Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management

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.

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.

It is a well know fact that customer satisfaction can have significant impact on the business bottom line. So when we hear that a company goes bankrupt, we, as customer satisfaction professionals, should check how the company was perceived in the marketplace. According to a report, published in October, 2011, by Amplicate on US airlines, American Airlines was Americas most hated airline on social media for the previous 12 months.

IBM has published a study of over 1700 Chief Marketing Officers titled From Stretched to Strengthened, Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study which highlights the changes the marketplace is going through and the need for businesses to adapt.

Seth Godin, author of over a dozen best seller books, wrote an article on unreasonable customers and why it is worthwhile to tolerate them. He also provides reasons to ‘fire’ a customer. For most organizations, the perspective is that the customer is always right. While that is true most of the time, it isn’t always. My list of when to say No to a customer is longer than those in Seth Godin’s post but they are similar.

In an earlier post titled Netflix responds to customer social media outrage, Netflix addressed customer dissatisfaction with it’s a newly announced business model (and price increase) and the CEO produced a video explaining his actions. I ended my post with the idea that time will dictate if Netflix’s customers will accept their new business model. The results are in: Customer feedback has reversed Netflix decision to split its business in two in just a few weeks.

Trust is one of the many factors that relate to customer satisfaction. When a customer does business with your organization, they have trusted you enough to do business with you. But trust can be broken in many ways, covered by The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey. Three key behaviors from this book that customer satisfaction professionals need to promote in their organizations are transparency, clarify expectations and right wrongs. A story of a major caught in a ‘real and apparent conflict of interest’ is an example of these principles.

How Social media are Amplifying Customer Outrage by author Chris Taylor shows examples of real life, on going, struggles between organizations and consumers. Some organizations are backing down from the public outrage. Some are not. Netflix responded with a change in their business model and a video of explanation. It remains to be seen if customers and Wall Street will react more positively.

The customer is always right has been preached as the secret to customer satisfaction for many years. It many cases it is true and many companies need to swing the pendulum from their attitude of indifference or arrogance to be more compassionate and customer centric. But there are limits. Here are eight examples:

Location based apps can be used as a customer service tool, if you broaden what the term customer service means. Examples from Pepsi, Kraft Foods, Meijer, Mall Maps, Real Estate and Weather channel are covered in this post. Read the book The Third Screen by Chuck Martin for more examples.