Companies and organizations that continue to resist blogging often do so because they view bloggers as isolated individuals with hidden agendas and axes to grind.
Dell initially made that mistake with Jeff Jarvis, but as Jeff noted yesterday, they're taking a different approach now:
...I had a rather infamous run-in with Dell here at Buzzmachine when I complained about a bad machine and service. They ignored me, but thousands of similarly frustrated customers did not. Dell’s attitude toward blogs at the time was “look, don’t touch.”... But things began to turn around when Dell opened a company blog, which was off to a puffy start until Lionel [Menchaca], the chief blogger, entered, speaking with customers in an honest, direct, humble, and human voice. Next they put together a team to reach out to bloggers who had problems...
It is clear, through [Lionel and his colleagues], that at least at some levels, Dell has changed its culture and certainly its attitude toward bloggers. They now see value in reaching out. As they’ve said before, bloggers tend to state their problems clearly, which makes it easier (and, I assume, more efficient) to solve them. A problem solved is not only a customer likely to be saved, but also often leads to good PR and branding as the bloggers recount their happy endings. And the Dell guys say they get information and data from this; they hear about problems that may arise before others in the company do, because their customers are talking about it...
Lionel, who came from years of customer service and PR at the company, said the team working on the blog and with bloggers loves it. Aren’t there a few people out there who just can’t be satisfied, no matter what you do? Lost causes? Bozos? They agreed that there are a few and the outreach people don’t always say yes to their demands. But my drinking companions agreed that in an open forum, other folks tend to know who the bozos are. And the bozos tend to stand alone.
That, you see, was the real moral to my story. Whether or not I was a bozo, I did not stand alone. My story wasn’t about me but the people around me, the ones who said, “me, too.” I was merely the agent of coalescence. That’s what you have to watch for on the internet. That’s what the internet enables. [emphasis mine]
The "agent of coalescence"--I love that phrase. It may have been easier for Jeff to step into that role because he's a big-name blogger with a sizeable readership, and because he tapped into frustrations shared by thousands of Dell customers, but any one of us can do the same, albeit on a smaller scale.
We blog because we care, passionately, about something. And thanks to the live web, others who share that passion will find us. If we're not bozos, they'll join us--they'll say "me, too," in any number of ways. This is how movements and constituencies and networks of all sorts are built today--they form around agents of coalescence.
Which leads me to two questions: If you're blogging, how might you serve more effectively as an agent of coalescence on behalf of a cause you're passionate about? And if you're a company or organization, how might you identify and engage those agents of coalescence who are passionate about what you do?
Photo of Jeff Jarvis by Doc Searls. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.
