One of the interesting topics touched on in my eMarketing class lectures was how businesses have either positively or negatively tried to have conversations with their customers online.
Having worked in customer service in the banking industry before, I understand the importance of effective communication with your customers. It makes a huge difference when the business actually tries hard to have an actual, sincere conversation with their customers, listen to them and respond to their inquiries in a timely manner.
Although my experience was the traditional form of offline communication — in person or on the phone — the same effort is required online. It is crucial for businesses to be able to create positive experience for customers. This is especially tricky online, especially through social media. Facebook plays a prominent role in helping businesses connect with their customers and has created a good environment to allow businesses to do so. However, many businesses do it poorly.
Again, this goes back to the Shiny Object Syndrome. Many businesses think they “should” or “need” to have a Facebook fan page, just because…
1) everyone else seems to have one
2) it seems to be expected for them to have one
3) …just because.
Yet, not all businesses do it properly. Many businesses create their pages and try to get as many people as possible to “like” their page. They makes a few updates within the first three weeks of launching their page. Then, they abandon it and never really come back to it, or when they do, they never really seem to post anything else or respond to messages that people leave on their wall. I have seen this many, many times and it is always frustrating to me to see this happen. What was the point of creating a page if you aren’t going to use it and let it do what it is supposed to help you do–having conversations with customers?
Fortunately, on the contrary, there are many business who do maintain their page and take Facebook seriously. One example is the Carnival Cruiseline.
Carnival has been able to actively engage first-time cruisers through their Facebook page through providing information, answering questions, and allowing them to see what others are saying on their page. They made efforts to focus on user-generated content (which is appealing to first-time cruisers looking for reviews and advice) and have recognized that social media changes at a pace that many marketers are not used to. For one thing, they started with the right objective: “to better connect with first-time cruisers–people who have never cruised before”. Social media is about interaction and even socializing, which is exactly what cruising is all about. Carnival has successfully taken advantage of this fact and improved their cruising business.