Chew on this – “80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices … people update anywhere, anytime …imagine what that means for bad customer experiences.” (www.socialnomics.com)
Now, remember the last time you got really angry about something and were so glad later on that nobody was around to see you lose control. Then, ponder the above statistic again and think about all the people who will tell everyone who follows them on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and everything else that they had a horrible experience, way before they calm down.
Now, imagine that the name of the company or person they are texting, posting, or talking about is you. If you don’t find this terrifying, you must be awfully customer-centric or you’re fooling yourself.
The idea that people will post their anger about their customer experience while it is still happening is terrifying. How many times have we had to deal with the wrath of an angry customer who contacts us or our call center and lets loose with high-octane screaming and frustration about what happened? The only person who knows about that extreme anger is the CSR or other employee who is talking to them. Also, if we fixed the situation, their stories to friends about the incidents would be tempered by time and would include a happy ending.
The worst time to have somebody complain about your product or customer service is when the anger and frustration is still white-hot. And today, using social media to tell others about their anger is equivalent to somebody standing in the middle of your office or store and calling everybody they know to complain. In the old days, the anger might have calmed down by the time they got to the tenth person. Now, they can tell thousands (My daughter, Hannah, has 590 “friends” on Facebook. If Hannah complains about your product, 590 people hear about it instantly. Terrifying).
Even if they cool off a little, the customer you just ticked off may be one of the 200,000,000 bloggers out there. And statistics show that 54% of these bloggers post new information daily and 35% of bloggers post their opinions about products, services and companies.
What can we do about this?
- Make a firm commitment to become customer-centric by implementing new procedures, systems and processes where the customer is the most important person in the conversation or the process. If you’re not sure how to do this, here are two books you can start with: Passionate & Profitable: Why customer strategies fail and 10 steps to do them right by Lior Arussy and The Best Service is No Service: How to liberate your customers from customer service, keep them happy & control costs by Bill Price & David Jaffe.
- Make a major effort to map your customer processes. Identify the dozens, if not hundreds of touch points where your company touches the customer in any way (even those where the department or person doesn’t touch the customer directly). Identify which are most important and find out where you need the most improvement by talking to your customers. If you can’t do the surveying yourself, hire somebody (Arussy’s Strativity Group is a great consultant on these issues)
- Get on Twitter NOW and set up a way for your customers to reach you there.
- Train, train, train your customer-facing people in techniques to diffuse situations when they are in the white-hot stage. A calm customer with a problem is less likely to tell the world than an angry customer with a problem.
People now trust their peer’s recommendations over advertising by a factor of more than five-to-one. You should be terrified.
Tags: angry customers, bad experience, Bad health insurance behavior, bad service, customer expectations, customer experience, Customer Experience Ownership, customer service, customer service training, Expectations have changed, impersonal service, social media, social media & customer service, telling everybody, terrifying social media, upset customers
August 19, 2009 at 7:09 pm |
Good post.
Wonder how much social media is the “flavor of the month” as far as marketing and advertising is going. Talking to several groups that are having the social media mavens speak to their organizations because everyone thinks SM will lead them to the promised land. You saw how popular it was at the convention this year, but who is really turning it into real business and client signings (Unless they speak on that)?
To illustrate, look at our colleauges who seem to live on Facebook. Are they really getting booked by these methods that much? Or are they grasping at the social media straw in desperation that it holds the key to prosperity?
Just wondering…
August 20, 2009 at 2:11 am |
That’s an interesting question. I don’t know that anybody has been using it in the right way (whatever that way is) for long enough to see some real results. I do know that there are a good number of people from my outer circle (synagogue, neighborhood) who now know what I do and speak about so there is more awareness because of Facebook and LinkedIn. Two people have introduced me to other people because they have that information about me. It hasn’t brought me any business, but then again, it hasn’t been that long. I DO know this: As I said in the blog, the passing of bad reports about customer experiences ISbeing impacted by social networking. And that affects my business. Thanks for the comment.
August 20, 2009 at 3:02 pm |
Steve,
Interesting thoughts and you present a very compelling case to make sure companies commit to on-going service training, expecially in the eventuality that with instantaneous mobile contact, frontline staff may need to know how to literally talk the irrate customer them down off the roof – or from even a more overt retaliation!
Would be interested in your opinion (and others) on SM and where it is heading: With 200MM participants and growing, I am wondering if blogs, Twittering, Facebook, MySpace, etc. will become an over-stuffed complaint box or an avenue for entertainment/frivolity only, where the noise volume is so great, and the networking so fractured/splintered that no one really will have the time/resources to listen and respond? It’s sort of like e-mail, where it used to be vital and now 99.9% of it goes directly to my junk box filter without me ever opening it. That medium is killing itself because of SPAM. Wondering about your views…Will SM crash and burn because people like me tune out rather than turn on to most of it because of the shere volume and volocity of it? Or will it really become a mainstay, by which companies communicate, support and leverage their brands? What I am sensing is, the more that technology connects us, the worse and more tenuous the connections really end up. I am attending a ‘customer experieence” marketing seminar later this month in Chicago (a two day event called Alterian’s Engaging Times Summit, August 25-26). I’ll let you know what transpires of value. In the meantime, it been great to read your blog and hear your views!
August 21, 2009 at 1:40 pm |
Steve, great point, terrifying but important to think about.