Tail Whipped

Normally I put interesting Long Tail comment that I've found elsewhere in my sidebar, but this one was too good to thumbnail:

"My wife is boycotting Burger King and has been for the last 8 years. Of course, that means that I boycott Burger King too. We haven't been in one voluntarily since the day my wife got a badly burned chicken sandwich and an employee refused to take it back or make her another one....

[But] our boycott of Burger King is meaningless in the company's eyes. As Kelly Mooney notes in The Ten Demandments, our boycott is "invisible."

Back in the day, there wasn't much you could do. You could leave a nasty comment card that would likely wind up in the trash. You could call or write the company, but that takes effort and the results, based on experience, are likely to be less than satisfying.

But several articles have emerged recently that have reminded me how things have changed. The aforementioned Kelly Mooney's own blog references a new Forbes report on the top corporate hate sites. A very entertaining read. Warning: You may waste a lot of time reading other people's gripes about companies that you don't even frequent. They are just that interesting sometimes.

I also ran across an article on the Lawler's Rule blog that talks about the "Long Tail" and using search engines to reach a niche with regard to your complaints about a specific company....

I guess this is sort of like the difference between being a little fish in a big pond versus being a big fish in a little pond. If a "YourCompanySucks.com" web site gets a better Google ranking than your own corporate web site, heaven help you. The little pond has a way of getting bigger....quickly.

The take-home message? You can't afford to allow bad experiences to flourish in your company. Customers have a bigger arsenal to fight back with than they ever had before. If you allow bad experiences to thrive, the long tail will whip around and beat you senseless."

Comments

[Discfree]

You're wife has been boycotting for Burger King for 8 years because of poor customer service? Where did you think you were eating the Ritz Carlton? It was probably some high school kid who doesn't even work at the company. Obviously Discree, being a prominent site gets immediete attention. Here is an email I sent regarding their most recent national advertising campaign. According to David Leonardo (the manager of their franchise unit), they dropped the campaign directly as a result of my email. They were quite fearful actually, shaking in their boots. I have .25 cents of the BK fish fillet for anyone interested.
When you have traffic like Discfree, I bet your opinion will matter too.

Dear Discfree,

Thanks for your feedback. In response to your request , we've pulled the
ads. I hope you cancel your boycott and accept our apologies.

David L.

Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 11:08 PM
To: Leonardo, David
Subject: customer complaint

Hello,

First of all, I would like to complain that you don't have an email
submission policy for improvements for your franchise. You should allow
consumers to contact you when they feel that they have a suggestion or
complaint that could improve your business via email. To not have email
submission is clearly out of touch with the 21st century. Since you don't
have a policy of accepting these emails, I had to find your email address
online and will disregard such a screwed up policy.

I am writing to complain about your latest marketing campaign on two
grounds. The first is that I find the reference to a nice caboose very
offensive. I believe that the marketing campaign is off taste given your
emphasis on building brand loyalty with very young children. I am 28, a
very worldy person and yet for some reason the innuendo is still offensive
to me. Secondly the commercial sucks. It has an annoying bacon ranch
theme that lacks originality and creativity. If you wanted to be
controveresial you should have done something more like the godaddy
superbowl commercial instead of an annoying cowboy song. Do you really
think that your key demographic of 18 - 30 year old males will find this
commercial appealing? If so, then you need to rethink your view of the
young adult population in america.

I would appreciate it, if you would forward my comments onto the
appropriate parties. Personally, I plan on boycotting your company until
you pull the ads.

Thank You,

Discfree.com

[Chris Anderson]

Just to be clear, the text is the post is from the site I referenced, not from me.

[Bryan William Jones]

This is why blogs will become more critical to consumers, consumer protection and why businesses will have to start paying attention to issues that will run long tail economics in reverse, right? (something about wagging the long tail seems to come to mind) Blogs, especially those hosted on personal accounts or servers will become a forum that unlike many of the XYZsucks.com sites will have some other form of draw. Specifically, those blogs that gain traffic or reputation for other things will become a forum that might have some degree of success in delivering a message to the public in a manner that a letter to the company never could accomplish. For instance, your site has an audience that comes back again and again to read about long tail economics. If you were also to use it to write about an experience with a product, it very well will have some degree of impact on the market of potentially large corporations.

My own experience with this a number of years ago was after I wrote an opinion in Epinions.com regarding a brand new Dodge truck I had purchased (the new ones in 1994 just after the redesign). The opinion was written after about four years of ownership. One week after writing the opinion I had a lawyer (presumably from Chrysler) call me and threaten libel. I replied all I wrote down were the facts. Nothing more and that I had all documentation to back up my claims. I never heard back, but it was that kind of treatment combined with the experience of ownership that unfortunately convinced me to never purchase another product from them again. Beyond that, the review in Epinions apparently disappeared from their site which then became the first entry in my blog.

[Eric G. Myers]

I am the one who wrote the original article. And yes, I realize just how absurd it seems to boycott an entire company over one lousy customer service experience. But doesn't that just make the point even more relevant? It wasn't that we had a horrific, life-changing bad experience. My wife just got ticked off over how she was treated by a minimum wage employee about a chicken sandwich.

How do you think Starbucks would have handled the same problem (if they sold chicken sandwiches of coure *grin*)? Part of what allows Starbucks to charge a premium price for what is essentially a commodity product (coffee) is how they treat the customer. The offer better than average wages and benefits and, most importantly, lots of training. I would argue that fast food has become a commodity product in many respects as well. If one of the fast food giants really stepped up and delivered a superior customer experience, they might be able to get out of the profit draining rut of "value menus" and 99 cent offerings.

Gosh darn it! Now you've made me hungry! Mmmmm chicken sammich. *grin*

I hope you might consider visiting ICE - Improving Customer Experience.

EGM

[Consumerpedia]

Check out Consumerpedia.org - the easiest way to leave comments about companies, products, services, etc...

[Greg]

I've boycotted McDonalds for ten years or so over a Whopper that I ordered which I thought resembled a hockey puck much more closely than the huge burger bursting with toppings that graced the glowing menu behind the counter.

Years later when a fellow employee of a computer lab I worked in brought a McDonald's menu for our convenience in ordering lunch, I trashed it.

Today, fast food of any kind simply isn't on my diet.

[discfree]

Greg, as much as I can appreciate you desire to boycott McDonalds over a lousy Whopper, I do think it's important that you realize that whoppers are sold by burger king and not Mickey D's.

[sniper]

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