On this blog, I feature companies that either have good or bad customer service and readers would leave their feedback. Some share their good customer experience, others their bad customer experience.

There are times that only one customer would share a negative feedback about a service, a product, or a company. Would one customer negative feedback matter to a company? Or would a company be content with one positive customer feedback?

Normally, we don’t listen to one person’s feedback as we are used to listening to the majority, and base our decisions on what the majority says. However, times have changed. With the onset of social media, Web 2.0, a single voice can influence the many voices out there.

So I believe that in this time and age, a single voice matters. A company who is serious in getting their business  ahead should not be too complacent. A customer feedback, whether good or bad, should matter.

In fact, in the call center industry, one negative call center experience turns off 68 percent of customers. That is the observation of David Sims, which he shared on TMC.net.

Sims based his observation on the study of Teleperformance that premises on: “a single negative experience with a customer call center would likely cause 68 percent of the respondents to take their business elsewhere.”

The results of the customer care survey, Teleperformance officials said, show that the quality of experience with a company’s customer contact center determines consumer sentiment and brand loyalty.

Survey results also revealed consumers expect excellent service in return for brand loyalty, finding that 87 percent of people felt they had a right to a better contact center experience if they regularly spend money with a company or stay loyal to a brand.

Continue reading…

More and more companies are now seeing the value of joining Twitter. The latest to do so is Microsoft. It’s Customer Service arm joins twitter.

I agree with the article on ghacks.net. Twitter may not be a good venue to share all the technical stuff, but it’s a good way to reach and help customers promptly. Read more…

For me, I’m happy that companies are now making themselves closer to their customers. Way to go, Web 2.0!

There’s a saying that goes, “No man is an island.” Like man, companies can benefit more if they stand apart from its peers or competitors. A company cannot exist in a vacuum. That is why there are such terms as Best Practices and benchmarking.

With the onset of Web 2.0, communities have become a new way to know and gather information about your industry, and from your customers.

Natalie Petouhoff, senior analyst at Forrester, identified seven key benefits that companies get if they use customer service communities. These are:

1. Reduction in agent-assisted interactions
2. Reduction in agent-assisted email
3. Increase in first-contact resolution
4. Increase in agent productivity
5. Increase in product ideation
6. Boost in relevant Web-site content and reduced search-engine optimization costs
7. Improved customer retention and customer lifetime value

Read more…

What is good about these customer service communities, too, is that companies can get real-time data instantly.  Thus, they can also address issues in a timely manner.

Do you have a customer service community? Or have you joined a customer service community? How is it going so far?

A whitepaper published by the Association of Support Professionals assembled a series of short essays by support experts and in-the-trenches practitioners on the general theme of how to achieve a genuine Wow! experience in support delivery.

• Over achieve
• Anticipate
• Provide great people, great support
• Utilize the Web 2.0 era
• Be speed demons
• Meet and exceed expectations
• Know the Wow and Ow experience
• Be adaptive and empowering
• Be efficient and consistent
• Eliminate “Dumb Contacts”

Read more about each element.

Here’s another hot serving of CustServ roundup. Read and learn about customer service and customer experiences.

Andy’s Goode Life Blog shares an insightful post on branding and marketing. How to promote your business and please customers as well. Read on…

Diary of a Sewing Fanatic shows us how she got amazing fabric she bought online because she was helped by the company’s customer service hotline. Read on…

Javaline tells us how a bank can lose a customer. In her words, “We will not renew our business with them in the fall.” Read on…

Hutches Affiliate Marketing cites reasons why a homebased online business takes time to be successful. But the writer emphasizes that once you get visitors to your site, customer service will then have a major role. Read on…

Read Write Web shares some an interesting list of must haves for enterprises ad social media. With Web 2.0 and social media, customers increasingly expect to engage with brands instantaneously and satisfactorily. They no longer tolerate long delays in response, live operators buried down the 1-800-line call tree, or the ever-mounting irrelevant spam. Read on…

With the fast-changing Web 2.0 architecture and the pervasive nature of social technologies, this is a webinar that you shouldn’t miss.

May 28, 2009; 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. PDT

In this showcase event, four vendors will show you how the latest technologies can help you interact more effectively with customers to improve their experience while reducing your costs.

Speakers:
Chuck Van Court, Founder/CEO of Fuze Digital Solutions
Cindy Cruzado, Senior Director of Product Management, Parature
Patricia Guerrero, Solutions Consulting Manager, RightNow Technologies
Kyle Christensen, Senior Product Marketing Manager, SalesForce.com

Register now!

Zappos is one company that doesn’t rest on its laurels. As you know, Zappos has been getting “Wow!” reviews from its customers.

Yet, the company continues to find ways to please its customers more. The recent step is making use of Web 2.0. As Zappos’s director of user experience, Brian Kalma, put it:

“People now say ‘Wow’ about our customer service, but we want them to say ‘Wow’ about our website. We see an opportunity for customers to create their own experience on Zappos. When you come to our site, you can determine what you want to see.”

In this regard, customers can expect the following changes on Zappos’s website and in their experience:

• web pages that customers can customize to suit their own preferences
• be able to rearrange how they view content by category and style
• expansion beyond shoes to apparel and accessories
• incorporate more social networking into its product pages, making it easier for shoppers to share information with friends through networks like Twitter and Facebook

Read more…

Over at SellingPower, Barton Goldenberg, the world’s foremost CRM consultant, shares his thoughts on what trends would be driving the future of CRM.

SellingPower outlined eight trends from that interview:

1. Increased Consolidation and Mergers among CRM Vendors.
2. Increasing Focus on the SMB Segment.
3. Increased Use of Business Intelligence Analytical Tools.
4. Increased Number of Mobile, Real-time CRM Offerings.
5. Increased CRM Offerings via the SaaS Model.
6. Increased Availability of Sales Coaching Tools.
7. Increased Availability of Web 2.0 Functionality.
8. Increased Implementation of CRM Software by CRM Vendors.

Read more…

CRM’s future is certainly looking up. You are seeing a trend that is increasing in opportunities as well as benefits. If you are a company that is still thinking of applying CRM, you may want to call that consultant now and discuss the possibilities with him.

Yes, I believe so, too. An article on PCWorld says that a number of companies have adopted Twitter as a way to keep in touch with their customers.

Two companies are featured in that article: Comcast with its Twitter account, ComcastCares, and that of Southwest Airlines SouthwestAir. Both companies are said to be using their Twitter accounts quite well.

Comcast, for one, uses Twitter to get feedback from customers and answer them in a timely manner. In the same manner, Southwest Air, uses it to warn passenger-customers of bad weather or flight details.

It’s really good to know that there is a social network that customers can go to air their concerns. I hope Comcast and Southwest Air will maintain their Twitter service and make good of their promises.

Now as for Twitter, I have a few suggestions to keep your service strong and stable:

1. manage spammers well
2. invest in a bigger web space to prevent downtime and for a faster response
3. have more interactivity such as having emoticons

I hope more and more companies will see your value and use it to reach out to their customers as well.  After all, only those companies that make use of the Web 2.0 technology will get that better advantage.

Related posts:
Enhancing Customer Service Through Web 2.0
Customer Service in the Web 2.0 Era
Cyber Customer Service, a New Business Trend
Comcast and Twitter Give Good Customer Service Together

*Photo credit

When the information highway was put up sometime in the 80s, people thought it would make the world a smaller place. You can communicate with someone from across the globe instantly.

Little did they know that that was only the start of things to come. The Web, with its apps and widgets, and websites with their forums and blog components are now collectively known as Web 2.0. Slowly, many discerning companies are realizing the value of using the latest technology to strengthen their businesses, thereby enhancing customer service.

Akin Arikan of Unica Corp. shares some of his thoughts over at CustomerThink. He offered FreshDirect as the example of an online business, effective, relevant, prompt, yet lacking the Web 2.0 experience.

• Design the user-generated content strategy around recipes.
• Allow friends to see how their friends rate recipes.
• Display ads on the site to customers who are not yet participating.
• Run win-back emails to lapsed customers.
• Customers should be able to rate other reviewers.
• Work toward increasing participation.
• Measure whether it is working.

Read more…

In other words, encourage and invite your customers into your business. These are really good tips!

Related posts:
Customer Service in the Web 2.0 Era
Cyber Customer Service, a New Business Trend

*Photo credit