Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management

One of the root causes of customer satisfaction problems is the skills of the people on the front line, dealing with customers. One of the techniques to ensure that customers are well served, is to ensure that there is a method to regularly check the skills of the front line staff and a training program to maintain the right mix and level of skills. The concept is called a Skills Inventory. This article covers why a skill inventory is important, what a skills inventory really is, how to do a skills inventory, and how to get started.

BP’s Oil spill has put it in the spot light, mostly with negative publicity. BP has attempted to fight back with improved communications on the $20 Billion fund, a new leader and Gulf Coast Restoration organization, clean ups and preparations for hurricanes. It has prepared 4 videos on these subjects but then make them hard to find except on the BP site. Small changes in the company website to improve search engine optimization would help BP’s reputation management cause.

One of the key customer satisfaction techniques is the need to provide front line employees with the ability to respond to customer situations quickly without the need to ‘ask for permission’. In his book ‘The little BIG Things’ Tom Peters asked managers if they encourage managers to celebrate successful use of this technique.

In Tom Peters’ book, ‘The Little BIG Things’, one chapter deals with a request from Stamford University Graduate School of business that was bungled due to lack of attention to detail. It is an important customer satisfaction lesson. The Devil is in the details.

Customer Satisfaction techniques can and should be used with internal end users. Any organization that supports others in a large corporation or business needs to determine who its customers are, and then set up a process to track and measure expectations and achievements against those expectations on a regular reporting basis. This article talks about why this is important, the key elements, how to do it and how to implement a customer satisfaction program for internal customers.

Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV fame, described an incident in his latest book: Crush it!: Why NOW is the time to Cash in your Passion that shows his commitment to customer service. While the individual incident likely lost him money, the culture he established in his organization was worth far more. Customer service in today’s web environment is very visible and creating the right customer service culture is even more important in order to improve or sustain high levels of customer satisfaction.

IBM’s Complaint Process begins with the company committed to a common definition of a complaint: any dissatisfaction with a product, or process. This article covers IBM’s complaint and critical situation process, roles and responsibilities and management system. IBM’s complaint and critical situation process continues to be a key factor in maintaining its high levels of customer satisfaction.

One of the techniques Toyota has used to try to minimize the customer satisfaction hit they took earlier this year is a new Social Media technique – Digg Dialoggs. Digg Dialoggs allows users of social bookmarking site Digg, to pick leaders they would like interviewed, then recommend questions they would like answered and have the top 10 questions (voted by users) asked of the leader by a Digg Correspondent. The top 10 questions asked of Jim Lentz, President and COO of Toyota US were a big surprise. Digg, Digg Dialoggs, the top 10 questions asked of Toyota US and the video of the interview itself are included in this article.

Faced with rider discontent, the Toronto Transit Commission and the local Union representing Transit workers have announced 3 public Meetings called ‘Let’s Talk – TTC Riders and Workers’ so each side can air their issues and be heard. For those unable to attend the meetings in person, they will be broadcast over a local TV station and on the union’s website. Public Forums are a new technique emerging where public institutions and users can engage to understand each others perspective and try to resolve customer satisfaction issues..

Most Organizations measure customer satisfaction with surveys. They can be tracked, and measured and compared year over year, month over month, quarter over quarter. But what techniques are available to raise early warning flags? Three types of measurements can help: Predictor Metrics, Prevention Programs and Social media / Blogs / Complaint Sites.