forum

Anyone who has built a desktop or upgraded their laptop will probably have purchased their RAM from Crucial UK. From their easy to use (and essential) system scanner and memory advisor to their speedy delivery, buying RAM from Crucial is as simple as it comes. As will be obvious, I’m a Crucial customer – and have been for quite a few years.

Equally obviously, I don’t tend to buy RAM on a weekly basis. That puts me in a category with the majority of Crucial customers. I receive email newsletters from Crucial but unless I’m actively in a RAM-buying mood, it’s unlikely I’ll do more than open, skim, and delete. What I really need is a forum, where I can pop in from time to time and see what’s new in RAM world. And the closer I get to a time when I want to upgrade RAM, the more information I’m going to check out from real world users.

One of the lessons of the new world of ‘social media’, after all, is that we trust the word of our peers (no, not those in the House of Lords!) more than we trust the sales messages of the companies trying to sell to us.

A bunch of RAM
Lo and behold, Crucial has launched a forum. (You probably guessed that already from the dreadful punning title.) This is good news. Not just for me and my fellow RAM fans but because it’s one more company accepting the benefits of interacting more immediately and openly with its customers.

Forums are such an obvious fit for technology companies. Geeks love to discuss the fine points and ways to hack and improve the vanilla product, newbies want to know how to install it, switch it on, or simply find the exact specification they need, and company insiders get to show off their knowledge and flex their customer service muscles in a testing but less pressured environment.

Everyone wins, as long as the company is willing to accept that all posting won’t be positive and that faults and complaints will get a very public airing. In return for a commitment to be open to criticism and negativity, the company gets a chance to respond in a highly visible manner to all sorts of issues. The quicker they do it, too, means potential bad press has less and less time to gather steam.

Dell learned this lesson the hard way. (We’ve looked at the Dell response and their adoption of ‘social media’ tools here, here, and here.)

Solve a problem – gain a customer
From a first browse through the forums already being populated (and the number of viewings of posts indicate a healthy interest in the topics), it appears Crucial have got it right. For instance, in the Standard DRAM Memory forum, there is a thread on ‘Problem with RAM install’. After a couple of postings of a problem, the Crucial moderator gets involved and the problem is quickly resolved. Not only are Crucial left with happy customers but anyone reading the thread (e.g. me!) is left with the impression that Crucial are quick and eager to resolve issues. Each purchase becomes less and less of a risk. That makes it even more likely that I’ll order memory from them next time.

The message is straightforward for companies: give your customers somewhere to air their views and you’re less likely to see negative comments springing up where it’s hard to respond quickly enough to limit the damage.