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Citizen journalism and social networking are two very different kinds of online explosives. The former is a combustible idea finder, while the latter is a flammable story spreader and when harnessed together these tools can make or break business reputations.

Business reputations are the preferred targets of modern social nets.  North Americans say they’ll ’stick it to the man’, but only if the man is a nameless, faceless corporation.  And because so many people are blogging and writing articles today, Tweeting, texting and posting photos, the internet has become a very fertile landscape for both positive and negative ideas that can really affect a business’s bottom line.

Because such a large percentage of our society now has a voice, it’s understandable that more sophisticated customer service websites should sprout up to mirror the growth of citizen journalism websites by harvesting opinions and experiential data from people when they are the most emotional. The very best of the new complaints websites offers brand surveillance to corporations and also provides a platform for big business to respond to each customer’s issues, individually.

Big Business Buys Reputation Management

In general, almost all retail sales and service orientated business is a little scared of social networking websites on the internet, and that mild climate of fear translates into new positions in the work force.  The words brand monitoring appear in executive job descriptions and as a line item in budgets.  “Keep an eye on the web, and get in there with your two cents” is the general rule of engagement.

Complaints Websites in Canada

Canadians are not complainers. Its not in their culture. As a nation they currently tolerate an unpopular war, scandalous politicians, fiscally irresponsible car companies, and a cell phone industry that charges customers a mysterious and expensive ’system access fee’ each month. Canadians take in on the chin at tax time too, and up until this year they’ve had only government websites like the Consumer Complaints and Information website, provided by the industry sector, that makes available basic consumer information and also links to official complaint forms where each entry is a formal declaration that can actually initiate legal proceedings.

Tell Oscar is something different for Canada, because it’s the first social complaints website to emerge in this rather complacent arena. This site lets Canadians praise and applaud good customer service and show disapproval of bad customer service they may have received from Canadian retailers and practitioners, suppliers and merchants of all description. The idea is that businesses and especially the faceless corporations can be made to listen and made to understand the relevance of their online social reputation. More importantly it provides a conduit for B2C interaction. This site is chock full of useful information including a resource page full of excellent consumer advocate URLS and other hard to find data. But more than being handy and cathartic, the website offers the promise to follow up on each submitted complaint with the corporation in question.

The idea is not entirely new. The United Kingdom has several sites already, including How To Complain and Grumble Text and many other less sophisticated sites.  How To Complain has lots of interesting data in their page copy and their pitch to corporate partners quotes UK stats that claim 66% of all consumers are too busy or too shy to bother making a formal complaint, but they will communicate their dissatisfaction with a corporation to an average of thirty friends using social networking tools.

How To Complain probably gets lots of daily search traffic as it was the first site this author encountered after typing the word ‘complain’ into Google. And that result was followed shortly thereafter by My Biggest Complaint which looks American but promises to service the world. And that’s its biggest shortcoming. Aiming to be relevant all over the world is, in this author’s opinion, not effective or even possible.

The United States has many regional complaints websites. The most findable is Lodge a Complaint with most of its members in south eastern United States. The site puts links to the best user submitted content right on the home page, which is essential, so visitors can immediately read the membership’s angry rants about fast food restaurants and furniture retailers.

On the other end of the spectrum there’s a very generic American start up located at Complaints.com which is by contrast too simple and yet requires a complex registration process before consumers are allowed to vent. This site should probably be the model of how not to structure a complaints website.

My3Cents.com is an interesting place, easy to navigate and comfortable to use.  But sadly this site doesnt allow business clients the machinery of an official responses. It does allow comments and the complaints are rated by the membership with the top ten posted on the home page.

Hello Peter is a complaints website run by Peter Cheales in South Africa. He claims to be the dark continent’s most popular service and management theme motivational speaker. He has books and tapes and a pretty cool interface which immediately displays South African consumer grief in the form of interesting complaints about McDonalds, and other multinationals.

Australia has a great complaints website called Not Good Enough which is very sophisticated with advanced tag clouds and a discussion forum and lots of site interaction. A controversial website, they’ve posted details about all the businesses that want to sue them for libel. It’s terrific how well they’ve detailed the specifics of all the legal cases against them and actually outlined their defense in each circumstance; its amazing how they have made it all so transparent. And today this is really powerful storytelling that depicts a Republican underdog skillfully out maneuvering corporate lawsuits.

The websites that target a distinct regional marketplace are more successful at actualizing a resolution between customers and corporations, and so they actually help brands that cooperate.

The Rise of Reputation Management

I’ve been in the board room and seen the worst case scenario. I’ve shivered with fear and loathing and read online reviews of our advertising with clients on the phone. And I’ve weathered the resultant email storm as more and more negative remarks went viral and the horribly embarrassing situation spun out of control and into the quintessential worst case scenario, a name smear on Google search forevermore.

But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. Turning negative remarks into positive publicity and increasing customer satisfaction is what good complaints websites are all about. The best in the business targets a specific region and becomes a conduit for angry consumers and responsible business. The best sites allow visitors to rage unrestricted and without complex registration rituals, but also give corporations an equal opportunity to respond, while the membership body grades the quality of each submission. People will always complain, the challenge is to harness the rage and harvest useful data while using negative remarks to build a stronger product and positive publicity.