JeffreyMarx.com

My former co-worker (I.E. I drove him to the airport one time) and colleague (I’m pretty sure he still knows my name) Jeff Jarvis wrote a book called “What Would Google Do?“. I really enjoyed reading Jarvis’ thoughts on business and media today and how how to take Google’s “open source” way of thinking and apply it to the rest of the world. Jeff Jarvis is a journalist who has gone on to become a pioneer/evangelist in the online world. His blog, Buzzmachine is a tremendously popular resource for media professionals everywhere.

He went over a case study about how he raised a firestorm on his blog Buzzmachine with Dell regarding poor customer service over a product he bought. After amassing a huge group of followers, he caught Dell’s attention. His blog posts resonated with many other frustrated customers who left comment after comment about their experiences. The controversy made its way to the media and caused some public humiliation for Dell. In the end, Jarvis got restitution and actually helped Dell shift its strategy so that they pay more attention to bloggers and involve customers when making decisions. That is a victory for any person who feels like they have been given the runaround from a company that sold them a defective product, or waited hours for the cable guy to show up in a certain “window” of time. And it really illustrates how the internet has given customers more power than they have ever had. Google has embraced the customers voice and used it as a key component in their monstrous success. Google’s whole business is based around customer service, organizing information and making it easy for customers to find what they want quickly. While that service in of itself does not yield any direct revenue, they found ways to make a ton of money once they won the trust of their fans. Pay attention to your customers, and the rest will follow. That is one of the concepts stressed repeatedly throughout the book.

But this book really is not just about Google. It is about how companies not only need to pay attention to their customers, but actually use them as resources to design better products. Imagine if a restaurant’s menu included customer comments next to each dish (good and bad). On my newspaper site, we have a popular New York Yankees blog where we routinely give credit/links to competing newspapers’ good columns/stories about the Bronx Bombers. We also allow some of our more regular users to actually write posts on the blog in the “pinch hitter” series that takes place during the offseason when baseball news slows down. Could you imagine that ever happening in print (I can sense one of my former journalism professors shuddering at the thought)? Newspaper writers are used to writing stories and not having to worry about immediate reaction from readers. Now readers can post comments so they are directly attached to stories posted on the web site. This is a whole new level of accountability that companies need to get used to and embrace.

I don’t agree with all of Jarvis’ views, but he definitely gives a great overview on how the new forms of media have affected all aspects of our economy. All businesses (small and big) must understand this to be able keep their customers, or their competitors will take advantage.