Thought Leadership

We live in an age of information. More than just an interesting sounding catchphrase, businesses today are sitting on vast amounts of data, more than any other point in history. Data tracking internal processes, data tracking supply chains, and data tracking customers amongst others.

Naturally, customer feedback is a part of that. While a simple feedback survey seems quite straightforward from the outside, when you think about the amount of data that can be generated through a typical customer experience management (CEM) program, the numbers can quickly become quite impressive. Most programs will receive 30 or more responses per month per location. For a brand with 250 locations that means close to 100,000 customer surveys each year. If you consider that most surveys will be made up of 20 or more questions, then suddenly if you’re a customer experience program manager you’re looking at 2 million individual points of customer feedback.

The question is – What insights are locked inside all of that data?

Some are obvious, location comparisons, average performance, overall scores, trending etc… answers to those questions have always been the biggest values of a CEM program. In fact if a program is well designed and the questions asked are of an appropriate nature, these are exactly the type of insights that can drive great brands to continue executing on a day-to-day basis.

But 2 million points of data are a lot. What else might be hidden in that data? Sometimes there’s more to the data than just the surface level trends, it just takes a bit of deeper analysis to get to it. Today’s technology tools allow anyone with a deeper level of curiosity to dig deeper and discover some of the additional layers of nuance within pools of customer survey data.

Some more nuanced questions that can be answered with customer survey data would include:

• Which factors in the experience hold the most weight when measured against overall satisfaction?
• How overall satisfaction is perceived across different demographic segments?
• How different product categories impact satisfaction?
• How can I measure a cross section of all of these questions looking at products and their impact against satisfaction across different demographics?

The challenge is being able to segment the data appropriately and easily. That’s where a flexible data analysis product can come in handy. Rather than having to rely on external resources program managers should be empowered to be able to quickly slice out interesting segments of customer feedback to make informed decisions. Or at least be able to use these slices of data to be able to follow a single train of thought through to some kind of conclusion or hypothesis.

In today’s world having data is no longer enough. We need to be able to harness the power of actually using it, to be able to effectively drive change.

It is one of the oldest adages in business — “the customer is always right.” While this is true in most circumstances, there is also the missing other side of that statement that holds true too — “customers want to be heard.”

This is supported by the consumer insights research that we do here at Empathica. Interestingly we have found that most customers are willing to provide feedback to the brands they frequent in some manner. In fact, a recent consumer insights study we ran showed that up to 85% of consumers are willing to provide feedback to the restaurants and retailers they frequent.

That same research also uncovered an interesting disconnect however. Of those same consumers polled, only 46% believe their feedback is used to improve the customer experience.

This shows on one hand a real desire from customers to become a more active part of the brands where they shop and dine. On the other hand, the current perception consumers have is that brands do not share a desire to listen to the feedback being provided.

Brands can do a lot to change this perception by adopting some simple habits in how they build dialogue and connect with their customers. Here are some of our tips that may be helpful to you and your business, gleamed from Empathica working with leading brands for over a decade:

Creating a dialogue is not only asking for feedback but also acknowledging that you’re listening and using your customers’ voices to improve.

Everyone can relate to the frustration of feeling as though you’re not being heard. CEM programs at their core are all about using customer feedback to improve your business. Make sure you’re using the most of your customer feedback and actually making improvements with it and not just allowing it to collect dust.

Upset or at risk customers can be acknowledged and helped, and delighted customers should get a chance to tell the world through social media.

Acknowledging customers directly who have either very good or very poor experiences can be a powerful way to build loyalty through direct interactions. Well thought-out CEM programs should have the ability to allow managers to intervene when a customer has a very poor experience, as well as allowing very positive experiences to be shared with staff as a motivational tool.

Feedback can also be shared in a more public manner.

Some brands have even gone so far as to publicly share their feedback scores on corporate websites and other assets. For brands that are successfully running advocacy programs, why not embed those messages directly into your website or other only marketing activities to truly turn the voice of your customers into your marketing message.

It doesn’t need to be said but customers really are the lifeblood of any business. For brands to acknowledge this fact and make them feel a part of your growth and success requires that businesses of all shapes and sizes do a better job of listening to them. That’s where a well thought out customer experience management program can play a role. After all, customer feedback is all about better listening.

Customer feedback is not about numbers; it’s about delivering great customer experiences. Empowering each frontline staff member to deliver great experiences is the best way to differentiate your brand in a challenging economy. Consumers remain cautious and selective about where they spend their money, so exceeding their expectations is more important for brand success than ever.

Great customer experiences can drive active advocacy. In fact, 69% of consumers are willing to share great experiences with their friends and family. The best CEM programmes capture the unique ‘essence’ of your brand and help operators to understand why their customers become advocates and how to harness the power of recommendations.

Let’s start at the very beginning. You need to gain a deep understanding of what a great experience looks and more importantly feels like for your customers. What drives people to your brand? What causes them to be loyal and become advocates? What experiences will they share with friends and family?

But which questions are going to give you the customer insight you need to make your brand stand out from the competition? Customer engagement is an over-used phrase but you do need to connect with your customers at an emotional level to understand what really makes them tick. There’s a world of difference between asking whether a store appeared clean and whether the customer felt it to be welcoming and inviting. The right questions should always be personal to both your brand and your customers.

So, once you’ve gained insight into what your customers really feel and want, how are you going to harness this knowledge to give your brand a competitive advantage? It’s easy to try to be the best at everything – but unfortunately, this isn’t usually an achievable goal. You need to focus on your own brand strengths and exploit competitors’ weaknesses.

Let’s take a fast food restaurant example. Restaurant A may score highly on factors such as menu variety, speed of service and price. But Restaurant B could tap into the market opportunity to produce high-quality food delivered with exceptional service in an extremely welcoming environment. The food may be a little more pricey and it may take longer to prepare – but most customers appreciate that you generally get what you pay for. As the saying goes, all good things come to he who waits.

It’s only by asking the right questions that you can gain valuable insight into what real customers think and feel about your brand, giving you the knowledge you need to help your brand succeed. The best CEM programmes help brands to stay ahead of the competition by empowering them to turn research into experiential reality.

It’s been said before but it’s worth saying again. The Internet has changed the way consumers make purchasing decisions. The vast quantity of information online has shifted power into the hands of consumers when it comes to how educated they can be before making a purchase.

In no industry is this more apparent than in the automotive sector.

In my own recent experience, I spent many hours researching before making a new car purchase. Not only did I go through traditional sources like magazine and newspaper reviews, I also joined a few Facebook fan pages and online forums. It was from the owner fan pages in social media where I was able to get some very direct pro and con advice from a large pool of owners of the cars I was most interested in. Many owners were also quite open about sharing pricing information and negotiation advice.

Best of all was all the research that I was able to conduct entirely on my own without the influence of the manufacturers.

By the time I got around to test driving a few cars I knew exactly what I wanted and the price I was willing to pay. On top of that I also knew, from all the owner advice I got, what to expect and what to look out for once the test drive began. I was a buyer with a much higher level of education and comfort in the product – that would have been unheard of only a few years ago!

In this new world it’s clear that car manufacturers face a huge challenge when it comes to attracting customers to physically come visit their dealer lots. There is a huge opportunity however in online channels where dealers can leverage owners to provide user testimonies to encourage others like myself to visit the dealers who provided them with a great product surrounded by great experiences. Message to dealers: turn happy customers into active advocates.

This is an organic marketing process that some dealers are beginning to explore with impressive results.

In just 90 days one American dealer who kicked off an advocacy initiative engaged with over 726 customers who visited their website, service department, and sales department. Their effort uncovered 126 advocates that communicated their personal and authentic dealer recommendations to over 16,377 people in just 3 months.

Rather than relying exclusively on traditional advertising channels to attract new customers it’s clear that it can be equally, if not more, effective to use today’s social channels to build a base of new customers by leveraging your best asset…the customers you already have.

Customer feedback has immense value.

We’ve been saying that (and, might I add, proving it) for years. And its immense value is only ever realized once insights have been extracted and strategies have been executed to create a powerful customer experience. Anyone who’s worked with Mindshare should recognize the process I just described.

The service we provide our clients has worked well in the past, it’s working wonderfully now, and, according to the numbers, it will work even better in the future. That’s right, some new big numbers have come across my desk in the recent weeks, and it’s sharing time!

In a report titled “The Business Impact Of Customer Experience, 2012,” Forrester writer Megan Burns presents extensive research and the latest findings to reaffirm and quantify the revenue advantages that a company like Mindshare Technologies can offer today’s service companies.*

As usual, Forrester is following all the best practices you’ve come to expect from them, using a sample size of nearly eight thousand U.S. consumers and accounting for gaps between the number of people who say they will do something and the number of people who actually do. In short, the numbers I’m about to share represent a very realistic representation of the full market opportunity for companies who employ a dedicated Voice of the Customer (VoC) service provider.

The report presents detailed portrayals of 12 different industries, including airlines, retailers, TV service providers, hotels, banks, wireless service providers, and medical insurers. Using Forrester’s own customer experience index (CXi), statistics bear out the fact that U.S. businesses maintaining above-average CXi scores make millions, if not billions, more each year than businesses maintaining below-average CXi scores.

In the report, the revenue advantages enjoyed by these top companies are attributed to three areas strongly tied to the customer experience and customer loyalty (this is where the money is):

1. Additional purchases

Forrester found a high correlation between consumers’ CXi rating of a company and their willingness to buy from the company again. Similarly, they found an inverse correlation between a brand’s CXi score and customers’ likelihood to switch business away, which means that the better the customers’ experiences, the lower the number of customers looking to defect.

2. Churn reduction

Forrester models show that revenue lost by low CXi, and retained by good CXi, can reach up to $825 million for hotels, where customer volume is extremely high.

3. Word of mouth

Forrester found that firms can see incremental sales from positive word of mouth that range from $2 million for retailers to $65 million for airlines (where a variety of social media sites, such as Flyertalk.com, help create extensive word of mouth).

It’s also important to remember that the Forrester models in this report only account for revenues gained from having a better customer experience. As shown in previous Forrester reports, other significant bottom-line gains can be achieved through improved operations that save millions in excess sales and service costs.

For companies to build a top service experience in their industry—and to claim the available revenue—they must be in tune with their existing customers, and aware of their operations at every level.

Mindshare Technologies continues to partner with companies who understand these principles, and we’re happy to see real revenues resulting from increased attentiveness to customers. Across the business world, good behavior is being reinforced and rewarded. Hooray for that!

*For a full copy of the report, visit the Forrester site.

I came across a Twitter post recently from one of my most trusted customer experience management resources, Bruce Temkin, which I found to be especially impactful. Bruce was relaying a comment made by Scott Hudgins, VP of Global Customer Managed Relationships at Disney about moments in a customer journey.

“No one owns the guest but someone always owns the moment.”

Scott couldn’t be more correct and the idea of owning the moment is critical to the success of any retailer. Now more than ever, retailers need to understand which moments within their customers’ journeys are those that can create the most delight and opportunity for competitive differentiation. If a retailer is able to correctly identify, own and act upon those moments then chances are good that a great customer experience will be the result. I think we all have had the pleasure of a great shopping experience where everything seems to magically come together and it sticks with us as a benchmark that we compare all others to. Did that experience happen by chance? Of course not and most likely it was the result of a well thought out CEM strategy that began with looking at the multiple points of interaction between consumers and the retailer, or put in a different way the customer journey.

In order to identify the most actionable moments in a shopping experience it’s critical for a retailer to engage in this exercise. It is a process that allows retailers to walk in their customer’s shoes and understand the way points along the journey that may be encountered. In addition to location visits, the journey mapping process should include more in-depth research such as sitting down with groups of front line stakeholders, including store/restaurant/branch owners, managers, and front line staff, to facilitate an understanding of the various “moments of truth” that are encountered by customers in their journey through a transaction with the brand. To do this, it’s important to follow the chronology of a customer experience:

• What is observed through the customers’ eyes (and nose, touch and ears)?
• What emotive senses become involved at each functional stage of the visit, be they pleasure, expectation or impatience?

From the very beginning of the exercise, starting from the outside looking in (the view from a parking lot, the street, or mall) all the way through to what is experienced as a customer leaves, you can deepen your understanding of the important moments in the environment that build (or detract) from a great customer experience. The facility’s visual layout, the product and its positioning, the communication boards (be they aisle signs in grocery and shops, posters in a branch, or menu boards in a restaurant) and the experience touch points with people – all these are examined as potential key moments to own for imposing brand standards and consistency in operations to ensure every visit is a perfect one.

As a retailer, make sure owning the moment is part of your CEM strategy and start with journey mapping. If done correctly you’ll determine the magic moments that need to be built, managed and monitored to ensure a differentiated and compelling shopping experience.

Food services and social media are a natural fit. Going out to a restaurant or bar has always been a social activity, even if it’s a quick lunch with co-workers. And diners have taken to social media enthusiastically, taking pictures of their meals before they dig in, racing to check each other into Facebook places, and competing for the position of Mayor of their favorite restaurants on Foursquare.  Savvy restaurateurs have made social media part of their marketing plans as well, taking advantage of Facebook and Twitter to promote their brands and keep in touch with their customers.

There is a down side to the rapid adoption of social media and mobile technology, of course. It’s just as easy for a dissatisfied customer to broadcast a negative experience to their peers as it is for them to praise you for a positive one. Consumers are dining out less, yet their expectations remain high. A negative post or tweet may persist and remain searchable for some time, influencing the decisions of others who are researching where to dine this evening.

Customer rescue strategies and experience management

Social media platforms are more than merely broadcast channels, of course; they are places where conversations and discussions happen. The same tools that allow consumers to research brands can also help business owners to find out what is being said about them and act on those reviews. A negative “tweet,” for example, is an opportunity to initiate a dialogue and, ideally, a customer rescue – by letting a customer know you are listening, and have a sincere interest in improving their experience.

The next logical step is to develop a proactive, rather than reactive, approach. It’s important to act quickly, and on a personal level, to win back a negative reviewer. But is there a way to close the barn door before the horse escapes? Can a restaurant owner do anything to help ensure that the messages that get posted online are positive, rather than negative? The goal of Customer Experience Management (CEM) is precisely that – to use customer feedback in a measured and strategic fashion to fine-tune business practices and generate increased customer loyalty.

Successfully applied, a CEM program can help you to:

• Capture customer feedback in a timely fashion and identify rescue candidates early in the process
• Analyze and quantify feedback so that it can inform adjustments to your operations
• Improve your customers’ brand experiences to encourage repeat business and advocacy
• Motivate brand advocates to recommend your restaurant to their peers through social media

In a sense, a CEM program takes what the social media-aware business owner does on a one-to-one basis with a single negative Twitter review and applies it at the brand level. Inviting feedback at point of sale can help diffuse and reverse the effects of a negative brand experience, while at the same time providing you with an opportunity to turn negative feedback into constructive criticism – which then can be leveraged to improve the brand experience for all your customers tomorrow.

Learn more about Customer Experience Management solutions for the Food Services industry.

Claiming that all Text Analytics solutions are the same is like saying all forms of transportation are the same. They’re not.

Research your Text Analytics options. Ask your vendor, even Mindshare, all of these important questions. You’ll be happy you did.

• Does the vendor’s text analytics platform categorize comments with similar-themed keywords and phrases for comparing and trending? (For example, would the comments “lukewarm cheeseburger” and “the hamburger patty was cold” both be classified under “Hamburger” and “Temperature”?)  Or would you have to mentally group terms such as “cold” and “lukewarm” to understand the scope of a problem.
• Does the vendor’s text analytics accurately identify the key topics in each comment individually as they come in? Or does it require a large sample size and batch process?
• Does the vendor’s product ensure the highest quality results by using custom-tuned Natural Language Processing (NLP) semantic rules? Or is it based on simple keyword extraction or statistical probabilities?
• Is their insight tagging at least 90% accurate overall? Or is it only slightly better than flipping a coin?
• Does the vendor’s solution minimize setup time with pre-tuned, industry-specific models? Or is the vendor’s solution generic, lacking industry domain knowledge and requiring extensive time and effort?
• Does their text analytics product seamlessly integrate with your current EFM system (Enterprise Feedback Management) or will you have to manage two separate systems? (E.g. Will you benefit from the cost savings of a fully integrated EFM and text analytics platform?)
• Does the product automatically highlight correlations between structured survey data (like location, time of visit, and satisfaction ratings) and unstructured survey data (open-ended comments and social media)? For example, would your product be able to find that the phrase “on … cell phone” is highly correlated to poor customer service scores? Or will you have to connect the dots yourself?
• Does their system send instant alerts when a key issue is detected in a customer comment? For example, if a customer reports “slipping and falling” on a wet floor, is an alert email sent immediately to your corporate office? Or will you find out much later?
• Are their text analytics results reported in real-time and available 24/7 to managers at all levels of your organization (permission-based)? Or will the results be stale? Can the reports be pre-scheduled to email to managers or must you always log in every time to get what you need?
• Do they have a turnkey product that can identify the central themes and sentiment in customer comments? For example, could it identify that the phrases “rude cashier” and “check engine light” are showing up frequently in negative context? Or do they require significant training, setup time, and resources to reach that insight?
• Can the vendor customize their solution to tag comments in categories unique to your business, such as products, programs, competitors, etc.? Or is it limited to measuring generic insights only?
• Can you navigate directly to source comments about key performance areas or are their results limited to high-level statistics? For example, assume that several feedback comments mention the cleanliness of floors in a store; can you instantly pull up those specific cleanliness comments to identify the root of the problem?
• Do they support more than seven major languages? Or are they limited to English and not much else?
• Is their solution fully up and running (already developed) and ready to deploy within just weeks, or are they selling something you’ll have to wait months and years to ever see.
• Does a team of professional, full-time text analytics experts guide their text analytics solution? Or is their text analytics package just a piece of software with no support?
• Are they confident enough to show you an unscripted live demo of their solution?  Will they allow you to test it with your own comments to see real results using a sample of your own data?  Or are they hiding behind a staged presentation?

Gather More Feedback by Offering Both Phone & Web Surveys

I was at the drive-thru of a national burger chain last week, craving that juicy super-burger that melts as it slides down my throat and becomes 800 calories of fat that I’ll probably never work off. As I grab my bag of food at the pick-up window, the employee informs me that if I call the number on the back of the receipt and take the survey, I’ll get a free burger next time I visit.

The quickest way to a man’s heart is up his wallet pocket and through his stomach, so the words “free burger” sold me. Plus, I had a bone to pick – they forgot my ketchup and a straw. As I pulled out of the drive-thru, I was already dialing the survey number with my cell. After all, texting is illegal in most states, but hands-free talking isn’t. So I can provide feedback, eat, and drive all at one time!

The easiest and most effective surveying method for the customer is over-the-phone responses to an automated survey. Automated phone surveys allow you to rant and rave to a company without an awkward exchange between you and another person. You can let it fly! Plus, neither your hands nor your eyes are busy while responding to a phone survey. In fact, I JUST took a phone survey while I wrote that last sentence! That’s how simple they are!

Ease of Method Trumps Technology

According to our research at Mindshare Technologies, when customers are given the option to take either a phone survey or an online survey, they choose to use their phone approximately 60% of the time — no matter the size of the company or its industry.

Though web surveys still take almost half the cake, they’re not as hot as everyone expected. When the internet became a regular household appliance nationwide about 10 years ago, customer feedback experts expected it to overtake phone surveying methods.

Web surveys never made phone surveys obsolete because technology doesn’t dictate your customers’ surveying preference; ease of method does. And for most, automated phone surveys are the simplest, quickest, most comfortable feedback method for customers.

Regardless, both web and phone surveys are here to stay. To collect the most surveys, your customer feedback program should offer customers the option to provide feedback via phone, web, text message, kiosk, iPad, social media, or whatever method they choose. After all, the more feedback you collect, the more usable information you receive. And with proper analysis for all that info, you’ll find more specific, actionable insights from your feedback to improve operations and increase revenue.

With customers taking as many or more phone surveys as web surveys, you need an analytics engine that digests both audible and textual comments equally well, combining all comments into one platform along with all of your Voice of Customer data.

We all like positive feedback. It’s natural to feel good when someone gives you a pat on the back.

In business, that feeling is extrapolated ten times. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of a satisfied customer telling you how perfect their experience was and that they want to come back. And for good reason – the more positive feedback you get, the more customers you’ll keep for life, and the more revenue they’ll bring.

But there are, in fact, no businesses anywhere that receive exclusively positive feedback.  Of the six billion people living on earth right now, there are about… six billion different attitudes, tastes and preferences. No one could ever expect to please each one of them.

As much as we all like positive feedback, a negative comment tends to create the opposite reaction. It cuts us personally when a departing guest tells us that they had a bad visit.

How you choose to react to that negative feedback is the key. Do you shrug it off and chalk it up to “just one customer” who won’t come back? Or do you see an opportunity?

People love attention, and they especially love it when a business makes them feel important. With so few businesses actually paying attention to their customers, you can really stand out by treating everyone like a VIP. In turn, they’ll come back over and over again, as well as sing your praises to anyone interested.

Unfortunately, when something goes wrong, most guests are reluctant to have a confrontation, even when they’re in the right. If a hotel concierge is rude, most people will choose to keep quiet about it and simply avoid that hotel (and probably tell their friends, or blog about it). So there is a strong need for anonymity, a place they can air their gripes without confrontation or fear of retribution.

Are you giving your customers a place to freely voice their opinions?

Let’s face it: your guests are going to talk about you, especially the frequent guests. They’ll let their peers know what they experienced, good or bad. Those conversations will have a ripple effect.  Here are two scenarios using a hotel example:

Scenario one: A guest had a bad experience and tells his coworkers. The next time they travel, they look for anywhere to stay but your hotel.

Scenario two: Another customer also had a bad experience, but the hotel staff responded to his feedback, explained the changes that they would be making, and offered to make restitution. The customer feels important and tells his friends, who then seek out your hotel the next time they travel. After similar experiences, they all become lifetime guests, who trust your brand every time they need a place to stay.

If you’re truly committed to customer happiness, you’ll take note of every negative guest comment that comes through, and treat it like a valuable asset. Instead of moping about it, you need to jump on the chance to make things right.

What’s keeping you from listening to your customers? Let Mindshare help!

Is customer service becoming extinct? Have we “hunted” it to extinction? Will an economic downturn be the last straw? Can it recover from the endangered species list? Who or what will make that decision?

All good questions – but maybe not the right questions.

As consumers, rather than spend our time bemoaning the loss of terms like “southern hospitality” or “western warmth,” we should each look in the mirror and question the level of service we are willing to accept. I believe the perceived drop in customer service that many consumers are feeling is a direct result of two simultaneous forces: (1) an increase in the comparable services against which we now judge any service, and (2) a decrease in our willingness to speak up, grab the pulpit, and let the service purveyor know how we feel. Let me address these two forces.

The increase in comparable services

It used to be that, as consumers, we pretty well knew the territory of comparison. We compared the service at our local banks. We knew the three closest pizza parlors and the local hair salons. When we called an airline to make a reservation, our point of comparison was “Airline X” versus “Airline Y.” This has all changed. Our point of reference has expanded.

Now, when we call an airline to make a reservation, we are consciously or subconsciously comparing our phone experience, not only against all other airlines, but we are evaluating that phone call with other phone experiences we have with companies like the Lands’ End catalog department and/or The Home Depot consumer affairs line. When I call my bank, and they ask me for my address three different times, I am no longer judging how my bank measures up against other banks, I am wondering how American Express seems to be able to transfer my personal information between agents, but my bank can’t.

In the age of the worldwide Internet, we are now faced with global service expectations. The acceptable standard is continuously being raised – cross culturally and across industries. What is most interesting to me, is that as our required minimum standard for service has continued to rise, our willingness to complain about poor service appears to have fallen somewhat. Which leads to the second force…

A decrease in our willingness to speak up and give companies our feedback

In a world of loosening values, declining courtesy, and speak-your-mind media, somehow the fear and avoidance of personal conflict remains mostly intact. Generally, all other things being equal, most people are “chicken.” They are conflict avoiders! Most folks would rather stick a fork in their head than tell you bad news to your face, particularly if they don’t know you. We may be willing to criticize a restaurant’s food in private, but when the meal arrives in front of us in poor condition, we often lower our eyes, and say nothing directly to the server or the manager.

Why is this? Could it be a result of the social interaction we’ve lost due to the Internet and computer gaming age? I’m not qualified to say. But it wouldn’t seem far fetched, that in a world where neighborhood kick-the-can and street-corner conversations have been replaced with texting, instant messaging, video gaming, and sterile social websites, that a culture’s comfort level with complaining directly about undercooked food would be diminished. It is one thing for a movie actor to say the words, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” It is quite another task to have the strength to provide that kind of personal feedback directly to a service provider.

The convergence of forces

So, here’s the situation: consumers with higher expectations and a wider definition of what constitutes “comparable service” are losing the courage to speak their mind directly and get things off their chest. But hey, everybody needs an outlet, right? So, where does a consumer go to vent their frustration over poor service? They tell 10 friends. They tell 10 neighbors. Heck, with the Internet and social media, they can tell 10 million strangers! Simple word-of-mouth broadcasting has exploded to become the global “bully pulpit.” Is good customer service extinct? Nah, we’re just hearing about the poor experiences more.

How can superior service companies lessen the drama?

Best practice service companies have quickly come to understand that when they do “drop the ball” with a customer, they can either hear about it directly, or they can read about it on the Internet. Even worse, they will assuredly notice it through declining customer counts. So, wise service companies are making it easy for their guests to provide anonymous, risk-free feedback to them in as many ways as possible, and at every potential touch-point. Through these different channels, companies can capture real-time, actionable information that they can use to immediately improve their operations and, over time, create even more loyal customers.

Mindshare can help

The Mindshare feedback system can lessen the impact of both forces described above, and help you close the gap. Because Mindshare collects over 25 million surveys a year, across multiple industries, our clients immediately see not only how they are performing within their company but also across their competitive set, and even more widely, across the general services landscape. They quickly see how their service compares, so that they can adjust their operations to be not only best in class, but best across all services. Also, by using automated customer feedback surveys, companies are providing their customers the ability to provide honest and direct feedback without experiencing the conflict of a face-to-face confrontation. For these astute companies, superior customer service is not extinct; it is alive, well, and flourishing.