The big problem with traditional advertising aside from its high cost and irrelevance is that 75 percent of consumers simply don’t place much trust in it according to a Yankelovich survey. It is precisely the rise in consumer skepticism that is fueling the demand for consumer ratings and reviews. But will the scourge of advertising ultimately diminish the value of social media as a trusted information source?
I’m not saying that business deliberately make false statements, but in an attempt to present their products and services in the very best light, consumers often are left with information gaps that prevent them from making optimal decisions. Social media has the potential to be the great equalizer an address the problems inherent with transactions where asymmetrical knowledge exists. Authentic content is created by peers without compensation so it is objective. When it isn’t filtered and includes both good and bad experiences, it presents a more accurate representation of the business being evaluated.
I am concerned that as more ad dollars flow toward the Internet and social media in particular, traditional advertising practices when applied to social media for profit purposes will marginalize its value to consumers as a decision resource and as an effective marketing tool for good/great businesses.
Core to many reputation management solutions, is the creation and proliferation of “positive content”. The goal is to suppress negative comments and to create “managed reputations” that reflects how the business wants prospective customers to perceive them versus what real customers actually think of them.
It is this mentality that diminished the value of advertising in general and explains why consumers are hungry for authentic or natural reputations. Most people are smart enough to make their own decisions if they are given authentic and accurate information from which to do so.
Another example is ADP’s Social Marketing and Reputation Management Solution. ADP’s service provides many powerful tools that enable auto dealers to build vibrant online communities. The part that bothers me is that their service selectively imports “Positive Word of Mouth” content to “amplify and enhance the dealer’s good reputation”. Some car dealerships are great and consistently meet their customer’s expectations and some don’t. With ADP’s solution both can use social media and portray a comparable image to the unsuspecting consumer. In other words it will become another piece of irrelevant advertising.
Positive reviews when authentic, speak to a business’s ability to satisfy their customers’ but they don’t address how consistently they do it. A natural reputation that is unfiltered and authentic addresses both the quality and consistency. Consumers need both pieces of information in order to make informed decisions. This is what consumers are seeking and it will drive exceptional results for exceptional businesses. Any system or service that enables businesses to “amplify and enhance” their reputations to create and unreal expectations is disempowers both consumers and social media.
Andrew Ward
Chief Trust Officer
Trust FX
Andrew,
I read your post with great interest because the ADP Social Media/Reputation Management suite of applications and services, as well as the product team, sales, installation and ongoing support have been my responsibility since concept inception in early 2007. As of January 3, 2010 I have handed over most of my other responsibilities to other ADP resources so that I can focus 90% of my time on managing this program, working with the existing resources and growing the team and refine the operational aspects and business model. First and foremost, let me say that I appreciate how well thought out and written your post is… I agree with your assessment, the pros and cons, and the risks that you have outlined. I have a deep sense of personal responsibility and am proud of the way our team at ADP has repeatedly demonstrated good judgment and business ethics while executed what is essentially a “Business Process Outsourcing” (BPO) set of managed services. As you can imagine, the senior executives within our company have been far more cautiously conservative about moving into this area of dealer services than any of the dealers have been! I am still amazed at how quickly our leadership team recognized the significance that consumer mass adoption of social media has had already, its impact on our culture and the way people buy products and services… Including new and used vehicles.
As we continue to develop, refine and grow our portfolio of dealer services related to social media and User Generated Content (UGC), I am acutely aware of the responsibility we are taking upon ourselves to operate in a reputable, transparent, ethical and respectable manner. Indeed, one point of value several dealers have commented on is how well the ADP SM/RM team understands social network etiquette, proper ways to engage and respond to consumers, and most importantly, how effective we are at convincing dealers and their employees NOT to do what their initial reaction is to many of the inevitable customer complaints or negative postings that even the best dealership operators will occasionally trigger. Everyone on our ADP SM/RM team has dealership employment experience… We quickly recognize the tell-tale symptoms of customers who have been getting less than satisfactory treatment by an employee or department at a dealership we service… I have personally made several Saturday trips to dealers for the purpose of finding out why they irritating so many customers and then worked as a consultant to help them change process workflows and other systems so that their people and business processes would “completely satisfy” more customers, and frustrate fewer.
One of the problems many of our dealer clients have is that they may sell 2,000 to 3,000 car a year, but when you check their customer reviews and ratings that show up on the web, they have less than ten TOTAL, and the breakout is usually something like; 5 negative reviews for something that could have easily been resolved if anyone at the dealership had ever paid attention to what shows up online… Then they’ll have 2 or 3 total train wrecks where something has gone so wrong that the customer writes a 500 word blog post detailing the horrors they were sibjected to at the dealership… The remaining 2 or 3 are “almost a compliment” with 3’s and 4’s on a scale of 5, with 5 being the best. What is NOT reflected in this fairly typical scenario is the hundreds of truly satisfied customers that the majority of dealers will have, and who will verbally recommend the dealership, but for whatever reason they don’t think about going to a dealer ratings and review site to write a positive review.
So, what do we do? We train the service advisers, cashiers, sales managers and salespeople how to properly ask customers to “fill out their report card online”, then send out emails with links to independant dealership ratings and review sites, and continue with reminders and polite requests whenever the opportunity arises… And, when we build out the dealer’s social media site accounts and their dealership sponsored online community, we put links to the ratings and review sites… As well as when we do get a portfolio of reviews built up, we display them in their unaltered and original manner (RSS feed) on the home page of the dealer’s online social network community.
Some of the ethical responsibility measures we take that you will not see in the sales materials, but we do disclose on our contracts include:
1. We set up “Web Blocks” at DealerRater for the dealer’s IP addresses so that we do not have to worry about a salesperson going to the consumer rating site and posing as a customer. Every dealer we have worked with appreciates that we do this to maintain their integrity by preventing “accidents” from a single employee.
2. We will not provide these social media reputation management services to any dealer who has 30 or more posted customer reviews and an average customer rating of less than 2.5 on a 5 point scale. We have learned that dealers with 100 customer reviews and an average of 1.2 on a scale to 5 are simply not worth the aggravation of trying to represent them and get them to do the right thing.
The bottom line is that as we write stories about the dealership sending 35 volunteers to build a house with Habitat for Humanity, and the dog that sets of shop in the back of the service department, but gets to stay because she chases away the racoons that were damaging customer cars in for service… and all the other interesting goings on that happen in most typical car dealerships, which are like their own small town of 100 to 400 people who work there… We get to know the people in the dealership and we get them to engage with their online communities, their neighbors, friends, family and yes even a few customers!
We have seen the transformation of the “culture” within our client dealershis, and I truly believe in my heart that the services we are providing help the dealerships we serve becoime a better place to do business from every possible customer perspective.
I know for a fact that we ensure dealers and their employees become aware of any problems their customers vent about online in social media that they were previously oblivious of!
So, here’s my offer to you, whether by remote or if you would like to do so in person, please allow me to take you through the real world examples of our social media and reputation management services… Then, you tell us where you think there could be problems or anything that is not in the best interests of both the dealer and their customers… And my team will take action to improve, fix, mitigate or whatever the right thing to do happens to be.
Lastly, you will soon see additional press releases as we engage with a major university, move the team into their academic/entrepreneurial complex and work together with the best and brightest business and science academics to further improve upon the services and technologies we provide to our dealer clienst… And, their customers whoi buy cars, parts and service from them.
My personal cell phone is 505-301-6369 and my corporate email is ralph_paglia@adp.com. And just so you can see that I walk the talk, please visit and consider joining my own professional community at http://www.AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.com and check out my profile and 100+ professional references that people I have worked with have posted onto my LinkedIn profile at http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/rpaglia … Heck, just Google “Ralph Paglia” and you will see that I have been utilizing social media since before it was called social media!
I look forward to opening the hood and showing you our social media engine!
Your suggestion is, but for me difficult to achieve, but I will try to change
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