The power of the web has big business hopping

An unhappy customer may be able to spread the word to hundreds of people by word-of-mouth, but if a online complaint goes viral it can get to millions of people in a flash.

An unhappy customer may be able to spread the word to hundreds of people by word-of-mouth, but if a online complaint goes viral it can get to millions of people in a flash.

It should come as no surprise, then, that businesses in the US are monitoring the blogosphere for customer complaints and dealing with them, The Boston Globe reports.

For example, a YouTube video of a technician who fell asleep on a customer’s couch while on hold with cable TV company Comcast became such a hit it was viewed 1.2 million times and triggered more than 750 comments.

But Comcast appears to have learnt from the experience. When one customer complained about his cable TV reception on the Twitter social network, he received an almost instantaneous response from the company promising to fix the problem.

Comcast monitors the blogosphere so customer complaints can be “nipped in the bud,” a spokesman says.

Another company keeping a close eye on the web is Soutwest Airlines. It has a dedicated social media team, including a “chief twitter officer”, tasked with monitoring and responding to comments made about the company via social networks and blogs.

“We monitor those channels because we know these conversations are taking place there, and we can either watch the conversations or take part in them,” a Southwest spokesperson says.

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