Episode Four of Philosophy and Media was a very educational blend of nineteenth century European Thought and cutting edge innovation as Dr Tim Rayner once again blended the various philisophical and anthropological theories with Social Media Start-up dynamics...as only he can.

This week we looked at Collaborative Consumption, The Gift Economy and The Tragedy of The Commons to understand how the very nature of human beings might be changing in front of our very eyes.  Under way is a major change in the way we transact which could have lastiung effects for the way we organise as a society.

Central to the theme of Collaborative Consumption is the idea that the sharing tendencies so encouraged by modern social media sites like Facebook is now bleeding into the off-line world. Sites like Air BNB, Go Get, Couch Surfer and Taskrabbit represent a trend in innovation based on the trading and sharing of real life economic resources - like cars, homes, time - within a network of a trusted community.   These new business ventures - all thirving successes - can claim as their inspiration the original Gift Economy explored by philosopher Marcel Mauss, who claimed that a desire for status and prestige can drive a demonstrable generosity and reciprocity that can become the engine of a new economy.

The theory reprised some of last week's examination of Reputation Systems and the effect Social Media is already having in rewarding a kind of "Pay it Forward" culture where a sense of community is powerfully strong.  With the counter-culture of the 1960s strong in the genesis of the Social Media scene, it is not surprising that San Francisco continues to be the hub for this "sharing economy". 

Quite surprisingly, the lecture reached a crescendo of bonhomerie and goodwill around the most unlikely of protagonists for communal life: Frederik Nietsche who talked about the "gift-giving virtue" and the human quest for personal fullfillment.  Amid themes of spiritual abundance and mutual benefit, increasingly we will see a far less self-ish and far more generous attitude to trade and exchange as the 2008 Financial crisis continues to take effect and ecological concerns permeate daily life.

But with all of this I again thought: what does this mean for the organisation?  It is a HUGE challenge for the capitalist sector - lets not beat about the bush.  As Social Media takes society in a  more caring, sharing and communal direction, business.inc is not well-prepared to join in. These themes run fundamentally counter to every instinct in modern corporate body.  What is it if you can't measure it?  Without ROI, it is nothing.  Wall Street and AGMs care not for "nice" and "warm".  Generosity, altruism and communal goodwill do not feature in your average business playbook.

That is why this letter from Jack Daniels legal department went so viral on Social Media.  It demonstrates a very surprising brand of generosity of spirit, tolerance and flexibility - none of which are traits usually associated with the legal profession or the Alcohol indutry!  Its popularity and celebre seemed like the commune welcoming one of their own.  It shows how small mercies in the social sphere can earn quite imeasurable kudos and brand value.  It also supports a new direction for some of the smarter brands in the very themes of altruistic economies other brands would do well to observe and emulate - like this campaign from KLM for instance:  

After the heddy themes of last week: peace, love and harmony - this week's Philosophy and Social Media course took on a slightly more distopian and cynical approach to this new world - at least for the most part.  Beginning with the German Philosopher Martin Heidegger, Dr Tim Rayner proposed that - based on Heidegger's theory of "enframing" - the Social Media industry is exploiting "prosumers" as a resource from which to make money.

"Enframing" is the Metaphysical view of reality as a field of resources that can be slotted into production systems.  Facebook takes the culture of sharing endemic in the activities of Social Media - and derived from the ideals the 60s counter culture revolution as we learnt last week - and cynically monitises it.  Much of the lecture in fact looked at the reality behind what Mark Zuckerberg likes to call "frictionless sharing", how Facebook Connect is in fact a genius strategy to glean as much personal data about your web usership, likes, hobbies and interests under the guise of identity convenience.  This data is the by-product of the resource which can then be sold to advertisers.  There is nothing radically new about this view; only more drill-down in the science of it.  Not surprisingly the class became quite vocal as their suspicions became alarmingly confirmed.

The position is beautifully summed up by this quite from "Prosumers of the world unite":

"Facebook's profit model is built upon an ownership of its user's labour, specifically, the intimate detail of our lives and self-presentations. This is an example a larger trend of “prosumption,” that is, the simultaneous role of being a producer of what one consumes.  [Prosumption] generally, and especially on Web 2.0, is the mechanism by which we become unpaid workers, producing valuable information for the benefit of businesses. This is the almost endlessly efficient business model of Web 2.0 capitalism."

Posing the question "How do Facebook make money?" - consensus is that Facebook has its eye on becoming the default guarantor of Identity, thereby beautifully positioning itself to become a payments company.

The narative then moved to the question of reputation.  To operate in this new economy, your reputation is based on the idea that - as Dr Rayner put it - you got to give to get back.  This is almost the theory of "pay it forward", the idea of reciprical worth.  If you do have nothing to contribute then you will derive nothing from it.  You get what you put in.  I personally think this is the very essence of Social Media.  Those who derive no value from Twitter are generally contributing nothing to it.  

Social Media connects trustworthy strangers and taps the benefit of that connection - note the way eBay farms the need for strangers to trade in a trusted environemnt where the integrity of the transaction is ensured.  Not insured, but ensured.  

The concerns of the class then moved from the fear of the cynical exploitation of Facebook to the obligatory regime that had now established itself - if you are not on Facebook you are no one.  As if to confirm this, Dr Rayner then focussed on TrustCloud - a new Beta service designed to establish a benchmark standard in Social Trust - kind of like Klout but on Trust instead of Influence.  

As always, my mind wandered to what I can take from the learnings in terms of consultancy to clients.  This very much supports my feeling that many people are very quickly becoming in danger of being left behind by an economy that defines influence, trust and profile in a new way. You might be CEO of a major organisation, but without a Social profile and without some form of Online credentials will you lose out to younger executives who have these assets in spades? How does a business person fork-lift their use of social media to score well in these new standard services like Klout, LinkedIn and TrustCloud?  

While the digital divide usually refers to those bereft of digital devices; pretty soon it could refer to those bereft of digital credibility.  Ironically, these could be among the most privileged and wealthy citizens rather than the most disadvantaged.

Anyway, enjoy Dr Rayner's slides - it is a very thought-provoking narative that emerged from its distopian perspective to finally ask: if Social Media rewards the spirit of sharing with a digital standard of currency, how is that a bad thing?

Well the second "philosophy of social media" (#philsocial) lecture turned out to be even more enlightening and inspiring than the first as we were taken on a whirlwind tour of the (mainly) Californian Counter culture of the latter half of the 20th century.  Hippies, the hacker movement, the early days of the personal computer industry and finally the conception of the Internet were all delved into as we explored not the philosophy of but the history of social media.  Where did it come from?

It is an enthralling and intertwining journey beginning with the likes of Jack Kerouac and Gilles Deleuze traveling via Richard Stallman, Tim Berners-Lee and Linus Torvald.  Along the way, we visited intrigueing movements like the HomeBrew Computer Club (which - who knew - prodoced both Bill Gates AND Steve Jobs), the Community Memory Project and The WELL, Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog.  These were all celebrated in a thesis which suggested that Social Media is not a technology but a culture, and its genesis lies in the same 60s Counter Culture that gave us Woodstock, The Peace Movement and Civil Rights.

The words of the 1974 People's Computer Company perhaps best summed up the spirit of the age and how it applied to the revolutionary innovations that were taking place in technology at the time:

"Computers are mostly used against people instead of for people; used to control people instead of to free them; Time to change all that - we need a... People's Computer Company."

But as groovy as all this was, I took away in particular something exremely valueable amid my need as a PR professional to understand how this new cultural phenemenon is impacting the organisation.  That was the inherently disruptive DNA within social media given it's routes so deep in the "turn on, tune in, drop out" scene, the Free Open Source Software Movement (FOSS) and Hacker Culture.  As organizations seek to adapt to and work with it, to attempt to do so with, as Marc Benioff said, a "command and control" mentality is to underwrite those efforts - internally as well as externally - with failure.  How can you seek to involve yourself in something so anarchic and non-conformist by expecting people to conform and to comply.  It can't succeed.

Echoing last week's thoughts on communalism, Mr Rayner again stressed the emphasis of sharing and freedom of information so deep in the spirit of social media - embedded in the Free Software Movement and the Hippie culture of non-ownership.  So when you see the hell that befalls companies like Qantas trying to placate people with a Twitter competition in the middle of a strike (#qantasluxury); or Vodafone trying to ignore a groundswell of rebellion amid massive network failure (#vodafail); or more recently Channel 7 attempt to quell a viewer-rebellion by simply deleting someone's Facebook post, you understand why they fail so badly.  It doesn't work because - as I now understand - social media is endemically revolutionary and should be respected as such.  Users are empowered and all-powerful, they are contrary and non-compliant. In the words of The Prisoner: "I am not a number, I am a free man".  

Organisations now have to collaborate with and listen to these social networks; attempts to control them will fail.  Anyone in any doubt as to the revolutionary and insurgent power of social media - the latest child of the 60s Counter Culture revolution - need only think of its role in the Arab Spring to get the picture, man.

Listening to the hours and hours and reams and reams of media coverage about the Batman shootings is just infuriating.  I've written about this before, but it never ceases to amaze me how America just doesn't seem to get it.  Hardly anyone seems to ask "isn't there something that can be done about this?" Instead they just wollow in the intenstines of the latest psycho's decent into carnage.

An analogy occurred to me where it feels like one of those cliched scenes where a serial victim of domestic violence throws herself on the sympathies of her friends and family, but over time their sympathies reduce and reduce as the obvious answer to her situation continues to inexplicaby allude her.  "Why don't you just leave him?" they ask in disbelief.  "I can't", she answers, "I just can't".

How many people need to die before someone asks the questions, "why don't we just make guns illegal?"

Jamie Holmes seems nothing more than a confused and lonely kid whose dreams were shattered - something that happens to almost everyone at some stage in their lives.  But instead of the usual break-down and at the very worst a case of limited domestic violence that leads to some degree of commital; this kid is able to - over the course of just two months - accumulate the most frightening arsenal of the sort a small resistance army would envy.  Four guns including an assualt rifle and a shot gun and 6,000 - SIX THOUSAND - rounds of amunition were sold to him by what seems like the same retailer with no questions asked.  Apparently this kid even got a briefing on how to use these weapons.  Somewhere along the line he was also able to boobytrap his appartment with a scary array of chemical devices and - get this - mortar rounds!

Then he was able to go out and kill 12 innocent, film lovers including a six year old child, and wound scores of others while shattering the cinema-going inocence of the world.

Who are these people that insist on the right to bare arms?  Why is this arbitary right more important than the peace and harmony of millions of ordinary people?  Why do polititians appease this ridiculously dangerous biggotry?  

Furthermore, why does the right to bare arms for some trump the right of many more to "the right to the pursuit of happiness" which is apparently the very bedrock of the constitution.  Wasn't the former an ammendment to the latter?

I just don't understand.  I really don't.  It's like the frustrated friends and family asking over and over, "why don't you just leave him?"

But even if America continues to indulge this stupid minority, at least bring in some controls for crying out loud.  Bring in psychological profiles of assualt-rifle-buyers.  Require parental escort until the age of 25.  Flag the rapid accumulation of weopons to the police for investigation.  Take some bloody responsibilty because I am so fed up with sitting through these miserable stories of the tragic innocent victims of these easily avoidable horror-scenes.

President Obama - if you win in November, will you try?  Please try.  This stuff has got to become a thing of the past.

Taking my interest in all things Social to the next level, I've enrolled in a "Philosophy and Social Media" course at Sydney University.  A six-week course of two-hour lectures, it already promises enormous value for both my professional and personal life online.  The opening lecture threw up so much to think about it occurred to me that it would be helpful, not to mention appropriate, to blog along the way.  So here goes...

The lecture - slide deck can be found here (and embedded below) along with the lecture notes -was given by Tim Rayner (PhD), philosopher, author and film maker.  This wide-ranging first session looked at a number of topics by way of introduction and scene-setting - so much in fact that I won't attempt to address it all right here and now. But among the many topics raised, probably the most attention-grabbing and controversial was that of the "Panopticon".

The broader concept is far better articulated at Tim's blog here, but in summary, the idea is proposing this 19th century prison design - pioneered by Jeremy Bentham - as a powerful analogy for the impact social media is having no our lives and on society generally.  The idea comes to us via French Philosopher Michel Foucault in his book Discipline & Power which explores concepts of power, culture and social change.  Very quickly then: it is the model whereby prisoners are kept in cells arranged in a circular arena around a guard tower in such way as to ensure that the guards in the tower - not to mention the other prisoners - can see into all of the cells.  Moreover, bright lights shining from the tower towards the cells mean that while the prisoners know that they can be seen by the guards and other prisoners - they are not in fact sure if they are or not at that moment being watched.  Thus they behave at all times as if they are.

It's a spooky, big-brother-like scenario, but Mr Rayner proposes that the "I might or might not be under surveilance by my social following - therefore I best assume that I am" impact on our psyche is radically changing society right on front of our eyes.  As is often the case, the social media revolution has set about us so quickly it will be years before we are able to fathom the true impact of it on us all - and we desperately need people like this canvassing these kind of ideas to force us to take stock of it all before it is too late.  This is an important role for academics and thinkers - and it's comforting to see it in action.

The alarming idea is quickly alleviated however even as the first lecture develops.  Mr Rayner puts forward a three-fold formula for healthy and rewarding social media life which - if followed - should ensure the damaging impact of the Panopticon is carefully guarded against.

1. Nomadism - the ability to move between different identities through different social networks and through the various different roles that we play in life  
2. Mutualism - keeping at the core of one's social media activity a principle of communalism 
3. Mindfulness - always taking time to take stock of one's activity and demeanor to ensure approriate behaviour, language and conduct at all times.

This is my paraphrasing and interpretation of Mr Rayner's thesis, but you can read it in his own, more accurate, words in his lecture notes (beneath the slide deck at slideshare).  All three concepts cover an array of characteristics but three stand out for me as essential to social success (and safety):

Within Nomadism is the quest for integrity as the user moves from one channel to another and through each different flavour of one's persona, it is essential that some core essence is maintained.  This is not different to the process we go through when we change from a suit we wore to an interview into jeans and a T-shirt in which to go clubbing.  Quite different personas, and likely-as-not quite different demeanors, but still essentially "you".

Within Mutualism, you should - I believe - always seek to add value and place the benefit of others first ahead of your own agenda in selecting and positioning the content and opinions you  offer.  This ideally unselfish approach should ensure goodwill and the benefit of the doubt in the innevitable event of some mistake or stumble.  It also should ensure a solid following as the nature of one's content should stay rich with this as the guide.  

Finally, within Mindfulness is the key word: vigilance.  Social media contribution requires an ever present filter or - as a public relations professional, I like to say - a "press office".  I'm no expert on the various components of the brain, but some portion of it should be resereved to process content before it airs - to "approve" it, for want of a better word.  By asking the questions: "is this sensible, is this valuable, is this offensive" you can hopefully avoid those moments of regret and panic.  Because as we all know - in real-time social media - there is no such action as <delete>!

I believe these three principles Mr Rayner outlines are an excellent protection against the scrutiny of the guards' tower, hopefully making its gaze less stark and penetrating.  Ultimately, Mr Rayner encourages you to simply "be the very best that you can be" in the social web.   

As I move through the course, while considering the impact of all of this on society and the individual is of course fascinating, I would in particular be keen to also explore the impact all of this has on an organisation.  What impact will the Panopticon effect have on an orgnisation and while individual mindfulness is relatively simple to achieve, how can an organisation strive towards it.

Fascinating stuff, more soon!

[Re-posted from The Social Enterprise (Down Under) Blog]

Brian Solis of The Altimeter Group has long been a strong proponent of social media and is well known for some of his books such as "Putting the Public back in Public Relations", "The End of Business as Usual" and "Engage".

To gain a better understanding of the revolution that is happening in brand engagement with customers, his thoughts are a great place to start.  The video at the foot of this blog post for instance sums up very well the changes that organisations need to put in place to enter the new era that salesforce.com describes as "The Social Enterprise."

Brian Solis, Principal at Altimeter Group by frenchweb

What particularly resonated with me is where he talks about how companies have for the last few decades been trying to put as much distance in between themselves and the customer as possible. Beginning with those impersonal mail-merge mail-spams, then automating customer service and offshoring the conversation to far-flung destinations.  

Then social media came along and changed all of that, putting the customer back in touch with the brands with which they interact, on terms that better suit the customer than business.  His thoughts here also are very profound:

"Why Do Customers Use Social Networks for Customer Service? Because They Can…"

But he makes the point far stronger that brands are not going to fix this just by putting in place some new social media tools.  This revolution requires fundamental changes within.  These new tools cannot be best leveraged by simply using the old thinking.  The customer has to be placed at the centre of the organisation.  Without this change in the culture, the new channel to market will only serve to further frustrate the customer.  

You can learn more here about Radian6, Chatter and other tools that can help that move to The Social Enterprise.  

Brian spoke at Dreamforce last year, watch here is his view on what defines the Social Enterprise.

[Re-posted from The Social Enterprise (Down Under) Blog]

Interesting new research from Optus confirms that for those still wondering whether social might be important or not - the verdict is in: it already is!

There's always a tipping point in the life of a new business dimension.  The phone, email and the web all went through the will-it-won't it become mainstream debate.  Well increasingly, it seems that Stilgherrian is right - the debate is over and organisations should just get on with it - or get left behind.

"This year what we've seen is not only has that debate been won -- very few organisations are still trying to hold out on how they'll go about social networking  -- but more importantly they're understanding that they need to be actually engaging their customers through social media channels." 

Something very interesting emerged from the report that runs counter to most development trends. While usually, major technology developments have been primarily driven by the desire to cut costs or maintain competitive edge, this trend is different.  As Scott Mason, Director of Fixed Products, Marketing and Strategy for Optus Business is reported to have said, "73 per cent of respondants said [deployment of externally-focussed social media strategies] was to meet customer expectations."

This dovetails with some very interesting research released recently in the UK.  A study by Fishburn Hedges and Eco Research found that some 18 million UK consumers (35%) have used social media to engage with the brands they are interested in.  Moreover, 65 per cent said that it was a better way to communicate with organisations than through a call centre.  So if the bulk of your customer service is set up for the phone - think again, because consumers are moving away already.

Most powerful yet however, is this statistic from a study conducted earlier this year by New York University which found that 88 per cent of respondants were "less likely to buy" from companies that didn't engage on social media.

While 59.6 per cent expressed guarded optimism for the future of social-relations between consumers and brands; 32 per cent characterised their satisfaction with the way that companies engage socially as either poor or very poor.  

As always change can take time.  The organisations that will benefit from this new development are the ones that have already tried and tested this new channel and are now busy increasing their investment in that channel.  Some more research, this time conducted by Sensis last year found that one year ago, 66 per cent of large business and 56 per cent of medium sized business expected to increase their social media budgets in 12 months' time.  Those companies are already reacting.

So the opportunity is huge to delight those customers looking to engage socially with the brands they follow, while at the same time - those who do not could lose out; as we said earlier on this blog,customers who engage with companies socially will spend between 20 and 40 per cent more.  So don't delay - get social today!

(Those looking to play catch up could do worse than attend this year's Cloudforce event in Sydney in two weeks' time, where we'll help organisations understand how to take those first and next steps into the social web.)

I've been talking to Yahoo on Twitter for weeks to absolutely zero response from them - which in this day and age from a technology company is a spectacular #fail IMHO.

Oh @Yahoo <sigh> first you let other people into my account to spam all my friends.Now you wont let *me* in! #talkingtomyself?

— Gareth Llewellyn (@Mrgareth) May 17, 2012

I used to work for Yahoo - indirectly - back in 2003 when I set up my Yahoo Mail account and for the most part have been very happy with it, keeping it as my main account vs GMail (perhaps until now).  Like the brand, respect the heritage.

But last month, twice, hackers were able to break into my account - seemingly with impunity - and spam everyone I'd emailed from there since 2003.  A lot of people!  The fact this was able to happen once is not a big deal I guess...it happens to lots of webmail accounts all the time.  But after I changed my password, it happened again!  Very embarrasing - resulting in Tweets about it from some contacts which I could obviously do without.  

Still, no communication from Yahoo.

But, letting other people in is one thing - but now it won't let me in!  I have attempted many times to log in today and each time I fail.  I'm using the right password, I *know* I am.  I try and do the "forgotten your password" thing and it promises to send me a mail - but it doesn't.  Three times I"ve tried - nada. #fail

I go to help - and there really isn't any way in which you can *talk* to this company outside of selecting from drop boxes.

Now I know Yahoo are in some kind of meltdown-hell right now with their CEO lying about his computer training, but this is abject negligence I think.  I am always frustrated by corporations' attempts to take your money but keep you at an automated, faceless arms length.  While I appreciate Yahoo don't charge me, they do charge others for the promise of my eyeballs.

Last chance Yahoo - attend to my needs or you're history.  GMail would be more than happy to take me off your hands if I'm too much of a chore.

I thought it was worth flagging this article which grabbed my attention.   It isn't just the astonishing statistic that there are now more people on Twitter in the UK (10 million) than buying newspapers (9,002,963) - which in and of itself is astounding.  But it is the fact that even a baby-boomer, fairly old-school politician such as John Prescott (former Deputy PM under Tony Blair) has appreciated the huge importance and power of social media in mainstream society.  Yet Twitter is only six years old!

It isn't all about Twitter of course.  Quite often all the focus is on the ubiquitous micro-blogging service, but a whole suite of social media tools combine to have a powerful influence: LinkedIn, Facebook, Google +, Pinterest, Blogs, even the comments box at the foot of news articles.  All these channels provide avenues for comment and sentiment - good or bad.

This is why it is neccessary to invest in more purpose-built tools for the job - like Radian6 - that can quickly provide a view of all channels, not just Twitter; and understand and prioritise whether something requires a response, action or simply to be heard.

@johnprescott's comment that:

"Twitter is OUR media, the public have become the news editors and the Twitter trend list is the running order"

...is in a way an echo of what we often say at salesforce.com in relation to social media - that no longer do marketeers control their brand but the brand instead is an amalgam of what customers are saying about it on social media.  This is why it is so important to listen, and so important to - as we say - line up for the customer where they are, instead of making the customer line up at your store of call centre.  The balance of power has fundamentally shifted in a very short space of time and as a result organisations - media organisations, companies and even governments - can no longer expect to operate as if nothing has changed.  Those that do will swiftly become irrelevant.

As salesforce.com CEO and founder Marc Benioff (@Benioff) said this week in an article on the BBC: 

"Rather than fear this shift, we must use it to stay closer to customers, connect to them and engage with them in entirely new ways.  The companies that will be successful in the future recognise the need for fundamentally changing the way they engage with their customers, and are transforming themselves into social enterprises and radically altering the way they manage their businesses."

If a veteran like John Prescott has got the message, it is a measure of how mainstream this reality
has become.

[Re-posted from The Social Enterprise (Down Under) Blog]

A visit to a much-talked-about restaurant this weekend provided a very helpful analogy for The Social Enterprise I thought was worth sharing.  It hammered home that maxim that listening is half the battle won when it comes to delighting your customers.  The challenge is being able to hear them.

A second attempt to lunch at a busy, much-hyped inner-city Italian Restaurant quickly turned to frustration when our attempts first to be seated, and then to be served, were met with what seemed to be apparent blindness.  “Can they even see us?” we thought, “are we invisible.”  After eventually being seated after perhaps 30 minutes of waiting, we then seemed entirely blanked by waiters.  After a while, we could take no more and complained.  Hunger can all too often lead to crankiness!

Immediately we were met with an offensive of charm.  An extra – and quite delightful – starter, rapid attention and a level of courtesy and contrition that very quickly brought us back on board.  We were turned from “we are never coming here again” to “we must come back again”…and fast.

Everything changed when we spoke directly to the concierge.  Once they were able to understand our dissatisfaction, they were able to act quickly to assuage us.  Directions were quickly sent to the kitchen and the waiting staff and within minutes and with very little effort we were not only placated but totally won over.

But until they heard from us, they were none-the-wiser and powerless to act. 

This whole situation made me think of what the Social Enterprise promises organisations: the ability to listen.  Imagine if the restaurant staff had been able to sense our unhappiness by over-hearing our conversation.  A pre-emptive strike on our dissatisfaction would have been so much smoother and impressive.

Monitoring social media to identify customer dissatisfaction and turn it around through proactive engagement is a powerful tool.  Amid the effective charm offensive, the restaurant staff were also able to explain how they had been hit at once by a perfect storm of a sudden rush of customers as well as a massive disaster in the kitchen.  Context always makes things easier to understand and be tolerant of.   Social media engagement provides companies the opportunity to communicate context around any possible problems in customer service or product performance.  But only if they can sense the dissatisfaction in the first place.

Direct communication with customers – and building a personalized profile of someone to understand their likes/dislikes – is key to a long-lasting and profitable relationship.  This is borne out by a report by Bain & Company which establishes that customers who are engaged on social media spend between 20 and 40 per cent more. 

Its a well-known fact that for every person who complains, 26 do not - but you lose their business too.  So the opportunity is not only to turn around the vocally disatisfied, but to retain all the rest.  Who can afford to ignore all that business?