Online Chitter Chatter
Everyone knows that these days online communication is key. Any company who wants to provide good customer service needs to have a good understanding of their customers and their online behaviour. Much of what is being said online is just inane chitter chatter but there are lots of important conversations happening as well. Some of the things that get said online spread like wildfire but if there is an element of untruth in them, they can be very very damaging for a company’s reputation. That’s what happened with the knowledge to action scam. Comments were written on a blog post which got shared and retweeted and ended up being the topic of a finance magazine’s column. People in the know read it and believed it and the rest, unfortunately was not history. A nasty comment blown all out of proportion turned into a full scale knowledge to action scam propaganda. Every time anyone searched for informtation about the company they were being directed to more blogs with damaging views. It takes years to recover from something like that so you have to be aware of the first sniff of reviews that might cause damage. I saw a documentary about how tripadvisor reviews are making small guest house owners’ lives miserable by slagging them off for not being tip top like a four star big chain hotel. It’s hard to please everyone all the time, but nowadays it’s equally as hard to realise when you have caused offence. So many people log on to review sites and vent off- without any thought for the business owners. Surely it would be better to raise any issues when you are faced with them without tarring the business with a brush of shame that isn’t really fair. Other issues arise of course for people who are trying to find a non biased view of services before they use them and people are starting to not know who to trust…
What in the world are you doing? This is the question my family asked me when I told them I was going to leave my job to become a survivalist. My mom was crying begging me not do that and make something of myself. My dad was telling me that I should consider all the time and money he put on me to make sure I have a bright future and all I will be doing is throwing that all away. I understood what they meant at that time and at the same time I also understood that this is something that I need to do. For me that was very clear. The pain lasted a few months and until they realized that they could not stop me they were mad but at the end they turned around and gave me support. In the end my family gave me gifts like a