Utilizing Groundswell Response - A humbling but beneficial practice

Social media allows customers to constantly talk to each other- sharing reviews, experiences and suggestions. All of these customer to customer interactions are important but only if we, as business owners, listen and act. The groundswell is a teaming pool of knowledge for businesses to tap. The creators within the groundswell share valid input that if utilized, could help turn around an unsuccessful product or brand or revitalized products or brands that need improvement.

 "The key is, you need to do more than just ask for feed-back. you need to show that feedback online, good and bad, where people can see that you are ready to act on it, that you are committed to improving things" (p. 194) 

Turning a blind eye to criticism online is not helpful to a company. It looks bad in terms of customer care and in the long run is not helpful or productive to improving business. These are the points of Groundswell I'd like to focus on this week. 

Harnessing customer input in the development process by letting the customers tell you what they want and addapting to appease that desire (p.182) can be extremely successful. As demonstrated with the example of Loblaw (p.191) we see this in a real life scenario. VP of Loblaw, Jim Osborne tapped into the groundswell, listening to customer complaints and suggestions and acting to remedy the issues. He turned unsuccessful food products into successes by changing recipes, addressing packaging issues and continuously monitoring feedback. Loblaw is prime example of how to use customer generated social media content for the purpose of brand improvement.

Something to keep in mind in the endeavor of utilizing customer reviews from the groundswell is that there are risks. We need to know our objectives, know that communities can get out of hand and have a plan for how to deal with this outcome (p. 144). There are countless brands that have opened themselves up to the groundswell and been overrun by negative feedback. Some negative feedback is so harsh that it goes viral for its comedic ridiculousness- such is the case for Haribo Sugar Free Gummy Bears and their unfortunate product reviews which went viral in January of 2014. And more recently Samsung's 85 inch 4k HDTV reviews.

These products caused such intense illness and upset that their reviews read more like elaborate comedy sketches than a real life product reviews. After reading Groundswell we would assume that such negative viral feedback would elicit speedy public response and action to remedy these immense product flaws; yet despite my searching I've been unable to find any sort of reply from either company.

Can we assume that the problems are too deeply rooted in product development to change? Perhaps the brands feel that they are established enough to withstand the onslaught of negative feedback on a single product? How could either of these companies have addressed their customers and utilize their feedback in a productive way?