In my Monday post, Become A Youtility, I talked about marketing guru Jay Baer’s notion that good marketing is all about helping the customer, versus selling to him or her.

Jay takes his point a step further, talking about customer service in this great podcast — Hug Your Haters — put together by Marketing Profs (some highlights published here).

He makes an interesting distinction between ‘off stage’ and ‘on stage’ complainers.

The former complain through legacy channels, email, phone. 90% of the time, according to Jay’s research, they expect answers; they  expect the business or organization to get back to them. So, don’t respond at your peril.

The latter — ‘on stage’ complainers — don’t expect the business or organization to respond. What they are really looking for is empathy. Here’s how Jay sees it:

“What they want is an audience. What they want is group empathy. What they want is all their friends to say, ‘Oh, that totally sucks, I can’t believe that happened to you.’ That’s the dynamic that they’re looking for. Our research found that only 47% of people who complain in public…expect a reply at all. ”

Precisely because these complainers don’t expect an answer from the party that aggrieved them, they represent a great upside opportunity. Says Baer: “This is a massive opportunity for businesses … If you hug those onstage haters—the people who you are frankly ignoring right now—if you actually answer them, it has a massive impact on customer loyalty and customer advocacy.”

I wouldn’t think most nonprofits don’t have many ‘haters’ (I’m not counting the zealots who might oppose your very mission — e.g., providing reproductive choice to women), but still, Jay’s point deserves consideration.

If you’re proudly displaying your nonprofit on social media, you’re missing a huge goodwill and retention opportunity if you don’t actively respond to each and every complaint, inaccuracy, lament or suggestion that comes your way.

Of course, Jay takes it all the way: “You need to answer every complaint on every channel every time (and you can). He adds: “When people say ‘we don’t have the resources,’ I say ‘you do have them, you just choose to not spend them that way’. And that is a choice, that is not a static phenomenon. You are choosing to ignore your customers because  you do not think it is worth the money to address them on line and that is wrong. It is worth it.”

Amen Jay! Listen to his entire podcast.

Tom