In an age where we are constantly told about how customers are supposedly begging to engage brands it strikes me as strange that so many companies are both laying off people while increasingly promoting themselves through social media. A good example of this was the news today that telecom Sprint will be laying off 8,000 employees. The No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier, which continues to hemorrhage subscribers, said it will lay off 14 percent of its work force by March 31 as part of a move to cut annual costs by $1.2 billion.
The bad news was accompanied by the usual bullshit positive spin across various social media from CEO Dan Hesse, the kind of stupid exercise that is now invariably greeted with cynical scoffing: "Labor reductions are always the most difficult action to take, but many companies are finding it necessary in this environment. We continue to improve the customer experience and these improvements are reflected in much higher levels of satisfaction in customer surveys and in independent performance tests. Our commitment to quality will not change."
Does Sprint think that they can increase their customer service amid layoffs? It just shows that in common with far too many other companies, their loyalties are to the balance sheet first while their customers will have to continue putting up with poor service.
And what about their commitment to their employees?
Yeah, I know... Dumb question.
Well said George, well said. But, as for the line "customers are supposedly begging to engage brands", 'supposedly' should be in giant capital letters. Social media was set up to be social. It's advertisers and owners attempts to monetize this medium that has created this nonsense talk that customers WANT to engage brands. They don't seek to engage brands, the brands seek to engage them by infiltration of their social groups with all sorts of daft apps and other such.
spot on John - if consumers want to tinteract with brands, brands need to provide the media opportunities to enable this, but they don't need to be sticking their noses in to 'social' environments that they have not been invited in to - this is intrusion - worse so than telemarketing, as at least in this case you can opt-out via TPS, or just hang-up.
Engage, entertain, provide value and allow interaction on the consumers' terms, but don't intrude upon their lives when not invited to do so.
Well spotted our George !
That bloke seems to have been to the old "If you can't dazzle 'emwi' diamonds, baffle 'em wi' bullshit" school of P.R
One thing thesemuppets really should take on board is that they cant fool all of the people all of the time and when they TRY to it really insults our facking intelligence !
innit
George Parker
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Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 17 Nov 2009
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