Managing Consumer Feedback – Listen, Understand, React

Recently I filled out a consumer survey for a company that I shop with regularly. The company in question will remain nameless; suffice to say that with my consumer hat on, I found myself getting fairly frustrated with the way in which the survey was structured and delivered.

As is frequently the case, this led me to put my professional hat back on and started me thinking why, with consumer feedback and insight being more important than ever in the current climate, would a company rollout such a substandard survey? Surely collecting and analyzing consumer feelings and opinions is critical in determining how your business is doing and how you can improve services?

Having a feedback programme is an extremely valuable asset, although embracing it and using it to its largest potential is equally important. My recent experience has shown me that having a feedback programme is not enough on its own; there must be a culture within the business that embraces it. As a consumer it is easy to spot when a company is simply paying lip service to consumer feedback, it is also clear when a company cares for the data gained from their programme and understands their consumers purchasing behaviours and attitudes.

A commitment to consumer feedback should be evident in different channels, not purely with consumer surveys. For example, social media is an excellent resource of honest consumer feedback as are face to face interviews, as long as you are aware that different channels will produce different sorts of results (typically responses gained through social are far more likely to be honest than those gained in person).

Somewhere in the middle of this scale is not responding to a disgruntled person effectively, which on Twitter is in some ways worse than not responding at all. Given the immediacy of the format, any interactions deemed to below standard can quickly proliferate around the Twitterverse, particularly if the user is well connected with a large following. Embracing feedback and being committed however is wholly different from being obsessed. Listening and reacting to feedback is appreciated by consumers, whereas a contiguous barrage of surveys is likely to be a nuisance. On a practical level, survey questions should be kept relevant and the surveys generally should be kept as short as possible or your consumers will be left as frustrated as I was during my recent surveying experience.

But where do you start? If you want to gain valuable consumer feedback and use it to improve your business, you can follow these best practises below:

1. Implement a feedback programme and commit yourself to building a culture of understanding the important of consumer feedback to the direction of your business in the future.

2. Make sure your employees are encouraging consumer feedback although they should also appreciate that their approach and manner is critical if they are to avoid annoying consumers.

3. Manage and analyze consumer feedback with systems to gain valuable insight into consumers’ needs and wants as well as buying patterns.

4. Take action with the consumer feedback information. Use your insight to correct any issues or concerns and let your consumers know when they have been corrected in order to build rapport. Never ignore your consumers’ feedback; this is will have a negative effect on your consumer loyalty.

5. Learn to share the feedback with the whole company and don’t leave valuable insight sitting in one department; the entire business should be aware of consumer service data.

6. Act promptly with all feedback however it is gained, if a consumer has a poor experience with one of your products or services and defects to a competitor there is little point in contacting that consumer 2 months later or even a month later. The opportunity has been missed and the chance of retaining that consumer has gone.

7. Decide your communication methods and the mixture of channels in order for your consumers to feedback using the medium they feel most appropriate and comfortable with i.e. Twitter, email or telephone.

The ultimate objective of consumer feedback is to create new ideas from recommendations, resolve problems and improve consumer service. The increased engagement with consumers can help form tighter purchasing relationships and build significant brand value. In turn, it will also help your business make better informed decisions based on your consumer’s behaviours, attitudes and experiences; decisions that will be more profitable in the long term.

Customer Service on Twitter– Handling Negativity

I’ve been using Twitter for a while now and follow a whole host of different people both from a personal interest point of view and for more professional, work related reasons. It’s an amazing source of information and a highly effective means of sharing thoughts with like-minded people.

What I have noticed with increasing regularity though is the pack mentality that seems to proliferate on Twitter around contentious or divisive issues. Whilst often the tweets posted by the Twitter community can be humorous, occasionally they can become a little “close to the mark” with users seemingly attempting to outdo each other with more and more witty or scathing comments.

It occurred to me that the relative anonymity of Twitter may be somewhat responsible for this phenomenon and perhaps users feel able to say things that they almost certainly wouldn’t in a face to face, real world scenario.

I have to be honest and admit that I have been guilty of the odd ranting tweet, especially when I first started using Twitter. One or two were directed at a brand with whom I’d had a poor interaction and others where simply because I felt able to sound-off with impunity. The difference being with the former is I expected some form of a response from the brand in question in order to address the issue I had raised. What surprised me were the differing levels of engagement I experienced. One in particular responded quickly and managed my issue through to resolution very efficiently, whereas at the opposite end of the scale, I was simply ignored.

Somewhere in the middle of this scale is not responding to a disgruntled person effectively, which on Twitter is in some ways worse than not responding at all. Given the immediacy of the format, any interactions deemed to below standard can quickly proliferate around the Twitterverse, particularly if the user is well connected with a large following.

Avoiding the envelopment of negative press requires effective management of company Twitter accounts. From what I have viewed and experienced in both a personal and professional context, effectiveness can be achieved primarily by providing an adequate response that diffuses the situation quickly.

Responding to negative press often requires tact and judgment. It is as fine balancing act with humour and empathy on one hand and the corporate identity on the other. Understandably ensuring your tweets are in line with brand communications is a constant for any company hoping to establish a consistent online/offline presence.

Of course there is always a significant chance that finding resolution through Twitter will be impossible. In these instances it is important to recognise when to take the matter offline, using a one to one method of communication such as email, the phone or even a face to face meeting to resolve the issue away from the public world of Twitter.

Twitter isn’t simply about playing a combative role however; equally important is promoting and engaging with those customers that have had a positive experience with your brand. Re-tweeting positive comments (particularly after resolving a customer issue) is an excellent method, although it is crucial to make any positive promotion look and feel organic and never forced.

For better or worse, Twitter has provided us all with the means vocalise our opinions. Whilst some users may go too far, using Twitter to voice concerns about a company is wholly legitimate and responding to these concerns swiftly and effectively is now a responsibility for customer service professionals.

Bespoke CRM – back in vogue?

It does seem that age old question IT Directors are faced with when their business has a CRM requirement, just won’t go away – “do we buy off the shelf or do we go for a bespoke CRM solution?"

The past few years have seen many companies shy away from bespoke CRM solutions, maybe due to the perceived higher cost and risk, or maybe as a result of numerous high profile government IT initiatives that have badly failed and served to simultaneously make everyone in the IT industry shudder at the cost.

Whilst business leaders have always understood the inherent benefit that a solution tailored to their existing business practices and make-up provide, that understanding has been tempered with a large slice of should they invest in a bespoke solution that does everything or trade a proportion of that functionality for an off-the-shelf product that everyone else uses

No doubt there are some very good off the shelf CRM solutions out there, with differing delivery options, packaged components and as the saying goes ‘no one ever got fired for recommending the market leader’.

So are Bespoke CRM solutions back in vogue?

Well it would appear the tide is turning in favour of solutions that meet all the CRM requirements of the business, bridging existing operational solutions, collecting data and insight from all channels, integrating Social Media and in so providing that one-stop-shop that customers demand.

These days bespoke CRM solutions are not built from the ground up, but from the customers’ existing data layer and intended touch points, utilising proven, scalable, reliable software libraries and hardware platforms – reducing the risk and costs previously associated with the bespoke CRM solutions of yesteryear.

Finally, given these uncertain economic times it would seem to make sense that business leaders are more inclined to buy into CRM solutions that fully support their own, very specific, business and customer requirements, over the functionality that maybe provided by an off the shelf product which is probably being used by their competitors – after all, everyone needs an edge!

How Customer Insight can Shape Your Marketing

Understanding your customers, particularly your existing customers, has always been an important element in successful marketing. Ultimately through this understanding it is possible to target the right people, at the right time with the right message. To achieve this however, it’s vital to have data at your disposal, data which can be effectively segmented and used for marketing and advertising functions.

Such a point was recently reiterated by the head of marketing and communications at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Ray Jones. Mr Jones emphasised the importance of learning as much as possible about existing customers and using such information to provide better marketing material. He also highlighted that segmenting customers along the lines of wants and needs and developing plans to appeal to these desires should be a priority for all businesses.

Gathering data which can be segmented and profiled to provide a platform for effective, targeted marketing has long been a key principle of customer insight at EWA. Customer insight and data analysis has a vital role to play in marketing, look at companies such as Amazon or Play that send emails filled with products which customers are the most likely to buy based upon a plethora of data and the behaviour of other customers within their segment.

Whilst they may not always get it right, companies like Amazon do use their data to the greatest effect. They ensure that the insight they gain from it is never wasted and consistently use it to shape marketing campaigns based upon segmented data and not supposition.

Much can be learnt from such activities for all businesses but the primary lesson here is to understand that the data you collect as part of your customer insight activities needs to be handed over to your marketing department or agency. Fail to do this and your marketing is unlikely to speak to your customers in the right way. Do this however and it can help you to garner the largest ROI from marketing and improve the lifetime value of each customer through targeted, relevant and timely communications.

ISO27001? - Let the force be with you … (not against you)

Data security reminds me of global warming; it is an ever encroaching force in which we seem powerless to resist. Our thirst for data, its collection, availability and the sheer number of ways in which it can be accessed is mesmerising. So much so that the number of regulations acting in equal and opposite force has left communication companies like us facing the twin gauntlets of the law and those of whom we hold information.

Well, don’t you know it; there is a way in which you can live with the force, which admittedly comes with some pain – but hey no pain no gain! –and that is ISO27001 Information Security Standard. I know what you are thinking, I can hear the yawns already – another tiresome quality accreditation, hard to obtain, impossible to police and despised by the staff that have to pay attention to it.

Well, partly true, but with some (not inconsiderable) focussed effort, the sunny uplands of ISO27001 can be quite uplifting. And before being cast in the role ‘anorak’, this bit of regulation train spotting will make a profound difference to how your company is perceived by its clients and prospects, whilst being the catharsis of data management if handled with the right attitude.

Comfortingly it did prove that our systems were in pretty good nick before accreditation. So now we proudly fly our ISO flag, confident that it helps to open doors to new contracts, makes our existing clients very happy and secure and wouldn’t you know it – it has actually helped our sceptical workforce by reducing their paperwork and misunderstandings about the ‘monster’ data security; and by making sense of and seeing the benefits of the apparently incomprehensible.

@respondquicklyplease

I recently read an article on social media which suggested that consumers contacting brands through Facebook and Twitter had a much higher expectation of fast response times than consumers using other more traditional channels.

This brings about the question of how Brands should respond to this growing trend of ‘social is instant’ and ‘instant is best’.

Surely a consumer is entitled to a great ‘customer experience’ regardless of the channel or channels they choose to communicate via?

Of course it is essential that Brands adopt and respond to new media, and the growing number of consumers using these channels to seek information, contact a brand or comment on products – but the real question is how?

Throwing resources at the challenge is very often the first response but Social Media and the opportunities it provides should be integrated into the core Customer Management, CRM or communications Strategy.

Responding to tweets in a matter of seconds, while a backlog of emails builds up in the website inbox or customers listen to ‘greensleeves’ for two minutes before someone answers the phone is simply not acceptable.

Why not strive to provide an excellent customer experience across all channels at all times?

And, what about customer value? – Surely if you knew a high value customer was waiting for an email response while you deal with a low value prospect, you’d get on the case – and quickly.

The point is that measuring customer value and integrating channels for communication shouldn’t be a ‘nice to have’ – it should be fundamental to the investment in the future of your Brand.

Good consistent customer service delivered across all channels is within reach but needs to be a priority if Brands are to realise the vast opportunity as communications and consumer response expectations evolve.

Customers are revolting!

Isn’t it sad – in a recent survey of consumers in London and the Southeast, top of the list of ‘things that irritate them’ was...

Overseas Call Centres! – and, even Health and Safety overkill came in at number 5 . . .

This brings about a bigger question though, which is: what is it about Overseas Call Centres that really irritates people? – Most probably, it isn’t actually anything to do with location.

When you think about the original key driver for off-shoring these critical services in the first place – in virtually all cases it was to save money – not improve the customer experience, sharpen up the knowledge base, give customers better value or to make it easier for customers to access services. The bottom line, financial benefits far outweighed any real concern over the customer reaction or long term effects on the Brand.

But of course over time, the inevitable u-turn has taken place – big Brands (many of which pioneered the mass exodus from UK based suppliers in the first place) are returning to UK Call Centres and prioritising this return in terms Brand differentiation.

Regardless of where a call centre, customer service desk, helpline etc. is based, it needs to be geared around providing the very best customer experience possible and this should be viewed as an investment, not a cost.

Fill your desks (preferably in the UK) with bright, professional, enthusiastic and well trained people; encourage them to build their knowledge; give them fast access to key information so that the advice and guidance they give the customer is accurate and consistent and get them to LISTEN to what the customer wants – then perhaps we can move Call Centres down the list of irritations or rather leave the list altogether!