Don't mess with the internets: Belkin is hiring people to do positive reviews of their products.

On February 5th, 2009 Henriette Weber wrote:

WOW - it's more than 2 weeks old, but I still want to talk about it. In brief Amazon runs a site called mechanical turk, which is a side where people can go and get paid to do stuff that computers can't do. They get a small ammount of money for each task they do. He finds out that an employee at Belkin has posted a task that is called "write a positive 5/5 review for product on website" - for a belkin router that has consistently gotten bad reviews. wow. I really hope this is not going to be a standard way of doing business.

Anyway the president of Belkin answers and says he's sorry.

Which is great.

But what I also think is great is that they apologize, acknowledge that they messed up and actually say that "belkin will work earnestly to regain the thrust we have lost."

I mean they are very aware that this could blow up in their face, and they know that where they will be hit, is on their branding and trust. If people don't trust a company like belkin, there's probably close to 1000 other companies that could supply the same kind of products. So the statement from the president shows that they actually know that they're in too deep if they don't act, and that they will work on regaining thrust from their customers. bravo.

[belkin, users, reviews, trust] [0 comments]

Is your customer REALLY king ?

On March 19th, 2008 Henriette Weber wrote:

Honestly and truely ?

I want to elaborate on my last blogpost. The business of business shouldn't "just" be more than business. it is going to be the single, most important -top -notch competitive advantage in the future - oh wait let's say it is coming up now, and it's coming up real fast.

What else will you compete on towards king-like customers? product ? salesforce ? marketing activities?

You are one lucky bastard if you are swimming in so much sale that your personnel cant keep up with it. You are one of few if your company is known by the right people who are pushing it forward.

Let's look at me as a consumer - I make pledges to myself these days based on what company criterias I have - for me to have the slightest interest in buying a product. There's enough companies out there so I can be extremely picky and demanding.

The winning crowd is gonna be the companies that understands that the purchased product is a sidefactor to the identification with ideals and goals between consumer and company.

So the customer isn't king anymore - she's emperor of the world, running your board and your company =) or she will be in the near future.

Start making values and ethics for the whole company, and live by them. Don't compromise. because your users wont.

[marketing, goals, king, customer, thebusinessofbusiness, competition, advantage, product, consumer, users, pledges, purchase, winners, identification, ideals, values, ethics, compromise] [1 comment]