Many companies fear social media.  But the good ones have less to worry about than they might fear. While SM can be intimidating (especially with all those lawyers out there chomping at the bit in our sue-happy America), the truly good companies will find that social media is a friend.  In fact it is their key ally. Why? Because Social Media may expose your vulnerabilities but it also amplifies the good.  GREATLY! Here’s why.

Four companies in the past month have so impressed me with their service that after just this one experience with each of them I am probably a customer for life!  So what did these companies do?  Simply put they:

• indulged in good old fashioned customer service
• delighted me, the customer, especially when I was down /stressed
• simply kept the promises they made in all their ads and promotional materials when they signed me up or attracted me to their business.

Sidenote; If you know my philosophy of marketing then you know I simply call this marketing.  Everything else especially when people say “yeah it’s all just marketing…” is very simply, lies.

So how did this good get amplified?

1. I am a customer for life. And what’s my life time value compared to what they gave me in terms of goods and service?
2. I am so impressed that the competitors can quit calling or writing me. No matter how good their marketing they are wasting their time — not until there are exaggerated instances of bad service from my current companies in the future — highly unlikely! A good culture, like a bad culture, sticks!
3. I am telling everyone – on Yelp, Twitter, on my blog here, everywhere… And where I used to tell 10 friends I am telling all my followers in Twitter, I have told everyone on Yelp and this blog post even shows up on LinkedIn since my posts on this multiple through all my networks.

Some old fashioned stuff is not a fashion after all; it’s a classic.  Know how to recognize it, preserve it, cultivate it with great care AND let social media amplify it for you!!

In case you’re wondering, those companies are:  Geico, America’s Tire, Enterprise Rent A Car and Zappos.

Reena Kapoor, of Conifer Consulting, (www.ConiferInc.com) helps organizations with new product & marketing strategy.  She brings over 18 years of new products & brand management experience from Fortune 100 CPG companies and venture-backed Silicon Valley companies.   Reena has deep consumer brand, product management and marketing leadership experience and brings this background to her work in helping organizations define their businesses based on a strong marketing/customer focus.

I traveled with my family on a Carnival cruise to Mexico 2 weeks ago (yes, we had fun and gained a cumulative 11 pounds among the 3 of us!).  We were all prepared for a sub par cruise experience since, after all, it WAS Carnival (and not the higher priced Royal Caribbean or Princess lines which we have cruised before).

Our actual experience was not that much different from our experiences with other lines…there were little things that were different, however Carnival did a great job of spoiling us and ensuring that everything was in place to have a great time.  We walked away from the cruise thrilled that we had done the trip and ready to recommend Carnival to anyone that considered cruising an exorbitant luxury.

But what absolutely DELIGHTED us was the level of service we encountered when we reported my son’s passport missing (it actually wasn’t MISSING…we knew exactly where he left it!).  Within 24 hours of filing an electronic ‘claim’, we received a personal email from the Guest Relations department, telling us that they had, in fact, located the passport and that we would be hearing back from a designated representative within a week (they had to get the passport from the ship to a post office…at that time, it was back at sea on its way back to Mexico!).

Even better than hearing back from someone, less than a week later, we actually received the passport in the mail!  I was shocked…we had the passport back only 9 days after we had left it on the boat.  And no one was hitting us up for a ‘handling fee’ of some kind—I was totally prepared to pay $20 or so to cover the extra effort required to return the passport.

What this experience reminded me of is that even though all of the work that organizations do on their ‘core product’ is important, it’s the LITTLE things (like how you handle your Lost and Found department or your Returns process or your Tech Support desk) that are opportunities to exceed customers’ expectations and really wow them.  Those situations can go a long way to helping your customers really understand how devoted you are to making it easy for them to do business with you and that you really care about their business.

It sure worked for me…I’m now a loyal Carnival Cruise Line customer!

I have emailed about 8 small tour companies in Europe and in every case, received a response in less than 10 hours (and in a few cases, an immediate email auto response indicating that I’d definitely get a response within 24 hours)—no small feat since there is at least an 8 hour time difference.  The responses were personal, customized to some degree to respond to my specific questions, and very thorough.  I had all of the information I needed within 10 hours of my request.

My experience trying to find a shuttle to the airport in San Diego for my Mom was entirely different.  I still haven’t gotten a response to 3 different emails after 48 hours!  And I have no idea whether I ever WILL get a response, meaning that if I’m really serious about needing a shuttle, I’ll need to get on the phone and probably will book the first company I talk to vs. making an intelligent decision based on several choices.  Someone is going to get my business only because I don’t have the time to do more work on this…not necessarily because they deserve it.

In the case of the European ‘service delight’ examples, after the first response, I thought it was an exception…but when I received consistently amazing service from all 8 vendors, it made me think “Maybe they are really hurting for business there…”  And then after the consistently disappointing experience re: the airport shuttle, it made me think that there may be something bigger at work here.

This challenging economy we are in has shaken companies up, however, I’m concerned that many companies are responding by slashing prices vs. providing more value.  Understanding what your customers value and delivering on that very well is much more effective when it comes to customer loyalty than price cutting (see this great article on the topic).  But, obviously, not all companies practice that approach.  Is it possible that Europeans in general, or at least those in the European travel business, understand this better than American companies?

Note: I definitely did not get the impression from the travel vendors I heard from that they were ‘desperate’ for my business and ready to bargain on price…they were proud of what they had to offer and eager to provide an exceptional experience, not only in the ‘shopping’ process, but extending to the actual tour.

I tried doing some Googling to see what I could find on European customer service levels vs. American customer service levels, but came up empty…perhaps some of you have personal experience to either confirm or deny my hunch?  Would love to hear from you…and would love to see some major focus from our U.S. companies to make it easy to work with them vs. slashing prices.  It may be key to our long-term recovery…

Yesterday I spoke rather spontaneously during the final session of the 2010 Silicon Valley P-Camp - the third annual Silicon Valley ’un-conference’ focused entirely on Product Management topics/issues.

Spontaneous talks are not uncommon at an un-conference…the whole concept is that anyone can submit a topic for consideration and attendees vote on what they are most interested in. I came to the conference with a topic I thought of that morning and 20 handouts that I printed before I ran out the door (I thought that bringing any more than that would be a bit presumptuous!) and lo and behold my topic was chosen by popular vote to be one of the 12-15 afternoon sessions!

When I say ’spontaneous’, I really mean that…this is the first time I have EVER facilitated a 45 minute session with absolutely NO agenda, just a broad idea of the topic: “Choosing the Right Methodology for Gathering Customer Input”.

We ended up with 30 people all crammed in a small meeting area to explore this topic, specifically focused on using customer input for product development/marketing/launch purposes.  The session was very interactive and one of the things we discussed before getting into the meat of the topic was why product managers so seldom actually integrate any customer research into their work to launch great products.

I came with my own theories, but we had an active dialogue and below is a list of some of the reasons that came up…I’ll be blogging about some of these in the future, but wanted to provide a summary list here:

We talked about each of these obstacles, and debunked most of them, but it was important to ‘go there’ before talking about how to choose the right tools.  According to The 280 Group’s 2009 Product Management survey, the top 3 sources of influence on product management decisions are:

We’ve all seen the movie where the girl or guy turns to their significant other and says “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.” Sometimes it’s hard to believe while other times you want to yell at the TV and say “Duh!!!!!” Shouldn’t the recipient of the news have known? You can tell when someone loves you compared to being in love with you right?! Most of the time I think it’s pretty obvious.

Companies often fall into the same situation when you change the first “love” to “satisfaction” and the second to “loyal”. Companies tend to think that satisfied customers are enough, but it’s not. You want loyal customers! Companies also tend to think that satisfaction and loyalty are the same.  They are very different!

So what’s the difference between satisfaction and loyalty? Satisfaction is defined as contentment and fulfillment. Loyal is defined as being faithful and showing allegiance to someone or something – somewhat similar definitions but huge differences when it comes to businesses. Sure I was satisfied with my lunch today, but I’m going to keep looking around for a better restaurant like the one down the street that I’m loyal to. I love it and try to go as often as I can while also telling others about it.

Bain & Company and Satmetrix talk about satisfaction as a product meeting the needs of a customer, a product working as expected or problems being resolved as expected. Loyalty is a bit different. They both describe it as ordinary services delivered exceptionally or exceptional services/features delivered well. You will see the difference being “satisfactory” versus “exceptional”. When you were in elementary school you got a “satisfactory” grade if you did things okay but nothing exceptional – that’s what “A’s” were for. I always equated “satisfactory” with a “C”. Is that good enough? It might be for you, but not for me.

Still not sure of the difference?  How about this….

Love = satisfaction = dating

In love = loyalty = marriage

Studies have shown that loyal customers add to a company’s bottom line. Less money is spent on retaining them than trying to gain new customers. Loyal customers also tell others about their great experience with you. Loyal customers want to let others know how smart they are because they selected your product. Loyal customers have a vested interest in your company and product.  Satisfied customers are happy for the moment and although they might tell others about you and be repeat customers, it’s more beneficial for your company to make them loyal.

Simply put, satisfaction keeps customers happy for the moment while loyalty keeps them happy for a much longer period of time, while also having them tell others. It’ll cost you less money in the long run to have loyal customers rather than satisfied customers.

Don’t get me wrong, satisfied customers are good and definitely better than ticked off customers, but your ultimate goal should be loyal customers. Loyal customers are more beneficial to your company. Don’t be afraid to be exceptional! It’s the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone.

Are your customers satisfied or loyal?

Maeve Naughton has been involved in B2B customer references and customer loyalty for ten years.  She is currently on the Board of the Customer Reference Knowledge Sharing Network (CRKSN) and writes her own blog, Customer Reference Programs Maeve can be reached at maeve.naughton@gmail.com AND twitter id: @maevenaughton.

At first, it seemed like the show was about ‘spying on employees’ and sort of made me feel sick given my commitment to helping companies understand the link between employee loyalty and customer loyalty…and ultimately business success. After awhile, however, it became evident that even if the boss’s original intent HAD been to spy on his employees to find them doing something wrong, the real experience became something very different…the boss (Larry O’Donnell, President and C.O.O. of Waste Management), via various entry level roles such as cleaning portable toilets and collecting garbage, got a REAL view of what it’s like to work for Waste Management.

This view from the ground made him realize that:

• He has some terrific employees who are devoted to providing good service
• Many of the guidelines and policies that he and the board had implemented over the past year were actually serving as obstacles to his employees’ best efforts.

How many organizations are in this same position? Do YOU know what you are doing to keep your employees from bringing their best intentions to the job? As we’ve discussed before, employee satisfaction is on a steep decline in the U.S., which impacts the bottom-line at companies all over America.

Could this trend be reversed if more managers and executives spent just a little bit of time to experience their organization from their employees’ perspective? It sure couldn’t hurt… Could this new reality show help people in charge consider doing a little ‘snooping around’ of their own? We can only hope…

An excellent video talk by Joseph Pine on What Consumers Really Want. He talks about how we’ve evolved from economy that was based on commodities, to goods, to services and now its about creating and selling experience.  In this context, authenticity is the new consumer sensibility and it’s what consumers want to experience.  We’re hearing this with social networking/web 2.0 taking off as well.  But the question remains: what is authenticity and how do we (as businesses) render it effectively?

You’ve heard the adage, “It costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to retain an old one.” Even if you question the multiplier number, you know the concept is valid. And yet, businesses don’t always realize when former customers have decided not to buy from them again.

One possible clue: sales are down. Granted, in a recession most everyone’s sales are down, but this is not a time to get complacent. Another clue: people are bad-mouthing your business online. How would you know that’s happening? There are many tools that allow you to monitor whether anyone is talking about you on social networks.

Customers decide not to come back to a business when they have expectations that the business, service or product are not fulfilling. Invariably, they find an alternative. There goes somebody’s market share.

The trick is to learn what customers expect of your business in advance of their departure. Next, ask them how well you’re meeting those expectations, and implement changes that will keep them on board. Best to ask before they go, but if it’s too late and they’re gone, ask anyway.

I recently wrapped up a project for a business services company to help them uncover reasons for a fairly high customer defection rate. They knew a few of their small business customers had ceased operations when the economy took a nosedive. But they wondered what else might be wrong.

We pulled a list of customers that had left during the last year and undertook to interview as many of them as we could. We offered to make a generous donation to a nationwide health organization in the name of each business that granted us a 10-minute interview. Some contacts just weren’t reachable after multiple calls, so we sent out a survey to those.

Nearly 25% of the former customers did participate in an interview, and over 8% responded to the online survey. The results were both predictable and surprising, in turns. They had anticipated that some customers were upset by a price increase that occurred when the recession started. But they hadn’t realized that their one-size-fits-all bundle of services really didn’t work for everyone. Patterns emerged, and profiles of several different types of offerings that customers wanted became evident.

Better than finding out why they’ve gone, take active steps now to understand your customers’ expectations while they are still with you.

• Set up a social media-monitoring tool to alert you if people are posting comments about your business online. Identify someone in your organization to track and respond promptly to both positive and negative comments.
• Invite key decision-makers to a customer advisory board meeting. If possible, bring in an independent facilitator, and hold the meeting to a preset agenda that is relevant to the attendees.
• Encourage product management and marketing people to meet with a few different customers semi-annually to discuss how they are using what you offer, what they like, and what’s missing.
• Conduct a survey to determine what is important to your customers. Ask someone who is not so close to your business to help you frame the questions. Provide respondents the option to give more detailed, off-script comments.
• When you gain insight into what you can do to be a better partner to your customers, make it happen.

If you did this last year, that’s good! Now, it’s time to do it again. Customers’ needs change. Just remember, it may “cost you five times more” if you don’t keep taking their temperature.

Mary Sullivan is a co-founder of KickStart Alliance, a team of marketing and sales consultants to B2B technology companies, including clean tech. Mary started her career in tech in sales and later moved to product management and product marketing, bringing her affinity for the customer with her. Increasingly, her focus is on online and social marketing and the value of the content that can enrich businesses’ relationships with their customers.

I just happened to check my online credit card account info last night and saw a long paragraph in red letters telling me that a “recent merchant database compromise” may have put my account at risk and that my card was no longer active and I would be receiving a new one…WHAT?!

My immediate reaction was “Why didn’t they call or email me with this information?”  I have always been pleased with CitiBank’s service in situations where they suspected ‘fraudulent’ activity and called me proactively…why didn’t that happen this time?

I immediately got on the phone to customer service…and got an extremely frustrating response from the customer service rep who was very vague and never answered my questions about what merchant database was compromised, when did it happen, why didn’t I get a call to inform me of the situation, etc.

Instead, I got a ‘party line’ repeated to me over and over again: “We suspected that there might be fraudulent activity, so we cancelled your card.”  Got it…you were being proactive…cool…thanks…but how about that NEXT step of ‘proactivity’ and letting me, the customer, know what was going on?  BEFORE I try to use my credit card and get rejected by a merchant/store/gas pump?

I asked to speak to a manager to express my frustration and to get answers to my questions but he not only wouldn’t accommodate my request, but expressed his OWN frustration that I ‘was making him repeat himself’.   Ay yi yi…

This is a wonderful illustration of how companies lose customers.  I could have been talked off the ledge if the customer service rep had handled our call just a little differently using some very simple (common sense) steps:

-          Apologize for the problem/stress/concern that their message caused

-          Clarify what exactly had happened and what they had done and what would happen now

-          Ask whether I had any remaining questions/concerns

-          Apologize one more time for the inconvenience

-          Assure me that CitiBank is looking out for me and wants to protect my assets

-          Thank me for my continued business

It’s quite simple (hey!  Let’s give it an acronym: ACAAAT!)…and I think that this formula would work with any reasonable customer…it astounds me that respectable companies (which I truly consider CitiBank to be) still aren’t getting this…for those of us who work with organizations to help them monitor customer satisfaction/loyalty and retain customers, let’s all make it our mission to keep spreading the word that the SIMPLE things are what will help them keep customers…it’s not the fancy stuff…loyalty programs are great, but if you can’t get the simple human interaction stuff right, they are wasted.  And for those of you who have ANY influence at all over your own organization’s service policies and/or strategy, please keep this in mind.

What the @*!# are they thinking?