19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly.

If they blow it, it could be their last chance.

True

With the technology available and the amount of communicating that is going on already, a company really has a fine line until blaming it on some external problem causes it to collapse on itself.

With the use of blogs and micro-blogging sites such as twitter, companies now have a 24/7 customer complaint line. There is no reason that they shouldn’t be hooked into this network especially when their markets are using it constantly.

For so long companies hide behind their excuses of lost e-mails and letters, and customer service reps that rarely ever returned phone calls or weren’t very helpful even if they did answer. Now they have the chance to see complaints and issues first hand right from their consumer’s mouth. If they choose to ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist they won’t have the ability to redeem themselves. Not only is their one angry customer aware of their problem but so is every other customer and possible customer able to see the complaint. If companies don’t jump on this possibility and talk back they probably won’t be able to fix it.

I also am surprised that the authors thought of this in 1999 because blogging wasn’t really as mainstream as it is today. There was forums and chat rooms, but their popularity levels weren’t really threatening unless a major issue was going on.