Hard Refresh

With so much choice in the social media/blogging field, unexpected down times can quickly lose you your customer base as Tumblr may find out.

Tumblr had been riding high in blogging circles, overtaking WordPress.com blog numbers despite the latter service’s four-year head start. However, a series of stability issues are causing users to consider looking elsewhere.

Anyone who has played games online knows that there are sometimes periods where you cannot play, for a variety of reasons. However, the longer they go on, the more customers look for an alternative.

Perhaps this is one reason MMOs have, asides the ubiquitous World of Warcraft, failed to go mainstream.

What would make you leave Facebook, the daddy of all platforms?

Research has shown that the majority of us do not follow through with threats to change our bank accounts. For many there is more chance of changing political allegiances than our bank. Given the worldwide financial crisis there is certainly a fear factor in the consumer but most of all, we really dislike the hassle.

I still bank with my student bank despite their withdrawal, without warning, of my graduate overdraft facility. The resulting unauthorized overdraft fees, since proved illegal but never repaid, should have had me running. The tipping point proved to be having my credit card account closed after three months of a zero balance, despite 17 years of loyal custom.

Compounding this decision was the fact that the bank would not send out renewal cards because of a spate of ATM fraud that remains unresolved. Precisely how I was meant to use my card I’m not sure.

Or how about my experience with American Airlines? On a flight to my cousin’s wedding, my luggage was lost. Not lost in the “it arrives later sense” the 1% or whatever that’s lost, lost. Flying Miami-NY-London I was diverted onto the Miami-London direct flight. As luggage cannot go on a trans-Atlantic flight without its owner, I guess my luggage ended up somewhere between Miami and New York.

Not content with this, the return flight saw my luggage lost again, this time returned a day later without the new electric razor I’d had to buy. At least in this case I have choice, out-of-pocket by $1500 or so, I choose never to fly AA again.

My final example would be my natural gas supplier. The actual supply is monopolised, so to give the illusion of choice, there are a number of billing companies that can offer discounts. There was a huge fuss in the UK about this, as unscrupulous sales representatives would change people’s gas “supply” to their own company for the huge bonuses on offer.

This happened to us when someone rang up to inquire about our gas and despite never agreeing to a switch, were switched anyway. My incandescent phone call to that company is probably on some customer rant hall of fame, if it was recorded. This actually had a happy ending because in being switched back to our old “supply” they forgot to bill us for a winter’s worth of gas central heating.

How Tumblr regains consumer confidence will be interesting to see. Downtimes tend to breed more negativity, such as power user Anthony De Rosa’s rant.Add in an unpopular dashboard redesign and those bumps start to take on rock-like dimensions.

As for the consumer, some situations you have no control over and some you hold all the aces. What you can control is how you react. Don’t be the social media bore that uses their broadcast capability to publicise every minor stumble along the customer service road.