Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management

Facebook appears to be rolling out a new feature that will help companies handle complaints posted on their Facebook Fan Page. Rather than dealing with customer service situations or complaints in public, this feature allows for private messaging that no one else sees.htat may required personal information or account information that individuals or organizations would rather not be public knowledge, this feature allows for private messaging that no one else sees.

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.

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,  [...]

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.

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.

I am currently reading Engage, Revised and Updated: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web
by Brian Solis. In is book, Brian pointed out the threat posed by customer complaints that appear in Social Media, particularly Twitter. This brings up the whole issue of dealing with unscrupulous or aggressive competitors who use Social Media tools as a lever against you.

Conversocial has released two studies this year, one for the UK and another for the US, showing how well retailers are responding to customers on Social Media: Facebook in particular. According to the US study, Retailers did not respond to 65 percent of complaints and questions on their Facebook pages during a five-day period in September 2011.

Google is discontinuing Sidewiki. an annotation service that appears next to your website with comments from users. When Google Sidewiki was first announced in September 2009, it was intended as a way for Google users to share good and bad experiences with a company on the same page as the company’s website. This led to a backlash from organizations. Some web owners were upset that they no longer owned all the space on the browser when a customer accesses their webpages and two other major issues. Will Sidewiki be missed?

A new study has been released by Market Tools, a company specializing in Enterprise Feedback Management met with over 330 companies with revenues over $10 Million. 23 % of companies did customer service and support on Facebook but only 12% on Twitter. 5% didn’t think customer satisfaction was either extremely or very important. Read the full article to learn more.