After my recent post on the Three R’s of Web Marketing, I was challenged on the premise of being real with customers. Is honesty always the best policy? Well, nothing is always the right approach in any situation, but being authentic with your customers makes a lot of sense. Coke doesn’t have to divulge their secret formula if asked, but they don’t have to lie about it either. I ran across a recent case of extreme honesty in the face of difficult circumstances that is a good example of what “getting real” means.
What do you do when you have customers counting on your service and you fail? Many of us marketers would do nothing—that kind of communication is for the tech support department. And of course the sales reps need to be briefed on what to say, because they may be dealing with some angry customers.
Few marketers would decide to post a blog entry entitled “Anatomy of a(n ongoing) Disaster”—but that is exactly what DreamHost did, when they had a series of snafus that produced service outages for their customers.
DreamHost operates the computer servers that run other companies’ Web sites, so when DreamHost fails, their customers’ Web sites fail. Having the company’s Web site down can be a disaster for many businesses, but how many marketers would use that word to describe their own service to their customers? DreamHost did.
And DreamHost went into exhausting detail on what went wrong, which was actually a series of errors, many by DreamHost, but a few out of their control (by their suppliers) that made the problem as bad as it was.
And what was their customers’ response? Some changed to the competition, but many stayed. And the comments posted to that blog entry were overwhelmingly positive:
- “I’m not going anywhere and this blog post is a big reason why.”
- “Posts like this are the reason I love dreamhost and continue to pimp you guys out to all my friends.”
- “…try not to beat yourselves up too much over this period of bad luck..”
- “I have to say that without this post, I’d be outta here.”
- “It’s rare to find a company who is willing to own up to their mistakes and be honest with customers.”
- “…I am rooting for you.”
- “Without this post I would seriously consider moving.”
Did every customer respond that way? No. There were a few flaming comments that took DreamHost to task. DreamHost left them in there along with all the positive comments, for everyone to read.
And then a funny thing happened. Famous bloggers linked to the DreamHost blog to show such a great example for a company being honest under fire. For all we know, DreamHost actually attracted more customers than it lost.
Now will marketing like this make DreamHost a success? Not by itself. DreamHost must actually fix these problems or their customers will flee no matter how honest they are about them. But this kind of authenticity may have forged stronger relationships. It would have been easier to keep a lid on information, to placate customers privately, or to make excuses. And customers are smart enough to know that.
Getting real is not just about avoiding ethical lapses, but about using truthfulness as a differentiator to build trust in your customer relationships.
