But Twitter isn’t one-sided, and it’s not a pulpit. And those companies that make the best use of Twitter are the ones that use it to interact with customers, more specifically, respond to customer complaints.

But according to research from Maritz research company evolve24, not all companies are engaging in a dialogue with their customers on Twitter.

evolve24 surveyed 1,298 U.S. consumers that were identified as active Twitter users who use the service to address complaints they have with companies and their products/services. Less that one-third (29%) said that they received a response from the company on Twitter regarding their complaint.

49% of those surveyed said that they “expected” the company to read their tweet. And the older the respondent was, the more they expected the company to read the tweet.

Out of those that received a response tweet from the company, a whopping 83% said that they either liked or loved hearing from them. And beyond that, nearly two-thirds said they were at least somewhat satisfied with the company’s response.

Of those surveyed that failed to get a response to their complaint tweet, 86% said that they would have liked or loved to hear from the company. 63% said that they would not like it if the company responded to their complaint tweet with something that didn’t pertain to the complaint.

It looks like the moral of the story here is that people respond extremely well when a company takes the time to respond to a complaint on Twitter – and not enough companies are utilizing this weapon. When people are upset about the way they have been treated by a company or dissatisfied with a product or service, they are already in a bad mood. When a company fails to respond to a complaint on Twitter it will just exacerbate the situation (especially for those who have the expectation of a response).

And it’s amazing how satisfied the respondents were with the companies’ responses. 140 characters seem to go a long way.

Of course, it’s not feasible for large companies to respond to every complaint directed towards them on Twitter. Take Coca Cola for instance. In the past few days, their Twitter strategy has seen them respond to dozens of positive mentions. Here’s one of the only responses to a semi-negative mention in that time frame:

And even then, Coca Cola didn’t quite respond to the original query and they have yet to follow up on his followup.

Here are a couple of examples of businesses responding effectively to Twitter complaints -

If you’re a smaller business, it would appear that is in your best interest to not only maintain a Twitter presence, but actively respond to customer problems using the platform.

And as your Twitter presence grows, and you get more and more followers, the volume of complaints will inevitably grow. But the chance to make a customer’s experience a little better with 140 characters or less will grow as well.

The Club, which had searchers play puzzle games in order to win prizes, originally gave Microsoft a huge boost in search engine market share, a gain which has slowly dissapeared entirely in the last few months. Even worse, though, is the anger the Club’s fans are now turning towards the company.

Commenters have been showing up in increasing numbers at my original six month old Live Search Club post, complaining about cancelled or undelivered prize orders, a dead website, removed prizes and bugs. There’s talk of a class action lawsuit, and you can see some more complaints on the Wikipedia Talk page. Has Microsoft screwed up, or is it fighting back so aggressively against cheaters that it is causing a lot of anger among legitimate players?

Either way, we haven’t heard the last of this story. It looks like, in the end, Microsoft had negligible gains from the promotion, and there are a lot of headaches to come from its management, or mismanagement, of same.

If you’ve had a good or bad experience, feel free to post about it in the comments.

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It was no longer an honest “show of hands” — it suddenly was a platform for beating the Ron Paul drum. That certainly wasn’t our intention and certainly doesn’t serve our readers … at least those who aren’t already in the Ron Paul camp.

Some of you Ron Paul fans take issue with my decision to take the poll down. Fine. When a well-organized and committed “few” can throw the results of a system meant to reflect the sentiments of “the many,” I get a little worried. I’d take it down again.

Wastler blamed hacking or a targeted campaign for skewing the numbers in favor of Paul: more than 7,000 votes, with 75 percent in favor of the Texas libertarian.

Suggesting a hack took place borders on a criminal accusation. Wastler may want to back off that line of thinking unless CNBC’s IT staff can prove that happened.

But as far as people organizing and taking part in a poll en masse, isn’t that kind of the point of participating in the election process? Would a 75 percent share for Republican front-runners Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani have prompted CNBC to pull down the poll, suggest a hack took place, call out supporters for voting as a dedicated block?

Wastler missed a great opportunity to ask a question of the Republican camps besides Paul’s – why aren’t your supporters working the Internet as fervently as those of Ron Paul?

Google Street View Gains Six New Cities

The hunt for embarrassing or interesting photos has already begun.  So have the related complaints about a loss of privacy.  This, at least, is stuff we’ve seen before and could have predicted.  Yet the quality of certain pictures is new – Stephane Lafon, a software engineer with Google Maps, revealed, “[T]he images in Phoenix, Tucson and parts of Chicago are all in high resolution.”

Lafon then continued, “Ever wish you could pan up to the very top of a 50-story skyscraper using Street View?  Well, prepare yourself for some serious sightseeing; we’ve introduced the ability to pan up in most new cities.”  This may not have a lot of practical benefits, but a picture of the Sears Tower is quite stunning.

So keep an eye open for worthwhile scenes, and also stay on the lookout for Street Views of Canada and England – after seeing developments related to the former, and an actual Google camera car in the latter, it’s a good bet there are pictures, too.

A common thread among the complaints is Google’s failure to respond to customer service e-mails, or users being told their problem would be investigated only to hear nothing back. Some railed at Google for providing no telephone number to call when things go wrong.

Asked about difficulties in getting Google’s attention, Karen said, “We’re always looking for ways to improve.”

As someone who has spent plenty of face and headset time with people in a non-positive frame of mind, I think I can suggest three ways Google can serve its customers better. I’m not a business guru, but to paraphrase Scott Adams, I’ve gnawed an ankle or two in the business world.

First, Google, get a phone number and a call center. You have the technology to support this a lot less expensively in the age of VoIP than traditional copperline bound call centers do.

Avoid the temptation to outsource a call center, in the US or outside. Without naming names, routing your frustrated callers to a modern cube farm, where fanatical managers lose their minds when call handle times start to exceed a given number of minutes per call, will make matters worse.

Those workers won’t care about taking care of the Google customer. Corporate culture doesn’t translate well to outsourcers with sky-high turnover. Not every problem can be solved in 210 seconds.

That brings me to point two. Once you have made the proactive decision to embrace a call center, and bring on a bunch of smiling faces to strap on the headsets, you have to allow them the freedom to solve problems in short order.

That means codifying procedures for things like Checkout refunds and other annoyances that have pushed people to the point of complaining to the Federal Trade Commission. Customer service reps may make mistakes; they may do something to assuage an angry AdWords advertiser that, horrors!, costs Google money.

You smile, suck it up, and fix the issue that caused the problem. Then train people on the solution.

Here’s the third step, one that may be anathema to California’s job-bouncing culture. Invest in the long-term success of these reps. Reward them to the point where universities start doing ‘Loyalty Effect’-type case studies about how well Google treats not just its engineers, but its trench-fighting customer service types.

Why think long term? A veteran rep who knows policies, procedures, and the business well enough to snuff an angry little matchstick in three minutes, can keep a complaint from blazing into a blogosphere inferno. If you want examples of those, the Consumerist blog has loads of stories.

Customer service isn’t as sexy or interesting as rolling out new products. Infrastructure and support issues never are, but neither are major news outlets citing your FTC complaints at length.

The complaints vary from accusations of overcharging for advertising to returning pornographic sites when users search for their own names. The San Francisco Chronicle obtained complaints against Google through open records request that spans three years.

The names of the users who filed complaints were blacked out, along with over a dozen pages that are part of law enforcement investigations. One person from Frederick, Md. talked about being dropped from Google’s advertising program for no apparent reason. Another user from Omaha, Neb., was upset that a search for her name on Google led to pornographic Web sites and worried that it would damage her reputation and career.

As Google has gained in popularity so has the number of complaints from users. In 2005 the Federal Trade Commission received 74 complaints concerning Google. In 2006 complaints increased to 133 and then 176 in the first six months of this year. While the number of complaints has increased its still a small portion of Google’s user base, the company had 128.5 million U.S. users in August according to comScore.

When people do complain about Google it usually involves personal matters rather than accusing the company of being a monopoly. Only a small portion of complaints dealt with Google’s merger with DoubleClick or the information that Google keeps about its users.

"Marketers are compiling dossiers on you based on the pictures you post and the Web sites you visit," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a digital rights group. "Most people have no idea."

The most common complaints the Federal Trade Commission has received about Google include privacy and users wanting personal information that shows up in search results to be removed. Other complaints include Google’s reverse phone directory that allows users to search a telephone number to find out who it belongs to and get a map to the person’s home. Additional complaints involve Google Checkout and users not receiving a $10 credit for signing up and advertisers saying they were overcharged or falsely accused of click fraud. The Federal Trade Commission has also received complaints about Google’s purchase of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion sighting monopoly and privacy fears.

E-Commerce Times describes one of the fiascoes well:

Those problems include allegations of fraud and that RegisterFly aggressively cajoled customers to purchase upgraded services. Some customers complained to ICANN that they missed deadlines for renewal of domains, only to see those domains transferred to a company owned by RegisterFly CEO Kevin Medina, who then offered to sell the domains back at a higher price.

I’ve heard complaints about RegisterFly for months. However, since the April 26 ruling, the status of domains registered via RegisterFly was really in jeopardy. Once the domains have been transferred to GoDaddy, domain owners will once again be able to manage, transfer and renew the domains. Of course, GoDaddy will benefit from the transfers, but ICANN feels that the transfer will benefit the domain owners as well. I’m sure they’ll be glad to be free from the problem-ridden registrar.

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Google Apps Not Ready For Prime Time

Much has been made of Google’s ongoing assembly of a variety of homegrown and acquired online applications into a full-blown productivity suite. Every time a new component is announced, with PowerPoint-like presentations the latest one on Google’s schedule, we all run off to write the ‘Microsoft killer’ story.

One person has been working with Google Apps for over six months. He has about a hundred people livening up his day with the usual user requests. Garett Rogers is not the typical domain admin; Google followers should recognize him from his Googling Google blog on ZDNet.

His observations indicate Gmail as part of Google Apps is just not ready for a business that has been using Outlook for years. Getting mail from Gmail to the desktop email client has been a path fraught with peril:

Then you have users who “don’t get some mail”

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Google AdWords Quality Score Has Major Bug

Google AdWords Adds Quality Score Column & To Improved Quality Algorithm from Wednesday warned us of the new changes coming but apparently there is a bug that makes good performing ads prices spike through the roof.

]]> Google recently announced they were updating the Adwords Quality Score, however it appears that there is a bug that raises the prices form any advertisers:

Google AdWords Quality Score Has Major Bug

Google AdWords Adds Quality Score Column & To Improved Quality Algorithm from Wednesday warned us of the new changes coming but apparently there is a bug that makes good performing ads prices spike through the roof.

GrowMy » Blog Archive » Major Google AdWords Bug With Quality Score Increases CPC Prices

There are dozens of reports of people noticing their CPC prices in Google AdWords jump through the roof. With the launch of a new AdWords quality score, a bug has been released and verified by Google to increase the bid…

SearchAnyway PPC – Online Search Marketing Guide for Webmasters: Costly Google AdWords Bug

It seems that Google AdWords’ new Quality Score feature has a bug, and that are driving cost-per-click prices on certain keywords through the roof.

Google Plans AdWords Algorithm Change; Expects Complaints | Marketing Pilgrim

It looks like Google’s pushed the button too early – and it could be the wrong button too. Lots of people are complaining that their Quality Score has gone crazy.

While Google is aware of the problem and is fixing it they refuse to rollback the code and are content to charge advertisers more until they fix it. So if you went to the store and the cashier said I know this item only costs you $1 but the register is broken and I have to charge you $2, but we’re working on it, would that be acceptable? C’mon Google do the right thing, do no evil rollback the code.

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About the Author

Michael Gray is SEO specialist and publishes a Search Engine Industry blog at www.Wolf-Howl.com. He has over 10 years experience in website development and internet marketing, helping both small and large companies increase their search engine visibility, traffic, and sales. Michael is a current member of Internet Marketing of New York ( IM-NY.org) and a guest speaker on Webmaster Radio. He is also an editor for the popular search engine new website Threadwatch.org.

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/googles-greed-over-a-rollback-2007-02/feed 0 http://www.webpronews.com/google-expects-complaints-2007-02 http://www.webpronews.com/google-expects-complaints-2007-02#comments Sat, 17 Feb 2007 02:13:42 +0000 Andy Beal http://www.webpronews.com/?p=35304 UPDATE: It looks like Google’s pushed the button too early - and it could be the wrong button too. Lots of people are complaining that their Quality Score has gone crazy.

———-

I just got off the phone with Google’s Nick Fox, Senior Business Product Manager for Ad Quality, and got the scoop on the upcoming changes to the AdWords Quality Score.
]]> UPDATE: It looks like Google’s pushed the button too early – and it could be the wrong button too. Lots of people are complaining that their Quality Score has gone crazy.

———-

I just got off the phone with Google’s Nick Fox, Senior Business Product Manager for Ad Quality, and got the scoop on the upcoming changes to the AdWords Quality Score.

As we reported earlier today, Google is indeed planning a change to the Quality Score, with two major updates.

1. The addition of a new column in AdWords campaigns, showing the Quality Score.

2. A change to the Quality Score algorithm.

Fox explained the addition of the new column was Google’s effort to “improve transparency” and “make it easier to understand the quality score.” He also explained that Google hoped the new Quality Score information would “help advertisers optimize their ads.”

The new data will be available as early as tomorrow afternoon, which is a key move in anticipation of an algorithm tweak to the Quality Score in the next week or two. By being more transparent with the scoring, Google hopes to prevent any backlash that may come with the new algo.

While the new algorithm shift won’t be as dramatic as when Google introduced the landing page factors, Fox does expect to hear some complaining from advertisers. He confirmed that the new algo “will impact a fairly large number of keywords”, which might lead to a knee-jerk complaint by a large contingent of AdWords advertisers. However, Fox stressed the “bulk of the impact will be on keywords not driving traffic.”

To try and offset some of the complaints, Google’s also trying to provide “more benefit of the doubt, when data is not available,” says Fox. Effectively, some advertisers will find that their minimum bids actually go down.

The side-story to this update is Google’s effort to try and reach out to advertisers before they flick the switch. They’ve learnt their lesson from previous changes to the Quality Score and are keen to get the message across that while the change will impact a significant number of keywords, they believe only poorly performing keywords will be affected.

That said, it’s clear that Google is on an aggressive campaign to try and reach advertisers and bloggers before the sh*t hits the fan.

So, if I were you, I’d try and get a good grasp on the Quality Score data now, so you can be prepared for the new algo next week.

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About the Author

Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

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