My previous blog documented my disappointment with Second Life’s public relations. Here is an update on the situation. The day after my blog appeared, I received both a voice mail and an email from the lady at Lewis PR (her name should have been Kristin, not Christen as I had thought at the last writing). According to her email, she had attempted to send the requested information to me via two emails. But I assume both emails were lost in transition, because they were not in my inbox or junk folder. When I called back to Lewis PR, someone did pick up the phone this time. When I said my name, he was apparently aware of who I am. He sounded courteous and helpful on the phone. Since the information that was sent to me was already something I knew and not quite what I had hoped for, he even told me that they would consider putting the information together internally, as it would be eventually useful for the company itself as well.

Overall, I am glad that the situation was resolved successfully. I had heard about the power of customer complaints on the Internet. In fact, a fellow blogger and PR specialist Michelle Rogerson had documented such a situation with PBWiki. But it is not until I have experienced it personally that I truly feel and believe in the power. So what are the lessons learned from this whole event?

1. As Rogerson’s blog pointed out, a company should actively monitor the blogsphere (and I would add the websphere in general) for customer opinions. They are very valuable market research information that has been enabled by today’s participatory Internet.
2. Ignoring negative feedback carries grave consequences. But dealt with properly, negative feedback can turn around and become a blessing to a business. This is analogous to service recovery in the services research literature. No one is expected to do everything right 100% of the time. If recovered properly, a service failure may actually lead to higher customer satisfaction.
3. Email as a communication channel can be unreliable sometimes. Therefore, for important customer/public requests, companies should follow up through other channels of communication (online or offline). This would help avoid ill-will and negative word-of-mouth from happening in the first place.

A recent real-life encounter with Second Life turned out to be a big disappointment. For an academic research project, my co-author and I were looking for a list of real-life brands that have a presence in SL. The natural point of contact seemed to be SL’s press inquiries: Lewis PR. Being a geek, I tried email first. More than a week (or a year by Internet standard) went by, and no response. So I digressed to the more traditional way of telephone. Luckily, I reached a lady named Christen from Lewis PR. After explaining the situation to her, she said she would send me something related to what we were looking for. I was reaching the point of happiness and almost convinced myself that telephone is the tool to use when you really want to get things done. But not so fast! A few days later, I still did not receive anything from Christen. I called again, afraid that she might have written down the wrong email address. I only got her voicemail and left her a message with my email address and multiple phone numbers. After another few days, it’s still dead silence from the other end. Repeated calls to the contact number resulted in nothing but her voicemail (this is the curse of Caller ID technology).

It makes me wonder: is an academic project too ivory-towerish to deserve proper attention from SL or Linden Lab (the company behind SL) or Lewis PR? I did mention to the lady that the project will eventually turn into a journal publication. Is that not worth the same efforts as compared to, say, a prominent article in New York Times? I teach Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). One of the main principles of IMC is that no matter whom a firm is communicating with, whether it is customers, internal employees, or the general public, the firm should always keep a consistent brand image. The fun and cutting-edge image of SL in my mind certainly does not match up with the disappointment and ill-will I felt during the recent encounter.

Ironically, the following quote from the SL marketing team was featured prominently on Lewis PR’s front page:

“It really does feel like our marketing team has four more members — I sometimes almost forgot that the LEWIS team isn’t actually part of the Linden Lab.” — Catherine smith, director of marketing and brand strategy, Linden Lab

Maybe that is the reason why we did not hear anything from Lewis PR. They are spending too much time functioning as Linden Lab internal employees and not giving enough attention to real-life external audiences…PUBLIC relations. Alas!

When a technology innovation appears on the horizon, one would stereotypically expect that the younger generation will sign on to it faster than older adults. This was the same expectation I had with Second Life. Like many people, I thought of Second Life as a playground for mostly Gen Y’s and the occasional Gen X’s. As I am about to reach 33, I thought I would be “old” in SL. But my two recent encounters in SL made me rethink this issue.

The two avatars that I encountered in these situations were both in their mid-fifties. They were very adept at creating their own images and environments within Second Life, much better than a newbie like me is able to. Entering into the interaction, I never intended to find out about their real-life age, but it somehow just came out during the conversation. Both avatars were very kind and helpful, both were happy with their real life, and both expressed a newly found youthfulness in Second Life, as if they were taken back to that time when they were much younger.

These conversations made me rethink the value of SL to different age groups and the real-life demographics of SL participants. If we were to look at three generations of people: the baby boomers and above, the Gen X, and the Gen Y and younger groups, it is actually not that difficult to see the appeal of SL to the first group. As the idea of living a second life allows someone to create an ideal self that s/he cannot fulfill in real life, Second Life allows the older generation to either relive or recreate their life. Now that most of their kids have grown up, they also have much more time to enjoy the virtual world, once they master the technology needed to use it. For Gen Xers like me, in contrast, we are so busy dealing with our real-life responsibilities at home or at work that it is hard to find the time to truly escape to the wonderland. The even younger text-messaging generation may have more time but may not have the patience for the amount of time it takes for 3D worlds to load and function.

Of course, these thoughts came from only two recent encounters, and they are very likely to be biased. I do not have concrete data to support my argument. Digging around on the Internet only landed me on an older set of statistics on Second Life’s real-life demographics in early 2006, which showed a median age of 36. But I truly believe in the power of Second Life for the older generation. The sweeping Internet revolution has already brought this generation to be more on par with the rest of the population in terms of technology use, and it has prepared them for the even newer 3D Web. Once the technology barrier has been removed, these virtual worlds could mean great additions to their life that cannot be found anywhere else in real world. This may explain the findings I posted in a previous blog on how SL enhances individuals’ happiness in real life.