The Connected Consumer Code Of Ethics
There is much being said about how brands should engage with customers in social media. Words like “authenticity”, “transparency”, “immediacy”, “personability” and others are bandied about as we as consultants, together with our clients, figure out the rules of content and community online.
This is a good thing. Brands tend to forget that platforms like Facebook and Twitter were created for individuals to connect with other individuals, and not as business tools. When creating profiles, responding to and initiating conversations, businesses are constantly challenged with this dynamic and as a result have had to unlearn some of the long-standing principles of traditional marketing to succeed.
But that is only one side of the story. Not enough, in my opinion, is being said about the responsibility consumers have when they interact with each other, and with brands, online. The power of freedom of speech and the open and democratic nature of social platforms tends to encourage behaviour that is incongruent with how individuals might behave in “real life”. Consider the recent example of Ard Matthews‘ well-documented foul up of the South African National Anthem on live television. Angry citizens on Twitter and Facebook hurled violent insults and jibes at him – statements I’d be willing to bet they’d never say to him face to face.
I recently had a public spat with Dale Immerman (who is in fact a rad dude, I just didn’t agree with him in this instance), about a conversation he had with @StandardBankGrp, Standard Bank’s Twitter presence. I felt like Dale was bullying Standard Bank (you can see the whole conversation here – http://bettween.com/mikestopforth/idale), and I had a bit of a go at him as a result. I’m probably hyper-sensitive to this dynamic because of the abuse I witness our clients receiving at the hands of sometimes unreasonable consumers.
Uncle Ben (from Spiderman for the non-geeks out there) told Peter Parker that “great power comes with great responsibility.” To say that the average Twitter user with 200 followers has great power is a bit of a stretch, but it’s an undeniable fact that social media users (who have no access to any other media platforms) have greater reach and influence than what they would have had before they built those profiles, and it cannot be ignored. Surely consumers should be more conscious of their behaviour online? Surely, seeing as businesses are made up of individuals and have Twitter and Facebook profiles run by individuals, they should be treated with a degree of respect too? As much as we as consumers expect brands to use social media to connect with us in revolutionary new ways, we should understand that we are required to do so in an equally respectful manner.
There is a danger that consumers who have gained significant levels of influence use that to manipulate and bully brands online. In my experience, practicing responsible consumerism (I made that up) elicits a more positive responsive from brands.
With that in mind I’d like to propose a Connected Consumer Code of Ethics – a set of ‘rules’ (maybe guidelines is a better word) that I believe consumers should follow when interacting with brands online. We had a debate at the office about this, so feel free once you have read through it to disagree wholeheartedly!
The Connected Consumer Code of Ethics
- Do some homework. Your insurance company messes up a claim. It’s one thing if you try the website, phone the call centre, go in to your branch, receive no help and then rant and rave on Twitter. But ranting and raving on Twitter because the volume knob comes off the console of your Toyota Auris before taking it into the dealership is unreasonable. Give the brand a fair chance to solve your issue before dragging their name through the dirt.
- Speak as you would expect to be spoken to. If and when you get to the point where ranting and raving on a social platform is your only solution remember there are other human beings behind the social profiles of even the biggest organisations. Profanity and defamation will probably not get you the results you hope for.
- Don’t be a ‘mobster’. Mob mentality kicks in on social platforms, and all too often. One person complains and before you can say “brainless” hundreds more are retweeting and sharing and re-posting the same complaint. If you have an issue with the brand in question, feel free to echo the sentiments of the originator. But if not, why perpetuate negativity? Surely we have enough of that already? (this tip courtesy of Heike.)
- Balance the scales. It’s human nature – it’s so easy to complain when something goes wrong, but so much harder to remember to give kudos when they’re due. Try developing a habit of complimenting brands as often as you slate them.
- Temper your expectations. Even though you as a consumer should not be expected to differentiate between company structures, departments or silos, you should still have a realistic expectation of what a brand is capable of doing online – specific to the limitations of the platform (this tip courtesy of Keenan.)
Perhaps if we are all a little more conscious of and responsible for our actions online, brands will steadily improve their response rates and willingness to take social platforms more seriously as customer service channels. Regardless, I think how you conduct yourself in relation to brands or other users (especially when it’s safe to hide behind a digital mask), says much about your true character. That should be reason enough.
Mike you have very eloquently said what so many of us who work in this industry think. I hope the mobster mentality kicks in and people share this post… and hopefully learn some manners in the process.
Bravo, Mr. Stopforth. I’ve been meaning to write on this since that time Nivea “caused a car accident and deleted the Facebook wall post (naawt)”, but you took the words right out of my mouth.
Often, because of people who are very much on the ball like FNB, people think having a fit to their 105 followers will get them the reaction they want. There are also some consumers who very much just want to pick a fight, we’d call them trolls on forums and comment sites.
I’m sick to death of seeing a Tweet like this:
Hey @brandname it’s now ten at night and my signal has just been disconnected, HOW DARE YOU BRAND NAME!?1?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!! #BRANDFAIL1!!!!!!!!
I’m not sure about this.
The reason social media has been a success in my eyes was that there weren’t any rules of engagement. I find it laughable that the brands now come follow in the SM (and their agencies) gold rush and now want create ground rules. What bullshit.
The reason SM works is that people can group themselves and behave how they choose to. The result is that different networks have created different types of identities with different behavior. Your LinkedIn type of networks are professional and for most all business, everyone is respectful short of a few spammers. Twitter has a mishmash of users, some users group themselves with other immature loudmouths and it works for them. Likewise with Facebook.
I don’t see any problem with brands getting lashed when people are frustrated with them. If brands want to come into the playground and benefit then they need to deal with the nice kids and also the bullies and unpleasants. I believe 90% of user frustrations and verbal abuse of a brand is valid and people are venting which they’re more than welcome to do on a SM network, that’s why that networks are out there for many to be a platform for both neutral and positive communication and also unpleasant nasty venting. If you want a all pleasant let’s pretend to all be brand ass-kissing then you live in a imaginary world.
Many brands pay ungodly amounts of money for agencies like yours, so when you take bucket loads of money from brands like Vodacom don’t have your employees (looking at you John Beale) bitch about having such a hard day. You’re getting paid to deal with the community as a whole, if you’re getting verbally abused then deal with it. Why else are they paying you a fuck load of money for “sitting on twitter and facebook all day”?
I also believe that brands can choose if they want to engage. Most brands have call centers, email addresses and contact forms that have been put in place and manned by people who are trained and expect to deal with disgruntled clients. This expectation that every brand be in twitter is flawed in my eyes. It actually creates lots of confusion in that people constantly tweet to non-existent or wrong accounts expecting replies and then going on a rampage when they don’t respond.
You also have the likes to smart agency people being complete lazy idiots tweeting stuff that google could answer in 30sec and expecting replies just because they think everyone listens to them (here’s looking at the Brandsluts and Native SM experts).
I don’t believe any code of ethics works for the general public. As you well know when people get emotionally worked up the last thing they remember is something like this. Mike you yourself were hurling insults at Ard, so this post is quite laughable coming from you. I believe that the community behaves the way they see others behave around them much like the real world. There might be more trolls amongst the early adopters but they soon become a minority when more and more (and more mature) people start using SM.
Even though your intentions might be good depending what hat you wear I don’t think it’s achievable.
Hey GrantB
Thanks for your comment. As I said in the post we had a big debate at the office around the topic so not everyone feels the same as I do on the subject and I’m completely happy with that.
You said “I don’t see any problem with brands getting lashed when people are frustrated with them.” I wholeheartedly agree with you. I’m not for a second saying that consumers (we) shouldn’t rant and rave at brands. I’m merely suggesting that they (we) do so when it’s appropriate. I’m suggesting that people act online as they would offline.
You’ve had a fair go at my employees, my company and some of my competitors in this post. Is this something you’d do face to face, if we met at some random event?
I never once mentioned my agency or competitor agencies in the post. Companies like us a clearly an issue for you. I was talking about the relationship that exists between brands and their consumers online, whether an agency is part of that or not. If you take issue with what we do, I invite you to come through to the office, meet the team and voice your concerns to me personally and I’ll do my best to justify our “ungodly” fees to you.
I know full well that people get emotional and could care less for ethics, but that doesn’t make it right. It’s not ok to jump a red light because I’m in a bad mood, right? Or is it? You stated clearly you believe no code of ethics works for the general public…
Lastly, you’re categorically wrong about me “hurling insults at Ard Matthews”. I tweeted the following on the subject, “sometimes it’s ‘Ard singing the National Anthem”. That could have been a headline in the paper the next day. I thought it was quite clever, actually *pats self on back*. And even though it was hardly an insult I still apologised saying I disagreed with all the hating. If you can find evidence to the contrary, by all means let me know.
Hey Mike,
I mostly agree with your article, however I’d like to remind you about this tweet of yours:
“Pierre Spies is a useless twat. And that’s a euphemism.”
We should be careful how we address other people in social media. Although it’ s not direct communication, it’s still public.
Ha ha – you got me, well done. Actually I’m kinda chuffed you care as much to remember ALL my tweets!
Incidentally I also apologised for that one…
No worries, I’m just as guilty. We tend to be more aggressive in SM since it’s not face to face.
Mike, great article and I do agree with you in principle. But it will never happen, because as GrantB writes “people can group themselves and behave how they choose to” Unfortunately how we humans mostly choose to behave is not all that great.
Nice Post
I think Brands need to be very careful and think seriously about opening social media accounts or even when they advertise contacting them by Email.
Social media doesnt sleep, so if some one asks your twitter handle something at 6pm on a friday, they need to get an answer fairly quickly. You cant answer them the following week. My biggest pet hate is email responsiveness if you are going to punt email as a means of contacting a business you need to make sure that its Answered or atleast acknowledged with in 1 hour.
There are some very good twitter Handles out there, and some very bad ones. Just last week I had to deal with an organization that is terrible with communication and the twitter handle was great during the day but as soon as friday afternoon hit he was pretty useless
Hi Grant
Thanks for “Looking at me”. I get a lot of it, and as you’ll find, it’s quite a great view.
Something that comes to mind when reading your post is … well … ignorance. I find it laughable when people think all we do is, and I quote “Sit on twitter and facebook all day”, and this is clearly what you think I (we) do.
No doubt you have no idea what goes into setting up social media for a large corporate, the internal challenges, the strategic process and so forth.
Much in the same way I have very little idea what a rocket scientist does, however apparently very few things are in fact rocket science.
I’m not quite sure which “bitching” you’re talking about? Sadly, I can’t recall meeting you in person (if Grant Brown is in fact your real name) however “bitching about my job” isn’t really something I tend to do over twitter. The odd tweet about things about the online community circle jerk that frustrates me sure does make it out there, and that’s exactly why I think posts like Mike’s above makes so much sense.
I assume that by saying I shouldn’t be “bitching” about the work I do (which, just to clear something up, is not community management) you think I should probably not have any viewpoint or standpoint on the challenges social media brings to the people who manage and run it because we’re getting paid for it.
How dare we be human! In the words of a recent tweet I saw to Vodacom, we should maybe rather “Die and eat a bowl of aids baby penises”. Yes. There’s a plan
As you said, the individuals see how the community behaves and behave accordingly, but who is to say that this behaviour is right? Look at the London riots (or any riots for that matter). Just because this behaviour is happening around many other people in London doesn’t mean that everyone including Gordon Brown (is he family of yours?) jumps in on the riots. Why? Well basically because they have moral ethics (a deep discussion) and general know what to-do, and not-to-do in public.
Mike’s post merely sets out what he thinks should be the code of ethics around how people engage on social media. Majority code should not define the fibre of the mass.
I don’t think it’s as ridiculous as you make it out to be. Daily, I see hundreds of people follow many of the ‘rules’ above when asking for a problem to be solved by the brand they are interacting with. I’m not claiming innocence, I myself have had a good rage at one or two brands, but by no means does it mean that’s how I interact with them at every point and turn, and that’s what you’re condoning, and saying people (brands) should just “put up with” No doubt when you phone into a call centre I highly doubt there’s very many people that start off with “Fuck you BrandX you fucked up my X again… oh Hi, I’m Cindy”. No… So why is this the way we try get a brands attention online?
I’d also like to invite you to come and visit the “money-making-machine” that is Cerebra, and come and have this discussion face to face. As I always find, people are rarely what and who they try to portray on social media, let alone blog comments. Darn, look, there’s that damn interpersonal code of ethics again.
Interesting post Mike!
As you know “Social” is quite close to my CRM heart, and your post highlights a portion of a larger discussion around brands and their incorporation of “Social” into their CRM process.
Just as so many brands rely on companies who are specialists in areas like Contact Centers, CRM strategy, CRM technologies (etc. etc.), it is critically important that they can rely on companies like Cerebra to help them navigate the Social Sphere in a manner which allows them to manage compliments, potential business and, as is obvious in your post, customer complaints.
“Ungodly” fees are not charged by Cerebra … not compared to companies who are billing for other services which are critical to LOB or customer experiences (try checking rates for an SAP project). While I don’t know anyone at Vodacom – Im sure they appreciated having specialists working on their side of the fence when they experienced the network outages a couple of months back.
GrantB, if Vodacom (or Ard) paid for a PR agency to do damage control post their “incidents” I know for a fact that their fees would have been substantially bigger than our imaginations allow.
In Vodacom’s case Social channels, and a specialist agency, ensured that response and information was immediate and ongoing. Powerful stuff when considering the overall CRM goals of ANY brand.
Its true – our mob mentality is undeniable. In GrantB’s example of getting onto the playground its probably pertinent to imagine that our interactions on social are like being a skinny big mouthed kid with the much stronger older brother waiting on his shoulder to pound anyone who decides to stand up to him. Which I guess prompts the question, and makes Mikes point … If you were that kid, would you still mouth off if your big brother (read 150 followers) weren’t with you that day?
Interesting debate you’ve opened Mike. I am not sure I entirely agree with your opinion.
I love how social media has really opened up the web, the breakdown of gatekeepers gets me excited. Anyone can be a publisher, its changing the power balance. The traditional model of one directional conversation is quickly on the way out.
If your Toyota Auris volume button comes off, it’s great that finally we have a platform to have our little rant. I have an instant relief of anger for every #BrandFail on Twitter. I’d call for people to be smarter on who they follow on Twitter, if your mate aimlessly starts attacking brands I’d take that with a pinch of salt and enjoy the fight from a distance.
As for brands, I think they need to Man the F*ck up and roll with the punches, don’t take it too personally it’s not you they are taking. Let angry people be angry, if it’s unreasonable their followers will more than likely be able to figure that out too.
Plus, on a cheekier note, if we saw brands being taken out on large scale on the web, think how easily it would be to sell our services ?
GrantB, I don’t think this is about being “brand ass-kissing”. As I mentioned above, it’s just simply about having manners and treating people with respect. We all get irritated when telesales people contact us, and maybe I’m looking at the world through rose coloured glasses, but I hope when they contact us most of us don’t swear at them or hurl abuse at them. As irritating as they may be, you can respond to them in a firm but respectful manner.
There is a difference between simply ranting on Twitter and actually directing an abusive comment to a brand by @ing them – and most people who run these twitter accounts, whether they’re internal or run by agencies, are trained to identify comments that need a response and those that are simply a rant.
Your comment about tweets that contain answers that could simply be answered through Google – most agencies that work with brands completely immerse themselves in those brands and work closely with the organisation to be able to answers those questions easily – it’s definitely not just about sitting on Facebook and Twitter all day. From the other side, often the answers really are quite simple to find with Google, but people find it easier to simply ask the brand on SM channels instead of googling the answers or using any of the traditional methods Mike mentions above.
Hi Mike,
Nice one. The key point for me is respect, for oneself and for others. It does often seem like we are quick to insult and moan before following the logical process when dealing with an institution. And we forget that we are dealing with other human beings who deserve respect.
Love this post, Mike. I don’t need to tell you how I feel about this, I already wrote about it for memeburn a while back, but it’s safe to say that I agree 100%.
I worry that it comes across as only us community managers getting annoyed at the tweets to brands being put out there, it’s not. I’ve noticed so many of the people who live in my timeline getting fed up with others tweeting rudely and with disrespect to people running brands’ social media accounts.
I liken it to this: if you were in front of a customer care counter, would you call someone at Woolies a douchebag because your salad was wilted? No, so don’t do it online. And if anyone answers yes, then you’re a douchebag yourself.
Don’t wanna link bait at all, but it’s much better summed up in the memeburn article, so here’s the link for anyone interested:
http://memeburn.com/2010/11/three-ways-to-ensure-that-brands-listen-when-you-comment/
After a brand takes no action after I’ve tried to get in touch with them several times, I usually resort to either sending lolcats or making sarcastic comments about being stalked by their carrier pigeon. In both cases, they get back to me pretty quickly.
I highly recommend humour when dealing with brands. It’s gentler on everyone ;)
Hey Mike
Cool post, I do think the gloves should come off though.
If a person feels like they want to “fong” a brand, the brand should be able to bitch about the customer.
I remember a conversation with between an ISP and a disgruntled customer. Where he bitched about the ISP not providing services to him, to which the ISP replied it was because he hadn’t paid.
What’s good for the goose must be good for the gander
Thanks for the comment Trev. We’re on the same page – I don’t think consumers should have free reign at all and am totally behind brands standing up for themselves. I think all engagement, from the brand side or from the consumer side, should happen with a degree of respect. Unless of course there’s a solid case for a good rant.