What we need to know about Negative Experiences

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More often than not, we hear about bad customer service experiences. It makes you wonder if the world revolves around negative experiences. Apparently, people are far more likely to share their grievances publicly than they are to share compliments. According to ClickFox’s second annual benchmarking survey, Consumer Tipping Points, only 8% of customers are likely to make public posts or share a positive experience, whereas this percentage doubles in the case of a bad experience.

Think about that for a moment:

One of your customers has a great time, and they don’t tell anyone about it, but a bad time and suddenly their entire world knows about it.

Forget that it’s completely unfair; human nature isn’t about fair, unfortunately.

What do we do about it?

If you’re dealing with a specific negative review, make sure you reach out to that customer straight away. You’ve let them down somehow, best to dive straight in and apologize, perhaps offer them something to express your regret for the bad service they received; while you’re at it, why not ask for their input? If you can figure out what it was exactly that frustrated them, you can better address the problem. Maybe it was something that was said, not done — get the details so you can avoid the same issue in the future!

1. Identify the problem. There’s no point in plunging headlong in trying to solve your issues if you don’t know exactly what they are.

  • What section of your customer-facing department is letting the customer down? Are your customers complaining about something specific?
  • Is your sales team doing something ‘wrong’/not doing something ‘right’?
  • Are you meeting customer expectations in general?

Questions like this need to be answered before you ca begin to isolate the issues and deal with them. This can be tricky if you don’t have checklists in place, and some businesses find they need external help from customer improvement companies or other consultancies.

2. Isolate the problem. Don’t try and tackle everything at once. Which problem is the most pressing? Is it the way your staff greets customers, or is the long waiting periods that are creating negative feedback?

3. Fix the problem. You know what the problem is, you can take steps to make sure it never happens again. Are your customers waiting for half an hour before they’re served? Perhaps you need more staff. Did one of your sales consultants say something that generated the negative feedback? Time to discuss this with that consultant and have a general discussion with the entire team.

The goal here is to learn from the mistakes you’ve made. Don’t think of a customer’s negative review/complaints as a setback, think of it as an opportunity to do better.

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9 Reasons Why Your Customers Believe You Are Awesome

Your Customers think you are awesome!Everyone has different expectations from customer service, but your customers love you. Why do your customers believe you are awesome? It’s easy to see why customers may be walking out your door, but why are they staying with your competition? Or, even more confusing! Why are they staying with you? Customer loyalty is a puzzle, and it’s important to understand the reason behind the positives as well as the negatives!

You know those quizzes that you can take, online – or, formerly, offline – where you get scored on your answers and you then get a result which tells you what kind of chocolate cake you are? Let’s pretend you’ve done one titled ‘What do your customers think of you?’  You’ve crossed your hurdles and are met with smiles all around, and you certainly don’t suffer from any of these issues.  We’ve got great news: your customers believe you are awesome!

I know we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all, but surely you’re just a little curious about why you’re so awesome?

Also read this article for more information: How To Improve Customer Experience

1. You didn’t just sell…

…you connected. It’s not just about making that one sale for you, it’s about giving the customer what they want. For you, it’s not a question of ‘what can I sell to my customers?, it’s ‘how can I help them?’

2. You rock your customer service…

…and people just won’t stop talking about you over coffee with their friends, in the bus, on their social media. Your staff entertains and delights your customers, they know how to make people smile. You’ve put the time and effort in to make sure your customers know that you like them because they’re people, not just because they’re there to buy your product or use your service. You’ve made them feel like they really matter, because, to you, they do.

3. You provide multi-channel support

You recognize that it’s vital to let people connect to your brand the way they choose, not just the way you think is most convenient for you. You’ve done the research and checked out all the means by which your customers connect with you; you know where they spend their time online and how they want to be connected offline.

4. You’ve exceeded all expectations!

When you first offered your service or product, you made the customer a promise. Some companies fall victim to overselling these promises – like politicians – to get a sale. Building up customer expectations is a two-edged sword, but you’ve rocked your customers’ worlds and more than delivered on your promises: not only did you meet the customer’s expectations, you’ve exceeded them and that’s why your customers believe you are awesome.

5. You haven’t just learned from your mistakes you’ve made changes to avoid making them in the future!

You’ve implemented a feedback system, or perhaps your customers just talk to you, but the fact is: you listento what they’ve got to say. You’ve taken the good with the bad, and you’ve come up with ways to avoid the bad – and told the complaining customer how you’ve gone about to fix things, and then asked if they think that’ll solve the problem!

6. You’re in the now! You’ve evolved with the times to stay on top of the world!

When you started out back in the ancient days of ‘ye olde times’, you had a great message and jingle, sure,  but you’ve recognised that the times are a’changin’ and you’ve adapted that message and your branding to the here and now. Used to do TV ads? Now you’re big online! Radio ads? No worries, podcasts and streaming music platforms. Newspapers? Still use ‘m, but you’re also on Reddit, Facebook, and – well, you get the picture. You’ve moved with the times and your customers know you’ll keep moving with them at just the right pace.

7. Customers can’t stop themselves from coming back to because…

They know you understand them. You’ve given them a reason to come back, whether it’s via customer loyalty strategies, special offers, or just giving them time of day with all your collective customer service talents. They know you get what they want, and that you’re adaptable.

8. Your competitors may be great, but you’re doing that extra bit.

You’re in it to win it, and your customers know that that means you’re in it for them and not just because you’re competing with others. You may not be able to compete with your competitors on a financial scale, or even match their advertising campaigns, but you’re creative enough to know that you can win in other sectors: like upping your customer service initiatives and connecting with people in a better, more customer-centric manner.

9. Reasons beyond your control…

People move cities, change lifestyles, get older and, inevitably, pass away. These are things that you can’t control, but you canreact to them appropriately. You’ve made that impression because you’ve impressed them on a human level: you’ve been there to share their happiness and their grief, their ups and downs; and now that they’ve had a change in their life, you’ve expressed your regrets at losing them to these changes, but you understand because you believe in them as people, not just as customers.

Making a difference

Differentiating your company from the sea of businesses in the world is one of the best ways to make a difference.  Every companies in the world has customer service, but striving to make yours the best service out there, to go to the extra lengths is what will make your company truly memorable – and for the right reasons.

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9 Reasons Your Customers are Leaving You

No business wants to lose customers. They are the lifeblood of any company. It’s not always easy to pick out the exact reason why customers abandon a product or service. If you’re at a complete loss, put yourself in their shoes and walk yourself through what it is that you’ve done, right or wrong. There are many reasons why individual customers might walk away, but there are a few that are the likely suspects:

1. You only made a sale…

People aren’t just looking to be ‘sold’ something, whether it’s a product or service. They’re looking to be charmed and impressed, not just sold to. The world is a big place, and even with all our technology, humans are less and less connected to each other. To that end, we often forget that people are people, and are looking for a connection on a human level.

Why your customers leave you.

2. Your customer service sucks

Sorry, there’s no other way of putting it. Your staff doesn’t pay attention to your customers, and even if they do they don’t know how to actually talk to them! Ever walked into a coffee shop and had all the serving staff staring at the ceiling, heaven forbid they actually have to help you! A great attitude is one of the primary ingredients for good customer service, and if your staff don’t have it — and you’re not encouraging them to change  — well, there’s no magic, and without magic, you’re not going to hold onto your customers. Your customers want to be treated with respect and interest.

3. You failed to provide multi-channel support

Not connecting to your customers in the ways they want to be connected to is a big way to lose out on connecting with them altogether. Different people like to be contacted through different mediums: younger Millennials may want you to Snapchat your promotions, whereas an older generation prefers email. For example. This is about making sure you know where your customers go for information, and how they like to receive it.

4. You haven’t delivered what you promised

If you promised your customers the moon, they’re going to expect the moon, and possibly the entire Milky Way attached to it. It’s one thing to build up customer expectations, to oversell your product or service, but if you can’t meet those expectations it’s going to come back and bite you in the you know what. Keep the promises you make, and if your customers are complaining that it’s not what they were expecting, then perhaps it’s time to take a look at what expectations you’re building: do you need to change your message? If you’re promising 100% and you’re really delivering 98% that’s no longer ‘acceptable’; in this customer-centric world, if you’re promising 100%, plan on delivering 110% — that’s the way to keep customers.

5. You’re not learning from your mistakes.

We all get complaints, it’s part of any job — whether it’s directly or not. A little while ago, I wrote this article, which talked about how “…only 8% of customers are likely to make public posts or share a positive experience, whereas this percentage doubles in the case of a bad experience.” This was based on some serious research done by ClickFox for their annual benchmarking report.

rip6. Your message and method has gone stale

Back in the day, when you first set up your business, you were at the top of your industry and everyone was listening to you! It was great. Unfortunately, for whatever reason you haven’t kept up with the times and your message is outdated. People aren’t seeing you anymore, not between the noise of all the other digital and analogue material they’re seeing. These days you’ve got to be original, find your unique selling point. Southwest Airlines, for example, has their ‘Bags Fly Free’ policy. This isn’t just about what you’re selling, it’s also about how you’re selling it — take a look at how you do things, are your methods obsolete? Has your customer service lost its magic? When was the last time you updated your pitches, your store layout? Even things as silly as updating your decor can have an impact on how comfortable feel when they walk into your store or office (or roll onto your website!).

7. They don’t remember you

Customers need reasons to stay with you. It’s not just about the product or the service, it’s about what you offer them beyond that, how you treat them, why they should remember you. If they can’t remember you, then why would they come back? Memory is a tricky thing, and navigating your way into someone’s long-term memory can be tricky but it’s not impossible. What are you doing to earn your customers’ loyalty? Getting them in the door is one thing, making sure they remember which door to come in is a totally different story! Be memorable, and preferably for a positive event, like in this story, and not a negative experience like what happened in this one.

8. Your competitors are just…better

I hear this excuse a lot: ‘I can’t compete with the big companies, they’ve got too much money, too many people, they control everything!’. Yes, it’s hard to compete with massive corporations like Coca Cola, McDonalds or Microsoft and Apple, but that shouldn’t stop you. How much effort have you put in? Are you even trying? These questions may sound harsh, but we all need to face the facts: if you’re not in it to win it, then what’re you doing in business? There are areas you can compete with the bigger companies: if you’re a small business, focus on what you can offer your customers that no one else can — a personal touch, grassroots knowledge, that sort of thing. There’s never a situation where you can’t make yourself heard above the competitors. Yes, you might have to stand a little taller and work a little harder, but at the end of the day, isn’t that what this is all about in the first place?

9. Reasons beyond your controlcondolences

Obviously, there are elements that are beyond you control: your customers are immortal, and they’ve got minds of their own. They might move away, change their lifestyles… it’s a little hard to get customers to come back to your “Amazing Steak House” if they’ve become vegetarian for example. That’s something you’ve got no control over. What you can control is how you deal with these losses.

Take the Steak House example, maybe you need to look at some vegetarian options — vegetarians still have omnivorous friends, and everyone enjoys eating out. One of your customers leaving town? Express your regrets. Someone died? Offer condolences, send a card, flowers, digital if you don’t know their address. The point is to remind the community that you’re not just a service or product provider, you’re part of the community and you’re interested in its well-being.

Your customers may be leaving you for only one of those reasons, or for several. The trick is finding out which, and quickly: you don’t want to start at the bottom of the ladder again.

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“Why Choose Us?”: One Question Companies Need to Answer

“Choose us!” so many companies tell us, and there’s usually a reason why we listen; or why we don’t.  Last week, I was hunting for stationery. This isn’t far out of my normal routine: I like stationery, but I needed something specific. In Kuala Lumpur, there are plenty of places to look, but I had limited time and did’t want to get stuck in traffic for the rest of the afternoon.

My first thought when I think ‘stationery’ is ‘bookshop’. That might just be the way I’m wired — predisposed towards any excuse to visit a bookshop — or it might have something to do with major bookshop chains in KL stocking stationery.

Also read this article for more information: How To Improve Customer Experience

My second thought was, ‘which bookshop’? There are several to choose from in the KLCC area, but my mind flew to my favorite: Kinokuniya. Now I could wax lexical about this bookshop, but I’ll spare you the reading and simply say — the staff are always lovely and helpful, their collection is good, and they tend to have what I need when I need it. Plus they’re reliable, and the products are always good quality.

When we’re looking for a service or a product we inevitably draw conclusions from things we hear from others, read on the Internet, and experience. We end up asking the question:

  • Why this brand?
  • Why this company?
  • Why this product?
  • Why this service?

The real question is a matter of trust:

Do I trust this brand/company/product/service?

Companies and their products/services have to earn trust gradually — and they do it by answering the question we ask ourselves before we buy their products or services: why choose us?

So my question? Why Kinokuniya? The quality of their customer service and their products.

My trust in this brand didn’t happen overnight; it started more than a decade ago when I discovered the store by accident in the Queen Victoria Shopping Mall in Sydney, Australia while on holiday. That day, seeing their collection, and experiencing their great customer service, they began to earn my trust and win me over — now, I consider myself a lifetime customer.

That’s not to say that we can’t fall in love with a brand or product the first time we see it; we can become totally enamored of a service after using it the first time. Some of us may not even be able to answer the ‘why’, but something made us listen when the brand said ‘choose us!’

Why do I prefer PC over Mac, for example — for what I do, I really should be using Macs, but I don’t.

Why Star Trek instead of Star Wars? Or vice versa. I’m sure wars have started for uttering that question out loud.

Of course, what it comes down to is preference and experience. I prefer PCs because I’m used to them and because my experiences with them have been — largely — positive, whereas my experience with Macs is limited and — more or less — littered with frustration (probably because I’m biased towards PCs). I readily accept that both have their pros, but I stubbornly prefer PCs.

And I’m not going to answer the Star Trek vs Star Wars question.

Trust is based on experience: if a company/brand has delivered only positive experiences then the trust level grows. This goes for both products and services — and of course, above and beyond everything: the level of customer service experience.

Let’s admit it: we’re more likely to recommend a product if the sales consultant who sold it to us was smiling and helpful. Similarly, we’re likely to dump a company entirely — and badmouth them on social media! — if we called in and received bad customer service, regardless of the quality of the product or service!

Trust: it’s hard as hell to earn, and easy as pie to break.

It’s not our job to give a company our trust, they’ve got to earn it. They’ve got to answer the question: Why choose us? 

For example, if I were trying to convince you to hire AQ Services to help you improve on your customer service experience, I’d say something like:

“We have helped scores of brands improve their front lines across a variety of industries, from the automotive to the retail and hospitality sectors. With more than 15 years of experience in mystery shopping and audits, we have the best tools in the trade to help you improve your business. Why AQ? Because your passion is our passion.”

In fact, I’ve used exactly that for our latest flyers.

In answering the ‘why choose us’, I’ve been honest about what we’re about and the reason why we believe you should choose our service above all of our competitors. I’ve offered you with our big selling points: our 15 years of experience, the industries we’ve helped, our mystery shopping and mystery audit specialty, and — perhaps most importantly — the punchline.

This piece isn’t trying to get you to give me your trust off the bat, it’s about inviting you to let us earn it.

All luxury brands try to answer the ‘why choose us?’ question at some point. KLM answers it by explaining itself here. Companies like the Body Shop have enough of a reputation to get away with not pushing their point too far, and let their history do the talking for them. Other brands try to answer with their entire personality. A good example of this is the Jack Daniel’s website.

If you look closely at any company you’ll find that they’re addressing the ‘why choose us?’ question at every opportunity. It’s what their marketing teams are all about:

  • Why our brand?
  • Why our company?
  • Why our product?
  • Why our service?

Why choose us? Because we’re the best.

The trick is for us, as the customers, to make up our own minds about who we really believe.

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Marketing to the Millennial Generation: A New Customer Experience

This is the age of the Millennial.

Born between 1980 and mid-2000s, Millennials are an ever growing presence in society, especially in the workforce. With the first wave of this generation now in their early to mid-thirties, they are a section of the demographic that will not be ignored. According to Forbes, Millennials in the United States alone make up a fourth of the population and have around $200 billion in annual buying power. Hubspot calls them the ‘most lucrative market’; the short version is: if you’re not focussed on the Millennial Generation then you’re going to get left behind.

The world is moving a lot faster than it was twenty years ago; there’s no escaping the connectivity we enjoy (or hate) these days. With social media platforms keeping everyone connected to everything all the time, and every new gadget being integrated into ‘the Cloud’, Millennials maintain connections in a way that we’ve never seen before. It’s become a way of life.

A White House report actually sites a source saying that “Millennials are more connected to technology than previous generations and a quarter of Millennials believe that their relationship to technology is what makes their generation unique.”

How does this affect businesses? Well, for starters, outbound and interruptive marketing tactics are out: this generation wants to be connected to their brands in a way that allows them to decide for themselves just how trustworthy a product or company may be.

Think about this for a moment.

A survey conducted in 2014 suggests that Millennials actually distrust marketing and advertising campaigns and are more likely to trust the word of information from social media and their closest friends. This fact indicates that we, as businesses looking to tap into this market, need to reexamine how we market ourselves and our products.

We need to move fast. We need to get onboard with the Millennial way of life and join in. This means byte-size chunks of information that we can “swipe” in and out of our lives: no more long emails! It also means changing your customer service approach from a human-centric one to a hybridization with technology.

With the advent of technology, marketing – and sales! – need to adapt. Marketing and sales representatives now play a crucial role in customer service relations. More often than not, the one in charge of social media will be answering many customer service questions. The digital customer service element is becoming more and more prominent. Millennials are more likely to use technology to do product or brand research, ask questions, and spread the word (good or bad!) than they are to come into a store to do so in person.

Does this mean we should abandon our sales consultants on the floor? Absolutely not. What about retraining our social media management team to be better more customer service orientated? Well, that’s not a bad idea regardless. In fact, your entire team should know how to deal with your customers. This is a customer-centric world now, with the Millennials at the heart of it!

The important thing to understand here is that Millennials have different expectations in terms of customer service. The rule of thumb when it comes to marketing (and selling) to Millennials:

    1. They don’t like waiting days for a response.
    2. If your content isn’t authentic, they’ll walk.
    3. They will Google your product and brand before they make a decision.
    4. They want an interpersonal connection with your company/product/brand.
    5. Once you’ve earned their loyalty, they’re likely to stay with you.

(Forbes)

In conclusion, we’re going to need a multichannel approach to deliver a great customer service experience. Your front line is no longer just the sales consultants on the floor, or the receptionists at the desk, it’s also the people sitting behind your social media platforms generating content and allowing for Millennials to connect to your brand on a personal level.

Further reading:

Utilizing Social Media as Part of Millennial Decision Making Process, Leah Swartz, Millennial Marketing

All Grown Up and Here to Stay: The Next Generation and the Small Screen Valentina Perez, Harvard Political Review

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