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July 26, 2006
A Customer Experience Disconnect? 72% of Companies Surveyed Have No Clue…
A recent Bain and Co. survey of 362 firms in a variety of industries illustrated a classic customer experience disconnect. 80% of the firms surveyed believed that they delivered a “superior experience” to their customers. Yet when queried, only 8% of ALL customers felt that these companies delivered one.
So where do you fit? Is your company one of the 20% that KNOWS it isn’t delivering a superior experience? One of the 8% whose self-perceptions is congruent with your customers experience? Or are you among the deluded 72% that thinks things are going much better than they really are?
The companies that garnered praise from the 8% have these three things in common:
1. They design the right offers and experiences for the right customers – those customers who are both highly profitable, and who are most likely to be advocates.
2. They deliver on these propositions by focusing the entire company on them with an emphasis on cross-functional collaboration (for instance, marketing/sales, originations, underwriting, closing and servicing working together).
3. They develop the ability to please these customers again and again, by doing things like continually improving processes, internal training, and establish direct accountability for the customer experience.
It comes down to this: focus on understanding what’s important to your customers, what’s important to you as a business, and find ways to improve your performance in these areas. In brief, identify any gaps in your brand experience, and then close them.
Comments (0) | Posted by MCorp. at 2:48 PM | Permalink | TrackBack
July 10, 2006
The Impact of Bloggers on Corporate Reputation: Dell Hell Hits Home…
In a recent search for information on the influence of PR on brand perception for a client, we came across a report that’s potentially devastating for Texas-based computer maker Dell, along with any other company that delivers such abysmal customer service that someone feels compelled to Blog about it. It should also make the rest of us sit up and take notice. As a result of our insights on the power of Blogs, we’ve already helped our client begin to analyze brand perception in some new and interesting ways.
Blogs are here to stay; Technorati now indexes 22 million of them. So how does Blogging affect brand attitudes and corporate communications? Either they’re a great new communications tool “Blogs Will Change Your Business” (Business Week 2nd May 2005) or they’re a first step to brand obscurity, with a stop on the lower levels of PR hell “Attack of the Blogs” (Forbes 14th November 2005).
With a nod towards the Forbes perspective, all we need to do is examine blogger Jeff Jarvis and his blogsite Buzzmachine. Jeff Jarvis had a faulty Dell laptop and a negative experience with Dell’s customer service. He blogged about this and brought the story into mainstream coverage from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times among others.
The report we came across is a study from the UK that examines whether Mr. Jarvis has had any impact on the public perception of Dell’s customer service. The short story? Don’t tick off a Blogger. “Dell Hell”– an expression coined by Jeff Jarvis – has become shorthand for the customer service issues he experienced.
By examining a metric called the “Issue Influence Index”, the study finds that the Buzzmachine Blog is twice as authoritative as Dell on the issue of Dell’s poor customer service.
As a marketer, I cringe to think of the time, energy and money that Dell’s spending every day to counter this. The study noted above also tracks the negative effect of this news on Dell’s share price. Our own quick exercise proves out at least some of this: “Dell Hell” appears in Google 115,000 times; “Dell Customer Service” only 100,000. The two together? 27,500 results. Ouch! Further, the study finds that the influence of online media sources like Slate and Yahoo! also handily beat Dell’s efforts to control the negative flood.
Our advice? Listen and learn; most customers are pretty good at understanding whether or not you really care. If your organization has a handle on the hard and soft drivers of customer loyalty, you’ll know how to treat your customers in a way that both satisfies their needs and drives them closer to your organization. And if you do this, you’ll have much greater latitude when the inevitable mistakes occur.
Comments (0) | Posted by MCorp. at 5:02 PM | Permalink | TrackBack