“Customer service online has been relegated to “handling complaints”. Sites like to boast about how quick they can respond, but it’s rare you’ll hear any boast about what a great shopping experience they had online.

Online businesses are obsessed with user experience, optimisations, page rankings and much more. Yet a thousand of their customers could walk past their offices every morning, and they wouldn’t even recognise them, never mind offer to stock their friend’s CD.

In our quest towards total commerce automation, we’ve failed to bring the most important part of commerce with us. The customer experience.”

Where are your customers going?

The chart above shows a well-cited study by the Rockefeller corporation studying precisely why customers leave. Everyone expects that people leave because of lower priced competitors. If not that, then because of some gimmick their competitor has. It’s rarely the case. Customers leave because they don’t feel that you care about them. Online retailers are at best apathetic about their customers. I’ve spent literally tens of thousands of dollars on flights and holidays with some travel companies, and my reward is weekly spam from their newsletter. Unsubscribe.

With this degree of apathy, it’s no surprise that people booking flights have 10 tabs open running parallel queries. There is no service, there is no customer care, so it’s no surprise there is no loyalty.

He who cares wins

Each era of the web has brought new “must-have” skills. It used to be a “CSS web designer”, then it became “Web 2.0″, and of late it has been “UX designer”. Each skill starts out as rare and exciting, but all end up being simply the cost of entry. Already it’s a cliché to claim your app is “easy to use”. It will come down to relationships.

Companies that have a strong bond with their users will succeed. Those who focus on short term tactics will experience short term customers. The investment in relationships is high, but the reward is significant.

Building relationships

Let’s state the obvious. Here’s what doesn’t work.

• John searches for XBOX Game
• John clicks advert
• John arrives at site, and purchases game
• Game is delivered and John is satisfied
• John receives email every week from then onwards offering games he already owns, or doesn’t care about. Music he doesn’t listen to, electronics he can’t afford
• John unsubscribes, or worse creates a filter to ignore mails

There is nothing personal about filling in pre-defined web forms. There is nothing memorable about entering credit card details and clicking “Submit”. To get John back again, a business needs to do more than issue receipts and fulfil obligations. It needs to reach out and be human. Every communication from a business is a chance to delight your customers.

Making the connection

If you want to elevate your business out of the race-to-the-bottom, good customer service is the key. Loyal customers who feel valued are your road to riches. Loyal customers shop more, pay more, are the first to forgive, the last to criticise, and are your number one marketing channel.

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Many companies are prepared and have resources or software in place to monitor their online reputation, but sometimes when complaints go viral… you need to be very quick off the mark to try to avoid an online customer service crisis.

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The WWD Beauty forum is looking to answer questions about brand creation, brand renewal and how to refresh and revamp a brand without doing damage to customer loyalty and perception. A big mention is digital. Digital has fast become a major player from blogs to eCommerce and to social media,  but what’s being said on digital may be falling behind the aspect of “following the behavior,” according to Greene.

This creates a challenge for marketers. They want to deliver the message that the latest product is better, faster, hotter than the last one and that you need it. They also have to protect their existing customers and either make them appreciate their existing product for longer or make upgrading to the newer product more affordable to reward them for their loyalty.

Apple often does this by timing platform upgrades for existing models around the time of new model launches.
This can help make existing products seem less outdated and overshadowed by the release of new products, while still being able to promote the new models.

An example would be the upgrade of the iPhone operating system before the iPhone 4 was released. The iPhone 3G and 3GS received a few great upgrades, such as multitasking, folders and the book store.

This is a very important strategy to get right, as Apple is near to launching the iPhone 5 not very long after the iPhone 4 was released.

It will be interesting to see the approach from some non-tech companies.

In his 2003 book The Fusion Manager, management theorist Robert Heller noted businesspeople’s intense preoccupation with finding the ‘one right answer’ – a belief that a wholesale adoption of a single idea (Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, NPS, Business Process Re-engineering) will lead to success.

In fact, the only right answer is that there is no right answer, says Heller. The world is too complex for that – it is only through understanding and managing this complexity in a way that meets customer needs better than competitors that success can be achieved.

Nunwood recently published the top 100 league table of UK companies for customer experience, and those who lead the pack are not just masters at managing complexity, but have found ways to get up close and personal to thoroughly understand what their customers want.

Amazon, which tops the league table, resonates with its customers through its offer of the widest possible range of products delivered to exacting time scales. The recommendation engine, which processes huge quantities of customer insight every day, is viewed not as a crude cross-selling device, but as a valuable service identifying products which otherwise might have been missed. As a result, customers feel they receive a highly personalised experience. And more importantly, when things go wrong (as they inevitably must) Amazon responds rapidly and decisively to recover the situation and ensure it continues to deliver on the brand promise. The net result is customers who love the company. If Amazon ceased trading tomorrow, there would be millions of customers who would genuinely miss it.

In a financial industry fraught with problems, the exclusively telephone and online bank First Direct has become something of a ‘beacon brand’, winning not just customers but fans. It came in second on our list. As the bank’s brand supremo Natalie Cowen says: “It’s about creating an effortless and enjoyable process – which are ideas that don’t always go with banking.” First Direct is constantly talking to its customers about how it can improve – every month they measure their performance, striving to achieve industry-leading service – a great lesson in integrating customer service with customer insight.

For department store chain John Lewis and its supermarket brand Waitrose, which came third and fifth respectively, it’s all about listening to their employees. With a business model in which all staff are partners and co-owners, the John Lewis Group has mastered harnessing employee feedback and integrating their observations into brand delivery. When it comes to customer service these co-owners consistently go the extra mile because what is good for customers is good for them.

Marks & Spencer, which came seventh and its M&S Food brand, which came fourth, have clearly listened closely to their customers. The company has responded to concerns over the provenance of food and the wellbeing of those who produce it with large scale in-store statements of how it is improving its practices. This approach not only demonstrates their commitment to the brand promise, but also shows that they have listened to customer concerns.

For Virgin Atlantic, number six on the list, it’s all about being close to customers, taking every opportunity to show they really care. In a market where the low-cost carriers are lowering customer expectations, Virgin sets standards that put them apart. “Every airline should be like this,” one customer said. Its close proximity to customers is no accident as every quarter, Virgin Atlantic runs highly detailed customer satisfaction surveys. The surveys monitor everything from the punctuality of the flight departures to the length of check-in queues and the quality of the in-flight entertainment and service. Results of the surveys are fed back to managers globally and improvements continually implemented.

At positions eight and ten are, respectively, restaurant chains Nando’s and TGI Friday’s. Nandocas and Fridoids (as they call their employees) are carefully selected to be able to deliver the brand proposition. By creating a sense of theatre, both of these brands depend on the shared experience as a differentiator. But it’s their focus on the little things that sets these brands apart. For example, mixing drinks is all part of the show at TGI Fridays, and the company has made a special effort to make its cocktails more accessible, after research suggested people were sometimes nervous about ordering because they weren’t sure what the ingredients were.

At number nine is supermarket chain Asda, which is owned by Wal-Mart. With a market-leading price promise, Asda’s customers value both low prices and the friendly staff – a powerful combination. Using TV to communicate their extensive price-based research, the firm consistently reassures its price-sensitive customers that it is continuing to deliver the brand promise.

Increasingly the insight manager needs to be able to understand the whole picture of how their brand relates to their customers, taking into account service quality and customer experience. And while there might not be ‘one right answer’ to fix your business, it does seem that the ‘one right answer’ when it comes to delivering outstanding customer experiences is: listen to your customer.

Source: Research Live

Vodacom has often been fairly quick to respond and deal with customers on Twitter, but it has filled the companies main Twitter feed with a lot of direct feedback that is not meant for it’s larger audience.
It was a smart move by Vodacom to create @vodacom111, which is a 7 day a week dedicated customer care account much like it’s phone version when you dial 111.

Price influences behavior. In order to craft an excellent user experience, the price — and how your users interact with that price — must be central to the development of the product, especially applications. No user will welcome an application if the cost is prohibitive. This makes price every bit as important as design, information architecture and wireframing, and it goes deeper than just getting people to click “Buy.” By focusing on users in setting and maintaining a price, you will increase revenue, lower overhead and, most importantly, significantly improve the user’s (read customer’s) experience. Read More

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Train your customers

Yes, you can train them. By rewarding some behaviors over others, by keeping some promises not others, by having some expectations instead of others, you get the audience you deserve. Some things you can train customers to do… Continue Reading

Turn More Visitors into Buyers with Adwords Ad Sitelinks

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Over the past six months, Sanlam and Pick n Pay have made a consistent appearance in the top five rated companies in the getclosure customer centricity ratings, and are also listed in the top five companies to work for in the Job Crystal Happiness Indicator:

The getclosure ratings incorporate three important measures: Did the company respond to the customer’s complaint promptly? Did the business treat the customer’s concerns with courtesy and respect? Is the customer left satisfied with the resolution reached?

Nine out of ten of Pick n Pay’s customers who have used the getclosure service are happy with the outcome of their complaints and with the way their complaints were handled.  For Sanlam, nine out of ten of their customers are happy with the outcome of their complaints and every single one is happy with the way their complaints were handled.  Both companies also have great track records when it comes to responding to complaints on getclosure promptly.

In the Job Crystal Happiness Indicator, Sanlam and Pick n Pay came in as the second and third best companies to work for respectively, with over two thirds of participating employees voting for them as “excellent to work for”.

These statistics demonstrate that staff satisfaction with the companies they work for and customer retention may well be two sides of the same coin.  By adopting a holistic approach to customer service you will in effect be keeping all your stakeholders happy, which is arguably an end in itself.

To get you thinking about ways in which you can implement this strategy, read through our tips on how to effectively deal with and resolve your customers’ complaints.  Look out for the next article in this series for suggestions on how to boost staff morale and increase productivity.

Article by: Emma Donovan, Content Manager of www.getclosure.co.za.  getclosure is South Africa’s leading independent complaints management and consumer affairs portal.  The getclosure service is fast, free and effective for consumers.  All suppliers have the opportunity to respond to complaints on the getclosure site, free of charge.  getclosure also makes a host of consumer rights news and information available to South Africans.

% employees registered on JobCrystal rating the company “best”/”excellent” to work for

With the ever increasing flurry of activity on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, ignoring your customers’ feedback is simply not an option anymore.  To stay in the game you need to listen to your customers, engage with them and use their feedback to constantly improve your service and products.

getclosure’s independent complaints management service provides a simple, effective way for you to do this in the online space.  As the getclosure service is discreet, you will have the opportunity to resolve issues promptly and professionally, before they spiral out of control on a public platform and damage your brand.

When one of your customers submits a complaint, we will deliver it directly to the most appropriate person in your company, and send them reminders to respond.  You can log in to your getclosure dashboard at any time to track the progress of the complaint or contact your customer.

Consumers have the opportunity to give feedback once their complaint has been closed, and rate their satisfaction with the outcome of their complaint and how it was handled.  Subscribers to the getclosure service have access to this feedback, which enables them to pinpoint exactly where they need to jack up their service.  Contact us to find out more.

Here are a couple of handy tips to ensure that you make use of every opportunity to keep existing customers, and attract new ones too.

Respond to your customer’s complaint as soon as possible

Feedback on www.getclosure.co.za suggests that you have a much higher chance of retaining a customer when you deal with their complaint quickly and appropriately. Every complaint should be seen as an opportunity to win back a disgruntled customer and show them how much you value their support.

Manage your customer’s expectations

Give your customer a realistic estimate of when you will respond to or resolve the situation.  If the matter needs to be investigated and takes longer than planned, apologise to your customer and give them regular updates on the progress.

Emma Donovan is the Content Manager of www.getclosure.co.za, South Africa’s leading independent complaints management and consumer affairs portal.  The getclosure service is fast, free and effective for consumers.  All suppliers have the opportunity to respond to complaints on the getclosure site, free of charge.  getclosure also makes a host of consumer rights news and information available to South Africans.

All you do is hold your phone up to the walls and the constantly changing QR codes tell you what’s going on inside. You can also browse shop information, make reservations and download coupons.

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