For years, Mindshare Technologies has actively supported the efforts of the Ouelessebougou Alliance. The purpose of the alliance is to provide the citizens of Ouelessebougou (a group of villages in Mali, West Africa) with sustainable solutions to help fulfill their most crucial needs. The Alliance expects to remain in the region until the villages are well on their way to becoming self-sustaining.

Click on the video below to see how important the Ouelessebougou Alliance is to Mindshare’s president, Richard Hanks.

Photo courtesy of Marcus Vegas

This past weekend I stopped by a pizza store up the street to pick up a pizza for my family. My expectation was to quickly grab a pizza as my wife and I were late for an appointment. The goal was to get in and out as quickly as possible. All I cared about was how efficiently they would handle my purchase, so I could get on my way. To my surprise, I left the store with a completely different experience than I was expecting.

When I entered the store, I was greeted by an enthusiastic employee at the register. He quickly grabbed a pizza they were promoting and offered me a free sample. He did so with lots of energy and excitement about this great new pizza. How could I say “No,” even though I’m not a big pizza fan myself? I only tried it because the employee was so enthused about it.

I then proceeded to place my order. To my surprise, even though I did not order the promotional pizza, this employee continued to process my order with a huge, friendly smile on his face. He appeared happy to be there and his genuine smile made me feel as though he appreciated my business. I walked out of the store having forgotten about how quickly I needed the pizza, and instead reflected on the positive experience that I had because of a smile. In fact, I probably walked out with a smile on my face also.

In today’s world of convenience, where so much time and attention is given to how easily and quickly we can get what we need, we must be careful to not let it come at the expense of a smile. The experiences that we remember most in life are our interactions with people. The impressions that we leave are what determine how much time we want to spend with each other. In the world of business, this means a lot. Having read or listened to many customer comments, I can assure you that I’m not alone in appreciating a friendly smile. Here are just a few I have recently observed:

“…The staff all had smiles, and it showed in their service.”

“I want to commend the manager and all servers for their friendly welcome, always with a smile. Excellent service from all of the staff. We love it there and continue to always go back.”

“The waitress was very friendly and smiled a lot. Made us feel very comfortable. “

“Service was speedy; clerks were patient with my decision at the drive-by menu. Handed my food with a smile, and that made my evening!”

“The manager on duty was exceptional with the service she provided. She presented a great welcoming smile and maintained it throughout our transaction. Hope she is there on my next visit.”

“The girl at the window was very polite and smiled all the time. Great service and food.”

“Our waitress saw to our every need with a smile on her face.”

And many, many more…

In this fast-paced world of convenience and quick service, we must be careful not to lose sight of what keeps our customers coming back. When it comes time to decide between visiting one store over another, I will always choose the store where I feel welcome and appreciated… and as I was reminded this weekend, it all starts with a smile!

Image Courtesy of Old School Tattoos

Loyalty.  What creates it?  How can you sustain it?  Is there a ‘secret sauce’ that helps you transform a run-of-the-mill customer into a wildly enthusiastic devotee?  What motivates a consumer to drive past 25 restaurants to get to their favorite one?  Why does every piece of clothing I’m wearing have a Nordstrom label?  What in the world causes Harley Davidson loyalists to love a brand name so much that they will tattoo it on their body?

This awesome white paper features 10 key tactics to turn customers into brand evangelists.

Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed to get updated on more customer service tips, tools and best practices!

Image courtesy of quinn.anaya

There are four general purposes for your company to be gathering customer feedback.

1. Strategic Information at the Executive Level
2. Operations Improvement
3. Reward Employee Success
4. Save Dissatisfied Customers

Strategic Information at the Executive Level
Gathering customer feedback is key when attempting to understand what your customers are thinking at any given moment. Seeing your business through the eyes of customers can help improve employee training, hiring processes, future product offerings, and so much more.

Collecting as much customer feedback data as possible will help you make the right decisions to keep your business flourishing, and your customers pleased.

Operations Improvement
Customer feedback can be used to improve your business in ways that will have the most significant impact on the bottom line. Customers will identify key drivers that are in need of improvement throughout your company.

As you make appropriate adjustments, your customers’ overall satisfaction and loyalty will increase along with revenues.

Reward Employee Success
After conducting over 50 million surveys, (over one billion questions answered), a significant trend stands out: The vast majority of feedback given to companies from customers is positive, not negative. There is a huge opportunity to pass that praise along to employees.

When employees are receiving praise, job satisfaction and performance both increase. This, in turn, leads to more satisfied customers.

Save Dissatisfied Customers
Collecting feedback is vital to help identify individual service lapses and unhappy customers. For larger companies, the primary target for recovering customers lies at the store level. The executive team doesn’t have the time or means to reach out and satisfy customers at the local level. That power lies in the hands of individual unit managers.

The faster you can single out and resolve negative experiences, the more likely you are to save valued customers, and build loyalty!

If your feedback isn’t reported in real time, or sent directly to the people who can take immediate action immediately, your ability to promptly identify and resolve issues is instantly diminished.

Summary
Although gathering customer feedback for your business is incredibly valuable to employees at the store level and executives alike, many companies do not make the best use of their feedback. Too many companies focus solely on high-level statistics gathered to guide their business without reaching out to the individual customers… the lifeblood of the company.

I have heard many complaints from people who have taken customer feedback surveys, and been disappointed when a company did not reach out to them to resolve an issue. Following up with customers after a negative experience, or even a positive experience for that matter, is one of the most valuable ways to build lasting loyalty.

As one customer said, “If you’re not going to do what I tell you, I’m not going to tell you anymore.”

Are you maximizing the value of your feedback?

“Somehow we got the notion over the last few decades, that success is simply a function of beating the other guy. But this can’t be the only measure of success we use. What if the other guy is mediocre? Then we’re only better than the “bottom of the barrel.” What words do they put on your award for being mediocre?” (Richard Hanks, Delivering and Measuring Customer Service)

Is your goal to have the best service, product, or solution for your customers? Or, are you just trying to beat the other guys?

(Click image to enlarge.)

Image courtesy of Norm Feuti

Customer Service Award for Most Consistent Rating Across the Enterprise

Papa Murphy’s International (Winner)
One of the biggest challenges of growing a brand is maintaining a consistent customer experience to protect and promote brand image.

When Mindshare began its relationship with Papa Murphy’s International in 2006, the take ‘n’ bake pizza chain had about 900 locations.  Currently, Papa Murphy’s has over 1,200 locations. Even with all of this growth, Papa Murphy’s CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) variation between stores remains less than 5 points. This means that the difference in experience between locations is very minimal, making the Papa Murphy’s customer experience consistently excellent across the board.

Papa Murphy’s uses Top Box scoring to create greater dispersion of results, helping them identify training, improvement, and best practices.

Pier 1 Imports (Honorable Mention)
Pier 1 Imports has closed the variation gap in their CSI from 33 points to 12 points. When Pier 1 began using Mindshare, the variation between their best performing and lowest performing stores was 33 points. By relentlessly focusing on customer feedback, they were able to narrow this gap by 21 points in one quarter!

Mindshare’s EFM solution has enabled Pier 1 Imports to set a gold standard for the customer experience – then measure, compare, and improve the standard at each of their locations.

Customer Service Award for Greatest Improvement Using Customer Feedback

Bridgestone Retail Operations, LLC (Winner)
Through Mindshare’s customer feedback tools, Firestone has learned that “keeping customers informed on repairs” builds customer loyalty more than other, more traditional measures.  A few months ago, this was also their lowest performing service metric. With Firestone’s intense focus and training, keeping customers informed has improved across the entire organization (over 2,100 locations).

When the leadership at one of Firestone’s lower-performing divisions embraced and promoted the Mindshare EFM program, survey volume doubled, scores increased over 4 points, and alerts were reduced by 2 points, all over a four month period.

Tony Roma’s (Honorable Mention)
Tony Roma’s is known for outstanding ribs.  They learned, through feedback from their guests, that the quality of the meal is a major key driver of their guests’ loyalty.  Using their guest feedback, they improved the consistency of their meal quality, more specifically their ribs.  The Tony Roma’s leadership team immediately created a new training program designed to improve consistency in cooking procedures, and rolled it out to the field.

Tony Roma’s achieved a significant improvement in their quests’ perception of meal quality (approximately 10 points) and saw a significant improvement by underperforming restaurants.  This improvement has provided a more consistent meal quality throughout the restaurant chain, and raised overall guest loyalty.

Enterprise Feedback Management Award for Best Incorporation of Enterprise Feedback Management Principles

Comcast (Winner)
Two years ago, Comcast recognized a significant need to improve their customers’ experience. At that time, the Southern Division of Comcast began using Mindshare.  Since then, the use of EFM has expanded rapidly across all divisions. Comcast currently gathers customer feedback from a wide variety of touch points including: Tech Operations, Call Center Care, Retention and Disconnect, Lobby, and Self Install.

Comcast has increased the value of their customer feedback by using web services to integrate the feedback data with relevant customer information from other sources. This has helped them identify and fix trends in their business that could lead to service lapses and decreased satisfaction.

Hertz (Honorable Mention)
Hertz receives customer and employee feedback from multiple touch points within its business, including: Reservations, Customer Services, Car Rental, Car Share, Rent2Buy, Equipment Rental, as well various Employee and Human Resource Surveys.  Hertz also integrates feedback data with transactional information, appending further rental details to Mindshare surveys after receipt.  This integration allows for unrivaled reporting options and drives significant advances in operational improvement at Hertz.  Hertz also employs Mindshare’s proprietary text analytics solution, Reveal™, to unlock the valuable insights found within their open-ended customer comments.

Enterprise Feedback Management Award for Most Engaged In The EFM Program: Executive Level

Name withheld for competitive reasons. (Winner)

The Melting Pot (Honorable Mention)
Mike Lester (VP, Restaurant Operations), has been involved in expanding the Melting Pot EFM program by adding integration of web-site feedback into Mindshare’s system, and expanding the use of Inbox and Tagging features. He has also championed using Mindshare to test all new menu items in corporate stores prior to rolling them out to franchise locations.

Enterprise Feedback Management Award for Most Engaged In The EFM Program: Store/Unit/Team Level

Express (Winner)
Express has placed high importance on empowering managers at the store level to use the feedback they obtain through Mindshare to learn and improve team morale. Express goes out of their way to highlight to their employees the positive feedback they are receiving from customers. Management is consistently posting feedback comments and results for each store on a bulletin board dedicated to customer feedback.  Express uses EFM to improve operations, but more importantly, to celebrate and encourage the positive efforts of their staff.

The Maids (Honorable Mention)
Even though The Maids has been using Mindshare for less than a year, they have gained a very high level of field engagement in the program.

The Maids display their customer feedback results prominently in each office. They encourage their employees by bonusing them on most improved scores and survey volume.  The Maids’ customer feedback results are also included as part of their quarterly reviews, making customer feedback an indispensable part of the business.

Employee Satisfaction Award for Most Engaged in Employee Satisfaction

Asurion (Winner)
Asurion has been conducting multiple, ongoing employee surveys for four years with Mindshare.  Currently, Asurion stages multiple employee surveys throughout the year. Asurion collects employee feedback, uses it in their training materials, and then measures improvements in employee satisfaction and efficiency.

Asurion’s attention to employees is what helps them keep their teams happy, and working hard, and their customers loyal.

Dave & Buster’s (Honorable Mention)
Dave &a Buster’s has been conducting annual employee surveys with Mindshare since 2008.  Mindshare’s real-time feedback results have provided Dave & Buster’s with the ability to move quickly in order to learn about their employees and create programs that improve employee engagement. Their front-line employees have the most direct contact with customers, and as such, have incredible ideas regarding where to make improvements, and how to maintain employee morale. This employee engagement translates into loyal customers, with customer satisfaction increasing 34% during the same time frame.

“We’re a service company that just happens to sell shoes.” (Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos)

This statement says volumes about why the Zappos brand has become synonymous with customer service. Hsieh says that the main focus of Zappos is not to sell shoes to make a profit, but to make every experience with a customer a “WOW” experience.

I recently read Delivering Happiness, A Path To Profits, Passion, And Purpose by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos (the largest shoe store on the web).  This book provides incredible insight on why Zappos is such a successful service-oriented company.

The success of Zappos can be attributed, in large part, to the unique service-oriented culture lived every day by the employees. Hsieh knows that a company that provides excellent service, and builds undying customer loyalty needs an incredible culture. That culture cannot be driven from the bottom up! Amazing company culture that breeds employee and customer satisfaction must be a decision made at the executive level, then, facilitated and encouraged throughout the company in its entirety.

Here’s an example given by Tony of how Zappos approaches leadership:

“The best leaders are those that lead by example and are both team followers as well as team leaders. We believe that in general, the best ideas and decisions are made from the bottom up, meaning by those on the front lines that are closest to the issues and/or the customers. The role of a manager is to remove obstacles and enable his/her direct reports to succeed. This means the best leaders are servant-leaders. They serve those they lead.”

Customers are yearning for, and seeking out transparency in companies they do business with. They crave human interaction, not scripted dialogue. They want to be treated as special guests, not as tally-marks on a revenue spreadsheet. They need to understand their importance to your business – that without them, you are nothing.

It is obvious that Zappos places a high value on enabling their employees to make customers happy. Leadership is encouraged to “remove obstacles” and “enable” employees to provide memorable service experiences that “WOW” their customers.

“…Remember that at the end of the day it’s not what you say or what you do, but how you make people feel that matters most. In order for someone to feel good about a relationship, they must know that the other person truly cares about them, both personally and professionally.” (Tony Hsieh)

Read Delivering Happiness. It will transform and invigorate the way you approach your job, and your life.

(Zappos is a registered trademark of Zappos.com, Inc.)

Image courtesy of Batega

A few years ago I was remodeling our basement. Some demolition was required and not being experienced in remodeling projects, I was attacking the walls with a hammer and adrenalin. Needless to say, my progress was slow. Fortunately, my father-in-law was very experienced in construction. When I shared with him my progress, or lack thereof, he introduced me to the “sawsall,” a reciprocating saw that can quickly take down a wall and most anything else in its way. Wow! What a difference my new “sawsall” made. I finished the demolition in hours instead of days.

When it was time to do the finish work, I figured there must be a better way for cutting moldings than cutting them by hand with a saw and a mitre box. He introduced me to another power tool – the compound miter saw. My attitude completely changed. I went from hating the thought of having to cut another molding, to enjoying the next cut because it was so easy. Having the right tools made all the difference!

Empowering your managers on the front line with the right tools will help make them more effective in managing their teams. Teams that are led by effective managers deliver better service to your customers. Since your customers are the real “eyes” and “ears” on your front line, they are in the best position to tell you how you are doing. Turning customer experiences that happen every day on your front line into information that your managers can immediately act on is vital. Real-time customer feedback should be a valuable tool in your manager’s tool kit.

Here are a few tips on how to make customer feedback a more effective tool in the hands of your managers.

Attitude: “A complaint is a gift”
Be sure to cultivate in your customer feedback program the attitude of “A complaint is a gift.” Customer feedback is an opportunity to address something – good or bad. Since customer feedback makes us vulnerable as we open the door to criticism, make sure that your communication to the front line promotes the right attitude. Customer feedback must be seen as a friend…not an enemy.

Analysis: Analyze the information
Managers need to establish a routine for reviewing customer feedback. A good customer feedback program will call out service issues (alerts), customer comments, and trends. Taking the time to review this information is critical. Creating a structured process for using customer feedback, including a schedule of what to do daily, weekly, and monthly, will help everyone to understand the feedback and see the value of the information.

Accountability: Recognize and coach
Customer feedback is best utilized when managers use the customer comments to recognize and coach their teams. Recognizing an employee or a team for an exceptional act of service is the most effective way to reinforce desired service behaviors. Managers who do this regularly understand the value of customer feedback as a tool in building successful teams. Customers frequently provide excellent examples of the things they like and dislike. These examples are incredible resources for coaching your teams on the basics that bring customers back or turn them away. Remember to celebrate successes and use feedback to coach and train in every staff meeting.

Action: Do something!
As with any tool, if it sits on the shelf unused, it is of little value. However, a tool that is used regularly, and makes you more effective, becomes a critical resource to your success. Managers who use customer feedback actively to improve operational performance understand the value of this powerful tool. These managers use customer feedback to recover lost customers, to identify areas of focus, to develop action plans, to set goals, to engage employees, and to fix problems. For them, customer feedback has become an indispensable tool in their tool kit.

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There was a lot of talk at the recent Mindshare User Conference regarding Social Media. People want to know how to participate, or even control the Social Media buzz surrounding their brand. It’s obvious that Social Media is important, yet most companies don’t even know where to start.

This post is meant to provide a powerful tool to help you accomplish the first, and most basic, step to creating a successful Social Media presence.

Before jumping into the Social Media world and trying build fans and obtain followers, you must listen and understand what people are saying about you. Many brands spend huge amounts of resources every month on tools, programs, and employees in order to monitor what’s being said about them on the web.

Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to build your own, customizable (and free) listening tool that is comparable with some of the most powerful paid services. This tool, if used consistently, will help you keep a pulse on what’s being said about your brand or company on the web. (Click on any images to enlarge.)

1)      Set Up A Friendfeed account. This Friendfeed account will act as an aggregator for all of the following feeds and accounts that you will be setting up in the following steps.

• Go to the Friendfeed website
• Click “sign up” unless you already have an account. Then just sign in using the Username/Password fields.
• Click on “Settings”

• Check the “Private feed” box

• Click “Save changes”
• Click “Settings” again
• Click “Import a service”

• Click on “Custom RSS/Atom” under the “Miscellaneous” category

• Add your feed URL’s in the specified field, and click “Display entries as messages” and click “Import Custom RSS/Atom.”

2)      Set Up Google Alerts

• Go to the Google Alerts Page
• Enter the search terms you’d like to track (one word, or a phrase).
• Select “Everything” in the “Type:” menu.
• Select “Feed” in the “Deliver To:” dropdown menu.
• Click “Create Alert”

• Copy and paste RSS Feed URL into your Friendfeed account.
• Repeat for any/all other search terms you’d like to track.

3)      Set up alerts on Social Mention

• Visit Social Mention
• Enter the search terms you’d like to track.

• Let Social Mention search… it may take a while, so be patient.

• Click on the RSS Feed icon

• Copy and paste RSS Feed URL into your Friendfeed account.

4)      Set up alerts on Keotag

• Follow the same steps listed above for Social Mention

5)      Add your Friendfeed RSS Feed to your preferred RSS Feed reader, or just log into Friendfeed on a regular basis.

Use this tool consistently for a few minutes every day to monitor the pulse of your company brand. It will help you recognize what you’re doing well, what needs work, and even help you put out internet fires before they get out of hand.

Listening to the buzz surrounding your brand is just the first of many things you can do to build a strong Social Media presence. Future posts will cover other steps, tactics, tools, and principles that build upon the foundation of listening. Until then, go get started!

If there are any other free services that you would add to this list to make this monitoring tool more powerful or robust, please leave them in the comments below!

Image courtesy of webtreats

Many Social Media users talk about their experiences with businesses (both good and bad) on a regular basis.

Are these people using Social Media as a “virtual therapist,” or do they expect businesses to respond to their comments?

This question is important to consider, especially for those businesses looking to obtain actionable feedback via the web. There is also no simple answer.

To help better understand the how people are using Social Media to give customer feedback, we invite you to take the following 3 question survey.

Click Here To Take The Survey

We will  post the details as soon as they become available. Be sure to subscribe to our RSS Feed so you don’t miss it!