Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management

Better Business Bureau has recently released its list of the Top 10 Industries with the most customer complaints. One measure of customer satisfaction is the number of complaints received. Normally a complaint is a measure of the failure of a service call or multiple calls. The Better Business Bureau measured both the number of complaints and the number of complaints that are resolved within 30 days. Two charts ranked by volume of complaints and percent of complaints resolved in 30 days show very different results.

I have seen several questions on customer satisfaction forums about what is the right ‘metric’ for customer satisfaction that will predict future outcomes. Often this question comes up in respect to ’surveying’ customers . Is Overall Satisfaction the right measure; willingness to recommend; or repurchase intent?

I think customer satisfaction measurements are a mosaic of possible measurements and the ones that should take priority should be the ones where the executives feel there is a need to improve.

Customer Satisfaction is meeting or exceeding expectations. Social Media can be used to show how your dealership satisfies customers and can add some new ‘expectations’ customers never knew they had. Think of social media as making a dealership a more friendly place to come to, whether you are coming for a new car, a used car, or service.

Crowdsourcing is a new term and a possibly a new emerging trend. The basic premise is to tap into the vast wisdom of the general (or specifically skilled) population to funnel the best ideas to the top and execute them. It is also being used in the Customer Service arena.

An unbelievable scenario is percolating between Toronto, Canada transit riders and the Toronto Transit Commission workers resulting in a social media battle between riders and unionized workers. Add in a sex scandal by the chairman of the Toronto Transit Commission and you have the makings of a customer satisfaction twitstorm.

Here’s an interesting video about Dell and their attitude towards Social Media and how they are going from Dell Hell to Dell Swell. Jeremia Owyang, Partner Customer Strategy at Altimeter Group interviews Bob Pearson, Communications and Conversations at Dell. Dell is using Social Media to gather product requirements, notify customers of deals, create platforms for customers to help each other and monitor social media for negatives comments. Watch the video.

Radian6, social media monitoring platform for marketing, communications, and customer support professionals, is sponsoring Twebinars (hour long audio interviews) to share how companies are using Social Media on a regular basis. The most recent Twebinar covered how Xbox is using Twitter to augment their customer service. This article covers some highlights of how Microsoft Xbox support team called the ‘Elite Tweet Fleet’ is using Twitter, how they are organized, what they measure, and how they are managed.

Here are the 10 Most Read Posts from 2009 about Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service and Social Media and Reputation Management with links to the articles.

Using Twitter for Customer Service is a hot topic. Several comments from readers on LinkedIn are included in this post. The positive aspects of Twitter along with its limitations are covered. Generally Twitter is perceived to be an augmentation to existing customer service with added value to the customer that they have been heard.

US Thanksgiving Black Friday shopping brought out new services being used by retailers who have embraced Twitter. Augmenting traditional customer questions and problems are new services such as where to find parking near the store, in store specials, up to the minute inventory in store, and more. Best Buy pilots Twelpforce – 2500 employees responding to customer questions.