The familiar adage that the consumer is always right has taken on a new meaning in the Internet age. Rather than talk with a store manager, consumers are now making their feelings about different products known on message boards and blogs.
Message boards and blogs enable online users to start conversations about a wide variety of products and services -- from new product news to reviews of local restaurants. Quickly, these forums gained credibility and became central meeting places for groups of consumers interested in specific products and companies. Corporations were uneasy about engaging with these sites because consumers' opinions were often stated quite forcefully; profanity fills the pages on microsoftsucks.org, and gapsucks.org outlines a string of alleged environmental abuses by that company. One possible way to deal with such feedback is to try and shut it down. There have been a few instances during the past few years where established companies sued sites that they felt had crossed the line and libeled them. In July 2000, Credit Suisse First Boston filed a lawsuit alleging that 11 people posted bogus messages on a Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) 
message board slandering a Credit Suisse analyst and illegally copying the analyst's research.
Bribery Used to Cover Up a Scandal?
In 2004, Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR) sued 10 defendants for libel over comments posted to the message board of Lightwave, a networking news source. Among other things, the posters' comments alleged that top Juniper executives were bribing attorneys to cover up a scandal at the company and installing spyware to monitor employees' work at home. In its filing, Juniper alleged that the defendants made false statements that hurt the company's business and reputation.
The lawsuits have been largely ineffective for a few reasons. For one, Web sites have been given the same protection as established media sources like newspapers and magazines. Also, tracking down anonymous posters has proven to be difficult. Last, the lawsuits seldom discourage such activities.
"In some cases, the individuals feel empowered when they are sued and heighten the intensity of their assaults," said Adam Sarner, principal research analyst at market research firm Gartner (NYSE: IT) .
Rather than travel down legal roads, a growing number of companies are trying to engage in a dialogue with their online constituents. Many are setting up their own message boards and blogs to gather customer feedback. In addition to putting the software in place, companies hire full-time or part-time monitors, individuals who examine the comments and report back to management what customers are saying.
Where Should the Feedback Go?
However, where to channel this information is a bit unclear at the moment. "Corporations have different groups -- marketing, communications, customer support 
-- monitoring the boards," Louis Columbus, director of the ECQM practice at Cincom Systems, told CRM Buyer.
The consumer feedback can be helpful. There have been instances where online users offered companies significant insights into the design of their current products as well as helped them understand what features would appeal to customers in the future.
By monitoring the information, a company can also enhance its messaging. "Corporations need to try and shape the dialogue; they need to make sure that both sides, not just one, of an issue are presented," said Columbus.
Message Board Rock Stars
Despite existing stereotypes, consumers on these sites often are willing to engage in civil dialogues with companies. "There is a Cablevision site on Yahoo where one of the company's engineers answers questions online quite frequently, and he has become a celebrity at the site," Gartner's Sarner told CRM Buyer.
Corporations use the forums to minimize negative publicity. Companies have a choice: They can acknowledge problems by responding to Web sites or they can wait for the problem to show up as a front page headline in a major newspaper. Responding quickly to a problem can enhance a company's image.
As corporations engage with their customers, they need to abide by the online community's unwritten rules. "Companies need to make sure that they do not take away all of the negative commentary and leave only positive comments," noted Columbus. "The users will sniff that out in an instant, and the site will be dead."
Searching for Balance
While some sites present a one sided diatribe against a certain brand, a growing number tries to present more balanced views. If a person is constantly making negative comments or seems to have an agenda against a specific company, the community will question the person's motivations. In addition, many sites now include features where users rate each post, so it quickly becomes clear whether or not a community feels that a certain person is adding anything of value to the discussion.
In addition to recognizing these new channels for user feedback, companies are trying to take the online comments and formally integrate them into their business processes. The first challenge is collecting and categorizing the data, which arrives in a variety of formats. Increasingly, new analytical tools rely on search engine-like technology to find consumer-posted thoughts and then translate them into a format that the company's business applications can work with.
At the moment, these tools are relatively new and a bit underdeveloped. Eventually, observers expect that the information will be automatically funneled into CRM systems and treated like inquiries about a warranty or a product's price. "We are at the early stages, but companies are now searching for ways to take their consumer-driven information and use it to drive improvements throughout the organization," concluded DMG Consulting's Fluss.
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