There has been a interesting phenomenon occurring over the past few months relating to a poor United customer experience. This was not any customer however, it was David Carroll, lead singer of the Canadian band “Sons of Maxwell”. I will let David take up the story in his words from here:
“In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3,500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.”
Here is the 1st song, now with almost 5 million views…
Another strong message to the leadership about United’s need to fundamentally change its organizational culture, if it is to ever grow and profit in perhaps the toughest industry in the world it must develop a culture that focuses on delivering the greatest value at all times to its customers. This is an unfortunate example of again where they fall short……..
We had another great SVAMA program last night, with a very interesting keynote by Rohit Bhargava and an outstanding panel comprised of Michael Brito from Intel, Glenna Patton HP’s VP of Brand Strategy and Mario Sundar the Community Evangelist and Chief Blogger at LinkedIn.
Rohit made a compelling case for bringing back the humanity to large organizations many of which appear faceless to customers. He gave great examples of companies like Dole with bananas, “innocent” fruit smoothies from the UK and my favorite the new Intel ad that lets us inside intel with a fun take on their culture:
Each of the panelists spoke with passion about what it means to really connect with customers and also some insights into the challenges at making this happen in very large organizations. Intel with 85,000 and HP with 300,000 employees!
To summarize: social media is amplifing word of mouth and providing opportunities for businesses to put a real face on their companies in a way that is different, unique and valuable. By thinking more deeply about how to connect more meaningfully with customers, companies can build stronger and more profitable ongoing connections that are hard to replicate.
Customer complaints can often be a source of angst and negativity for businesses. What are they complaining about now….can’t we do anything right?
If not managed correctly this can lead to significant drops in employee morale and negative feelings towards customers which creates more customer complaints, a vicious cycle ensues….
So how should companies deal with these issues? They should learn to embrace complaints, bring them to the surface, use them positively to create change and make things better.
A interesting example is a company called Pizza Delphina that have actually used the customer comments from the review site Yelp and placed them on t-shirts worn by their servers.
Customer Complaints from Yelp
Is this a good idea? It maybe to early to tell… but it is one way to embrace negative feedback. The only question I have is are they really doing anything with the feedback? or is this just entertainment value? Is it valid feedback or just people having a bad day and taking it out on the Pizza place?
The bottom line is that complaints are easier to make and I think on balance that is a good thing. What matters most however is what companies choose to do with that feedback to improve the way they do business.
Finally there is a way to measure something we have been working with clients on for the last 30 years. It is what we call market culture or in research circles is referred to as market orientation. This goes beyond the notion of customer centricity although the terms are related. It really is about bringing the outside in and avoiding the pitfalls of working with primarily an internal focus. It is not just about customers but about the external environment, the competitive landscape and how intelligence is distributed and used within the business to create more value.
Why is it important? Because it is a proven driver of business performance, companies that have built a strong market culture have built businesses that are more innovative, profitable and grow faster than their competitors.
Our team is really excited as we have finally completed the development of a new survey tool that will validly and reliably measure market orientation (what we call market culture), connect it to business performance and benchmark our clients against a database of companies from around the world.
The overwhelming trend in the advertising business over the past few years has been fragmentation and a shift to online digital media. The traditional 30 second TV spots and print ads reach smaller audiences and have less impact than they once did.
It is time for marketers to look at new ways to deliver the results businesses need to grow.
Brian Halligan, the CEO of Hubspot is promoting the idea of inbound marketing and in fact is running an inbound marketing university this month to help people develop new marketing skills in this emerging arena.
Marketing is changing but here is a great video lamenting the old days in the advertising business…..
Unfortunately I had to have our Vonage phone line canceled today. I was a big supporter of Vonage when they first launched, I felt they had a great value proposition – fixed price unlimited calling nationwide with low cost international calling and lots of cool online features to manage voice mails and call forwarding etc. I thought this was innovative new approach in a market dominated by monopoly style businesses.
But it seems at least for us they could not deliver on the basic need of a clear high quality call. So I asked our office manager to cancel our service.
What happened next was not an AOL type experience like below……
But it was unpleasant, the agents are obviously trained to try and retain you as a customer so they try and diagnose the problem and send you to customer support if its technical or offer a reduced rate. Meanwhile our office manager was getting frustrated just trying to get one of a thousand tasks done…
I think companies should really rethink this strategy, are there better ways to deal with exiting customers? Yes some can be saved but how do you treat the ones that just want to cancel?
Companies have two options:
1. Try as hard as possible to aggressively salvage the customer through different offers and risk leaving customers with a bad taste in their mouths
2. Just ask the customer permission to understand why they are canceling, if they are irritated just thank them for their business and process their request as fast as you can at least the customer does not feel like they were held hostage and if the customer divulges honestly why they are leaving the company has a chance to fix it.
These are really difficult areas of customer service to manage but ultimately the culture of the organization determines the tone that is set in all customer dealings. If the culture is one that supports a primary focus on delivering value for customers then when it is clearly not delivering it will take those opportunities as a chance to improve.
What do you think, does culture impact customer service?
Here are some great sources of information on building a customer service culture:
As part of my role as the EVP of Programming for the Silicon Valley AMA myself and the President hosted an event on social media marketing strategy with Charlene Li last evening. One of the key points for me was related to the following video:
It is a great video that illustrates the divide between marketers and customers. I find it ironic that marketers can often be the least customer centric people in an organization when their role is really to deeply understand customers needs, wants and desires…
The primary advantage of the digital space is it allows businesses to really understand what customers think. It is a platform that gives a voice to customers of large and small brands and has the potential to shape the customer experience, service levels and even the strategies of the world’s largest companies.
This is great for marketers. Those that invest the time listening, engaging and learning will gain the deeper insights necessary to provide better value.
We measure the level of customer insight an organization has in a survey we recently validated and it is clear that companies that effectively execute in this area have greater customer satisfaction, more success in new product development and high levels of innovation. Isn’t that something all businesses are interested in?
I was lucky enough to have some time to attend a number of the sessions at the Inbound Marketing Summit run by Chris Brogan . I did not get to every session due to some client commitments but I was impressed by the sessions I did attend.
Here are my key takeaways organized into several themes:
The website is part of your sales force and should be treated that way (we can do some more work on that…)
A reason for advertising ineffectiveness is a lack of consistency and continuity – there is a disconnect with what’s offered and the reality of what people get from a business
There are some advanced techniques that allow you to use rules based on web behavior to provide a more customized web experience for users, one example is Tom’s hardware which can direct users to useful content based on how they arrived at the site.
The Changing Marketing Landscape: Brian Halligan from Hubspot gave a interesting presentation on why outbound marketing is dead. Key takeways:
Outbound marketing is dead..well not completely but certainly the mass media model is far less effective for marketers than ever before
Being found is more critical than ever
Drawing customers in by providing valuable content that addressed their pain points – be “remark” able to coin Seth Godin
Online Product Launch: Loic Le Meur from Seesmic presented on his learning’s from launch many online products over the years (the link is his story on funded Seesmic worth reading). Key Takeaways:
Get to market as fast as possible – launch, listen and watch behavior then move forward fast
Look especially for negative feedback as this can drive improvements and highlight weak spots
If you are not being talked about (good or bad) there is a problem…
New ways to develop customer insight: Justin Levy led a great panel discussion on how social media can provide companies with deeper customer insights, my takeaways:
Millions of conversations are happening that relate to you or what you offer, that is a source of information you cannot risk not working out how to harvest
It really is a marketers dream, most marketers are sitting in their offices wondering what customers are thinking or how they will behave, the social media landscape provides the answers. A simple ROI is the cost savings in market research…..
Insights are being used across the business not just marketing and PR but also to deal with customer service issues (think Frank at comcast) as well as internal collaboration and networking
The Changing Media Landscape: Paul Gillin gave a great presentation on how the print and TV media are continuing to lose control, my takeaways:
Daily Newspaper reader demographics in the US – ave age 57yrs
Media does not control the message anymore and looks to the web for story ideas and sources, journalists google rather than go to their blackbooks
Customers need be listened to and allowed to shape strategy – Is twitter the new newspaper?
Implications – media is in the hands of individuals, customers will speak up, companies will be forced to listen
I have been reflecting recently on viral marketing and it’s capacity to build global awareness almost instantly…
Like every great marketing technique there is a formula:
It has to be interesting and in a way that really stands out whether its wacky, creative, controversial, unexpected or inspirational.
This is one of my favorites (maybe the world’s best? – that probably depends on your criteria…..), it connects with viewers emotionally with a simple powerful idea that connects people around the globe…enjoy!
