Opportunities for you and your organization in the maintenance of a blog to address customer issues Essay

Blogs can be fun and very informative. Blogs could have a major impact on students, faculty, and staff. The opportunities for students, faculty, and staff are endless. Most students are fit within an age group that grew up with networking and social technology. They are familiar with blogs and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. For some, it is their primary means of getting information and learning. With 36,000 students, blogging can be a means of communicating security concerns, major impacts to the university operations, and crisis management. As mention in McNurlin and Sprague (2006), Dan Farber suggests â€Å"One corporate use of blogs is for crisis management. A blog can be more appropriate than e-mail in managing a crisis (such as a fire or a security breach). All the postings can be on one site, in journaling style, rather than passed as disconnected e-mails, notes Farber. † (p. 292) Students and faculty also like to voice their opinion about the way the university is run. Blogs would give them a voice to express those opinions due to the nature blogs. McNurlin and Sprague went on to say that â€Å"What readers seem to trust about blogs, that they do not trust about conventional media, is their opinionated and personal nature. † (p. 293) Blogs would also be a valuable marketing tool for the university. Blogs hosted by students could give direct advice and opinion to prospective students. According to Laudon and Laudon (2006), â€Å"Blogs provide a more personal way of presenting information to the public and prospective customers about new products and services. † (p. 123) Finally, blogs are a way to manage customer relationships. Faculty, staff, and students are considered customers of the information technology department. It is important to communicate changes, outages, and useful information that help to make the customer experience with technology more enjoyable. The more tips and helpful advice IT can give to end-users, the better the experience. In turn, IT can learn the needs, wants, and opinions of their customers. According to Haag, et, al (2005), â€Å"Customers interact with companies in many ways, and each interaction should be easy, enjoyable, and error free. †