It’s holiday time, and many of us are scouring the mall, flipping catalog pages, or browsing the web. Last night I wanted to purchase a digital picture frame for someone on my holiday list, and the awesome marketing impact of the web hit home once again. I realized I don’t shop, and my guess is many other people don’t shop the way they did in the past, and it is because of the great voice the consumer has on-line.
I had a specific frame in mind, so before doing anything, I went to Google, and typed in the name of the frame and the word “review.” Up popped page after page of both professional and user reviews. In fact, the product had been reviewed 52 times on Amazon, and it was not pretty. It did not take long for me to realize that frame was likely to be a dud. The user interface was clunky, and there were lots of defects. I proceeded to browse around until I found something that received good reviews.
Now I realize that a few people may be sour on a product, and give it a bad review, but when the reviews are overwhelmingly negative (with few positives in between), the product is not something I want to fork out my dollars for. The question as a marketer is how do you deal with the customer’s voice?
I was on a panel discussing social media recently when someone in the audience posed exactly this question. They were in the travel industry, and they wanted to know what to do when a bad review was written about their hotels. My answer is if you focus on the review, you are focused in the wrong place. The marketplace has changed. Information flow has been perfected, and focus needs to be on delighting and pleasing every customer, and encouraging them to go on-line and discuss their experience. Every company should always be looking for the point of customer delight., something that will make them stand out, and get the customer saying – “this company really gets it.”
In our business, we are always looking to do little things that may not get big notice, but in our mind, at the end of the day, when the customer looks back at the experience, they will feel that SubscriberMail did way more than send their email out. A simple example, voicemail – I hate it, and my guess is for the most part our customers do too. They want to talk to someone, or they would not be calling. A company rule is that if a phone rings, you answer it, it never goes into voicemail, a ringing phone is everyone's responsibility. Customers have told us they appreciate this about the way we do business with them.
Think about your business. What are you doing today that a customer will give you a five stars for? If you can’t think of what it might be, better get to work.
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