The "Truth" Is Out There

I hope that every business knows that the bar has been raised.

It used to be that if you had a dissatisfied customer they would tell ten people. With Web 2.0 tools, they can now tell ten thousand. Google shows 13,700 hits for the phrase "Best Buy sucks".

In my previous post, I complained about Best Buy's warranty return process. Just for fun, this morning I tried a search on Technorati. Here's what I found.

Companies had best be warned to pay attention to their process and performance more than ever. Because it's no longer possible to "control the message" or "contain the crisis", once it's out in the web world.

If you haven't yet aligned yourself around customer focus or choose to proactively address service or product issues, it'll be done for you.

And not in a way you'll like.

Your strategy will have to be better than buying up all the "yourcompaysucks.com" domains. You may actually have to search out these people, examine your processes, critique your staff.

Sometimes you'll have to "fire a customer".

Regardless, now would be a very good time to sit down and decide whether you need someone trolling the web, searching for naysayers - to ferret out the unsatisfied and proactively address their concerns.

Because you don't want your reputation to be placed in the hands of others.

1 Button: Voice of the Customer

Has your company talked about "the voice of the customer"? You know, a conversation which starts with the realization that you have no idea what your customers are saying about you, your products or your service?

It usually starts in the Marketing department, right after the CEO demands that the company try to attract more of your customers' share of wallet.

"Maybe it's time we listened to the voice of the customer!"

The outside agency is hired, the surveys and interviews begin, are analyzed and then presented back to your company. Once again, you've delegated customer relations to an outside agency. It's seen as a project, not a process.

Maybe it's time you saved the tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars and installed something on your website to do the same thing.

It's called a FEEDBACK button.

This function would allow customers (or prospects) to suggest product or service improvements, compliment or berate you. It would give your customers a direct communication channel - so you could hear the voice of the customer - in real time, everyday.

Brave companies make the process transparent, allowing visitors to see others' comments and your responses.

But that's not the way we like to work. In fact big business goes out of its way to setup customer service from an internal point of view, not the customer's POV. That's why we hide behind complicated voicemail menus, almost never reaching a human. That's why we don't offer FEEDBACK buttons.... because responding to customers would be sooooo inconvenient and time consuming.

Instead of spending several hundred thousand dollars every few years on Voice of the Customer projects, just hire a couple of extremely friendly (and tenacious) interns to forward, follow-up and respond to the customer email you get from your new FEEDBACK button.

And you'll get to hear the voice of the customer everyday.

And you'll likely earn the extra share of wallet.