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.

Every organization goes through cycles, from year beginning, monthly and quarterly results and year end. As a new year approaches, one of the exercises every department goes through is planning for the year ahead. Customer Satisfaction strategies and processes need to be reviewed as well.The most important things to review are Management Strategies, Customer Expectations, Customer Feedback, Measurements and Targets and Management Reporting.

Here’s an interesting video produced by Reachcast on how to handle customers who have posted a negative review online at sites like Yelp, Google maps, and other review sites.
Three major topics are discussed: 1. The Preparation before your respond, 2. The response itself, 3. Monitor and Follow up after the Response. A fourth step missing from the video is suggested.

Have you ever had the problem that management and employees who are not on the front line, don’t focus on how they personally impact customer satisfaction? This is a common problem in large organizations. In my years at IBM, it was one of the key challenges. Often decisions made in departments removed from day to day interaction with customers set policies, designed systems or created products, services or promises that were not customer friendly or could not be implemented in the real world. Here are some tips to get buy in and focus internally.

Google+ is a new social media initiative started by Google and somewhat in competition with Facebook. While Google+ isn’t rolled out everywhere, due to its popularity, there are some studies of the new features assessments of how they could be used or impact Customer Service. Specific features such as Circles, Hangouts, Instant upload, and Huddle, are explained. Customer Service organizations will need to learn about the new features and how they might impact them or be used productively.

One of the key trends in the free world today is that corporations and people can not longer hide what they say or do. Here’s an example where parents have had to turn their own children into the police for crimes due to social media pressure. This affects businesses, governments and not for profit organizations as well. See 4 tips on how to handle mistakes.

Customer Service is a delicate balancing act, especially if the client is clearly unhappy. There are 3 types of generic problems customer service personnel face. Two important outcomes of a service call should be to resolve customer problems (if possible) and ensure the customer’s emotional well being is preserved.

Difficult customers, both internal and external, are a part of everyday business, and finesse must be used when managing their concerns without further damaging or losing the project. Although many outcomes will often depend on the scope and size of the problem, there are a few key tenets applicable to every situation that will help you and your client come to an amicable resolution.

Many organizations plan conversions or modifications that affect them internally and may make changes relevant to their customers. It should be obvious. When an organization makes a change that affects customers, the business should communicate with them about it. Be sure when creating a plan to modify some aspect of your organization, that you consider the customer’s perspective. Planning how the customer perceives the change will impact customer satisfaction with your products and services.

A recent survey by Unica, an IBM subsidiary called the State of Marketing 2011 – Unica’s Annual Survey of Marketers highlights the challenges marketers face in this rapidly changing business environment. Interactive Marketing is changing the methods of communicating with customers; it is ‘the meaningful alternative to imposing messages on customers that they no longer want to hear.’ Three types of media marketers need to be aware of include Earned Content, such as reviews, testimonials and references, all customer satisfaction elements. Customer satisfaction strategy needs to change to accommodate the new channels.