Does your small business listen to customers' complaints? Do you have a way for customers to get in touch with kudos or complaints? According to Jeff Jarvis, learn how to love the customers who complain by learning how to listen to them. The first way small business should listen now is through online feedback.Most online enthusiasts know the online advocate Jeff Jarvis's Dell Hell story. Powerful blogger has hellish customer service experience and tells his story online. The world commiserates and the term Dell Hell becomes a metaphor for bad customer service. Cable companies and AOL have had their brands besmirched by bloggers telling their dramas in text, in photos and worse, by viral video. Your product may be the next one reviewed online.
If you think this is a challenge only for super-sized businesses, think again. Word-of-mouth is your friend for getting new customers and it's your worst enemy for losing them. Are you prepared to welcome and respond to online complaints from customers? If not, get on the train or be left behind.
There are free different online tools to help you listen to your customers.
- Blog – there are so many free blog platforms that rehashing them seems antiquated. Get a free one and practice. Just don't forget the small business blogging guidelines.
- Be Social – Hang out where your customers do, on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter (to name a few). Get a space and name it and then spend time there interacting with your customers.
- Feedback – at the least, add a contact form to your Web site. If you don't have one, get a free one (free might include advertising).
- Virtual Helpdesk – add a virtual helpdesk to your site. If your product requires support, use a system built to do that (not free but good) or take the step to open source helpdesk software here, here and here.
- Talk – get a free chat applet to let you converse online with customers. The easiest way is to use one hosted on another server. See a list of free chat applets here or here. Think about posting a time you'll be online and send email invitations to your customers for a customer chat.
Deal with customer complaints by making them part of your growth strategy. You can listen to and then resolve a complaint, but unless you fix the problem that caused it in the first place, you have no strategy except a mop and bucket.
When we first instituted our online help desk which was designed to track work, billing and ensure that customer problems were resolved (plus keep track of quote requests, the new business we wanted), our less-techie customers couldn't figure out how to register for free and open a support ticket. After internal incredulity (it seemed so simple to us!), we put a one-page step-by-step guide together to get even the least-geeky client using the system, which was our goal all along. We also provided everyone with a simple script to help customers over the phone. Their real, unvoiced complaint? We over-estimated our customers' ability to use the "easy" system. We could have trashed it and gone back to the old way – email. Instead, we used their complaints to solve the underlying problem and now 80% of our clients, and all new clients, are using the online tracking system.It is a far better business strategy that your customers complain to you (and you fix the problem) than if they start their own "your-product-sucks.com" site or tell well-read bloggers so they can tell the entire online world just how bad your customer service is. There's plenty of room in the comments for you to tell your worst - and your best - customer service experience. Admission is free.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-26-2008 @ 10:12AM
mxxcon said...
get your complaint/story to www.consumerist.com and get immediate internet wide attention and almost instantenious resolution to your issue.
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2-26-2008 @ 10:17AM
Todd said...
No mention of, or link to Get Satisfaction? WTF?
http://getsatisfaction.com/
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2-26-2008 @ 12:03PM
Sue Polinsky said...
The above two helpful links are places to register your complaint. The point - an important one for small business - is what to do on your own front to listen to customers and manage complaints so they don't go off-site and disparage your company worldwide. You WANT them to come to you (your small business) because they know you'll do something about it.
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2-26-2008 @ 12:42PM
Todd said...
Ms. Polinsky if there is a small business that thinks it can somehow stop people from staring "your company sucks" by offering stale FAQs, or creating a company myspace account they are beyond naive. ( or to be it more "troll-like" 2002 called and wants it approach to customer support back! )
I strongly suggested all review this slide show, which specifically address the dinosaur view of companies ingoing the resource that is their customer base providing each other support ( a la Get Satisfaction ):
http://www.slideshare.net/Thor/be-like-the-internet-8-steps-to-success-in-a-post-20-world
2-26-2008 @ 1:06PM
raymonda said...
Ms Polinssky highlights a vital function of Small Business client
response:feedback.Our firm makes a policy for our account
executives to maintain contact with a client until the lending
process has been completed to the client's satisfaction.During
the process itself,the a/e monitors the client's feedback to
ensure a smooth finish and upon completion holds a teleconference with the client to obtain referrals and suggestions from the client on how to improve the process
even further.So far our renewal rating is 90%.It must be
working!!
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2-26-2008 @ 1:46PM
Marc said...
Great article.
But a real leader in the space that might be able to help small companies is www.Measuredup.com
Your readers might want to try www.Measuredup.com a customer service review website where people share reviews with other users and with companies. Companies that are involved with and value customer service read Measuredup to keep up on what people are saying and to be able to improve customer service.
It is free and easy to use.
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2-26-2008 @ 3:24PM
Chelle Parmele said...
Here at Palo Alto Software we have a specific inbox and voicemail set up for people who call us with a complaint or dissatisfaction with any of our products.
The complaints are handled daily buy the customer care team and are monitored by the upper management staff as well as our development team. Major improvements to our products have resulted from some of these issues brought to us by our customers.
When complaints are aired out in the general public and not directed to us specifically, we try and engage in the forum and assist with the problem or issue. Thankfully, these kinds of things have been very small and we've been able to track and assist with most if not all of them successfully.
I agree with one of the comments here, sometimes the person in question is a troll or someone who just isn't satisfied no matter what help is offered. And quite honestly, these people tend to not be considered our customer. We want to work with customers who understand no one person, company or product is perfect 100% of the time, but we do the best we can and resolve as many issues as possible.
It's a company policy that I'm very proud of.
Super article, it sure got a group of us talking here at the office!
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2-26-2008 @ 3:49PM
tpp said...
I think this article misses the forest from the trees.
It's not about adding stuff to your website.
It's about making sure your customers can communicate with you. That includes being able to send feedback to you and you responding to it.
No amount of cool little techie tools are going to do you any good, if nobody at the company owns up to making sure customers are listened to.
If you have an email address on your website, answer the email you are getting through it. It constantly amazes me how few companies do.
Livechats, phone support and other tools like that are no good, if the person behind them is working from a script. I've been trying to get WDC to honor a warranty on one of their products for months now, but since the nature of my warranty request appears to be falling outside the realms of the scripts the customer service reps are equipped with, it's impossible to get anywhere with them.
It's not the tools. It's you.
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2-27-2008 @ 8:58PM
Sue Polinsky said...
As good timing would have it, read this article at MSNBC to see what happens when you don't provide a means for customers to complain - or if you don't do anything about their problems with your product:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23283402/
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3-02-2008 @ 10:25AM
Dan said...
You forgot the most important part. The seller must speak the buyer's language. I'm not talking about Spanish either. Many companies do that well. I'm talking about outsourcing to Bangladore.
Sometimes I feel like I am playing a game.
If I can't understand the instructions, then a buzzer will sound and the MC announces, “Oh, I’m sorry. That’s not correct. Thank you for playing. We have wonderful parting gifts for you. Johnny, tell our contestant what they’ve won!”
“You bet, Bob! You and a friend have won an exciting all-expense paid trip to Bangladore, India where you will learn Hindi to prepare you for an exciting career in technical support. Learn to confuse and bamboozle your friends with terms like ‘klighstar and sealit’ and ‘selitroon’ not to mention the memorable ‘rheeboo.’ ”
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3-26-2008 @ 9:46PM
ashbash said...
Hello. You know I agree with the whole pay attention to your customers, because as a business you should.
When they call and leave a message, call them back. Make sure you give them your time and attention.
But sometimes no matter how much you bend over backwards for people, nothing will please them. You all know what I am talking about, those hard to please customers that make your life miserable over something simple and that could have been avoided. Usually they go complain about you to the Better Business Bureau or some other customer rant zone.
I came across this the other day and I saw this article and thought I would run it by to ya'll. It is www.businessbeware.biz
For once, we the businesses can have somewhere to complain about the customers. But not only complain, but to in a way, warn each other of customers in our area. Pretty awesome thing.
I put a few people up on there and I hope it helps out others down the road. I own a fence business and we have some of "those" customers.
Anyways, Take Care and God bless
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4-24-2008 @ 2:36AM
Keivn La Brie said...
97% of consumers dont even bother to compain because of what i call THE DRAGON. The statistic that it takes on average 4 hours and contact with 4.2 people to see a customer complaint through to resolution. By the time someone turns to the web its too late. It should be just as easy to resolve a compaint then it is to upload a video to youtube.com! So Ive developed a system that bypasses THE DRAGON and puts customers in direct contact with a dedicated individual of a company with the authority and latitude to solve a customers complaint at hte swipe of card...
http://www.TIPPPS.com
Slaying the Customer Service Dragon...One transaction at a Time.
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