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Friday, August 27, 2010
Handling Negative Comments On Facebook, Twitter and blogs
There has been a lot of public discussion regarding
the best way to respond to online criticism. Use of back channels makes a lot of sense, but I have concerns with: 1) making
it the customer’s responsibility to turn around and contact your company through more traditional customer service channels,
and 2) assuming that your happy customers will come to your defense in the public media.
In regard to traditional channels, the unhappy customer is likely going public with their complaint or concern
on Twitter or Facebook because the mass media continually reports on how much better care customers are receiving through
those channels. Customers are beginning to think they have done their part by Tweeting, and that it’s then becomes the
corporation’s responsibility to magically “fix everything”. Expectations are high and
unless you are certain that your customer service team is extremely skilled and motivated, you are taking a chance.
In regard to hoping that satisfied customers will
come to your defense in the public forum, that may or may not work, depending on your product category. Most
“satisfied” customers just aren’t emotionally attached enough to the brand to bother responding (despite
what they claim in response to Net Promoter research). Many more simply will NEVER write anything (it’s
just not their nature). Others would write, but miss the opportunity because they just never come across
the criticism. Finally there are customers who buy loyally but really just don’t have any meaningful
“content” to offer that might counter the negative comments.
Until brands begin to identify those customers who are behaviorally loyal, emotionally committed, and of the
personality type that does speak out, and “arms” those individuals with knowledge and the opportunity to respond,
the likelihood that many of them will come to the rescue is not great.
2:50 pm edt
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Online Community Can Create Advocacy – But Not For Free
I couldn’t agree more that for certain brands
a Private Online Customer Community can provide not only insight and innovation like a more traditional panel, but that they
can also create increased engagement and advocacy. But no one should suggest that those engagement and
advocacy benefits come without effort and cost. The manager of the community (be it in-house or an outside
supplier) must be responsive, provide feedback, share inside information, be open to giving the community members partial
ownership, provide product samples, bring executive management into the discussion on occasion, and more if they wish to keep
the community alive, productive, and one which builds the emotional ties that manifest themselves in the generation of online
and offline positive word of mouth.
Simply buying a software package and forming a customer community won’t do it. Calling a
“panel” a “community” won’t change the output. In fact such approaches may
even damage the corporate image and decrease advocacy. Producing insight, innovation and advocacy requires
planning, commitment of resources, and daily attention. The more companies claim that they will generate
advocacy without establishing a process to prove that they are achieving that objective, the deeper they dig the hole. The
longer we go without separating those that really create high levels of advocacy from those that don’t, the more likely
the entire concept of Private Online Customer Communities will fail.
11:54 am edt
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Teaching Customers Why They Should Complain in Public
There has been a tremendous amount written lately about companies that
monitor Twitter , Facebook and other public forums and immediately respond to customer problems. Now the
question seems to be whether as the result of offering such special attention are corporations actually training customers
to choose a route of public complaining over more traditional customer service support chat, phone and email services.
We
believe that it is important to listen to customers and to respond in a timely fashion. We recognize that
in too many cases it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease (and that social media has allowed
that “wheel” to squeak a lot more loudly to a lot more people).
What we actually think corporations are teaching customers is that
if they want action, and they want it in a hurry, then social media is the way to go. They’ll get
the attention of the most enthusiastic, best trained, most highly empowered reps in the company – the staff monitoring
Twitter and Facebook are getting the headlines and the praise of management. Follow the traditional channels
and it’s the overworked folks in the back room who are charged with cutting call time, holding to strict corporate guidelines,
and giving back as little as possible.
Instead of assigning the “best” service teams to provide the most positive customer experience
to the most valuable customers, we are in fact assigning them to the customers who have learned how the system works.
10:55 pm edt
Monday, May 24, 2010
What Customers Won't Say Online
The trades continually are filled
with questions like:
Social media is all the buzz in marketing circles. How do I monitor
what customers and influencers are saying online?
How do I engage with customers on Twitter? How do I best assess,
analyze and
manage the conversations that will impact my brand?
It’s wonderful that marketers are recognizing the power of word of mouth. It’s too bad that they
have forgotten that all discussions of corporations and their brands don’t take place in a totally public forum.
Consumers trust most in what they hear and read from their friends, neighbors, relatives and co-workers, and much of
that communication takes place through phone calls, text messages, emails, and even plain old face-to-face conversations.
While going digital did create new media channels, and broadened the reach of the individual, it didn’t totally
change that dynamic, and it didn’t make other forms of individual communications disappear.
When we look to monitor what customers and influencers are saying, and how that is impacting a brand, we need
to remember that there is both Public Social Media and Private Social Media. While data
mining tools are improving each day in their ability to quantify and summarize the Public Social Media (Twitter, Facebook,
public forums, YouTube, etc.) the often more powerful written and spoken “word of mouth” is taking place in Private,
away from Big Brothers watchful eyes. We strongly recommend corporations take an approach that quantitatively
and qualitatively examines ALL forms of Social Media.
10:49 am edt
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Traditional Research on Campus
I listened in on a phone interview yesterday.
A university in the Northeast was asking questions dealing with: awareness, importance of attributes, their perceived
performance on those attributes, price and affordability, and finally demographics. Such a traditional
research approach is fine, except that since the questionnaire was written from an internal view and focused on what the university
probably already knew they were doing right, it’s not likely to drive very much improvement on campus or in their marketing
communications.
I actually have visited the university in question and have heard
what high school students in my town consider its strengths and the weaknesses. It’s a pity that the university didn’t
just ask their current students (and the ones they accepted that went elsewhere) what they are saying and writing about the
school to the high school students they know. It would have provided a lot better focus.
They would have heard
a lot of apprehension about those 6 months a year of snow, and the small town business district that has seen better days.
(Both issues currently avoided on their website, in their mail campaign, in information sessions, and during tours.)
Think
there’s nothing they could do about those issues if they allowed the research to identify them as critical?
One university in the Northeast accepting that six feet of white stuff could be an issue uses their campus
informational presentations and tour guides to draw attention to the campus-wide celebration that happens with the first major
snow each year, the proximity to great skiing, and thrill of their winter carnival. A second university
has taken on their downtrodden locale by helping with the maintenance of the local town green, gifting paint and matching
awnings for village shops, and even opening a trendy coffee shop in what would have been an otherwise empty storefront.
Critical negatives that
are diminishing inquiries, applications and even enrollment can be addressed with a little imagination, and some well-placed
funding. But it will never happen until the corporation or the university does some careful listening to what current customers
are saying to friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers, and even complete strangers.
8:37 pm edt
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