If you have ever been dealing with a vendor, you have probably felt that your issues were not taken seriously enough at times. The global recession has generally left consumers more powerful. However most online professionals feel left behind in a seller’s market. Who do you turn to when a vendor refuses to listen?
To get to a solution, you must be willing to openly discuss your experiences with peers sharing similar challenges. Jointly with others you can more effectively influence vendors, as it will be much harder for a large vendor to ignore your issues when you have grouped with several fellow customers who also want the vendor to take action.
In the past, the power of groups seems to have been more prominent; today it seems rather underestimated and undervalued. These days activists could find support in consumer organisations and there is a tradition for senior management sharing experiences in some successful industries such as pharma and wind energy. In Denmark there is a long standing tradition for sharing experience dating back to the Danish cooperative movement formed in the 1790s. This was especially used in the farming industry; a movement that eventually created global bestsellers including Danish bacon and butter.
Openly exchanging experiences with peers may initially be new and uncomfortable territory if you have been used to thinking you are on your own and isolated with your issues. You may also be concerned that talking about problems will make you look like a beginner. And what about confidentiality? Which issues would be OK to disclose to others in the eyes of your employer?
You can informally meet with peers, eg. at our practitioner-focused conference, and find like-minded people with similar challenges. Alternatively, you can join one of our community of practice groups. These meet regularly in a formal, moderated and confidential setting. We carefully handle group composition, which ensures that the time spent on meetings brings you together with several peers that share the same issues as you, and perhaps even have some solutions. We believe it is critical for the community that we as organisers and moderators are active in the industry and always side with the buyers.
When online professionals start working together across organisations, it can act as a catalyst leading to significant results, but as long as buyers don’t talk to each other we will never solve long standing issues such as accessibility, Firefox support, harmless URLs and usability.
If the vendor does not want to listen, get together as a group and feel free to talk to us about applying pressure on the vendors. As the old saying goes: Money talks…
