Last week LendingTree had two crises.

Crisis 1

The first, was relatively small. A few former employees used their access to customer inquiries (leads), most likely for personal gain, to give unauthorized lenders access to LendingTree’s Lenders Network. Sure, I and a lot of other people can think of the worst possible ramifications of this incident. However, the true facts probably will reveal something far less dramatic–a couple of ex-employees trying to stick it to their old company and make a quick greed inspired buck. And, a few unscrupulous lenders willing to comprise their integrity and their business for free leads.

Crisis 2

The second, is possibly the more unfortunate and potentially damaging. They lacked a community of vocal and fanatical customers. This is certainly not unique to LendingTree, but rather is quite endemic of the lead generation, mortgage, and to a lesser degree real estate industry. Those of us within this business ecosystem should take note and endeavor to fix this before we inevitably encounter our own crisis.

The Solution

This is more a open thought and discussion piece since I won’t be so arrogant as to believe I have the answer, or could have in the heat of the incident performed better. However, I will be critical in the hopes of beginning a useful discussion. A discussion on building a community that will passionately assist a business they believe in, even during bad news.

Here are a few things that LendingTree has done very well, and has differentiated their business, but didn’t help in the current crisis:

• Been dogmatic about creating the highest quality customer (borrower) experience
• Building an “elite” cadre of lenders who actively collaborate to improve the lead network, customer experience, and lender experience
• Creating a top-shelf consumer brand that remains etched in every homeowner in America

Here are a few things that LendingTree did not do well in adjusting to a new social marketplace:

• Did not build a community of customer evangelist from their loyal customer base
• Did not build a community of lender evangelist from their loyal lender base
• Create, develop a community evangelist at LendingTree

Turning Customers into a Community

I think if LendingTree had evolved their “network” into a “social media community” this recent incident would have barely registered. Instead it would have, in a natural way, triggered the vocal opinions of an established loyal customer and lender community. Here are a couple of examples from one of these loyal lenders:

• on Blog comments
  
• on Twitter

Imagine if LendingTree’s thousands of customers and hundreds of lenders had all been engaged. What would have happened if LendingTree began the communication with the community and the affected customers together. The doom and gloomers would have been a faint whisper and the media would have tracked a very different meme.

Community Building Resources

If you think this is important to your company here are a few of my favorite resources:

• It all starts here: Cluetrain Manifesto
• Robert Scoble, aka Scobleizer. He was arguably one of the first to fill this undefined social media community builder, and executed it well for Microsoft
• Jake McKee, did it for Legos
• Chris Brogan, gives us an idea on what that social community builder position might look like

Is this important? How would you build and maintain a community?