I AM CUSTOMER: HEAR ME ROAR!

I am the sad, frustrated and betrayed owner of a Lenovo Thinkpad.

On May 2, nine months after purchasing the shiny behemoth laptop, the lights went out. The screen went blank. Since I have a next-business- day repair service warranty for the computer, I didn’t think much of it. As a graduate student I am dependant on my laptop, but I could tough it out one day.

But here we are, 10 days later and I write this from a borrowed Mac.

I have placed 14 calls to customer service, spoken to 5 customer services reps and spent a cumulative 4 hours and 15 minutes on the phone, 74 of which were spent on hold. I have come to terms with the fact that I will never have those 4 hours and 15 minutes back , BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SOMEONE JUST TAKE BACK THIS LENOVO!

Now, I wouldn’t normally do this—just spill this frustration out like this. But then, this IS my second blog. And what’s a little dish among friends?

Apparently a lot.

I finally called the company I purchased the computer through, CDW, to see if they could help. In my last, desperate attempt at a resolution I found myself blurting out “You’ve GOT to help me. I HAVE A BLOG!” Suddenly there was silence. I heard keys clicking in the background. Then I was told the call had been escalated to “critical” and that the situation would be resolved on Monday.

I had laid down the ultimate customer trump card without even knowing it. I threatened the four-letter-word that makes most corporations cringe: B-L-O-G.

Just as customers can praise the merits of their favorite products and services through blogs, negative viral can lead to a brand’s demise. Sites like www.my3cents.com have sprung up everywhere, allowing customers to complain, and tarnish brand reputations, overnight.

Maybe CDW had a flashback to perhaps the most infamous example of the power of negative viral: the demise of Dell. When Jeff Jarvis blogged about his negative experience, the company ignored his complaint, but thousands of frustrated customers did not.

It’s all about crowd management. There is no such thing as a “lone consumer.” I may look like one person to the customer representative at Lenovo, but I’m not. Like everyone else on the Web, I am networked.

But even Dell learned that backlash blogging can be valuable in its own right. Since the birth of “Dell Hell” the company has changed its attitude towards bloggers. As Jarvis says on his own blog, “bloggers tend to state their problems clearly, which makes it easier (and, I assume, more efficient) to solve them. A problem solved is not only a customer likely to be saved, but also often leads to good PR and branding as the bloggers recount their happy endings.”

In order to track viral, many companies are turning to “search engine reputation.” In his recent post, ClickZ expert Erik Daffom discusses the merits of monitoring “search engine reputation" (SERP), which he defines as the sum feeling a user takes away after querying a search engine for a company's name, product, or representative, regardless of whether the user actually clicks on any results. Viewing negative search results and and consumer rants erodes brand perception.

In order to track what is going on with your brand in the vast abyss of cyberspace many have turned to Google Alerts. The alert lets you know immediately when your name or company is discussed online. You can tag key words such as your company name, company URL and the names of key executives.

This way you can find unhappy customers like me.

Levono: you've been alerted!

ASSIGNMENT: Help me get my computer fixed!