Comments on: Your Customers Aren’t Telling You Everything. Here’s What To Do About It.

By: Jeff Toister

Jeff Toister — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:18:21 +0000

I enjoyed your post, particularly the coining of the phrase, “customer issues in the wild.” I’d also suggest many of these issues aren’t all that wild. They just don’t make it to management.

Your restaurant story is a great example. Many of the issues you experienced that night were well-known to your server. I bet your server didn’t do anything with that information.

Why? They may not have resonated as an official complaint. Or, they feared being implicated in poor service. Perhaps they were just too focused on a busy night to care.

I also like your suggestions on monitoring social media. My own research indicates that Twitter is generally a second channel for complaints.

http://www.toistersolutions.com/blog/2014/10/7/what-angry-customers-tweet-about

By: Theresa Ferries

Theresa Ferries — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 17:08:21 +0000

At my job, we focus on asking “Discovery Questions.” These are open ended questions that help both my customer and myself find the best solution for their current need.

However, I find those very same “Discovery Questions” work even better when the customer has a concern or problem with an order. It tells the customer that I (and the company) am listening to them, that I WANT to find a solution, and that I want to prevent the problem from happening to them (or any other customer) ever again. Of course the most important is for them to know that I am actively listening to their concern.

And of course when there is a problem, it is ever so important that I accept the responsibility on behalf of the company, since at that time I am the face/voice of the company. That sincere apology makes it so much easier to get the needed information with those “Discovery Questions.”

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 17:04:02 +0000

It’s a bit orthogonal to your point, but one thing we’ve done at Improvely is add a feedback form to the bottom of every single page of the app. It’s at least 10X’d the number of messages we get, including from people who are frustrated/upset about something and want to vent. They’ve got the contact form right there and do it, which also means they vent on our site instead of somewhere else, and we can get them helped right away.

E.g.: http://demo.improvely.com/reports/mywebshop/person?id=nlt%40fnzpfpplf.nft

i do monitor the brand on other sites too of course, and my tool of choice for that is Mention.com.

By: Dale Harrison

Dale Harrison — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 16:02:33 +0000

A number of years ago I did a restructuring and turnaround on a company with a terrible service history and a significant rate of account loss.

To try and get a handle on things, I pulled several hundred lost accounts and we contacted them directly to learn why they left. I then cross-correlated this with the historical customer complaint records.

Result: 1:50

For every 50 customers who quit us for a competitor…only one ever lodged a recorded complaint with our customer service group.

Most complaints ultimately point to systemic issues in the organization…and are always just the tip of the iceberg waiting to sink you…

By: levberlin

levberlin — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 15:39:51 +0000

Another approach is to proactively ask users how they feel about the product while they’re using it. Kind of like the net promoter score with feedback. Basically a popup with -1, 0, +1, and comment field to explain why they felt this way. Much more likely to get feedback that way (positive or negative) and bug reports than the user going out of their way to email/call/chat you.