Carri Bugbee's List: Customer Service

• Seeking questions ask for product-specific use cases, and look for facts rather than opinions. “Does this hotel offer free wifi?”
• Our study found that most questions asked in automotive (81%), travel (79%), and consumer electronics (79%) were seeking questions.
• Samsung reps answer shopper questions on retailer sites under the moniker “Mr. Samsung,” and find that questions reveal large gaps in product information: 91% of the content they provide in answers is not already on the site.
• products with answers from official brand reps get 100% more questions than others – suggesting that, upon seeing that the brand is engaged, shoppers are more likely to ask questions (when they may’ve otherwise left the site to look elsewhere).
• After a consumer answers a question or submits a review, never leave them at a dead end; once someone contributes, they’re more likely to contribute again. Take them to a thank you page that includes a few more related, unanswered questions.

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• As more consumers turn to social media to solve customer service issues, their expectations are also rising, according to the survey. More than two-thirds of customers said they felt a telecommunications company should respond to questions on Twitter within three hours.

• According to the research, nearly a third of consumers said they would consider switching providers if their customer support requests through social media went unanswered. 
• he potential for a disgruntled customer to do major damage to the brand is exacerbated by the speed at which social media can spread the word of a bad brand experience worldwide.”

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• 80 percent of companies believe they deliver superior customer service, only 8 percent of customers agree,
• If a consumer contacts a business with a question or complaint, they typically expect a response within the hour. However, a Social Media Marketing University (SMMU) survey conducted in February shows that only 17 percent of businesses respond to customer complaints via social media within that hour time period and a surprising 21 percent of businesses never respond at all,
• 11 percent of brands have lost revenue, 15 percent have lost customers, and 26 percent have tarnished reputations, all because of negative comments on social media.

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• The survey identified numerous pain points and asked respondents to rate them on a 10-point scale, from “not annoying at all” to “tremendously irritating.” The top irritants in terms of the percentage “highly annoyed” by the practice, were:

   
   
  • Not getting a live person on the phone (75%);
   
  • Customer service being rude or condescending (75%);
   
  • Getting disconnected (74%);
   
  • Getting disconnected and being unable to reach the same rep again (71%); and
   
  • Being transferred to a representative who can’t help or is wrong (70%).
• customers who had returned to a company after a bad service experience were most likely to attribute their return to the company owning the failure and admitting its mistakes (29% share) and receiving a genuine, personalized apology (22% share).

• Changes such as these actually could make your loyal customers less loyal, said Susan Cantor, president of Red Peak Branding: "It erodes good will. If you make a change, it needs to be more in line with previous customer expectations."

   

• Katie Hooper, managing director and vice president of strategy at HZDG, agreed: "As soon as you say you're changing your loyalty program, an instant skepticism emerges. When you make the reward harder to realize, it feels like something that's just helping the companies improve their revenue streams. We recommend telling customers how this is going to improve their daily life. Before, Starbucks was doing it really well by rewarding them based on frequency. It said they valued the customer no matter what."

   

• 86 percent of marketers say they will own the end-to-end customer experience by 2020. To accomplish this, the report found that marketing leaders must have a single view of the customer that allows them to engage in two-way, personalized conversations across technologies, locations, and physical objects.
• Marketing complexity is growing: More than half of respondents believe the accelerating pace of technological change, mobile lifestyles, and an explosion of potential marketing channels via the Internet of Things (IoT) will change the field the most by 2020. This is driven by the billions of possible interactions these channels will create between a company and its customers.
• The top marketing channels are those that can be personalized: The top channels to the customer in 2020 will be social media (63% of respondents), the World Wide Web (53%), mobile apps (47%), and mobile web (46%).
• Marketing will no longer be just about acquisition: Loyalty and customer acquisition will still be the top two strategic programs for marketing organizations, but by 2020 they are separated from pioneering new and emerging technologies to engage audiences by only 1.6 percent.
• Raising customer loyalty and better brand perception are the two top benefits (both 53%) marketers aim to realize through a more positive customer experience.
• Innovation will focus on small screens and no screens: Mobile devices and networks (59%), personalization technologies (45%), and IoT (39%) are the three technology-specific trends that will have the biggest impact on marketing organizations by 2020.

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