Shep Hyken's Blog, page 143

5 Top Customer Service Articles for the Week of August 6, 2018

Each week I read a number of customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

8 Tips for Delivering Authentic Customer Support by  Tamina Steil

(CustomerThink) Whether a support delivery is good or bad depends largely on its authenticity.

My Comment: Want to deliver authentic customer service that connects with your customers? Then this is an article you will enjoy. Eight tips that will remind us of how important it is to try and create a connection with our customers.

Building a Servant-Led Culture by Art Barter

(SmartBrief) Culture — every organization has one. Is your culture thriving? Do people feel like they can make worthwhile contributions and others have their backs? Are people happy to come through the door each day?

My Comment: The success of an organization starts with leadership defining the culture. The right culture creates a place where people want to come to work, do their best and contribute at their best/highest level. This article shows how the author bought a company with a failing culture and turned it around.

How to Build a Successful Business Around Your Best Customers—Including the Ones Who Work for You b y Megan Totka

(AllBusiness) Did you know that almost every business has the same first customer? It’s a fact. Although few entrepreneurs realize it, their first customer is their first employee, and this truth alone should make business leaders look at both sides of the customer service coin: External and internal customer service.

My Comment: This article starts with the idea that your first customer is your first employee. Later in the article, the author writes, “The customers who buy your products or engage your services will never be well satisfied if the people who produce and deliver your products or services are not themselves well satisfied.” This concept is what’s behind the success of many great companies. What’s happening on the inside of a company is felt on the outside by the customer.

7 Things You Must Know About the Psychology of Customer Service by Laduram Vishnoi

(Acquire.io) The secret to acquiring new customers, offering top notch customer service, and wooing your existing customers to stick to your brand is as simple as understanding consumer behaviors. Why?

My Comment: There are some really powerful ideas in this article. The author examines some of the psychological triggers to creating a better customer service experience. Help customers make online decisions by using more descriptive language will avoid analysis paralysis. Create a personalized experience will help eliminate price resistance (and the customer may even pay more). Those are just two of the seven ideas.

Try These New Customer Service Social Media Strategies by Christopher Elliott

(Forbes) If you want better customer service — and who doesn’t? — there are strategies, and there are social media strategies.

My Comment: While this article comes from the perspective of the customer wanting to get better customer service, there is plenty here for a company to take note of. Christopher Elliott is a consumer advocate and is suggesting to his readers that they embrace social media for customer service. And, that means the brand needs to be prepared and monitor social channels to provide the level of service that their customers expect.

BONUS

10 Great Customer Service Books You Need in Your Library by VIPdesk Connect 

(VIPdesk Connect) VIPdesk Connect compiles ten of the best customer service books you need in your library, NOW.

My Comment: VIPdesk Connect has released a list of the ten customer service books you need in your library. I’m honored that my book, “The Amazement Revolution,” made the list. And, there are nine others you will want to consider reading if you haven’t already done so.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus customer service training programs go to www.TheCustomerFocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

Guest Blog: Good Customer Service is Essential for A Successful Business

This week we feature an article by Eugene Aronsky who talks about good customer service versus bad customer service and how proper training and proper knowledge are key to answering any question that a customer may have. – Shep Hyken

“Good customer service is essential for a successful business.” This is a statement that is rarely disputed by most business owners. It is also widely accepted that the cost of retaining an existing customer is much lower than that of getting a new customer (in many cases almost 10x lower). Given this most businesses place good customer service as one of their top priorities.

What is Good Customer Service?

When you try to define good customer service it may be best to stick to the old mantra, “you know it when you see it.” Each business will have their own standards as to what makes good customer service; these standards will depend on many factors such as the type of business, the overall goal of the business, the industry that the business is in… For example, a gym that specializes in extreme exercise will need to have trainers who are unforgiving and who will be able to push clients beyond their limits; whereas a business that provides doggy daycare services would need to be able to cater its customer service to both their 4 legged and 2 legged customers. If a business provides a product their customer service team must be well trained in the ins and outs of the product and must be able to provide support for the product. If the business is in an industry that is known for especially poor customer service they should do their best to go beyond customer expectations. Businesses that fail to invest in their customer service team, no matter the industry that it is in will eventually receive a backlash from its customers and will either need to change its customer service practices or go out of business.

What is Bad Customer Service?

When it comes to defining bad customer service it is often easier done with examples, a rude salesperson at a department store, or a company that will not honor its warranty b/c of fine print, or even a doggy daycare that is nice to the two-legged customers but that does not treat its four-legged customers with respect. Defining bad customer service becomes more difficult when looking at a broader range of businesses, for example, a cable company that is happy to provide its customers with an almost infinite # of channels but that will periodically make changes to the bill, often without notice, or a customer service call center where the agents do not have the proper training to answer all of the types of questions that customers might ask about the product/service their company offers and will give incorrect or inaccurate information to callers or will put callers on hold for long periods of time. When dealing with subpar customer service there are many other examples that may come to mind but for now, I would like to take a moment to discuss some ways to improve customer service.

How to Improve Customer Service

When it comes to improving your customer service the first step is to stick to the basics, hire the right customer service team, train them well, and reward them for their success. For businesses that have front-line employees such as department store sales clerks or cashiers it is important that they be knowledgeable in all of the products/services that the business offers as well as having a basic knowledge of the competition, this way they can offer suggestions as to why their products/services are superior to those of their competitors. When it comes to the customer service team that handles issues off-site, such as a customer service call center it is vital that these individuals have the proper training and the proper knowledge in order to answer any question that a customer may have for them. The best way to ensure that customer service agents at a call center provide optimal customer service is to give them access to all of the knowledge about the products/services that the call center serves and to allow the agents to be able to update, delete and expand this knowledge as needed. Giving customer service call center agents access to a knowledge base would ensure that they have the ability to accurately answer any question they might be asked. This would also serve to greatly decrease the knowledge gap between new agents and those that have worked with the call center for many years. A well designed, professional knowledge base can do wonders to improve the productivity and efficiency of a call center and will greatly improve customer service, and the satisfaction of your customers as well as agents.

Eugene Aronsky is a marketing specialist with Unymira. He is an expert on customer experience and knowledge management.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Articles:  The Gig Economy Opens The Door For Employment Opportunities

Don’t Blame Me. I Just Work Here.

I can’t make this “stuff” up. It really happened! The other night I was at a very nice – and very expensive – steakhouse restaurant. This place was top rated for their steaks and seafood. We all ordered a salad. As the server was setting down the salads, we noticed that one of the salads had a tiny portion of salad compared to the others. It was less than half the amount. The salad didn’t even cover the entire plate. So, my friend spoke up and mentioned it to the server, who replied, “I don’t make them. I just serve them.” And, then he walked away.

We were stunned by his response. I broke the silence by stating, “Well, it looks like I have material for my next article.”

I was hoping that he was joking when he gave his excuse, but unfortunately, he wasn’t. So, let’s talk about what happened.

We all have two jobs: Our server didn’t recognize his most important responsibility, which was to take care of his customer. He just viewed himself as the guy who delivers the food. Everyone must recognize that they have two jobs; to do the job that they are hired to do and to take care of the customer.
Be an ambassador for your brand: Our server didn’t realize one of his very important responsibilities, that he was an ambassador for his restaurant. More than just doing his job as a server and taking care of his customer or guest, he is also part of something bigger. His actions reflect on all the other employees. After the dinner, our friends made comments like, “They really have bad service.” The reality is that the restaurant usually has good service. Most of the other employees, if not all of them, are very good at what they do. Yet, one employee ruined the reputation of everyone.
Don’t blame others: Our server played the blame game. “I don’t make them. I just serve them.” He was blaming the chef and his staff for the mistake. It may not have been his fault, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t accept the responsibility of managing the experience. A simple apology is a good start. And, making it right, in this case, would have been easy. Just bring the guest a new salad.

Nobody and no company is perfect. There will always be mistakes and problems. Some are small, and some are large. It’s how they are handled that is the true test of excellence. A problem is an opportunity to show how good you are. A complaint is a gift, allowing you to respond in a way that proves to the customer that they made the right decision to do business with you.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author. For information, contact 314-692-2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

Amazing Business Radio: Scott Walker

Leveraging Customer Data In Real Time
Focusing on Business Intelligence and Customer Experience

Shep Hyken sits down with Scott Walker, the CEO of ethosIQ,and discuss three levels of customer optimization, finding the correct customer service metrics to focus on, and why companies should give back to their communities.



Top Takeaways:

Customers don’t mind staying on the phone longer if it means getting their problem solved on the first interaction. This means that metrics like “average handle time” or “time to resolution” can be misleading.
There are three levels where a company may be at in their roadmap to customer optimization.


Intermediate/Operations focused
Optimized
Strategic


You can’t guarantee you’re going to keep your best people forever. However, by doing your best to take care of them, and giving them the opportunity to do what they love to do, they will do what it takes to engage with the customer on a higher level.
When call centers capture and share customer data across their organization in real time, they can leverage this data for the greater good of the company, which can help drive higher profits.

Quotes:

“You can easily tell whether or not a company’s leadership cares. All you have to do is look at the employee attrition rate.” – Scott Walker
“If you do what you like and you like what you do, it’s not work. If you’re doing it with people that you love and appreciate, they become family.” – Scott Walker
“Instead of just focusing on meeting your monthly sales numbers, try focusing on customer retention. Doing this will have a huge impact on your shareholder value.” – Scott Walker
“If all you focus on is reducing labor costs and network expenses, then you probably won’t have a high NPS or customer satisfaction.” – Scott Walker

About:

Scott Walker is the CEO of ethosIQ. Before founding ethosIQ in 2009, he worked with companies like Apple, Microsoft, Ticketmaster, and Nike. His passion is a non-profit  he started, Orphans To Executives, which provides much-needed mentorship to orphans.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

What is “time to resolution,” and is it important?
How can you increase customer satisfaction by making data-driven decisions?
What’s the difference between being customer focused and operations focused?
How can you keep and motivate your best employees?
Does giving back increase customer loyalty?

The post Amazing Business Radio: Scott Walker appeared first on Shep Hyken.

5 Top Customer Service Articles for the Week of July 30, 2018

Each week I read a number of customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

12 Ways To Improve A Customer’s User Experience by Forbes Technology Council 

(Forbes) We asked members of the Forbes Technology Council for their best tips on improving a company’s user experience. The answers given are insightful and may prove useful if you’re looking to revamp your company’s customer engagement in the near future.

My Comment: How do you deliver a better customer experience? The members of the Forbes Technology Council have shared 12 ways to do so, starting with one of my favorites, which is to ensure the customer only has to tell their story once. There’s something here for every type of business to consider and execute.

Why is customer service training so important? by Flow XO

(Training Journal) Your staff are usually the first people customers will interact with. They act as a lasting first impression of your brand or business.

My Comment: I’m still surprised at the number of organizations that don’t provide proper training to their employees. Most of the time product and technical training are at the forefront of a company’s training. Soft skills, like customer service, seemed to get left out. This short article has some very powerful ideas on how to go about creating a customer service training program.

5 Ways Online and Offline Customer Experiences are Coming Together in 2018 by Vandita Grover

(Martech Advisor)  5 ways online and offline customer experiences are coming together.

My Comment: Retailers are recognizing the power of combining online and brick-and-mortar strategies. The two can co-exist, and the reality is that retailers who combine the two are finding greater success. This brief article shares five ways that prove that “the sum is greater than the parts.”

Reimagining customer experience, part 3: Airport innovations by Mitra Sorrells 

(PhocusWire) For part three we take a look inside airport terminals, where a variety of innovative work is being done to improve and ease the process of air travel.

My Comment: When it comes to customer experience, there is much we can learn from the airline business. Really! In spite of problems that cause passengers to be upset with the airlines, they have really defined some good success-criteria worth paying attention to. This excellent article is the third in a series of articles focused on CX. (You don’t need to have read the other two to enjoy this, but it wouldn’t hurt.

How to tune your customer service to run like a Porsche by  Holly Simmons

(CustomerThink) From streaming video of the latest movies to delivery of high fashion or gourmet meals to their doorstep, people have already been delighted by the ways they can order and manage services and products. In this new subscription economy, everything-as-a-service provides new options and greater flexibility for customers, but also presents more challenges for companies in delivering superior service from start to finish.

My Comment: How would you like to have your customer service run like a finely tuned Porsche. Holly Simmons of ServiceNow teaches us how to do so in this short, yet very informative article. Customer service is much more than just reacting to complaints. It’s about creating a process that makes doing business with a company easy and pleasurable.

 

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus customer service training programs go to www.TheCustomerFocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

The post 5 Top Customer Service Articles for the Week of July 30, 2018 appeared first on Shep Hyken.

Guest Blog: Deconstructing A Textbook Customer Service Email Exchange – My Allbirds Experience

This week we feature an article by David Martin who shares an Amazing customer service experience he had with Allbirds shoe company. – Shep Hyken

Congeniality, proactive problem-solving, and a genuine follow up made me an Allbirds fan. Here’s how Adrianna turned my purchasing gaffe into a textbook customer service experience.

So here’s the problem:

If you’re a regular traveler, then you know how hard it is to find good shoes for a trip. You can’t take your whole closet, so what you do take has to serve a multitude of purposes.

My wife and I, when traveling by air, subscribe to a strict carry-on policy: Everything we take — no matter the trip duration or location — has to fit in our respective carry-ons. No checked baggage. Ever. So, as you can imagine, the number of shoes we can lug along with us is fairly small. Usually, we take only the ones we wear as we travel, plus a single extra pair packed into our suitcases.

Now, cutscene to me staring at my shoe collection shaking my head:

We were gearing up for our trip to Barcelona last fall and I stood there looking at all my shoes, thoroughly underwhelmed with my options. What I needed was a pair that could get me through the airport, sustain a sizable bulk of my daily walking through the city (Barcelona is best explored by foot), and be more stylish than my beloved, yet slightly unhip, sneakers.

My pile of shoes was a small mountain of “nopes.”

Then I remembered a friend of mine telling me about Allbirds, what he described as the best shoes he’d ever bought. “No really, man,” he’d said, “they feel like clouds on your feet. But, like, supportive clouds.”

At the time, Allbirds had just two product offerings — their Wool Runners, which are styled as laced-up tennis shoes, and their Wool Loungers, which are slip-ons with foam soles. After reading a handful of reviews I decided on the Runners.

I placed my order on September 19th and promptly received an order confirmation response saying they’d let me know as soon as the shoes were en route to my home. A couple days later, September 21st, I sent an email to their customer service team asking when runners would ship since my wife and I were due to fly to Spain on September 30th.

That’s when I got an email from Adrianna.

Apparently, the shoes I’d selected were on backorder, a fact I’d completely missed while pinging around the Allbirds site. After apologizing for the mishap (though it was clearly my fault), Adrianna proceeded with the best email management of a customer service dilemma. Here’s how she started:

We are expecting to fulfill this order by early next week, but I don’t want to cut it too close! The rumors are true, they’re pretty much awesome for travel. We have a couple options here, though!

She immediately positioned herself as my advocate, and we were going to solve this problem together as a team. By taking this approach, I immediately felt comfortable and that I had someone working with my best interest in mind. Not only that, we had options…plural. This wasn’t going to be a zero-sum scenario. I was going to have multiple ways to win.

First, we can certainly cancel the order and issue a full refund ASAP. However, if you wanted to keep the order as-is and risk that they [not] come before the 30th, I’d be happy to add on some complimentary expedited shipping so when these come back in stock they will be shipped out faster.

I liked that she presented the cancellation as the first option. From there, the options would likely only get better. And even the canceled order wasn’t a total loss because, if I chose it, she was ready to make that happen immediately so I could get on with my own contingency plan.

Then she put the ball in my court with the helpful assistance of “complimentary expedited shipping.” Again, I cannot reiterate the point enough that this was all my fault. I’m the doofus that overlooked the backorder status of the shoes I wanted. Yet here she was, willing to cover the cost of speedy shipping to get me the shoes I’d picked.

As for the third option:

If you’d prefer to cancel and purchase another color instead, please feel free to pay for the expedited shipping and we’ll waive the additional cost. Simply write back with the new order number after you’ve made the purchase and we can send you an instant refund. Personally, I think this may be the best option to ensure you have some Allbirds for your trip to Spain!

Please let me know how you’d like to proceed and I’ll make it happen! I hope this helps, David.

Talk about team spirit here. She was still willing to cover the expedited shipping costs while also offering her “personal” thoughts about the best way I could get the Allbirds before my trip to Spain — and it all reads like she is excited for me and my trip.

Amazing. Which is what I told her I thought about the level of her service when I emailed her back to tell her I’d decided to switch my order to the Wool Loungers since they were in stock.

            We aim to please

CX and EX (Customer Experience and Employee Experience)

Customer service and customer experience (CX) have become as hot of topics as any in business. Owners of small businesses and leaders of the largest companies recognize the importance of CX. It’s what drives our business. It’s become a customer expectation. Don’t deliver on the CX and the customer will find someone – or some company – that does. And, not only do you have to deliver on the experience, you have to stand out and be different. In many of our customer service workshops, we do an exercise where the participants answer a powerful question that helps them understand what makes them different:

Why should someone do business with us?

In other words, why us instead of our competition. What do we do differently than our competitor? And, even if it is different, do our customers care? And, more importantly, will that difference make a customer do more business with us versus others that sell a similar product or service? These are great questions that can cause us to have two to three hours of conversation.

Today, there is a twist. If you’ve been following my work, you know that I believe that what’s happening on the inside of a company is felt on the outside by the customer. Just as a company wants to keep their best customers, there also needs to be a focus on what you do to keep employees. So, the new question isn’t about customers. It’s about employees and the employee experience (EX). And, that question is:

Why would someone want to work for our company?

While this question may seem totally focused on the employee, it really isn’t. Yes, it goes to the way employees are treated, but it also directly ties to the customer experience. Because, without happy employees, you aren’t going to have engaged employees. And, a lack of engagement has a direct impact on the customer experience.

There are plenty of stats and facts that prove to be the best place to buy from, you have to be the best place to work for. Take a look at the list of the top 100 companies who provide the best customer service and you’ll see a lot of overlap with the top 100 companies who are considered the best places to work. You can’t ignore the obvious.

So, is your CX in balance with your EX? Do you have engaged employees who feel a sense of ownership and pride when they are at work? Do they own their customer’s experience? In other words, do they take responsibility for their role in creating a good CX? Answer these questions and you’ll have an idea of the direction you’re headed – or need to head – to create an amazing customer experience.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author. For information, contact 314-692-2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

The post CX and EX (Customer Experience and Employee Experience) appeared first on Shep Hyken.

Amazing Business Radio: Craig McVoy

The Holy Grail Of Customer Experience

How any sized business can create customer experience and loyalty.

Shep Hyken sits down with Craig McVoy, founder and Chief Experience Officer at Beyond Brand. They discussed Craig’s new book Beyond Brand, the seven customer experience principles every business must follow and the questions you must ask if you want your brand to compete in 2018 and beyond.



Top Takeaways:

McVoy shares his proven methodology that can help any business, regardless of size, improve their profitability and audience happiness.
Not being a big conglomerate or brand shouldn’t stop you from delivering a great experience.
In the omni-channel world we live in, great customer experience is more than just great service on the phone or in store. The experience is an end-to-end feeling the customer has across all touchpoints and channels across the journey.
McVoy states that you cannot deliver a sub-par employee experience and expect your staff to deliver your customers a great experience.
86% of customers say they want to have a meaningful relationship with brands they use. However, 74% of those people said they couldn’t care less if those brands fell of the face of the earth tomorrow.
There are three audiences that brands must be aware of if they want to improve brand loyalty.

Employees – People who work for your brand.
Customers – People who’ve spent money on your product or service.
Community – People who know about your brand, but aren’t an employee or a customer (and have an opinion about you).



Quotes:

“Customers falling in love with your brand is the holy grail of customer experience and customer loyalty.” – Craig McVoy
“Good service comes from great people.” – Craig McVoy
“If you don’t have an interactive relationship with your customers, as soon as someone does it faster or cheaper, they’re gone.” – Craig McVoy
“The best people choose to work with the best brands. The best brands offer an experience that makes employees never want to leave.” – Craig McVoy

About:

Craig McVoy is the co-founder and Chief Experience Officer at Beyond Brand. Before Beyond Brand, he spent 25 years helping brands like BMW and Mercedes deliver a better experience to both customers and employees. Currently, while consulting with dozens of brands, he is writing a book titled, Beyond Brand – Why it’s the experience that causes people to fall in love with the brand.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

How can small to medium sized businesses deliver the same great experience that fortune 500 companies can?
What it is that makes people fall in love with your brand?
Why must you focus on your employee experience first?
How can you use insights to drive value and create a competitive advantage?
How do you get more customers, and how do you keep them longer?

The post Amazing Business Radio: Craig McVoy appeared first on Shep Hyken.

5 Top Customer Service Articles for the Week of July 23, 2018

Each week I read a number of customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

Geolocation: How Businesses Are Improving Customer Experience and Engagement by Robert Szyngiel

(CustomerThink) Welcome to the exhilarating world of geolocation-based marketing, where your physical coordinates are your biggest trump card.

 

My Comment: As I pull up to the store, my phone vibrates with a special offer, just for me. Is it a coincidence this happened? No. It’s called geolocation, and businesses are using it to give their customers personalized offers. Very cool technology that’s starting to catch on.

Why reducing customer friction is the new customer loyalty by Jeremy Goldman

 (TNW) The marketplaces that are winning loyalty from today’s consumers are doing it by focusing on reducing customer friction points.

My Comment: I was very excited to read this article, as it focuses on reducing friction, which is exactly what my upcoming book, The Convenience Revolution, is all about. Reducing friction is about customer convenience. If you aren’t thinking about how to give your customers a more convenient experience, you’re missing an opportunity to potentially disrupt your competitor – or maybe even an entire industry!

As a bank fires its robot, will the robots fight back? by Chris Skinner

(Thefinanser) If you didn’t catch the big news of yesterday, it was the first public firing of a robot. In this case, a bank’s chatbot, Amelia. Amelia was launched last year by Swedish bank Nordnet, with the aim of speeding up customer onboarding and improving customer satisfaction. Apparently, she achieved neither and so was sacked for underperformance.

My Comment: I have to love an article where the author’s picture is a caricature and not a photograph. Chris Skinner recaps the story of a bank who fired its robot. The bank’s chatbot, which was meant to be used to speed up customer onboarding and improve customer satisfaction, failed in its duties. As a result, the bank made the chatbot’s termination public. So, what happens when you fire a robot? Nothing today, but that might be the case in the future.

Why empowered marketers will own the customer experience by 2020 by Andy Berry

(Marketing Tech) For customer experience to secure its position on the board agenda permanently, businesses must do two things: firstly, they must identify where the customer experience begins, and secondly, they must allocate an owner.

My Comment: This article starts with the popular stat that by 2020, customer experience is expected to overtake both price and product as the key brand differentiator. Today’s customer has a voice that can be amplified. Good of the voice is positive. Bad, if it’s negative. This is the premise. Customer experience is marketing, and this author offers several insights that every company should pay attention to.

This Company Outsources Customer Service Back to the Customer by Olga Kharif

(Bloomberg) Samsung, LinkedIn, and Pinterest use Directly’s software to refer questions for a small fee, as an alternative to outsourcing.

My Comment: What if you could outsource your customer support calls to your happy and knowledgeable customers? That’s exactly what brands like Samsung, LinkedIn and Pinterest are doing. They refer simple questions to “amateur experts” and pay them $2 (or more) to help a customer. That’s a bargain compared to the cost of someone answering from the support center.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus customer service training programs go to www.TheCustomerFocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

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Guest Blog: Social Media Reputation Monitoring and Its Role as an Organizational Differentiator

This week we feature an article by Daniel Bakst who writes about how important it is to monitor and respond to comments on social media and review sites about your brand. – Shep Hyken

Interactions between brands and consumers are changing across virtually every industry, making it more important than ever that your organization strives to encourage consistency within every moment of the customer journey. Increased accessibility has changed the expectations of the average customer, and as a result, brands have a whole new set of responsibilities that did not exist even ten years ago. While social media has opened up a litany of new opportunities for brands to increase their reach, it has also played a huge role in these shifting consumer preferences. There is now a commonplace expectation that your organization will provide instant feedback via these channels, and if it does not respond appropriately, the digital community will be instantaneously able to view your failure.

Depending on the size of your organization, there could be a constant feed of incoming messages being sent to your various social media accounts. Implementing a brand reputation monitoring tool can streamline the scraping process so that all messages sent to your brand are localized in one easy-to-access location, with the ability to quickly analyze and respond to each individual message. This level of personalization can help improve the individual interaction with that specific customer, but it can also prove to those that read the exchange your team’s willingness to go the extra mile to provide value.

Beyond social media sites, another important location to monitor the way customers are discussing your brand is on popular review sites. Yelp is the most popular website, but many of the social media sites offer a specific review section, as well as more specified industry forums depending on the space your brand encompasses. Possessing the ability to group all the reviews that are submitted across these sites into one reporting portal can greatly reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to respond and provide service to customers. This can help your organization reduce the number of employees responsible for filtering through and responding to this feedback, as well as categorizing the data in a simple and actionable format.

A brand reputation monitoring tool that scrapes these sites can serve as a differentiator for your brand because it is a public assertion of your employees’ willingness to provide value and increase the convenience for your customer base. Regardless of the impact that each moment of engagement may have on an individual sale, by sending out consistent responses to online customer feedback, you are proving that everyone from brand leadership to frontline employees are actually listening and trying to improve the existing Customer Experience. This can serve as a great reputation booster compared to a nonexistent online profile where consumers feel as though they are shouting their feedback into a void. While it is important to analyze each individual situation and respond appropriately, simply having an active profile can help you stand out amongst competitors.

The goal of any Customer Experience initiative is to reduce the amount of effort that a customer must exert on their journey to purchasing your product and beyond. Responding to service requests, negative and positive reviews and other forms of online customer engagement can help you further encapsulate your desired brand image to consumers. It proves that you are willing to invest time and energy into constantly improving your existing platform and can make a positive impact on each individual you engage with.

Daniel Bakst is the Social & Digital Marketing Associate for  Second To None , a leading Customer Experience research firm that empowers customer-centric brands to deliver consistent, intentional and authentic consumer experiences. They adeptly design and manage mystery shopping, compliance, engagement and voice of customer solutions grounded in strategic relevance, program integrity and actionable insights. 

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Articles:  Customer Experience Is The New Brand

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