We have the opportunity each month to read an article or book and then have a discussion on it as a company. This months article was “The Microeconomics of Customer Relationships” by Fred Reichheld. It brings up some interesting points on assessing where you are at as a company in regards to your customers. It talks about a “net-promoter score” which comes about by asking one simple question, “How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?”. Through that you can find out who your “promoters” are, those that would recommend your services and also find out who your “detractors” are, those that don’t like you and would deter others from your services. It goes into how each group needs to be addressed and how doing so can help you improve. The article mentions that most companies forget about there promoters, or the core group, because they are an easy sale.
I recently had an experience on both ends where I’m a promoter for one company and a detractor for another. About a year ago I bought a monitor from Dell but the monitor had some issues with it. I contacted them about the problem and they were very helpful and replaced the monitor. I currently am still having issues but the customer service has been helpful and I feel like they really want to help. They are fast and informative with their responses. Even though the monitor has caused some problems for me I would most likely purchase other products from them because I feel like they are on my side.
On the other end of the spectrum, I purchase a book from CK Media – Creating Keepsakes, and there is no way I’d ever purchase from them again and I would recommend to everyone else not to purchase from them. It has now been over 6 weeks since we purchased the book and we still haven’t received it or a refund. This is after trying to cancel it but told we couldn’t because it had shipped already and now that we have convinced them it hasn’t we can’t get a refund. We’ve talked to a dozen people there that don’t have any idea what’s going. The customer experience has been horrible and has wasted a lot of our time.
Now that I done playing the detractor role, there is one statistic that is worth noting in the article, that each negative comment is neutralized by three to 10 positive. Basically, the detractors are going to loss you a lot more business than the promoters will bring.
Along the lines of this article there is a good talk by Seth Godin on the TED website. (Also posted below)
One thing he mentions in marketing is to be remarkable, adding that what ever it is should be worth making a remark about. The customer experience with Dell is worth making a remark about, it’s remarkable.
While doing some research online I came across an interesting article about branding and what the means. This article is from Good Experience by Mark Hurst and it is titled “Underestimating the Brand”. Here he brings up an interesting change that JetBlue is going through and one that is forgetting their core costumers.
“If one is to measure the brand by the traditional approach (“let’s spend thirty million dollars shoving a logo and a tag line down their throats”), then the new JetBlue is, I suppose, consistent and well-known. Lots of money buys lots of ad impressions. Congratulations.
“However, if one is to measure the brand through the lens of “good experience,” which I believe is the most accurate way of evaluating companies today, then JetBlue is doing poorly.”
If anyone has some other articles related to this please post them, I would be interested in reading them.