We love having you on our team and I’m sure you will be an integral part of its success.

My opinion is that a company should be respected for listening to their customers & talking with them. Dell did it (Geoff outlined that). My goal here was more to share the story of the evolution & it’s been quick for an enterprise as large as Network Solutions. Small companies have a huge advantage in that respect of being more nimble.

And I can easily answer your questions. That’s part of the problem is that people have misinformation & keep repeating it. Actually NetSol encouraged people to support ICANN in making domain tasting & front running illegal. That came to be in the end of June. You can read about it on the NetSol blog: http://tinyurl.com/6rsp7f

Yes, reputation is about perception – but ultimately the facts don’t seem to be considered. As you said, times have changed & that’s what we’re working on expressing. NetSol is much more than a domain registrar & offers many products (with many more coming).

And finally, yes, they are listening. I’m proud of being part of a case study in the making – it means we’re setting the bar! My Resources tab has some case studies of my work (Best Practices for Cust Service/Brian Solis & Comm Management/Jeremiah Owyang).
Connie

Social engagement, of course, is just one marcom channel. A company’s products, pricing and behavior matter a bit as well of course. NSI’s overpriced domain solutions likely survive based on a lot of folks just not getting around to switching from years past, (I have a few domains left with NSI, but hundreds elsewhere), newbies who don’t know any better, and perhaps some real added value products I’m unfamiliar with. The thing is, I actually LIKE NSI and used them years ago when they were one of the few games in town. Still, even though they may remain a top registrar, they’ve got some issues.

Such as Domain Front Running issues. While maybe not illegal it’s clearly unethical. (I haven’t kept up with whether there’s laws against this now or of NSI still does it.) Ethics can be quite arguable of course, but this seems to be the majority opinion. In any case, someone there at some point thought this would be ok and spent effort to create systems and processes to do this. Maybe they thought it was 1991, forgot they were no longer the only or one of a few registrars and they’re in a commodity business now. All the social media in the world can’t fix perception when such actions are taken. Though maybe paying attention can avoid such arrogance and foolishness in the future. Maybe they get that now.

Perhaps someone with your skill and customer/marketplace empathy can make a difference in how some folks there understand their place in the world and behave accordingly. If you’re getting listened to at the levels that matter, maybe you can help them get back to a position of respect.

Again, good luck with the new effort. Seems to be a good case study in reputation management and perhaps recovery. (Looking forward to seeing if this comment passes Moderation.)