Customer Feedback Via The Blog

Happy New Year!

Have you made those New Year resolutions yet? If not, or if you have, as part of your campaign to do better at Customer Service/Customer Experience management you might want to think about improving your Customer Feedback .

Companies and small businesses traditionally have put this on a back burner or have used it in limited ways, usually to verify their position instead of listening. The power of feedback information from the customer/client/market segment can be powerful. Surveys you say, well no I don't say. These traditional forms are so trite and blasé that most customers ignore them. Those who do participate usually pad their survey answers with what you want to hear or just out-right lie. Hmmm, isn’t this dirty laundry? So many of the surveys that are used by researchers to provide data for decision making and marketing projects are so far offline that the effectiveness of related strategic decision making or marketing projects are far from effective.

My suggestion is to try something new. Try setting up blogs for customer responses, Blogs that allow for customer specifics to be anonymous but feelings and responses real. You can use preset questions to gain a response (NO SURVEYS or advertising Please) or create one that is just open ended where customers can sound off, praise or condemn. Honest feed back is powerful and provides real insights into the market place and customer attitudes. It enhances the customer experience and adds another link for customer loyalty enhancement.

Blogs are ever increasingly becoming popular with individuals, but not yet as a feedback tool with companies. Those who have used them have found that their customers have not become desensitized to them as with surveys and other avenues of feedback gathering.

How powerful is the course of a blog? Well it certainly can change the course of a river, rivers of opinion that is. Dell Computers found this out when their customer center failed to adequately listen to a couple of customers. They blogged their feelings on the open blog network. Others with like mind also joined the swelling chorus causing Dell to loose critical points in market share.

Another example that is echoed in an article Found in the online
Slate Magazine, "Ironies of Her Downfall" about Kate Moss a Swedish model. A top Swedish clothing manufacture was persuaded by the power of Blogg to drop Moss as a Representative for their clothing line due to her publicized use of cocaine. In fact the response was so over whelming others who where going to use her in other marketing campaigns also dropped her from their projects. Viva le blog (horay for the blog).

It is important to supply as many feedback routes/alternatives as possible from the customer to you and your business so that the resulting information can provide for responsive avenues of change and effective customer experience management. OH! As an after thought don't be a traditionalist. You might actually listen to what the customers and market place are saying if your smart. If not it will cost you dearly if it hasn't already.

For more thoughts on the customer experience, customer service, and customer feedback please chek out ."The Customer Development Center".

Have an Opinion or Comment Please feel free to share. We're listening

What Is A Customer Relationship?

Now this is an interesting subject. Is there a canned way to define this? Well, good luck if you think you have a handle on it. I was just reading a beautiful article by Sussan Abbot of Abbott Research "Is it a relationship or just a Rolodex? How do you define a relationship with a customer? Or a donor? Or a 'friend of the family'?" Long title with very astute thoughts attached. What we consider a customer many times is very borderline if a customer at all. In fact they are more of a contact than anything. Many people in our customer files are people we can't remember or people we had met that should just be part of wish list. Susan addresses this much better than I can so I would highly recommend you take the time to read her article and then take the time to re-evaluate your list and card files as to who is who. Re focus your energies with those who count. But most of all come to a clear understading of just what is a true customer for your business.

For more information on the Customer Experience please refer to "The Customer Development Center"

Any comments or thought, Please share.

Its the little things that make the Custiomer Experience

After all it’s the little things that count. It has been my experience that when dealing with customers it always boils down to making them feel good. Buying is an emotional experience and if you want them to comeback for more than once or twice you need to lead your customer down the path with an experience that leaves them feeling good about the decision they made and that they gained an added value proposition. That can be in the form of open access customer service, the thank you note etc.

It is in creating that unique customer experience that makes the difference between selling and really providing a service. Selling is product centered and yes it brings in the dollars, but does it create customer life cycles that brings in continued business and customer lifetime value. Creating the customer centered Customer Experience is what adds value to the customer. If you place the customer first your cashflow will increase, your customer retention will increase significantly and recovering the cost of acquiring your customer will significantly be recovered quicker

For more on The Customer Experience go to
The Customer Development Center
Please Post your Comments or Opinions.

Customer Development Stagnant?

Large businesses pay marketing firms billions of dollars every year to promote and brand their identity and products. They flood us with an inundating amount of information. They are merciless in their attempts to invade every aspect of our lives. Now the question surfaces, "Are they effective?" You might want to read the story
"The Purple Cow" posted at Fast Company. I have a tendency to believe them. With all the money and hype the latest figures show a growing decline in the effectiveness of traditional marketing. Increasing customer dissatisfaction, increasing abandonment rates, coupled with decreasing customer loyalty are starting to turn heads.

Maybe to little to late for some. However this is a great opportunity for small companies and businesses to step up and take charge. The one area that customers are responding to is to the renewed effort in the development of "The Customer Experience". No, not the way that the marketing teams are trying to develop it. They are just doing the same thing with new names. Small and medium size businesses can respond to clients faster and in more personal ways. They can build lasting trust bridges through personal contact and develop one on one recognition. They can even be more effective in a regional context of branding their name and product/service were National and global players are loosing their grip. Small businesses can also focus quicker on developing niche markets and respond to small market changes.

Why? Because customers really do count. And small businesses because of their increased sensitivity to customers needs feel a huge gap by those who think money can buy everything. Maybe the marketing people should stand up and take notice. It's not only just about sales.

For more information go to "The Customer Development Center"

As always we want to encourage your comment and idea exchange.

A Social Conscience Comment

OK, EVERYBODY LISTEN!!!


Yes, I was shouting how rude right? Well I know that I have a bit of trafic here and people are reading this stuff, but nobody is commenting. Please agree or disagree or something. Maybe the commentary is just to over whelming. Hmmm, I don't really think that I'm that good. Bloging communities are set up to exchange ideas and to challenge convention.

So please comment when visiting here or at other blogs. If nothing else at least as a professional courtesy.

Merry Christmas to Everyone

And thanks for letting me shout a little

Customer Experience = Customer Loyalty

Good morning blog land. I just read an interesting article at the "Brand Autopsy" written by John Morre concerning the importance of putting the customer at the center of our business success. We often tend to want to measure, dissect, manipulate and de-humanness our clients for the sake of promoting products and stuffing our good name down their throat. Like John I think this is a vile approach to developing those who create the greatest growth potential to any organization or small business and that is our customers. After all who can better advocate our good virtues than those who really believe from personal experience. Great article and a great read.

For more information on customer loyalty try The Customer Development Centerfor greater insight.

Again, as always let me encourage you to leave your thoughts for others to muse over.

Blogging a Doorway To Customer Development and Feedback

Today I had the opportunity of reading a blog called Big Bears BackBone Media, that dealt with the interactive nature of using a blog form customer feedback groups in the form of customer communities. Hey! It would work great with individualist that march to their own drum beat. The thing here is that through the creating of blogging communities in a formal head on interactive content or in indirect feedback groups you are able to create direct feedbaack content from your customer base, the idea has very strong merit.

This proactive creation of feed back chanels isn't about marketing this is about listening and building viable trust bridges between customers and potential customers. Take a look see. I feel it is worth the effort of a click.

Need other information on Customer loyalty, customer experience managing, customer development etc please go to "The Customer Development Center"

If you have a comment please leave it behind for others to read and share.

Customer Experience Management Is for Small Businesses Too.

OK, it’s Time to blog. Small businesses often feel lost in the rampages of large corporate programs and industry clichés. I can understand why when most small and medium size businesses haven’t any permanent marketing staff and large sales departments to power them into the customers lap. Look guys, customer service and the newer version, customer experience management are the same rules for them as they are for you. Do you need to hire a marketing company? No, not really although if you have the bucks be my guest, however choose well. You can compete, heads up with any corporation if you know how to set the rules of the game, your game. The easiest place to start is in paying attention to your customers and the experience they have when dealing with your, store or company, product or services. And I mean on every level. Believe me, everything a customer hears, sees or reads gets laid into a mental data bank. It is these images or impressions over all their contact experiences with your business that will determine whether or not they buy, comeback and buy again, or just brush you off and go some where else. I’ll be writing quite a bit on small businesses and the customer experience so stayed tune.

If you have a comment please share a word or two.

Customer Service vs Intellectually Challenged Technology

Bellow, you will find a comment that I left on someone else’s Blog,"A Day In The Life of A Persuasion Architect" . I actually have read every entry and found them fascinating as they keep coming back to the same topic. Business, whether it be a sole proprietor or a large enterprise have all been given a big line when it comes to IT systems. As a result customer service on line and off really sucks because no one knows what in the hell is going on. Talk about confusion. Take a read and visit the blog.


Blog Comment:
You had me smiling. The one singular problem is that with the onset of computer technology, CRM, order systems, and remote phone centers those who should care and those who would be normally involved in the inline order process are now removed. Our decision making is now in the hands of automated junk.

The incredible thing here is that this IT junk is designed by people who haven't a clue about business or business processes let alone customer management. Less than 5% of the IT developers have any kind of biz degree and less than 3% of that has any mid level experience managing outside of an IT firm. Need I go further? Customer service took a big kick in the mmmm because of this now dependency on computer generated data and analytics designed by people who haven't a clue.

People make decisions based on this artificially induced intelligence (computer generated analytics) and it lulls the organizations to sleep. What a mess. Managers need to get off their butts and back into the interactive stream and make a difference.

The call center you talk about was contracted as an outsourced initiative and probably has never seen the web order system. The web order system was probably outsourced to IT company who has no clue about customer interaction and the good management people who should know probably have never used the order system. Good article it further exposes a trend on the false Provodo the new brave world has brought. Don't get me wrong here; IT has its place as a support system to enhance business not as replacement systems to smother it.

There are more article available on Customer Service, Feedback, CRM, Customer Experience Management at "CDC" Please take a look.

Please feel free to comment. We would love to hear what you have to say.

Customer Service - A Clear Thought

Tom Asacker in his latest blog,"David Allen on Achieving Clarity" has underscored what some of us already see and understand in relation to what's happening around us in the world of business and marketing.This has great impact on the concept of the customer experience. Why customer satisfaction is falling and why we can't respond to the customers needs. If you would like to read it follow the link to Toms Asacker's blog. It leaves alot to meditate on.

If your in the mood for other articles on the customer experience, customer service, etc then go to where we focus on the importance of customers.