Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management

There have been two bills that were created and going through the approval process in the US congress and senate, called SOPA and PIPA, that, if passed, would affect internet users worldwide. This story is an interesting one about how various groups of businesses competed for government attention, and how the internet based organizations enabled consumers to bring their dissatisfaction to the attention of US law makers and halt the progress of the two bills.

Best Buy’s on line store ran out of stock on ‘hot items’ during the Christmas season and four days before Christmas, cancelled customer orders, leaving their customers with little recourse to buy elsewhere. Some of those orders were taken after Thanksgiving, weeks earlier. Customers were furious. What is worse is the way this issue was handled.

I recently called my mobile service provider about some new services I required. Within about an hour I received a text telling me I was going to receive a text survey and 4 more texts of one question each. My answers were to be texted back. All the texts (both the ones I received and the ones I sent were considered free texts by my mobile service provider. It is interesting that I had also called the same company as they were my phone service supplier as well. They also called me with an automated survey where I spoke the answers. The four questions were identical. Three were 3 multiple choice questions and one was open ended.

An employee at a Papa John’s Franchise in New York made a career limiting move by entering a racial slur on a customer’s receipt. The customer posted the image of the receipt on Twitpic and submitted the following tweet.   The image posted on Twitpic shows the slur: ‘Lady Chinky Eyes’. 20, 000 Retweets later,  [...]

I came across an interesting article called Keeping Its Commitment To Its Customers: A Bank Does The Right Thing which I think makes an excellent point that companies often forget. At IBM we used to call it being a good Corporate Citizen. That used to mean helping out in the local community, sponsoring local events and supporting local initiatives where employees were involved. Webster Bank has an interesting approach to keeping its customers loyal through its program of Good Corporate Citizenship.

ForeSee runs a ecommerce survey of on line retailers twice a year. Here are some of the winners and losers. Top performers were Amazon, Avon and J.C. Penny online stores. At the bottom of the heap were Gap.com, Overstock.com and Buy.com. The biggest loser was Netflix, down 8 points from last year. Netflix drop is being attributed to its change in pricing and business model earlier in 2011. It’s fall from grace was swift. Get the full story from ForeSee. Link in the blog post.

Just a few days after FedEx had a delivery fiasco go viral on Youtube, UPS was caught in a similar situation. While not as extreme as the FedEx error, the driver was quite intentional in his action. The driver gave the camera that was recording him the’ third finger salute’ and then threw the box on the customer’s doorstep. The box appears to be from Zappos. It is possible that the contents were shoes or clothing which were not likely to break but Zappos do sell accessories which might be damaged. Here’s the video which has been seen far fewer times though other sites also are showing the video. Notice the difference in how the crisis was handled by UPS compared to Fed Ex.

On Dec 19, 2011, a Youtube video was uploaded showing a FedEx Employee delivering a monitor by throwing it over the fence. It went viral. As I write this post it has been seen more than 5.7 Million times. Imagine the embarrassment of FedEx! FedEx responded with a video of their own with 11 elements worth noting. Alas the video has only been seen by about 5% of those who saw the first video.

Five of the 15 ‘most read posts’ in 2011.are: How to Handle Complaints: The IBM Way, Facts on How Social Media Complaints impact Customer Satisfaction, Customer Satisfaction technique – Empowerment of Front Line Employees, Customer Satisfaction: What role should a business partner play?,Customer Satisfaction Techniques for Internal Customers, Biggest Challenge to Exceed Customer Expectations? Read all 15.