When will big companies really embrace the idea of having a conversation with customers? Will they do it voluntarily, or will they be forced into it? By new competitors who do communicate better? By scandals and annoying customers?

Here at Les Blogs, there are a number of speakers telling us how corporates use weblogs so that a brand is about a relationship with customers, rather than just something on a billboard. They are all from big companies. But really, these companies are still using weblogs very well.

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I have seen one company go down in the UK, tiny.com largely because of failure to interact with customers. There were problems with the products they were selling (plasma screens), and the company didn’t deal honestly with the people who had the problem. In the end, it was actually customers in a discussion board (ironically) who figured out what the technical problem with the product was, and how to fix it. But by then the company had annoyed so many people and received so many returns, it was too late.