Instant customer feedback

 Instant customer feedback

Instant customer service feedback is becoming more and more common. With the emergence of IoT (Internet of Things) and the billions of connected objects, this is contributing to the production of tons of data which will be extremely helpful to companies in assessing workload, staff performance and overall quality of service against a very large number of parameters such as time, throughput, seasonality and many others. More efforts however must be put in for the customers who give feedback. Some of them will press the green button and will never want to be contacted again. Others will press red, because they waited too long for example, but nothing else can be done. A large number though will leave the service area with frustration as their problem will not have been resolved. They hit red (sometimes so hard that the button collapses as shown on the above picture) and then what?! 

It is refreshing to see that the most modern feedback station include some interaction capabilities. Not everybody will want it as it will require time investment and patience by customers to give more detailed feedback and explain their grievance but at least not all the red-faced ones will be left slamming their hands into buttons and stamping the ground without an option to put things right.

Customer service: could your reputation go up in smoke?

Customer service reputation

One critical aspect of good customer service management is to be well aware of all the smoke signals sent by customer though all available channels including social media. If they are carefully monitored, captured and acted upon they can help create a positive feedback loop initiated by customers for the long term benefit of the company. A thorough handling of complaints for example is an easy to achieve step which could led you a long way towards achieving great results. On the other hand, if a company ignores them or thinks that all the customer feedback is unfair or inaccurate, it runs the risk of seeing a gradual deterioration of its trade and see its reputation go up in smoke.

Customer service: should you blow your own trumpet?

With the increasing emphasis on customer service, more and more companies claim that they offer a very good service, the very best service even. But is it wise to blow your own trumpet? Any service delivery hick-up could then lead to a severe back clash, with many customers using the high quality service expectations set by the company as an excuse for complaining, mocking the company and thereby damaging its reputation. An alternative course is to let the customers do the talking and use forums, social media platforms and the many other tools available to ensure that the positive feedback is noticed by many. So next time you are thinking about blowing your own trumpet, make sure you can last the distance.

Will your customer service leave a long lasting impression?

Giving a good impression is the ambition of many companies and it is fair to say that with the investment in technology, social media and training much progress is being achieved across the board. The basis for competition has shifted though and with no immediate prospect of a sustained improvement in the economic environment, customer service's importance keeps growing. At the end of the day it is no longer enough to assess if your service performance was good enough. The key measure will be to what extent your customer service has left a long lasting impression and as a result existing customers will become promoters of your products and services

Vultures are circling

Customer service circle

Achieving the best customer service levels and maintaining them is not a simple task. There are numerous metrics available, one of them being to measure customer satisfaction.
However, sometimes one finds that only customers who are very satisfied or customers who are very unhappy are prepared to give any form of feedback. But what is happening to the bulk of your customer base? A tell-tale sign might be when your competition starts talking about your company's poor performance. Indeed if your customer service delivery starts to deteriorate they might pick it up early by listening to stories told by new customers or employees who have decided to jump ship. At that stage your competitors' behaviour might become more competitive and, feeling that there is an opportunity, they might start circling around.

Encouraging customer service feedback through social media

Customer service feedback

After a long session of surf or for that matter a good or bad customer service occurence, most clients want to share what they experienced. The choice for companies is either to encourage this desire for communication so that it creates the right swell when positive or to put their head in the sand and hope the bad press goes away. Social media is making a two tier system more difficult to organise as the good mixes with the bad. To counter this, some companies are starting to set up dedicated accounts on Twitter for the problem areas such as delivery issues or service outage. But, is this segmentation approach going to succeed by containing the less positive stories or is it a serious threat to the holistic nature of social media?

Picture courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/beachball2007/ with our thanks