Up until the Internet came along it was fairly easy to keep your customers under control. Unless you were outed by the newspapers or television, the failings and deficiencies of your company were only transmitted by word-of-mouth which limited the spread and level of detail of any complaints or problems. Not so now. Now the slightest rumor about what your company isn't doing right can go viral on the 'Net and before you know it you're fighting raging PR fires and trying to repair the damage.

There are two strategic elements to handling this new world of public relations: First, establish solid, frequent communications with your market. If you are known to be engaged then when problem occur you are in a position to ensure that the second element – a quick, honest, and relevant response – can be executed.

A service that’s been around for a while that provides an excellent platform for communicating with your market and managing problems is Get Satisfaction.

Get Satisfaction is a service where not only can you as a company establish channels to your users but they can communicate with each other creating, in the case of the more enthusiastic user groups, crowd-sourced support and customer service.

Here’s how it works: Say you run a cable company. You are a huge operation with hundreds of employees providing thousands of services and components of business processes. Someone has a problem, say, a coaxial cable has come lose from a telephone pole and they want you to come and fix it. They call your office but no matter who they speak to no one seems to know how to even identify if it is their own cable let alone figure out who should fix it.

This was actually my problem and having found no help by telephone from the local cable companies (Time Warner Cable, Verizon, or Comcast) I finally (today as I write) went on to Get Satisfaction and posted my problem on the forums for each company.

Within 15 minutes I got an e-mail message from Comcast’s Customer Connect department asking for details! So far nothing from Time Warner or Verizon but the day is young and hope springs eternal to the savage breast … in this case, my savage breast (this cable has really annoyed me – it is about ¾” in diameter and really stiff and really in the way).

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.