Customer Satisfaction and Reputation Management

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,  [...]

Just a few days after FedEx had a delivery fiasco go viral on Youtube, UPS was caught in a similar situation. While not as extreme as the FedEx error, the driver was quite intentional in his action. The driver gave the camera that was recording him the’ third finger salute’ and then threw the box on the customer’s doorstep. The box appears to be from Zappos. It is possible that the contents were shoes or clothing which were not likely to break but Zappos do sell accessories which might be damaged. Here’s the video which has been seen far fewer times though other sites also are showing the video. Notice the difference in how the crisis was handled by UPS compared to Fed Ex.

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.

Small Business organizations often ask how they can gather customer insights without spending a fortune with consultants or research firms. This blog post covers 6 techniques and tools a small business can use to determine the satisfaction level of their customers.

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.

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.

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.