A recent article on BNET.com bemoaned the difficulty of getting customers to participate in case studies or joint press releases. Many companies feel obligated to pursue this type of publicity. I think it is time to re-evaluate their purpose and value.
These solicited case studies and press releases are simply not credible with prospective customers and therefore do little to advance the welfare of the vendor.
In contrast, customer-generated content and peer reviews are not only credible and trusted by other customers, they seek them out. There is going evidence that this is true in both the B-to-C and B-to-B environments.
Why is this the case? Customer trust and believe each other when they talk about the experience they have had with the product—the experience using it to address business challenges and to gain competitive differentiation. The vendor company only comes into play if they facilitated a positive experience.
Companies that support open customer dialogs signal a genuine interest in a win-win agenda and accrue relationship value. As relationship value builds, customer become more co-operative, open and even collaborative. The caveat is, a company can set-up and manage a forum or social media site, but they can’t censor it.
A number of companies have jump-started their sites by first sponsoring regional customer advisory meeting. They hire a third party to facilitate customer discussions around challenges, obstacles and solutions. These discussions are them published on their site and other customers are invited to join-in.
Most often what surfaces is a dose of reality tempered by a lot of proactive “the glass is half-full” thinking. Most business leaders are solution-seeker, not nay-sayers.
