The Value of Direct Feedback

At a conference I attended a couple of weeks ago, I heard some interesting points made that tie directly into the theme of our panel: the giant global focus group.  One of the speakers from a large Fortune 50 company talked about the value of unfiltered feedback.  He spoke of yearly meetings with a small group of his company's top customers where they shared their ideas, feedback, criticisms and so on during a couple of days of face-to-face meetings.  He said this was his most valuable event of the year due to that direct feedback.  Then he claimed the comments one of their corporate blogs receives were equally as valuable because they also are unfiltered feedback.

Another speaker at the same event put enabling blog comments in terms of cost savings versus traditional focus groups.  Asking the question, "How much money do you spend to talk to 15 or 20 people? $10,000? $15,000?" Compare that to the cost of a blog (low, comparatively).  I can't remember the exact numbers quoted, but think about it.  Even 5-10 good comments a week (a month!), where the feedback is less filtered, less scripted, can give immediate ROI to your blogging efforts.

Here's something else to think about.  Marketers spend millions every year trying to capture customer attention.  Yet, at the same time, they make it ridiculously difficult for those same customers to talk to them in any easy fashion.  A customer who has chosen to take valuable time out of his/her day to try to talk to you is an incredibly valuable resource for your organization.  While it might be difficult to retool your legacy call center, CRM and other customer contact technology, it is relatively simple to set up a blog and invite your customers to join the conversation.

We'll be touching on these themes and many other during our session.  I hope you will share your thoughts and examples here as well, so we can bring them to the audience.

Comments

[Kristen E. Sukalac]

While I think blogs offer an interesting opportunity to tap into a giant focus group, there are some aspects that make me wonder if they are oversold as such. Bloggers are a self-selected group. How much do the following adages apply? Birds of a feather flock together. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

How often do people blog about you because they agree with you? Aren't they much more likely to blog because they want to change something about your business?

What about the people who have something important to say but who are not blogging for whatever reason?

Does this approach therefore risk giving very skewed feedback?

[Elizabeth Albrycht]

Important questions all, Kristen! A good example are all of these blog surveys, many of which are completely unscientific in approach. Constantin Basturea has done a great job of debunking many of them here: http://blog.basturea.com/archives/categories/surveys/

The blogosphere is a place where you can get incredibly valuable direct feedback. But it can also be an echo chamber, and some early research has shown that the format of blogging can actually drive people to more extreme positions (as they are forced to defend themselves from critics). That is why you can't look only to bloggers for information, feedback, etc.

What we have to remember, too, is that we have no control over what happens in the blogosphere, which is very frustrating to organizations who are still trying to control the message. However, just because it can be a wild and wacky place doesn't mean you can ignore it -- far from it!

Communicators need to find a pragmatic balance between all of the tools they use.