Dear List,

I have had this list recommended to me by Brian Hunt, and am just writing a
quick intro to myself. I am the guy responsible for creating
nthellworld.com, an online community of consumers in the UK, specifically
geared towards US and British TV company ntl Group. It started as a way to
get my technical problem fixed by way of referring friends to a few web
pages to collect technical data on cable modem performance to get fixed what
refused to acknowledge as a problem with their service.

Members of the public e-mailed me and urged me to create feedback mechanisms
on the site, so I started with "Hell" and "Heaven" story/experience pages,
which was shortly followed by an online discussion forum. The site then
grew to what you see today, beyond my wildest expectations. I then joined
ntl along with nthellworld.com, and the idea was that the company would
embrace this community of customers and learn from them.

Unfortunately I have a sad tale to tell when it comes to online customer
interaction and support versus commercial interests. I feel that
corporations (or the one I worked for) currently have no idea whatsoever
about how to deal with online communities, and have now completely destroyed
this one. This has happened because rather than take a proactive approach
towards what the community is saying and trying to solve problems, they have
instead taken a reactive approach and tried to silence the worst criticism.
I feel that ntl is very scared of talking to it's customers, and that
constructive online interaction with their customers on a business scale is
many years away.

That's my intro done, I look forward to learning from this group and putting
something back in if I can.

Kind regards,

Frank


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