These days, it’s just about impossible to find a social media “expert” who doesn’t recommend that your company and/or clients jump on the social media bandwagon. And why not? It really is an amazing new channel that both empowers customers and, as pointed out by Bill Hanifin, is about as close to the holy grail of 1-to-1 communications as we ever may get.

But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment: Is there ever a situation where getting into social media is a mistake? Well, just maybe. There are at least a few companies on the social media scene that are taking a thumping.

I’m talking about companies that, justly or unjustly, are seen as having a less than sterling reputation when it comes to customer service. With the advent of social media, these companies have to deal with more than angry customers on the phone—they now have angry customers on the Net, with the ability to amplify their message to thousands of others, often on the company’s own social networking sites.

One vertical that seems to have more than its fair share of angry Netizens are the cable companies. Take for instance, Comcast. In a past post, I wrote about some Comcast service-related issues I was having with the cable conglomerate, but also pointed out that their Twitter presence was top-notch.

As far as I can tell, Comcast has no official Facebook presence but, as you might expect, others have filled the void. A quick look reveals two separate Facebook pages for people who don’t like the company, including “I Hate Comcast”. Yet the fact that Comcast doesn’t have its own corporate Facebook page may be a good move—especially when you take a look at competitor Verizon, who is being forced to fight off critics right on its home turf.

On Verizon’s Facebook Discussion page are threads that include “Verizon sucks” and “Awful Customer Service”. More vitriol can be found on the company’s “Fans of FiOS” page. Along with accolades, there is a steady stream of negative postings like: “Verizon has the worst customer service in the world and here are all the things I now HATE about FiOS”, followed by a 10-point list.

What’s most interesting are the responses from the “Fans of FiOS crew” (aka Verizon employees) who have the unenviable job of answering these rants. In most cases, they respond in a bright and chirpy manner that deals with the issue at hand and ignores the nastiness. But many times the FiOS crew appears to let damaging claims go unchallenged.

Here are two customer postings that did not get an official company response:

“Beware. Their billing is atrocious. Watch your bills closely, they are playing games with the bills.”

and:

“Verizon lies again with their offers and promotion propaganda and I am not the only one. Many people on this board are not getting the $150.00 gift card that you promised when we signed up as new costumers. Explain please!!”

The query below received some polite technical advice regarding the Xbox issue, but ignored the “bill” and ”dedicated line” comments:

“This service blows I’ve been getting so much lag on xbox live…my bill is crazy high every month going up and I’m still in my one year contract…and by the way its not fiber to the home… its a shared network too… stop advertising “dedicated line” until u back it up.”

Ouch! So what do you do if you’re Verizon, now that the social media genie is out of the bottle, and you’re consistently being hammered on your own Facebook page? Well, the “Fans of FiOS Team on Facebook” recently took action. They put up a “Notice Regarding Repeat Posts on the Wall” which in part reads:

To our valued Fans,

Recently, we’ve seen a number of fans repeatedly posting questions regarding content that we’ve addressed in the past…these repetitious posts have made it more difficult to address new questions…for this reason, we have decided to begin removing repeat posts of the same topic.

So they’ve given themselves the “right to remove posts”—which could mean taking down any complaint on any issue they feel like they’ve already addressed. This is sure to tick off some fans of FiOS, who see the Facebook page as a public square—but I think Verizon has done the right thing.

At a certain point, you just can’t let your own Web pages be a platform that assists in your own demise and further damages you’re already less than golden reputation.

What do you think?

I read some really great year end posts during the week leading up to New Year’s Day. Amidst the “Top 10/50/100″ lists, there were thoughtful, humorous, and motivational takes on how to evaluate 2009 and approach 2010 with energy and enthusiasm.

One or two that caused me to take my finger off the mouse and pause for a second read-through had to do with the pace at which we work.  The net-net message was that those people who work around the clock, never take their eye off the ball, and keep their energy switch constantly in the “On” position, will achieve the highest level of success in today’s always-connected world. One post went further, bragging about the pace they were keeping and implying that if the reader isn’t doing the same, you could count on falling, not only out of the race, but off the competitive map.

While there have always been overachievers and workaholics in our midst (and I admit to being in at least the first category), this year’s version of the “never take your foot off the pedal” message was heavily influenced by our steady adoption of social media. After two solid years (or 3?) of absorbing social media serum into our blood stream, we are a people possessed. Possessed by activity, by multi-tasking, by to-do lists, and by immediacy.

My take on how we interact with social media and other technologies – and how we advise our clients to interact with them – is that we have to remain constantly vigilant about who is in charge.

• Do we own the blackberry/iPhone, or does it own us?
• Does a ringing phone cause us to drop eye contact with a prospective customer to see who’s calling?
• Can we manage our social media presence as part of our work day, or does social media become our day?
• Are we creating another reason to procrastinate on tasks more closely correlated with revenue generation than SM so-far?

Don’t get excited, I’m not walking away from continuing to build social media communication strategies as part of my client’s customer strategies, but I am advising people to keep things in balance. If you’re not convinced, I have two resources to share with you, one older and more current.

The more time that goes by, the more I applaud the brilliance of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. Covey encourages people to prioritize the “critical” tasks of the day ahead of the “important”. In plain English, I am always going to complete and deliver a promised deliverable for a paying client before catching up on my Twitter email or posting to this blog.

The second resource is evidence of a growing body of evidence that multi-tasking is just not good for us as human beings.

• I saw the first commercial from a wireless company discouraging texting while driving over the holidays. Congratulations to Verizon on that ad which you can see here.
• The Harvard Business Review published an article during 2009 on “The Dangers of Distraction” and I have read other summaries of research that indicates we humans do our best work in linear, not multi-threading style.

With all the attention given by Marketers today to Customer Engagement, the issue of attention spans is critical to understand, dissect, and integrate into our communication plans. Our success in reaching and building loyalty with Generation Y (the Millennial Generation) is highly dependent on our commitment to addressing this key issue.

In my opinion, we need to build some space into our own lives if we are to successfully design and execute effective strategies for our clients. Building space into our lives means that we need to create some “margin” in the day. You know the one inch or so of white space around the typical page full of copy? Well, we need to put a version of that into our calendars, drop the to-do list to the ground, and reside peacefully there for enough time that it takes to refocus on the strategic, the critical, and the longer term view.

I’ve got lots more to share on how to drive Customer Engagement in an over-stimulated consumer environment.

Stay tuned.