One bad customer experience + One Tweet = Disaster

Immediately after contact, many companies offer customer satisfaction surveys to their customers both online and by phone. For example, some surveys may ask, how well the representative handled the call or if the problem was resolved. Or, you may visit a website and within a few seconds a “pop up” window asks you to participate in an online survey. It asks you to rate the website, if navigation was easy, if the information was easy to locate and how quickly the information was found. Hospitals and healthcare facilities are offering patient surveys that inquire about patient wait times, how patients were greeted, how the doctors performed and the overall satisfaction of health care.

Before social media, most people called or wrote a company to share their frustration and dissatisfaction with a product or service. The chances that someone at the company called or wrote back were slim to none. Now, we have Facebook and Twitter – two powerful resources for immediately venting frustrations out to the universe. One tweet on Twitter could end up as a “Retweet” or be “Retweeted” five times or 100 times. It could then be “Liked” and “Shared” on Facebook. Before you know it, the information has gone viral and everyone is sharing how awful the company’s product or customer experience was.

The 2012 American Express® Global Customer Service Barometer was conducted in the U.S. and ten other countries, exploring consumer attitudes and preferences toward customer service.  The results found that the greatest amount of influence came from customers who have used social media for customer service.  They also indicated that those customers will tell approximately 53 people about a bad customer experience.  Forty-six percent were found to vent their frustration about a poor service experience.

In the 2012 survey, eight in ten (79%) Americans cited the following Big Four Service Gripes as their reason for switching brands:

1)      Rudeness:  An insensitive or unresponsive customer service representative – 33%

2)      Passing the Buck:  Being shuffled around with no resolution of the issue – 26%

3)      The Waiting Game:  Waiting too long to have an issue resolved – 10%

4)      Being Boomeranged:  Forced to continually follow up on an issue – 10%

In addition to having a well-trained customer service staff, someone should monitor customer satisfaction from a social media perspective. This person can watch satisfaction keywords on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as they are associated with the company name, product and brand.  If your company does not have a way to survey customers, this is a definite plus to consider for strategic planning, as surveys are a key ingredient to maintaining a positive brand.