Why Jamaican companies should stay away from Social Media

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 10 Comments

Over the past year, especially the last 6 months I’ve been involved in many client meetings, speaking at workshops, hosting trend briefings- sitting with, listening to, fielding questions from and guiding clients who are executives and entrepreneurs across various industries. The two words on everyone’s lips – social media. The brands everyone’s talking about – Facebook, Twitter and now Foursquare. So while the buzz and hype about social media begins to bubble up like soup, it’s a marketing and communications channel that some Jamaican companies should stay away from for a little while. Why? They need more time to asssess their products, services and most importantly, they need to ask themselves if they truly value their customers and show it.

It’s a belaboured and unfortunate fact that Jamaica has an awful customer service culture across all industries. It’s a scenario where front line workers think it’s slavish to give good serveice and don’t see the direct (reputation,profit,job and salary) benefit. Add to that, the “boss” and managerial culture here, which is typically one of hiring individuals who are underpaid and micromanaged to the death of their initiative, creativity and productivity.

So how then can companies that have a culture of substandard or selective ( based on class, money and who knows who) customer service and a practice of reacting badly or worse disregarding customer feedback, be expected to excel in social media? Funny some of these offenders, tend to be companies who are viewing and using social media as another channel for them to shout their messages and sell their wares; they tend to be the ones too with unrealistic expectations (“I want a million hits for my Youtube video like this dancing babies video” or How come I didn’t get 10,000 Facebook fans from that weekend article in the newspaper, it has a circulation of over a million people?“)

So, I think as we’re in the social stage of the internet, or as Gary Vaynerchuk calls it, the customer service age for brands- it’s a great time for Jamaican companies who are serious about still being in business in the next 2-5 years, to examine their internal culture – how they think about customers, how they go about developing new products and services and how they gather and respond to customer feedback.

Social Media can be a great opportunity for companies that are open minded to doing things differently and being nimble in their response to the changed way of doing how customer expect them to do business. Only the fearful will see it all as a threat and continue to take their customers for granted. I expect we’ll have ring side seats to how consumers of things Jamaican,will vote. As we say in Jamaica…some companies ah go feel it!

Category: Thoughts

Comments

10 Responses to “Why Jamaican companies should stay away from Social Media”

Tweets that mention Why Jamaican companies should stay away from Social Media : INGRID RILEY -- Topsy.com
August 20th, 2010 @ 9:08 pm

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by anniepaul, Gordonswaby, Jherane Patmore, Joel, Ingrid Riley and others. Ingrid Riley said: Fresh Post: Why Jamaican companies should stay away from Social Media http://bit.ly/abAQ3O [...]
Gayle
August 20th, 2010 @ 9:20 pm

true thing!
David Mullings
August 20th, 2010 @ 10:27 pm

Well said.

The unfortunate thing is that these companies will still be in business in 5 years.

Too many business people around the world still subscribe to the idea of “interruptive” advertising instead of engaging in conversations.

They fail to listen to their customers and potential customers, hence why so few companies conduct focus groups for their products and services or take suggestions and complaints seriously.
ingridjm
August 21st, 2010 @ 8:12 pm

I may agree with you to a point that some of these companies will still be in business 5 years ago.Why? because the Jamaican market can be slow to adopt some things but I’ve realise that this slow adoption process is primarily because teh gatekeepers steer them away from the information and feed them only marketing messages that benefit them. Which is why I believe a wide access to the internet and more tech evangelists like you and me ought to get even more vocal and talk di tings dem.
David Mullings
August 22nd, 2010 @ 3:36 pm

You are quite right Ingrid, the average Jamaican consumer is not demanding what we are in terms of service levels and there are enough of them that the companies will still be profitable.

As for “talk di tings dem” we are in an awkward position: Able to publicly criticize in order to get positive change but also trying to get the very same companies as clients in some cases.

Such is the case the private criticism is actually wiser but that does not educate the populace.

Sticky
Timbo
August 22nd, 2010 @ 8:34 pm

Very interesting and honest take on the social media mania. Social media can do wonders for some businesses but certainly leaves others quite vulnerable.
ingridjm
August 23rd, 2010 @ 4:10 am

Very sticky! But people like Seth Godin and others have managed to do it. The slap and tickle routine that constructively criticises, helps, get companies excited at the same time being able to win business from anyone we want.
Kharim
August 23rd, 2010 @ 7:14 pm

I don’t think that some Jamaican’s understand the term Social Media, so they will use it in the wrong way.

The first of the two words, social, they lack the concept of being social and this can be critical depending on what you are using the social media for.
ingridjm
August 23rd, 2010 @ 9:59 pm

Yeah I agree, there is a hunger for information, so the crucial thing is where they get that info and then how do they use it!
The Last Word: Prudence Simpson | Corve DaCosta
September 3rd, 2010 @ 11:32 am

[...] Twitter. I think it’s good, I think we’re using it well. I saw one of Ingrid’s post entitled Why Jamaican companies should stay away from Social Media. I read it and it meant a lot to me because a lot of times I think I’ve gone ahead of the [...]