customer-service
Customer Experience & Engagement Statistics
Sep 1st
The Customer Experience Statistics document is a comprehensive compilation of internet statistics and online market research with data, facts, charts and figures that are ideal for presentations, business cases or client pitches, RFPs and understanding the marketplace as a whole.
We have aggregated as much data, research and resources together in this one place, to help you quickly find the relevant statistics or information about customer experience that you need.
The report is one of 11 individual downloads that form our popular Internet Statistics Compendium (also available as one report).
There are all sorts of internet statistics which you can slot into your next presentation, report or client pitch.
The sections include the following:
- Customer Experience and Customer Engagement
- Usability
- Accessibility
A sample is available for free with various statistics included and a full table of contents, to show you what you’re missing.
Google’s new real-time search is as bad as Bing’s
Aug 27th
Case in point: Microsoft’s Bing, which a couple of months ago launched Bing Social. Billing it as “the first search experience” based around the Twitter and Facebook firehoses, Bing Social is essentially, in part, a dedicated Twitter search engine. But, as I’ve pointed out, it’s not really all that useful.
So one might assume that Google would take a cue from Bing and know how not to build a real-time search offering. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Yesterday, Google announced the launch of Google Realtime Search to the world, and it feels a lot like Bing Social. Realtime Search is essentially Google search for tweets. The results page listing the latest tweets is almost a mirror image of Bing Social’s, which is nothing to write home about. The primary problem: there’s a lot of chaff, and it appears that both Bing Social and Google Realtime Search have forgotten that it’s all about the wheat.
To be sure, there are a few useful features. There’s a simple graph showing the volume of tweets for a particular search phrase. There’s also the ability to set up Google alerts based on a real-time search, to view a “full conversation” and to filter tweets geographically.
But even though these might impress some users, overall, the overall search experience is unlikely to make Google Realtime Search a mainstream hit. There’s just not enough substance or quality.
Ironically, Realtime Search might make for a decent poor man’s reputation monitoring tool. Tweet volume graphs, alerts and geographic filters will probably be far more interesting to social media managers, business owners and others who are using social media for more than casual use than they will be to the average consumer.
From this perspective, it might be worthwhile for search engines to rethink how they’re positioning their real-time search products. Right now, they fall far short as consumer-oriented products, which is why targeting them at the consumer audience may be ill-conceived. They can’t succeed in that market, but they could serve as the foundation for some real-time oriented business tools. The first search engine to figure out that the target audience isn’t always the consumer will win in this space.
Where does customer service fit into your digital strategy?
Aug 19th
As customer service continues to shift online, the traditional models of delivery are being replaced by a wider variety of channels and touch-points.
This is having an impact on who is responsible for the daily management of digital customer services. Is it marketing, offline customer service, sales or PR?
The ability to respond online means that any department or individual within a company can potentially be responsible, from frontline staff to the CEO. It is becoming increasingly apparent that customer service needs to be considered holistically, within the framework of an inter-departmental strategy which covers both online and offline channels.
Getting this right can potentially be enormously beneficial to an organisation, as it can create highly positive sentiment and good PR, as well as generating financial ROI through customer retention and acquisition.
However, failing to run effective customer services can result in poor business performance and negative feeling towards an organisation, both of which are damaging in the long run.
But how can you identify where customer services should fit into your company structure and how do you develop a strategy that will work?
As with any strategy, the foundations for success are based on good planning and a focus on business objectives, instead of just picking the most appealing options. The impact on business operations and performance should not be under-estimated.
In his own blog post about the roundtable, Guy Stephens (who hosted the event) talks about how social media and smartphones are becoming “the catalysts for business change”.
Social media is a customer service channel which is currently the subject of much discussion, with a great deal of information surrounding this particular area.
But it’s not just about social media. As well as forums and reviews, online customer service also encompasses site search, intelligent FAQs and live or virtual chat.
The following points should hopefully provide some pointers for integrating customer services into your organisation.
What is your current customer service culture?
How does customer service fit into your organisation? Have you already got an established history of trying to provide exceptional customer support, always going the extra mile (benchmark yourselves against the likes of Zappos) or bending over backwards to help both potential and current customers?
This is important. If you’ve already got a strong emphasis on providing the best support to your customers, then it’s likely your organisation will already have a strong structure in place that can be harnessed further.
Are your goals for customer service in line with your overall business objectives?
Customer service isn’t necessarily about creating a tangible financial return. Although it can work as a supplementary sales channel, it can also be used to create warm, fuzzy feelings and a sense of loyalty among your customer base.
It is important to define your customer service goals and strategies, before looking towards the best channels to implement them. Equally, internal policies need to be formed, with all employees trained in the relevant processes.
Following on from this, who in your company is championing customer support? What departments are currently responsible for maintaining online and offline service channels? Does your approach need to be realigned or streamlined? There is a fine line between delivering enough levels of service and overwhelming customers with too many options.
Also, think about whether you might be providing services that are too expensive and resource-heavy to contribute positive value to the organisation.
Where are your customers and what are they doing online?
Social media is great for delivering customer service, but if your core demographics aren’t using sites such as Twitter, then other online options should be considered, such as official forums (also great for improving SEO visibility), online chat or on-site intelligent FAQs.
Can you keep customer service universal?
Providing great customer service isn’t just the responsibility of a single department. Overall, even if there is a specific service division (online or offline), delivering exceptional service falls to every individual employee. Company-wide, everyone needs to understand how to identify issues before they escalate, be able to communicate problems to the relevant departments and understand that it’s often better to lose a customer, but give a good experience than convert through a bad one.
Even if staff don’t work directly in customer-facing roles, if common objectives are understood, then these can be achieved, rather than creating internal conflicts.
Customer services starts and ends with employees. If they don’t understand its importance then you are facing an uphill battle.
[Image credit: HikingArtist]
Five simple steps for rebuilding trust
Aug 4th
An incident that causes consumers to rethink their impressions of your company can be a painful experience, and it can be a difficult one to recover from. But recovering isn’t an impossible feat. Here are five simple steps for regaining trust after your company makes a horrible faux pas.
Apologize. The first step in rebuilding trust seems easy: offer an apology. But be careful: you may only get one chance to say ‘sorry‘ so make sure your apology reads as being heartfelt and genuine. Obviously, it helps when it is.
Explain. Apologies are wonderful, but alone they can hardly make up for a breach of trust. Every good apology includes an explanation. Detail what happened as you see it and why it happened. Do this honestly and it can go a long way towards rebuilding trust that has been lost.
Rectify. Words without action are meaningless. When you’ve made a mistake that has caused others to lose faith in you, the situation must be rectified if trust is ever to be regained. Generally, rectifying a situation means ‘doing the right thing‘. If there are harmed parties, consider making them whole, even if it’s not required, legally or otherwise.
Remain silent. After apologizing, explaining and rectifying, it’s usually a good idea to bite your tongue. After all, you’ve done all that you can do and prolonging the negative attention isn’t likely to be to your benefit.
Be patient. Trust is something that takes a long time to earn. We all know that, but when it’s lost very quickly, it’s often convenient to believe that it can be regained quickly as well. Unfortunately, it can’t, so the fifth and final step in rebuilding trust is being patient. Focus on providing a quality product/service, treat your customers well and whatever you do, don’t make the same mistake twice.
By following these steps, it is possible to replenish your ‘trust fund‘. The challenge, of course, is having the wherewithal to keep the faith that while painful, big mistakes don’t have to be fatal.
Photo credit: TerryJohnston via Flickr.
Social media customer service needs to be underpinned by empathy
Jun 23rd
In this new paradigm, traditional
constructs, ways of communicating and business processes are being
constantly questioned by customers. The challenge businesses face is
that this questioning is taking place at the margins, on independent
platforms, where their presence is neither required nor requested.
Sites such as ComplaintCommunity,
Cofacio, GetSatisfaction, Amplicate, Vark, Plebble, alongside their
more established counterparts like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and TripAdvisor are shifting the power of voice back in favour of
customers. A company’s ability to remain relevant given the
changing needs of an increasingly vocal customer, requires companies
to actually demonstrate their customer centricity, rather than treat
it as a box to tick on a ‘to do’ list.
The drive towards creating a
multichannel service experience is now a more complex undertaking.
The convergence of social media and smartphones has added a
multiplatform dimension to the online proposition, resulting in the
proliferation of ‘unstructured’, yet highly influential, ‘now’
conversations between people. Telephone, email and letters (yes they
still exist) are being replaced by video, audio, microblogs, instant
chat, SMS alternatives. Communicating with our ‘friends’, real or
perceived, is exciting, visual, participatory and even voyeuristic.
In this new paradigm, customers are
bypassing the necessity to engage with a company altogether. Instead,
they are turning to each other for help by posting questions on third
party sites or simply self-helping through their own (re)search, on
forums or via blogs. People have created their own networks and
ecosystems built on social platforms where the sharing of information
between trusted ‘friends’ is paramount. In a sense, customer service
is moving outwards, it is decentralising into the hands of customers
themselves. If you have a problem, who better to ask than someone who
has recently had the same experience.
For companies it means finding
themselves in the unfamiliar position of having to work with, and
even at times, compete against, not just so called ‘citizen experts’
such as KachiWachi, but customers and people providing answers to the very services and
products they supplied in the first place. The increasing ubiquity of
the smartphone (and, soon, tablets), serves only to exacerbate and
hasten this inevitable erosion of the role the company has to play in
the customer service dynamic.
Companies that recognise this trend
have begun to redefine the way they engage with customers. In time,
this will likely result in the transformative re-engineering of
business processes, what Jeremiah Owyang refers to as ‘seamless
integration’. He qualifies this ‘highest state of nirvana’ by
saying it ‘doesn’t yet exist’. However, BestBuy with their (r)evolutionary platform using the simple
hashtag – #Twelpforce – perhaps gives us a glimpse of what
nirvana might look like.
Furthermore, the use of the smartphone
enables help to be sought at the moment of greatest truth: now. It
gives us all the possibility of wresting control of the brand away
from the company and placing it firmly within a public space,
accessible to all. It condenses the experience, and the momentary
touchpoint encapsulates the sum total of how a company views and
engages with its customers.
Ironically, this decentralisation of
customer service is not only placing it firmly at the frontline of a
company’s customer advocacy efforts, but it is also forcing on it a
PR potential that has always been there, but never really sought.
Social media is a natural ally for the call centre, empowering it with
a public voice and the right to reply. The only proviso being that
agents do so, on their customer’s terms, and in an open and
empathetic dialogue.
Social media by its very nature is
highlighting the need for businesses to break down their departmental
silos. Stakeholders from sales, marketing, customer services, brand,
PR, compliance, business operations are having to come together to
redefine, not their social media policies, guidelines or what
Charlene Li refers to in her latest book – Open Leadership –
‘sandbox covenants’, but the way they fundamentally look at their
customers. Social media gives the notion of customer-centricity a
chance.
The resulting framework gives rise to
the possibility of creating a truly cross-channel cross-platform
customer experience that allows businesses to deliver on their
customer service promise.
In this paradigm, the customer experience
becomes the service. Indeed, in many instances, a positive experience
supersedes the need for a positive resolution, as in the example
below, blogged by a customer following their negative experience:
‘…in desperation – I turned to
Twitter to try to penetrate what felt like the huge, uncaring
behemoth of Carphone Warehouse. And I found Guy Stephens, the company’s Knowledge and Online Help Manager, who appeared to be
tackling customer rage in a passionately empathetic way on Twitter. I
tweeted him at 8pm; by 8.07pm, I had a reply, rendering me
unconditionally blown away. Three months of periodic call centre
torture had got me nowhere, but via social media I felt listened to
within minutes and my problem solved within a few days.
‘True, I was a departing customer,
but not before being turned from a ‘hater’ to a fan of what
Carphone Warehouse is doing to improve its customer experience via
social media.’
Such examples are becoming more
commonplace. And this is no bad thing. If the emergence of social
media has resulted in a wake-up call to customers that a better
customer service experience underpinned by empathy and empowerment
can exist, be demanded for and expected, then that is no mean result.
For so long, customers have been the
victims of the drive for cost-reduction and operational efficiency
within the contact centre. But exemplars of customer service
excellence such as Zappos are now rising above the mundane.
Their
uncompromising and unstinting approach to a type of customer service
underpinned by delivering ‘wow’ through emotion and innovation
gives hope to others such as ComCast, BT, The Carphone Warehouse,
ASOS, EasyJet, BestBuy, JetBlue, Virgin Trains, whilst paving the way
for those yet to start their journey and operating within the more
regulated industries of finance, insurance, utilities and law.
After all, why should talking to a
customer until their problem is resolved be anything other than what
we should all expect, whatever the channel? ‘Listen to your
customers’ has finally been pushed to the fore by the social media
revolution, and it was about time too.
Five ways to maintain authenticity with social media
May 27th
Businesses have been flogged over the head with the advice about being ‘authentic‘ when using social media. But what does that really mean? Here are five tips for being authentic and maintaining authenticity with business social media use.
Make it personal.
Identity matters online. Which is why companies shouldn’t build a faceless social media presence. At a very minimum, business social media profiles should be associated with a real person who has some level of autonomy and the ability to make his or her personality part of the show.
Keep it real.
While it may seem cliché, social media is one of the mediums in which companies need to ‘keep it real‘. Several examples:
- Avoiding the ‘social media sorry‘ when you don’t believe an apology is deserved.
- Being able to say ‘no‘.
- Admitting when you’ve messed up.
Keeping it real can be uncomfortable from time to time because somebody, somewhere might not like a decision you make or action you take. But smart businesses recognize that you can’t please everybody and that being spineless can often be far more harmful than being principled and decisive. Social media doesn’t change this reality.
Don’t be afraid of opinion.
A big part of ‘keeping it real‘ that deserves individual attention is the fear of opinion that often exists amongst businesses. It’s my belief, however, that one of the big reasons consumers don’t trust companies is that companies often strive so hard to be ‘PC’ that they lose a sense of culture and personality. Instead of representing something, they end up representing nothing. Frankly, there’s nothing worse from a branding perspective.
When it comes to social media, companies and their social media managers shouldn’t be afraid to express an opinion (or two or three). Obviously, opinions have consequences. So ‘speak first, think later‘ isn’t an advisable approach. But ‘speak, say nothing‘ is something that should be avoided at all costs as well, as it negates whatever potential social media has to help your business build relationships with consumers.
Focus on interactions, not followers and fans.
Many businesses have an unhealthy focus on the number of followers and fans they acquire on sites like Twitter and Facebook. To a certain extent, it makes sense: the number of followers or fans you have is an easy metric for assessing ‘success‘.
But a sizable following doesn’t necessarily equate to influence or results. Which is why businesses using social media should focus more on using social media to facilitate quality interactions. This is far more likely to produce meaningful action on the part of a consumer, and will likely have a greater impact on the perceptions of the silent majority (read: the many consumers who watch, but don’t participate).
Keep the distribution of traditional marketing messages to a minimum.
Social media may or may not be a cheap way to distribute your traditional marketing messages, but if that’s all you use it for, it defeats the purpose. So many consumers shun traditional marketing for a reason.
If your social media presence is merely a platform for promoting press releases, promotions, etc., it will be much harder to attract attention, spark meaningful interactions and create the warm, fuzzy feelings amongst consumers that you’re hoping to elicit. In other words, if your Twitter or Facebook account is an extension of your RSS feed, you’re missing the point.
Photo credit: Sideshow Bruce via Flickr.
How Mercedes uses online research communities to build advocacy
May 21st
“Asking builds advocacy,” says Stauble, “it’s been a two year partnership with our consumers.” In the two years Mercedes has been running the invitation-only program, they’ve rolled out 156 polls, 179 surveys, 262 discussions, live chats with company executives, have invited participants to 32 live events, recruited some 25 members as mystery shoppers, and more. One member was offered the opportunity to test drive a GLK. He posted a glowingly positive video review to YouTube.
Recently Steve Cannon, who heads marketing for Mercedes, tested a TV spot for the gull-wing SLS in the community. He’d been “on the fence” about running a spot for a super-luxury vehicle in the depths of the recession. The community told him otherwise with a resounding thumbs-up vote. The spot is slated to debut on-air this month. “Online communities are a remarkable platform for maintaining relevant marketing strategies, and getting to know our customers in a deeper and richer way,” he says.
Generation Benz, the original community, was launched because as Stauble puts it, “Generation Y is the next big wave.”The 580 members age 16 to 33 were qualified by age and “propensity to luxury” via a questionnaire. Only 64 percent of them are Mercedes drivers. The older boomer community are all Mercedes drivers. An astonishing 70 percent of them regularly log on to MercedesBenzAdvisors.com.
Community members are excited about the opportunity to provide feedback directly to Mercedes decision makers. It’s a win-win for both sides. Mercedes is able to regularly conduct consumer research at a much lower cost, not to mention infrastructure and organizational requirements of the classic focus group while building advocacy through that research.
“You need to keep your customers close,” says Stauble. By creating private online communities to do just that, Mercedes is fostering relationships that benefit consumers — not just their brand and products.
Customer Experience
Apr 19th
Customer Experience – Delivering more than the mechanics of Usability
This course designed to explore the activities involved in creating and measuring engaging online experiences:
Develop an understanding of the Total Customer Experience – integrate across channels and beyond the limited online transaction
10 common social media mistakes
Mar 31st
Overfollowing. Social media is called ‘social‘ media for a reason, but there’s nothing ‘social‘ about following an ungodly number of users, especially in a short amount of time. Success with social media is just like marketing, sales and PR: results are achieved one victory at a time.
Using every tool available. Getting social media ‘right‘ is harder than it looks. One of the things that’s required: focus. But it’s hard to focus when you try to build a presence on every popular social media website. Which is why companies should resist the urge to get involved with all the new and shiny toys and instead focus on the social media platforms that are most likely to be a good fit.
Falling off the wagon. A social media effort is easy to start, but it can be a challenge to keep going. In short, social media is a journey, not a destination. Businesses that aren’t prepared for the long haul are far more likely to give up. That’s not a good thing because social media is a party and the other partygoers (your customers, competitors, etc.) are likely to notice if you pass out.
Not training employees. Social media may look easy, but it really isn’t. How your employees behave can have a big impact on your company’s social media reputation. For companies that are actively involved with social media, setting expectations and creating policies for employees is the best way to ensure that they help your reputation, not hurt it.
Letting the new kid or a low-level employee manage your profiles. Who should be in charge of your social media endeavors? The young employee who joined Facebook back in 2004 and who has 5,000 followers on Twitter might seem like a good choice, but chances are he or she isn’t. Your social media presence is far too valuable to leave in the hands of somebody who is new, inexperienced, lacks detailed knowledge about the company or isn’t heavily invested in the company’s success. Putting it in the hands of anyone else can quickly lead to disaster.
Pretending that social media is free. Signing up for a Twitter account and Facebook Page, for instance, may not cost any money, but managing them (and managing them well) doesn’t magically happen without an investment that can be quantified in dollars and cents. Social media will always require somebody’s time and may require that certain corporate resources be allocated differently. Businesses can’t ignore these costs when planning their social media strategies and evaluating what they’re delivering.
Publishing first, thinking later. In the world of social media, everything you say can and will be held against you. Unfortunately, the real-time nature of many social media websites encourages a ‘publish first, think later‘ dynamic. Companies have far too much to lose, however, and need to ensure that what’s being published is accurate, honest and in line with the company’s values. Sometimes, it’s better not to publish.
Ignoring metrics. When it comes to social media, companies need to be comfortable experimenting. But experimentation doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t define the metrics by which progress and success can be measured. Measurement is just as important with social media as it is with any other business effort.
Assuming ROI isn’t possible to calculate. The three letters R-O-I often make social media proponents cringe and social media skeptics grin. Many companies buy into the notion that social media is really, really important, but a lot of them also buy into the notion that social media’s value can’t reasonably be calculated in terms of ROI. That’s a mistake because for all of social media’s virtues, any effort made by a business eventually has to produce tangible value that can be correlated the bottom line.
Expecting the world. Social media can do many great things for businesses, but it has its limitations. For instance, it isn’t necessarily going to drive sales, increase brand loyalty or create buzz — especially overnight. Getting the most out of social media requires healthy, not unrealistic, expectations.
Photo credit: David Farrell via Flickr.
It’s social media, but that doesn’t mean the rules of PR don’t apply
Mar 17th
Morgan Johnston, who is apparently the voice of @JetBlue, pointed it out to me via Twitter:
@probles @Econsultancy – You’ve got a Southwest plane photo in your article, not a JetBlue plane look around http://is.gd/al0mx
It’s hard to tell if this tweet is rude or not. Obviously, 140 characters doesn’t provide a lot of room to say much, so it would be unwise to try to read tone. But in my opinion, “you made a poor photo selection, take a look around” isn’t exactly the best use of 140 characters. More importantly, Johnston’s link isn’t of much help. It points to JetBlue’s Flickr page, where all of the photos I can see (and all of the photos of the JetBlue event I wrote about) are listed as copyrighted with all rights reserved. That means that I can’t legally use them without JetBlue’s permission.
This is no doubt a minor ‘incident‘, but I do think it serves as a good example of how difficult it can be to use social media as a means of sending corporate communication. I wrote a story about JetBlue, used a photo that somebody at the company thought was less-than-ideal, and was then sent a tweet implying that it should be changed.
Having dealt with PR folks for some time, it occurred to me after seeing Johnston’s tweet that an experienced PR person would probably have done the following if the photo I used in my post was important enough to warrant a communication:
- Fire off an email. As I mentioned, it’s hard to say much in 140 characters. So instead of trying to communicate with a tweet, an email is oftentimes more effective. And just because you’re the “voice” of a company’s Twitter account, for instance, doesn’t mean you can only use email.
- Ask for what you want, nicely. If you want something, you usually have to ask for it. And asking nicely typically helps too. Here, Johnston implies what he’d like to see, but doesn’t explicitly ask for it.
- Make it easy for the other person to give you what you want. If somebody from JetBlue wanted a picture of a JetBlue plane associated with my post, I would have happily obliged had I been sent an email with a photo and the permission to use it. As mentioned, the link Johnston provided contains copyrighted photos that I couldn’t use without JetBlue’s explicit permission.
There’s a lot to like about social media, and it can be a valuable communications tool for companies, but obviously there are numerous challenges for companies. From getting a story to having a story corrected, good PRs are always focused on outcomes. The tools and techniques used to achieve those outcomes shouldn’t be ignored just because it’s social media.