In this politically charged environment where everything about our borders is under fire, did I just use the word “Maquiladora“ in the title of a post from a social media centric blog? Yes I did! And it gets worse, as my first example has ties back to the German pornography industry!
It is all in good faith, however, as this discussion is going to be about the integration of blogs and social media into the customer feedback loop with a strategy that can redefine manufacturing. Customer service blogs are a huge opportunity for manufacturing businesses to connect with consumers.
To start this post, I am going to use one of the most hilarious manufacturing mistakes that I’ve personally witnessed and how a broken feedback loop cost a European furniture manufacturer a lot of money.
When I was in high school, way back before Al Gore invented the Internet, I worked at a local mall in a contemporary furniture store that had about 50 locations across the United States. The majority of the products we sold came in boxes and were assembled in our stores or by our delivery teams. Most of the products came from Europe. In late 80′s in Dallas, TX, our customer base consistent primarily of conservative born and bred southerners.
One day we got a frantic call from a customer demanding her money back on a small desk she had picked up in a box at our store the day before. She wouldn’t discuss it over the phone. When the box was dropped off, I pulled them apart to make sure none of the pieces were damaged. It was then I realized what the problem was.
This manufacturer used newspaper to stuff the open sections of the box to protect the item during shipping. We used to get a kick out of these newspapers as they were generally in foreign languages. This particular manufacturer was German. The problem with the box in question was that the newspapers used to stuff it consisted of German pornography. After the adolescent giggling came to an end, reality hit me: I was going to have to unpack every box from this manufacturer to see if more of the offensive material existed. Unfortunately for the manufacturer, we could have changed our mall honing to “Adult Periodicals” based on what we had in inventory that day. This literally led to a massive recall of their products from our home office.
The Customer Feedback Loop
So where am I going with this? Well, there is a huge opportunity to get out in front of the curve for manufacturers. Let me tell you a little bit about my first encounter with the concept.
While at Microsoft I had the opportunity to visit a decent number of the world’s premier manufacturing and assembly plants. These ranged from Toyota’s Formula One unit in Germany to assembly plants along the US/Mexico boarder. All of these facilities had one thing in common: they benefitted from timely feedback.
In the world of Formula One, this was instantaneous due to the sensor and data collection technology built into the car. For a television assembly plant in Mexico, however, their first point of customer feedback was in many cases a returned product from US retailers. Much like the furniture store example, by the time they find out about issues it is too late.
In spending the day with the general manager of one of these maquiladoras, he told me, “If we could get instantaneous feedback, we could make real time changes to our assembly processes and force our parts suppliers to do the same to provide solutions to problems before the next lot of merchandise leaves our facilities.”
Unfortunately, the road to getting to this point involved building massive business to business intranet systems that would take years to deploy. Fast forward 10 years and enter social media.
Social Media and Consumer Pulse
How many times have you been on the comments section of a blog, Twitter, or Facebook and seen phrases such as, “My iPad is awesome!”, “AT&T sucks!”, or “My Chase banker saved my day”. I actually tweeted a few nasty comments yesterday after an Intuit representative admitted they flat out lied in their representation of a product’s capabilities.
The bottom line is that consumers voice their opinions everyday on social media. This is a great place for manufacturers to connect with consumers. Not only can they gain valuable insight but it presents the opportunity to connect with consumers. Though there are a plethora of social media monitoring tools that can allow you to tap into the social media ecosystem, there is a much more simplistic way–a customer service blog.
Customer Service Blogs
Customer service blogs are blogs dedicated to helping customers maximize the value of their purchase decision. These blogs contain information ranging from how to use a product to troubleshooting, care, and maintenance.
A good customer service blog can impact a customer prior to a sale and increase post sale satisfaction. It also gives product manufacturing teams detailed insight into customer expectations, common problems, and ideas for future product improvement or development. Lastly, if you can connect with a disgruntled customer in a timely manner, you can shape their perception of your company and product.
A good customer service blog should contain:
- Personalized authors with whom customers can relate.
- A variety of information formats including manuals, videos, images, and detailed content (more content than the enthusiast blogger is producing who is your main source of competition).
- Clearly defined areas including a forum where customers can self help.
The “Made In Mexico” Image
“Made in Mexico” has gotten a bad rap. Consumers will be drawn to the name brand marketing of a major American, German, or Japanese brand and then discount it a bit based where it is manufactured. It isn’t fair but it is true.
You have companies like Fender who have converted American icon products like its flagship “Stratocaster” guitar to a Mexico-based factory, thus creating heartburn for their image. Still, a blog can help to shape this opinion as seen in this post on Fender guitars Made in Mexico.
The bottom line is that Mexican manufacturing is mature and has been heavily influenced by the American and European manufacturing titans who invested in it. Still, a national television commercial won’t sway American consumers on that message. When it comes to staples such as consumer electronics and automotive subcomponent assembly, the blogosphere can help. Sure, reviews such as the Fender post above are one thing, but what can really turn a customer is a corporate based blog supported by the factory.
Let’s say you purchased a television at a local Best Buy and realized when putting it together that one of the cables had a defect not allowing it to properly connect. Today, you will probably head to the Internet. If your first hit in a Google search was a customer service blog that had representation from the teams responsible for your product, you might be enticed to leave a comment. After doing so, if you had a factory representative identify the issue and remedy the situation for you, you might be compelled to tell your story. Some executives might fear too many comments or overload. If that is the case, you might actually have a manufacturing problem!
Word of mouth marketing is powerful and inexpensive–a lot of it starts with an Internet experience. Why not make it your customer service blog?
