The first thing you need to understand before reading too much further is that I am not handy. I will even go so far as to say that no one in my house is very handy. So when it comes to fixing broken household items; repair calls are usually made, hundreds of dollars are usually spent, and someone else will usually order an expensive part for our fridge, or tell us how not to load our dishwasher.

So when our Kenmore Elite front load dryer started acting up recently I knew the dollars would be draining from my purse soon enough.

But a funny thing happened while I was searching for the Sears repair number. I stumbled upon the Sears Home Services blog. There, right in front of me, were  threads of customer issues with Sears appliances. Yet even more importantly, for almost every inquiry on this site, there were replies from Sears support personnel.  “Darold” from the Sears Blue Crew had suddenly become my savior. With one reply to an aggravated customer, Darold had given me my solution. Unplug the damn dryer. Lo and behold, my dryer is now working perfectly and my cash is still in my pocket.

However, it’s not just Darold’s helpfulness that you will find on the Sears Home Services blog. You may encounter a “Steve Binder”, “Jon” or “Phil”. But regardless of who the response is from, the message is clear: Sears cares.

And this is a perfect example of why companies should value and maintain a blog or consider microblogging: To show customers that they care.

This post is not to rave about Sears. There are plenty of blogs out there telling you why Sears sucks. I found them as well when I was searching for solutions to my product woes. However, this post is meant to show companies that communicating with their customers online, openly and frequently is a great way to go. Although I found negative blogs, I also found Sears blog. And it helped me solve my problem. In the end, I was less aggravated and, guess what? I will continue to consider Sears’ products in the future.

Now what would have happened if I had not encountered a blog by Sears and had only saw the negative information? Or, what if there was no Sears blog and I had trouble getting through their 800 number to customer service? Or, what if I had scheduled the service repair visit (because there was no helpful blog being maintained), only to have the repair person unplug my dryer and plug it back in and then charge me for the visit?  I think we all know the answer.

Although there are many companies using blogs or microblogs to provide a higher level of service to their customers, surprisingly there are even more companies who are not. Whatever the reasons for their delay, here’s to putting some pressure on those companies to start using the web – or social media in particular – to provide more support to their customers. Join me in letting them know it is the right time to start, and kudos to Sears for blogging!