Skype is not yet ready for a blog
Stuart Henshall asks whether Skype should start blogging. Will Pate says Skype should.
Will makes some very convincing arguments for why they should, including suggesting Skype hires a Chief Blogging Officer to be the new proactive interface between the company and its growing customer base. The CBO, and a blog, would play a major role in addressing customer relationship/customer service issues such as you can see in many of the Skype user forums, in particular the SkypeOut forum.
I say - no, Skype, do not start a blog. Not yet.
Let's look at some issues.
It certainly seems that Skype has a massive number of customer complaints, especially regarding its pay-for SkypeOut service. Indeed, I've posted critical comment based on some poor experiences with it at home, and recently commented that I think Skype is reaching a crossroads with regards to its offering in terms of its rapid growth vs. customer satisfaction.
So what is the picture on customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction? You certainly get the impression from the forums that there are alarmingly-high numbers of very unhappy users, especially with SkypeOut.
Yet Stuart quotes some down-to-earth numbers:
SkypeOut now has one million users. [The SkypeOut forum] has 1702 topics. Let's assume that these are all separate cases, and mega complaints. If that's the case then SkypeOut complaints are running at 0.17%. Many of those complaints are about "buying" problems. While some interconnect issues have been blogged and well entered into the forums this number suggests that consumers "understand" the trade-off.
If you turn that number around, you could look at it as suggesting a customer satisfaction rate of just over 99 percent. A stretch, I know, but I can't imagine any business being unhappy with such a suggested statistic!
Returning to the prime point here - should Skype start a blog? - I think Will states the reason in his own post why they should not yet do so:
Change your strategic mindset from reactive to proactive. Your new modus operandi is to find problems, thank customers for finding them and fix them as fast as you can.
There is little to indicate that Skype has made such a change yet. So starting a blog before this strategic change would not be in the best interests of Skype or the user community. Otherwise, I could see a Skype blog developing from the start into a place that's filled with the types of negative complaints currently in the user forums. All that would do is create a bigger and much more visible issue that, if unaddressed, would simply add to negative perceptions about Skype and how they see their customer relationships (which no doubt isn't the same as how Skype themselves see those relationships).
However, there's a more fundamental point here about the concept of whether Skype should start a blog or not - where would it fit within an overall plan that supports Skype's strategic business goals, of which building and developing relationships with customers is one element? And let's not dismiss the existing forums, either - maybe not as sexy as blogs, but they do have their uses when effectively set up and managed, as part of a communication plan.
My advice to Skype - and to almost any company thinking about a blog - would include these points:
- Formulate a plan that describes the measurable communication objectives you want to achieve that support your overall business objectives.
- Determine what the relationships are you want to have with your customers where online communication (a blog is one example) plays a major role as a channel in helping develop those relationships.
- Consider all the communication channels and tools at your disposal that you might use in executing your communication plan.
- If blogs are among those channels and tools, then the six points Will outlines in his post could be the start of a specific blogging strategy.
You have to have a sound foundation to begin with. And that doesn't yet look like it's the case.
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