Happy Customers Tell 400 (with Blogs)
Those of you in customer service know that, historically, a happy customer tells 5 people, while an unhappy customer tells 100. While that was true in the past and likely remains true for verbal communication, Web 2.0 functionality is leveling the playing field. In particular, through Blogging your customers may tell the same number of people - whether they are happy or unhappy.A recent posting from one of the country's leading ITIL consultants rained down unsolicited praise for FedEx. Although the source was a personal blog, the estimated 400 member readership contained many IT consultants, contractors and industry professionals - all of whom rely upon carriers for their business.
Now I can hear the naysayers already: "one could complain just as quickly" - and you're right. That is precisely the beauty of this evolution in communication mediums. Like it or not, your customers will hear all the big customer service stories. It used to be that each bad incident was relatively self-contained. However, this is no longer the case.
Now, emotional (favorably or negatively) customers will log onto any of the growing number of vendor-neutral customer complaint boards, the Better Business Bureau, or industry discussion forums and distribute their thoughts. If customers Blog about it, you will see that incident quickly broadcast to hundreds of readers. The internet is undiscriminating and the communication is immediate. What are you doing to manage this environment? Are you:
- Monitoring relevant industry and consumer discussion boards?
- Surveying your largest customer's for preferred communication channels?
- Researching customer service incidents online for "vent-sessions"?
- Offering your customers a direct online forum through your own site?
- All of the above?
- Something else?
Labels: Blog, Management, Web 2.0
Quick Benefits of Enterprise Social Networking
I recently had someone challenge the benefits of social networking for the enterprise, suggesting there was no real value for such technology in the workplace. I came up with a quick list and decided to post it here:Examples of benefits to social networking in the workplace include:
- Collaboration: The more your employees can find out about each other, the quicker they can share ideas. For example, if you have a large number of staff, there is a great potential for duplicating research efforts. Through digital networking, it will be easier for your staff to self-identify complimentary projects and align their efforts.
- Innovation: Your staff may have a great deal of common interests outside the office that could transfer into a profitable new line of business. For example, perhaps you produce electronics and an office club forms around bicycling. The result may be the greatest electronic innovation for cyclists in generations, produced by your company and not the competition.
- Resource Identification: Content Management systems are great, but what if your staff does not use the right search term? Identifying experts within your company can be much easier, quicker and more cost effective through networking tools than traditional, structured, data hierarchies.
- Stronger Community: As the famous Gallup Poll pointed out, employees with friends at work are much happier and more productive. Social networking will empower your staff self-identify individuals with similar interests, resulting in larger and stronger community within the workplace.
- Increased Communication: Industry experts have predicted that social networking is much like email or the web itself - another evolution in communication mediums. As a result, it is not a question of whether to adapt social networking, but when. Mechanisms like chat and forum discussions further empower your staff to communicate more effectively and in a manner that is easy to capture and compile.
Labels: Collaboration, Innovation, Social Networking, Web 2.0
