Pay Attention!

How to Listen, Respond, and Profit from Customer Feedback

Ann Thomas, Jill Applegate

• Editore: Wiley
• Anno: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470627426
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Betriebswirtschaft
• Categoria: Kleinbetrieb

Make customer feedback work for your business.

Customers are speaking loud and clear through a miriad of mediums. Evidence shows that customers will no longer stand for the hurried and complacent service that has become the norm. They are looking for a positive, memorable experience. Organizations that provide that level of service will earn their loyalty. Customers base their decisions on nothing more than a positive or negative review of your product and/or service.

Pay Attention! paves the way. Your company wins when you:

• Understand Customer Expectations
• Embrace and implement The RATER Factors
• Define who you are and what you offer
• Become E.T.D.B.W. (Easy To Do Business With)
• Connect with your audience in all mediums
• React appropriately and respond immediately to customer feedback
• Recover sincerely when things go wrong

All you need is to Pay Attention!

Chapter 1

PAY ATTENTION TO TODAY’S CUSTOMERS

When two rogue employees at Domino’s Pizza decided to have some fun with a video camera, they had no idea they were about to provide the business world with a powerful lesson in the new voice of the customer.

The employees filmed a prank video of themselves stuffing cheese up their noses and then putting it on Domino’s sandwiches. As one of the employees appears to tamper with the food, the other is heard saying: “In about five minutes this will be sent out on delivery where someone will actually be eating it.” The two then posted the video to YouTube, the popular video-sharing site, where it proceeded to get more than a million hits over a few days.

News of the video spread like wildfire on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and it wasn’t until a sympathetic blogger alerted Domino’s to the offensive posting that it was finally removed.

Domino’s response was textbook. Its president posted his own YouTube video apologizing for the incident and repeatedly stressing that it was a misguided joke. “There is nothing more important or sacred to us than our customers’ trust,” said CEO Patrick Doyle. “It sickens me that the act of two individuals could impact our great system.” But the damage to the brand was already done. According to the research firm YouGov, which surveys some 1,000 consumers every day, the perception of Domino’s quality went from positive to negative in just a few days. Untold numbers of loyal Domino’s customers were likely second guessing their relationship, wondering if they could trust the pizza maker to deliver untampered food in the future.

Further evidence of the new ways that customers are speaking to companies—and how some of the most service-savvy organizations are speaking back—came in an incident involving Comcast Corp., the cable provider. When a prominent blogger, Michael Arrington, complained on his site about a frustrating outage with his Comcast cable service, no one was more shocked than the blogger when a Comcast executive responded within 20 minutes to his complaint, making sure a technician was quickly sent out to fix the problem.

The blogger reported that he first notified the company of the problem by phone, but service staff there had no clue as to when the problem could be fixed. The Comcast executive’s swift response was part of a new program called Comcast Cares, created to actively monitor Twitter and other social media sites and respond to customer comments about the company. The program is designed to buttress, not replace, e-mail and phone help channels and respond to pressing customer concerns with greater speed.

Rather than forcing customers to call an 800 number and endure a wait on hold or send e-mail that isn’t answered for 24 hours, Comcast service reps can simply “tweet” customers to quickly acknowledge problems and set the recovery process in motion—engaging customers in a communication channel in which many are increasingly comfortable.

The Power of Online Megaphones

Long gone are the days when customers made their voices heard only through 800 numbers, e-mail messages, or face-to-face interactions or by telling neighbors over the back fence how horrible—or surprisingly wonderful—was the service they received at the dry cleaner, local restaurant, bank, or web site. Now they more commonly speak through the virtual megaphones known as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites as well as by posting reviews of businesses they frequent on sites like Yelp or CitySearch. Many more make their voices heard through discussion boards and dedicated product review areas on company web sites. Although accurate user numbers are hard to come by, it’s safe to say many millions of people are using these tools on a daily basis.

“An entire generation is growing up that will never dial a 1-800 number to reach customer care,” says Amanda Mooney, a digital media strategist with Edelman Digital, a division of Edelman Public Relations.

But it isn’t just teenagers or 20-somethings using social media. According to a 2009 study from Pew Internet and the American Life Project, the median age of Facebook users is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008; the median age of Twitter users is 31 and LinkedIn users is 39. Businesses of all sizes also have become regular users of social networks to market products, keep tabs on consumer opinions, and engage customers on the turf where they feel most comfortable.

When today’s customers are upset by customer service experiences, the first place many turn to vent their frustrations is the Web. A 2008 study by TARP Worldwide Inc., an Arlington, Virginia-based customer service research firm, found, for example, that 12 percent of dissatisfied online customers told their “buddy lists” about the experience—lists that average more than 60 persons. On average, four times more people on the Web hear about negative experiences than positive ones, according to TARP research.

Consider the experience of professional guitarist Dave Carroll. Carroll was unable, after a full year of negotiation, to receive any compensation from United Airlines for having his guitar damaged by baggage handlers—damage requiring $1,200 in repairs. Carroll had been at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, en route between Halifax, Canada, and Nebraska, when a passenger next to him noticed that baggage handlers were throwing guitar cases on the tarmac outside the plane.

Frustrated by the airline’s response, Carroll decided to write and post a song titled “United Breaks Guitars” to YouTube. The song proved an instant sensation that received more than 600,000 hits within a week, and as of this printing, has received more than 7 million hits. According to news reports, United representatives called Carroll after the video went viral and said they wanted to discuss the situation. To the airline’s credit, it was considering using the reputation-damaging video as a case study for how to better handle future customer complaints.

Although it’s impossible to control everything customers say about your company on social networks or in the blogosphere, shrewd companies have figured out that there are effective ways to manage their reputations online. One such tactic is to try to redirect negative commentary, getting customers to talk directly to your company rather than to broadcast their displeasure to millions of Web users. The idea is to try to harness the conversation and thus control more of it.

Such interventions increase the odds of positive outcomes and mitigate the potential damage caused by letting rumors or “viral sharing” of bad service experiences go unchecked for long periods on the Internet. Dell Computer, for example, is among the growing number of organizations using sophisticated tracking software to monitor comments made about the company on social networks and the blogosphere, often joining these conversations to try to solve problems or answer questions. Although customers may initially have viewed this behavior as intrusive, many have grown to embrace the service assistance, with the caveat that it’s handled deftly.

Negative service experiences spread like wildfire, even without the aid of technology. When we feel disrespected, talked down to, treated like a number, or just plain poorly served by an organization, we’re eager to share that experience with friends, work colleagues, relatives, and anyone who will lend an ear. The sharing carries a warning: Steer clear of the offending company. Consider the multiplying factor, then, when people write about those “service experiences from hell” on their blogs, user groups, or social networking pages. Untold numbers around the globe are likely to read them, especially if they are particularly well told or the company in question has done something that offends a sense of fairness.

A More Skeptical and Distrustful Customer

Whether wholly true or not, tales of service woe or service excellence have an impact on those who read them, especially if those people have no prior experience with the organization. And that perception, when acted on, can mean the difference between sales realized and sales lost.

That’s because today’s customers are much more likely to believe in and trust the experiences of their peers or other consumers than they are corporate marketing messages. According to a 2008 study by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), 74 percent of active Internet users choose companies or brands based on the experiences of others that they read about online. Additional research, conducted in 2007 by Edelman Public Relations as part of its annual “trust barometer” study, found that people’s most credible source of information was “a person like me,” which for the first time surpassed even academic experts and doctors on the trust scale.

Commented Richard Edelman, head of the public relations firm, about the study findings: “We have reached an important juncture, where the lack of trust in established institutions and figures of authority has motivated people to trust their peers as the best sources of information about a company. Companies need to move away from sole reliance on top-down messages delivered to elites toward fostering peer-to-peer dialogue among consumers, activating a company’s most credible advocates.”

Today’s customers also are more prone to conduct exhaustive research about products or services before making buying decisions, a process made easier by the volume of comparative data available on the Internet regarding prices, features, reliability, performance, and more. According to the SNCR study, 72 percent of respondents research companies’ customer care history online prior to purchasing products and services.

What Does This All Mean for Your Own Customer Service Strategy?

For starters, if you’re not giving customers an online outlet for expressing their opinions about your products, services, or overall operations, you’re likely raising suspicion or even being left behind your competitors. Research shows that consumers are increasingly skeptical of companies that don’t encourage reviews of their offerings on a corporate web site. Many believe it means you have something you’re trying to hide.

Organizations that don’t solicit comments, reviews, or ratings are often afraid they’ll get too many negative ones, but the reality is that some less than glowing comments mixed in with pats on the back add credibility to the site. We’ve all read review sites that feature nothing but positive commentary that reads as though it’s written by the CEO’s mother or a book author’s husband. Shrewd companies such as Amazon.com have begun displaying their most useful positive reviews side by side with their most useful negative reviews, a process many customers find helpful in making buying decisions. Other companies are regularly sending customers e-mails that feature online ratings or reviews, and many find that products with customer reviews have a significantly lower return rate than those without them.

Most service-savvy organizations also realize that there are nuggets of gold to be mined in this new, albeit more skeptical, voice of the customer. By tapping into what customers are saying about them in unfiltered settings such as social networks or blogs, companies can gather information and insight that can help tweak service performance, capture ideas for product enhancements, improve marketing campaigns, or upgrade their web sites based on user suggestions.

The best of these companies also view their front-line customer service staff—those working in call centers, standing behind counters, strolling sales floors, or on teams dedicated to crawling social media sites—as the canaries in the coal mine of customer service. Well before anyone else in the organization, they usually know about emerging problems with service quality, recurring issues, or breakdowns that are driving customers into the embrace of the competition. They interact with customers each and every day and thus have intimate knowledge of where the company is meeting their needs and where it is falling short.

In that sense they are essential “listening posts” of the organization and a key piece in tracking the new voice of the customer. Organizations that are truly interested in customers’ unvarnished opinions of their service quality regularly make a point of surveying their frontline staff to help identify, and shore up, weak spots in their service delivery systems.

Rising Global Service Expectations

If you’re part of an organization dedicated to listening to the new voice of the customer, you’ll know that expectations for service quality are rising and have been doing so for a number of years.

According to the 2008 Customer Satisfaction Survey conducted by Accenture, the global management consulting firm—a survey that queried 4,189 people in eight countries across five continents—52 percent of respondents said that their expectations for customer service were higher than in the period five years before. The trend toward rising expectations was found in both mature and emerging markets; in fact, the survey found that “expectations of consumers in emerging markets are rising at an alarming rate.” To wit: 84 percent of survey respondents in China, India, and Brazil said that their expectations for quality service were higher than they were five years ago.

The Accenture survey also found—for the fourth consecutive year—that the number of consumers who left a company because of poor service was significantly higher than the number who left because they found a lower price elsewhere. In addition, only 45 percent of respondents reported that their service expectations were frequently or always met.

Given that statistic, it’s little surprise that 67 percent of respondents reported taking their business elsewhere as a result of shoddy service during the previous year. The estimated average value, in U.S. dollars, that each of those defectors took with them each time they switched companies? About $4,000.

There are a number of explanations for why service expectations are rising around the globe. As more service-savvy companies expand their tentacles into emerging markets and more businesses sell products and services over the Web, customers in developing countries are exposed to what quality service feels like. Anyone in Brazil, India, or Zambia who’s done business with FedEx, Amazon.com, Netflix, or Zappos.com, for example, is more likely to expect that same level of customer care from the next company they deal with, regardless of whether it’s the mom-and-pop restaurant or auto repair shop around the corner.

Organizations also are realizing that today it’s harder than ever to get away with bad service. Offend customers or give them robotic or indifferent treatment and the odds are high that the experience will be retold in vivid detail on the Web or on social networks. And if a customer’s horrific service experience gets enough attention on a site like YouTube or Twitter, the traditional media will often come calling for follow-up reports, which ratchets up the exposure.

The real fear of negative service experiences “going viral” is keeping more organizations honest, leading them to enhance their service quality to avoid the odds of negative publicity. That in turn leads customers to expect more of them and other companies they do business with, because the service bar has been raised.

Watchdogs of the Web: Are Social Networks Helping to Improve Service Quality?

The effect that the Web, blogs, and social networks are having on companies’ service performance might be compared to the influence that videocams and cell phone cameras have had on the actions of criminals and law enforcement officers. Both of these groups now know that the odds of their being caught on camera doing anything unlawful or ethically questionable have risen dramatically. Countless criminals (or unknowing celebrities—can anyone say Tiger Woods?) have had their acts caught by cell phone cameras, and police officers have been more wary of their public actions since the infamous Rodney King bea...