Thor Muller - Customer Service From the Outside-In
(Get Satisfaction is a "Switzerland for customers" aka a neutral space for consumers and businesses to track and engage in conversations.)
"Customer service is a problem. 18 billions dollars are spent a year on customer services and the experience today is worse than ever. Partly because consumers can communicate instantaneously, it's almost telepathic. Meanwhile to get a simple answer out of a company is like pulling teeth. Sometimes by the time people get through to someone, they feel like they know more about the product or company than the person who answers the help line. It's also expensive to provide customer services.
Part of the issue is we've learned to think about the problem in the wrong way — companies have learned to avoid customers. But just a 5% increase in customer attention can increase profits 25-95% depending on your industry. Customer service is correlated to 50% of company growth."
"The big question we had at Get Satisfaction is: What would this look like if companies came to the customer? This sounds good but...there's a lot of noise out there.....So there are monitoring tools. And listening is Step 2 after denial. Step 3 is engaging. But nobody knows how to engage perfectly well.
The Patterns We're Seeing:
More companies recognize conversations are happening outside of their organization and are learning to integrate this information back into organization.
First example is Timbuk 2 which makes messenger bags, laptop bags, an extremely popular company in the Bay Area. They realized a long time ago people were talking about them, primarily on Flickr. There's a whole Flickr group called "What's in My Bag." Timbuk2 realized they couldn't reproduced this easily in a traditional marketing scheme. They started monitoring these conversations (using Get Satisfaction) and began to participate.
GS's "Overheard" allows companies to respond in a variety of ways. This combined with widgets that can be integrated into customer service page, pull conversations back into the customer service line.
Comcast is an example of a company that doesn't have much to lose. They've had plenty of negativity directed at them. Nonetheless, they've been a leader in reaching out to people across the web through a team called 'Comcast Cares.' A rep, who uses his name, has a job to reach out to their customers, to be human and to 'rehumanize' the company. Undeterred, this team enters the fray within minutes of the post. They simply reach out, assure them that someone is listening and cares, and is going to contact them from the customer service department. A customer may start out angry, but after Comcast responds, that customer is cautiously optimistic. The loop gets closed--they might not be a raving fan, but they've got someone whose optimistic, because a few people are showing their human sides
Whole Foods is another company...with more to lose. The question is values. When issues come up such as "I love how they toss out the leftover sushi," this is not something that WF leaves unanswered. Context really matters. They're able to go in and address the specific issue, and the specific store and align the values with their customers through simple outreach.
JetBlue had a calamity on the tarmac. It was a PR disaster. They did all the normal things in the normal channels, but they also went to where the customers are. They made a video, put it on JetBlue and left the commenting ON. They got thousands and thousands of comments.
The Anti Patterns: What's Clearly Not Working
Suing your customers: We call it The Streisand Affect in reference to Streisand suing a photographer. It's the instant and obvious remedy for anyone who receives a cease and desist letter. Bloggers then publish cease and desist letters and create a whole other set of problems.
Robot Voice: companies try to engage but do it in a way that feels safe by bringing over old scripts from the email system. Paypal did this...they reached out but did it in their Robot Voice. It reeks of non-human participation.
Making the customer wrong by going public with an accusation about motives: This is not a successful strategy. Any community manager who has banned a user will have their motives questions. If you have clear community guidelines you'll have legs to stand on.
Other solutions: One of the solutions is to re frame it, establish mutual responsibility
for interaction. If the company is going to be human, the customers
are treating them as consumers. Get Satisfaction has launched a
"Customer-Consumer Pact."
Risks & Rewards
Control issues, public criticism are issues, but we're past that as it happens whether or not we engage.
You can get closer to customers than you've ever been able to before.
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