Mother's Day Flower Fail and the Power of Feedback for Aid

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-05-11 13:48:00 UTC
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What if we could amplify, aggregate, and publicize the feedback loop in international development?

There is an interesting story TechCrunch just posted about the anger the Twittersphere is expressing towards flower companies for failing to deliver flowers on time for Mother's Day. Very reasonably angered customers have been venting and sites like Twendz.com have been keeping track of the collective sentiment.

We did a sentiment analysis of tweets about FTD’s brand using Twendz, which looks at the sentiments expressed about a brand or topic and measures how positive, neutral or negative the tweets are. According to Twendz, 63% of recent tweets about FTD are negative. And 83% of tweets that include “FTD” and “Mom” are negative.

Interestingly, another well-known flower company is trying a proactive approach to make amends:

There is also negative buzz on Twitter about 1800Flowers.com regarding issues with the delivery of flowers yesterday. But interestingly, when you do a search on Twitter, you will see that 1800Flowers’ Twitter account is trying to appease customers. It’s not a bad idea, considering the damage that angry tweets can do for a brand. Twendz reports that only 33% of tweets about 1800Flowers.com are negative. FTD has twice the number of negative tweets.

This is the power of real-time feedback and new communications channels for instant responsiveness. Nothing like this currently exists in the world of international aid. There is simply no good, scalable way for individuals around the world to give feedback on aid and development programs.

But as cell-phones become increasingly ubiquitous, and as people build services aimed at extending access - even if its not full time access - to communications technology across the whole of the base of the pyramid, there would seem to be an opportunity for someone to build a tool or service that makes it easier for people to report and reflect on the services they're supposed to have access to.

In the short term, this might be a scary loss of power for some organizations, but I have to believe that in the long-run, we understand that this sort of listening loop is not about "proving" your organization is doing good work but constantly working to improve your impact.

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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