeting away in 140 characters or less on Twitter – they are sharing their opinions.

Last year we asked “why would anyone care what I’m doing?”

This coming year we are going to be asking “what are people saying about us and what can we do about it?”

Gone are the days when a dissatisfied customer grumbled on the way out the door and maybe told 15 of their closest friends. Now they are on their mobile device sharing their bad experience with the world – or at least the hundreds of friends, family and various and sundry other folk that follow their updates.

Companies need to quickly get on board with reading what is being said about them on line – hopefully it is ALL GOOD – but on the off chance it isn’t, Twitter will become the fastest, easiest, most visible way for companies to “nip it in the bud” and show consumers they are on top of their customer service.

As more people are reviewing and contributing, the sheer mass of opinions will lead to a real-time stream of information, findable and viewable to all. In addition, online access and device convergence will allow more on-the-spot reviews. Twitter is the much-deserved poster child for real-time reviews: it has established itself as the real-time snapshot of what people are thinking/feeling/experiencing and yes, reviewing, around the world.

So what can you do?

• Make sure your company name, your name, your top product names are set up with Google Alerts so you receive an email the minute someone writes using those names
• For Twitter – consider the Twitter Beep for alerts about your company
• Twitter Alarm is another free tool
• FlitrBox offers a similar service

Any other suggestions or tools for keeping your finger on the pulse of what is being said about you on the Internet?  Please share.