Businesses across the world are realizing that they need to figure out how to sift through the megatons of information that is being shared about them via social media amongst customers, ex-customers, prospective customers and more.

It’s extremely important to pay attention to the information being posted online about the impressions that people have of your products and your company.  This information can complement the work you may already be doing to collect customer feedback via customer satisfaction questionnaires or any other research you do to understand how to better meet your customers’ needs.

There are many social media monitoring tools available to collect information from public areas of the Internet.  Most of them automatically classify each comment using natural language processing technology (NLP) to help assess whether they are positive or negative.  This approach can help take a broad sweep at assessing what the sentiment is out there about your company and your products.  Monitoring these metrics over time and seeing what variations occur in conjunction with new product launches or organizational changes is very important, however this just tells you ‘what’ people are saying and doesn’t tell you ‘why’ people feel that way about your company/your products.

In order to get the biggest benefit from monitoring social media, it’s important to look at the actual comments that are collected and analyze what is behind them.  For people that are frustrated with your company or products, is it the purchasing process, installation of your product, or actual daily use of your products that is the core of the problem?  This information can be very helpful in making decisions about where to invest improvement efforts, product enhancements, etc.

Likewise, it’s very helpful to understand what it is that customers like most about your products.  This information can help you ensure that you don’t mess with the elements of your product that customers like most.

Getting full understanding of the social media noise requires in-depth analysis of a sampling of the actual comments.  Some organizations have the bandwidth and expertise to do this in-house, however, sometimes it is necessary to bring in external resources.  Researchers who do qualitative research such as interviewing, focus groups, etc. have the expertise to know how many comments to review in order to have a valid sample that represents all of the comments that are out there.  A good researcher can glean the details behind the comments and look for trends to help you get clearer about what to do to improve the perception of your company and products.

Net net: be sure that you are not only looking at social media metrics, but also investing the time to analyze what those metrics mean via thorough analysis.

• Get information from your sales team or contact database to identify accounts that you ‘won’ and those that you ‘lost’ (aka didn’t WIN) in a given period (monthly or quarterly is most common)

• Have a conversation with the key contact(s) at each account to understand the following:

                   - Who they consider your competition

                   - What their key criteria were for evaluating their choices

                   – How you measured up against your competitors on their key criteria

                   – Their perception of the sales process

These efforts don’t require a huge investment of time or money: these conversations can be brief and you don’t need to talk to a lot of people—you can pick a random sample of people who bought or didn’t buy your product/service.

The rewards for collecting this information are huge! To have a regular, ongoing perspective on these items will help you make sure that you have a finger on the pulse of your marketplace and that you anticipate issues before they become huge problems. To understand how your customers/prospects perceive you and the marketplace, is extremely valuable…and in some cases, the side benefit is that you make a great impression on a lost prospect which may turn their impression of your company around and change their mind (I’ve seen it happen!).

Think about how win/loss analysis could help you or your clients…it could be the perfect tool to get insights that you need in order to make some key business decisions with your customers’ needs/wants in mind.

The evidence continues to accumulate: happy, satisfied, highly engaged employees help increase customer satisfaction.  And vice versa.

Why is this?

• Customers like to do business with people who have good attitudes.

How many times have you done business with a company and gotten the impression that people just don’t like working there?  Their unhappiness/dissatisfaction oozes from their pores and can’t help but impact their interactions with customers.  And it makes you want to shudder to think about how your employees’ negative attitudes about your products/services could impact your customers’ own attitudes…

• Knowledgeable, experienced employees make it easier to do business with your company.

Employees who have worked at your company for a long period of time and have mastered their jobs, understand procedures, and know when to escalate issues are a huge asset when it comes to providing satisfying customer interactions.  And the only way to retain your employees is through high levels of satisfaction and engagement.  Starbucks makes this a very high priority, knowing that there are bottom-line benefits for them.

• Your employees are an important tool for understanding your customers.

Your employees who work directly with customers are constantly receiving input about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to doing business with you.  And they also know what other options your customers have and how you measure up.  It’s important that your employees feel engaged and invested enough to share this information with others in the organization, enabling you to ensure that your products, services, and policies are in synch with what your customers want.

There are other factors at play which drive the close relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, but these are three of the most important ones.

And if you wonder why good service is hard to find these days, consider this: only about fifty-percent of employees are satisfied with their jobs — and only one in five are passionate about their work.

Some very successful companies have a radical approach: employees first, customers second.  There must be a reason for that thinking.

If you consider customer satisfaction and loyalty an important strategy for your company, be sure to invest some energy in understanding and measuring your employees’ satisfaction/loyalty also.  The results could be enlightening and help you understand why your customer sat/loyalty numbers aren’t quite what you are hoping for.

It sounds so obvious.

Is there anything more important in your efforts to keep customers happy?

I’m in the middle of a situation with Samsung where my new networked printer isn’t working because it requires a new network card.   Samsung handled things great.  After several support calls that didn’t fix the situation, they realized that the card needed to be replaced and ordered a new one.  And escalated me to receive in-person support to install the card through a third party company.

This is where things got frustrating.  I was promised that someone would call me to make an appointment to come work on the printer.  No such luck.  After 4 business days, I still haven’t received a call from the support company, but have called THEM 6 times to follow up to see when someone is coming out.  Apparently they themselves can’t get the local technician to respond to them after many phone calls.

OK, understood.  You have a ‘bad’ employee.  Good to know.  So, what are you going to DO about it?

Your customers shouldn’t have to chase you down to get your products to work.  We all know that there are going to be problems with technology or service from time to time, but we expect the companies we do business with to take responsibility and make the situation as painless as possible.

My advice for how to keep your customers happy when products and/or service fails:

1) Communicate to your customer to let them know the status of the situation.

Once you/your reps realize that the normal system hasn’t worked as planned, they should proactively communicate with the customer vs. expecting the customer to follow up themselves (or hoping that they won’t?).

2) Let them know that you care.

Your customers will be extremely tolerant if they know that you understand the imposition that your product/service failure is causing IF you use a little empathy…put yourself in their shoes.  God forbid, maybe even APOLOGIZE.  It goes so far!

Likewise, if you fail to do this step properly and sincerely, you are on your way to losing a customer.  Who wants to do business with a company that doesn’t value you as a customer?

3) Have a back-up plan and don’t be afraid to use it.

Have logical escalation points and processes to put into place when the standard systems don’t work.  Again, don’t make your customers do the work…have the back-up plan in place and know when to use it.  Your reps shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to serve your customers.

4) Do what you say you’ll do.

Make sure that if your reps say they are escalating something that they DO so.   And then they go back to Step #1 until the situation is resolved.

Training.  Processes.  Commitment.  CARING.

That’s what is involved.  It’s the cost of doing business.  If you don’t do these things, you just don’t deserve my business.  Period.