I took a trip to AdAge.com looking for some recent articles on online advertising and couldn’t help but notice this week’s cover story: Comcast Must Die! Definitely, a strong title. The author of the article has been frusterated to the point of alienation by the cable provider’s customer solution. His solution: create a blog comcastmustdie.com. And this is nothing new, this ‘criticism culture’ has been flourishing online and many companies must be bracing at past embarrassments. But can some good be made of this?

Why not. This is a great way for companies to monitor the successfulness of its customer service. With more customer service being outsourced and evenoffshored and or – as from my work experience – the obsession to turn call centers into revenue machines through the perfect mix of a great upsell and an aggresive rep or a well-played ’saving a cancel’, companies should see this as a report card. Sure there’s some negative publicity, but its a way to monitor the effectiveness of their programs. Companies often staff a position to look for any references to the company within their PR Staff; maybe its time for companies to do the same from within the operations department.

Other sites for venting online: Complaints.com and Consumerist.com.

Looking for a plumber, here’s a neat site I found in the article that has a rating of local services: Angie’s List.