Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management

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.

I recently finished a book called How to Deal with Difficult Customers: 10 Simple Strategies for Selling to the Stubborn, Obnoxious, and Belligerent
by Dave Anderson. The focus of the book is how to sell to ‘SOB (Stubborn, Obnoxious or Belligerent) Customers but many of his words of wisdom apply to the practice of customer satisfaction. Most customer satisfaction theory revolves around the quality of the product and post sale support. The main point of this book is that customers can become dissatisfied during the selling process and provides techniques on how to prevent the most common problems.

Seth Godin recently wrote a blog post on What (People) Want, where people could be defined as customers, users, neighbors, friends, etc. He describes five simple ideas that motivate and drive most of us. This blog post looks at whether these 5 elements also define what customers want.

Customer Centricity is a new term to capture the thought that customers are central to everything an organization does, including product development, sales, service, marketing and even through its suppliers and channels. IBM has an excellent video called “How it Works: Smarter Commerce” that covers the concept well. Watch the video and review the key points in this blog post.

A study by IBM® Institute of Business Value of 30,000 US consumers in September and November 2008 revealed that, on average, consumers will drop allegiance to retailers after an average of 3.1 negative experiences. To promote customer satisafaction, eight key areas that affect the customer experiences are covered in this article.

A really key factor in retaining customers and preventing problems is to pay attention to what expectations you, as a business owner, are setting with customers. What promises are you making?