Thanks to this comment by Robin (excellent technology blog by the way), I found this TipidPC thread which I feel mirror a lot of the sentiments generic customers feel during a viral crisis. This thread is also a treasure trove of consumer insights for Globe. I’m just surprised Globe hasn’t joined the conversation (the thread’s 26 pages long and counting). TipidPC is geek central and is 100% in tune with their “mobile broadband for the mobile laptop-toting geek” positioning.

I feel a lot of marketing and PR professionals are sufficiently trained in ‘inducing’ a neutral-to-positive response from customers and prospects. I have friends in consumer goods and media who are on top of their game as far as conceptualization and roll out implementation plans for their beloved brands and clients go. What most of them lack are hard skills to induce a negative-to-neutral or better yet, a negative-to-positive response. The other thing that scares them is that they are absolutely clueless on how they should be reacting as brand managers to a downward spiraling online story. Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing in a Web 2.0 environment is something most marketers don’t understand and thus, can’t appreciate.

The ongoing revolution against Globe Visibility is living proof of how little marketers understand word-of-mouth marketing. Here you have a WOM darling, embraced by consumers and loved by sneezers. An ongoing technical(?) problem has Globe Visibility’s brand reeling from multiple attacks from evangelists turned malcontents. Globe’s reluctance to decisively address their product’s very public crucifixion is going to hurt Globe in more ways than one:

• existing non-corporate subscribers who are at their wits’ end are canceling their subscriptions with a “screw the pre-termination charges, let’s use Smart 3G’s P10/30 minutes” mentality
• potential customer recruits who don’t sign up because they’re treating these customer gripes as gospel truth. This hurts Globe more than the first one since for every one disgruntled subscriber who quits, he’ll be evangelizing at least 10 other people who in turn will spread the negative gospel to 100 more people. The exponential hurt caused by not sending out a SMS technical advisory or offering rebates will haunt this brand for months to come.

I’d tell the brand management team of Globe Visibility to focus on two things:

• Pick your target. Not all online consumer complaints need your attention, yet. Unless you have 300 Sparta-bred online reputation specialists at your disposal, the truth is you can’t be on top of all things, all the time. Your first task would be to identify the loudest sneezer with the largest following, and then move to placate his concerns.
• Initiate a stop-gap measure while you solve the root problem. Send out a technical advisory acknowledging the problem, train your customer support frontliners to include this in their spiels and lastly, issue rebates. Nothing shuts down a loud critic better than a rebate.

Consumers, especially Filipino ones, are very forgiving and very patient. Use that to your advantage.