White Papers
What not to do during a recession. Do not follow the cost-cutting crowd (e.g. those who cut not only "corporate fat" but also "muscle"). Of course, now is the time to be frugal, but be frugal in areas that don't touch the customer.
The Platinum Rule builds on the Golden Rule by recognizing that we have very different preferences than those around us. Said more simply; people may not like what you like - give them what they like, not what you like.
Is customer service becoming extinct? Have we "hunted" it to extinction? Will an economic downturn be the last straw? Can it recover from the endangered species list? Who or what will make that decision?
Have you heard the saying, "Don't sweat the small stuff?" I don't know who the original author was, but I'd be willing to bet you two things…
1. They didn't die of a Type-A heart attack, and also,
2. They didn't succeed in the service industry.
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?
Our approach at Mindshare Technologies is built on two very simple axioms of business. Literally thousands of books and research projects have explored the direct correlation between "Satisfaction," "Loyalty," and "Profits."
Enterprise Feedback Management is the process of systematically collecting, analyzing, consolidating, and then using all sources of feedback to improve your business and your overall profitability.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and web blogs are just a few Internet services that make up the new growing digital world called social media (SM). Many companies have seen the influence these new sites can have on their organizations for both good and bad. Mindshare advises all companies to ask themselves, "How can we tap into the power of this new method of communication to improve our business and the experiences we are providing for our customers?"
If you're not collecting immediate feedback from customers about their service experience with you, then you are already behind. Customers no longer have to accept what you package up and give to them – there are too many other competitive choices.
We've all heard someone totally upset over a bad experience with a phone call to a call center. At some point, we've each probably felt that way ourselves. It may be wait times that are too long, poorly recorded messages, or an agent who just doesn't communicate well - everyone seems to have a bad story and most don't seem to mind sharing those stories with others.
Customer service means being aware of needs, problems, fears and aspirations. Numerous studies have shown that the cost to acquire a customer is seven to ten times the amount of retaining an existing customer. And according to The Harvard School of Business, even a 5 percent improvement in customer retention can result in up to a 85 percent increase in profitability.
Let your customers provide real-time feedback, specific to each service employee, as close to the service experience as possible. In this way, you'll be presenting the literal voice of the customer to the employee, and the suggestions for improvement will be direct, applicable, and devoid of the inherent bias that is present in all employee-supervisor relationships.
People have an innate need to connect to each other. It's what drives us to be close to our families and friends. For some, this desire includes the businesses with whom they commonly associate. It's likely that your regular customers see your business as a friend and as part of the community, even though you may be one of hundreds of franchises.
We all like positive feedback. It's natural to feel good when someone gives you a pat on the back.
But it's how you choose to react to negative feedback is the key. Do you shrug it off and chalk it up to "just one customer" who won't come back? Or do you see an opportunity?
But it's how you choose to react to negative feedback is the key. Do you shrug it off and chalk it up to "just one customer" who won't come back? Or do you see an opportunity?
Henry Ford was on to something when he said "A business absolutely devoted to Customer Service Excellence will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large."
Research & Other
Utilizing Customer Voices to Accentuate Marketing
Much of the hype around the NPS scoring method is attributable to Fred Reichheld's book titled "The Ultimate Question" where Professor Reichheld presents the Net Promoter Scoring method as the single performance metric to understanding customers and predicting financial success.
But when we tried to use Reichheld's Ultimate Question in practice – we discovered its major utility flaw… a lack of actionable information that our clients can actually use to improve their business.
But when we tried to use Reichheld's Ultimate Question in practice – we discovered its major utility flaw… a lack of actionable information that our clients can actually use to improve their business.
How can you make certain you know what your customers are really experiencing? You have to ask using real-time surveys. It’s really that simple.
The "balanced scorecard," formalized by Kaplan and Norton in 1992, is a simple concept (executed in many different ways) that has at its core the goal to use a balanced set of metrics to measure the health of a business. In practicality, this means expanding management's view beyond the financial metrics and adding other metrics to balance out the equation.
How do those of us who love our customers and want to know what they're thinking find out without a phone call? We don't. In fact, some of us believe we never should have called them in the first place. The better solution is… (drum roll please)… to let them call us. That's right. Let the customer volunteer to call us on the phone and choose to share their thoughts and feelings with us.
Collecting surveys is easy. It's what you do with the collected date that's difficult. But at Mindshare, that's our core competency. .
