Category Archives: Attack of the Customers

Peer Reviews With a Difference

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People love online review sites even if they don’t always trust them. Despite ongoing allegations that even the biggest customer review sites are routinely manipulated by businesses and their detractors, 85% of consumers in one recent survey said they consult online reviews for recommendations of local businesses at least occasionally. A 2012 Crowdtap survey found that online reviews are second only to recommendations from friends as the most trusted sources of buying advice.

Most trusted sources of buying advice - Crowdtap

One of the problems with   online reviews, however, is that they require an act of will to publish. Customers must make a conscious decision to contribute their ratings, and critics argue that this fact tends to draw out the most extreme opinions – the lovers and haters, if you will.

But what if the millions of casual recommendations that people make every day on social networks could be captured and organized? That’s the task that Microsoft veteran Yoav Schwartz and a team of Israeli developers have tackled with WhoDoYou, a ratings service that taps into Facebook conversations to rank local businesses.

WhoDoYou uses some sophisticated linguistic analysis to parse public Facebook conversations and figure out which ones are asking for recommendations of everything from fast food restaurants to cardiologists. It then uses location data, website addresses, telephone numbers and a database of local businesses to match referrals to local businesses where possible. Registered members can also contribute their own reviews in the same manner as they do on Yelp and TripAdvisor.

The Real Thing

WhoDoYou logoWhoDoYou is impressive technically, even if the results fall short of the richness and detail found on more traditional review sites. The primary advantage of mining public Facebook posts is that the recommendations are genuine. Casual conversations between friends are obviously less prone to manipulation than reviews that are intended for a large audience. If you’re logged into Facebook, you can also view private conversations among your own friends.

WhoDoYou assigns a rating score to some businesses, but the algorithm used to calculate it is secret and unclear. An entry on the company blog says only that it is “customized for each search, and includes things like the number and quality of reviews, proximity to your search, and a social weighting.” A spokesman said the rating is a calculated from a combination of friends, location, rating and recency.

But…

There are several disadvantages to the WhoDoYou approach as well. One is that recommendations typically lack the richness of the often detailed reviews one finds on commercial ratings sites. Many are no more than a phone number or a URL and there is no way to tell if the recommendation is lukewarm or strongly positive.

Another disadvantage is that casual conversations are often difficult to categorize. If WhoDoYou can’t find an exact match in its database, the results fall back to a default “Attorney referral in Reading, PA.”  From there you’re on your own to figure out what’s in the thread. Fortunately, the review links directly to the relevant conversation on Facebook.

Machine intelligence can also have unexpected results. For example, the post below is listed as an attorney referral but is really a Facebook discussion of Risa Weinstock, the controversial director of New York’s Animal Care & Control agency. It’s not clear why a post titled “THE MURDERESS OF THE NYC SHELTERS” merits an 8.7 rating.

Despite its shortcomings, WhoDoYou is a fresh and innovative approach to mining an untapped vein of sentiment. The quality will no doubt improve, and WhoDoYou has done us all a service by capturing conversations that would otherwise be all but invisible.

WhoDoYou Attorney Referral

My recent book, Attack of the Customers, has an extended analysis of online ratings and reviews.

8 Data Points about the Importance of Customer Experience

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I was asked to prepare some background information on the importance of delivering a positive customer experience, and I thought I would share some of the research with you.

How much does the market reward companies that deliver excellent customer experience? Consider that the Fortune list of the world’s 10 most admired companies in 2013 includes seven that are renowned for excellence in that area: Apple, Google, Amazon, Starbucks, Southwest, Disney and FedEx. The world’s two most valuable brands – Apple and Google – are considered world-class.

Recent research worth noting:

  1. Dell has published internal metrics showing that 97% of dissatisfied customers can be rescued with proactive intervention and more than 40% of those people actually become raving fans.
  2. Siegel+Gale’s 3rd annual Global Brand Simplicity Index reported last year that nearly 1/3 of American consumers would be willing to pay an average of about 4% more for simpler brand experiences.
  3. Gartner estimated last year that by 2014 “failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15% increase in churn rate for existing customers.” You have to wonder why one-third of large corporations still block social network use by their employees.
  4. Research published by Temkin Group last year reported that only 7% of the 255 large companies it surveyed could be described as reaching the highest level of customer experience maturity, although nearly 60% said their goal is to be the industry leader in customer experience within three years. That’s gonna be a tall order.
  5. A July, 2013 Lloyd’s survey of 588 C-suite executives found that customer loss was their second biggest concern, exceeded only by worries about high tax rates. Respondents also indicated they are under-prepared to address this risk, with executives giving themselves only a 5.7 rating on a 1-to-10 scale (see chart below).Areas of Biggest Business Risk As Defined by CEOs
  6. Sixty-two percent of B2B and 42% of B2C customers purchased more after a good experience, while 66% and 52%, respectively, stopped making purchases after a bad experience, according to a recent survey of 1,000 people who had had recent customer service interactions. The research also indicated that customers are somewhat more likely to share bad experiences through social networks than good ones.
  7. Executives talk the talk but still don’t walk the walk. An Oracle survey of 1,342 senior-level executives from 18 countries earlier this year found that 97% agree that delivering a great customer experience is critical to business advantage and results, and that the average potential revenue loss from failing in this area is 20% of annual revenue.  However, 37% are just getting started with a formal customer experience initiative, and only 20% consider the state of their customer experience initiative to be advanced.
  8. A survey of 2,000 adults last year found that 83% are willing to spend more on a product or service if they feel a personal connection to the company. One-fifth said they would spend 50% more on companies that they felt the company put the customer first.

Attack of the Customers Roundup, July 25, 2013

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Recent stories of customer attacks, bad business behavior online and advice on how to prevent the latter.

Don’t ignore customer service on social media

Social media gets discussed ad nauseam as a marketing tool, but it does have other business applications. In the case of customer service, that’s something apparently ignored by many businesses.Only 44 percent of the top 25 online retailers respond to complaints on Facebook within 24 hours according to the data compiled by Desk.com. 
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3 Easy Steps To Turn Business Failures Into Customer-Generating Positive Case Studies

Ever go public online with something your brand will regret later? Alas, it’s human nature. But there are ways to combat that! The plain fact is, we all have the ability to knee-jerk ourselves into orbit a wee bit past the Alpha Centuri moon. I do it, you do it, we all do it. The challenge is to sit on your hands until that extraordinarily compelling urge *disappears* so you can comment without being in the red flare of unstoppable…
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Revisiting the Facebook ‘Other’ folder disaster

Facebook has a folder for messages into which it unceremoniously dumps email from people who don’t normally contact you. Because hardly anyone ever checks this “other” folder, many very important messages to missed. Every once in a while, a writer will ask his readers to go check their “Other” folder to crowdsource the discovery of surprising messages that have been sitting there. Recently, New York Times columnist David Pogue asked the question, and the…
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Slow Social Response Times Prove Annoying to Millennials

A growing number of consumers around the world are contacting brands through social media channels, to the extent that customer service and audience engagement is now seen as one of the top organizational areas where social tools carry the most heft. Results from a new study [download page], conducted by Havas Worldwide, suggest that consumer expectations are high for social responsiveness, and that brands that fail to meet those expectations risk alienating a large portion of consumers. 
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Attack of the Customers Press Release

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I’ve read thousands of press releases over the years but don’t believe I ever wrote one until now. It was more difficult than I expected! Links and tweets are appreciated, but Amazon reviews will get you undying devotion.

New Book Explores Recent Epidemic Of Online Customer Assaults on Businesses

 ‘Attack of the Customers’ Helps Marketers and Business Owners Manage and Prevent Reputation Threats Carried on Blogs and Social Networks

Attack of the CustomersCustomers are taking their complaints about companies and products to the Internet in record numbers, and a new book tells what is driving this trend and how businesses can avoid being victims of customer attacks.

“Attack of the Customers,” by award-winning author Paul Gillin and customer relationship management pioneer Greg Gianforte, arrives as online attacks are becoming a top concern for business and government leaders.

“A lot of attention has been focused on social media’s capacity to aid in awareness, marketing and positive brand perception,” said co-author Paul Gillin, “but little has been written to date about its dark side. Brands have been piling into Facebook expecting to reap a bounty of positive PR, but they forget that these channels can be used to tear down as well as to build.”

Recent research has shown that 70% of large companies have experienced an attack on their reputations during last two years.“Decision-makers believe that social media has made managing crises more difficult and more expensive,” Gillin said. “We wrote this book to address the increasing need for corporations to understand how people express dissatisfaction online and how to distinguish between everyday complaints and potential crisis scenarios.”

Attack of the Customers analyzes the motivations and goals of people who drive negative campaigns and offers guidance for how to respond to and prevent online attacks. Using dozens of case studies from consumer and B2B brands, the book classifies attackers into four categories – Casual Complainers, Extortionists, Committed Crusaders and Indignant Influencers – and provides coping strategies for dealing with each.

The book also documents step-by-step how some recent notable attacks developed and the critical factors that transformed them from minor brush fires into international news stories.

Capacity to Destroy

Attack of the Customers analyzes customer-driven negativity campaigns like the 2010 Pampers Dry Max Facebook crisis and the 2012 beef-industry “pink slime” hysteria to identify lessons brand owners can apply to understanding customer motivations and preparing response strategies. The book also looks at the growing influence of online customer reviews sources like Yelp and Amazon on businesses ranging from electronics to hospitality services and tells how business executives can use peer reviews to their advantage.

Readers will learn:

  • Why businesses’ common responses to customer complaints often make matters worse;
  • Why complaining customers are some of an organization’s most valuable assets;
  • How vocal critics can be turned into raving fans with an active response strategy;
  • How to organize a team to identify and respond to attacks in minutes; and
  • How to create a culture that puts customers first.

“Delighting the customer is the only sustainable source of competitive advantage today, because product differentiation is fleeting and price differentiation is unprofitable, ” said co-author Greg Gianforte. “Failure to deliver exceptional customer experiences is simply failure.”

Attack of the Customers is available through major online retail outlets and in Amazon Kindle format. Learn more at AttackOfTheCustomers.com.

About The Authors

Paul Gillin, co-author, Attack of the CustomersPaul Gillin is a writer, speaker and online marketing consultant who specializes in helping businesses use content to reach customers. A popular speaker and writer, he has addressed more than 150 conferences and groups and published more than 200 articles about social media marketing since 2008. His four previous books about social media and online communities include The New Influencers, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, The Joy of Geocaching and Social Marketing to the Business Customer.

Paul is a columnist for BtoB magazine and a director of the Society for New Communications Research. He blogs at PaulGillin.com and NewspaperDeathWatch.com.

Greg Gianforte, co-author, Attack of the CustomersGreg Gianforte has started five successful software companies. He founded RightNow Technologies in 1997 with a mission to rid the world of bad experiences. The company enjoyed 15 years of continuous growth. At the time of its sale to Oracle in 2011, it had more than 2,000 large customers, 1,100 employees and $225 million in annual revenue.
Among his awards are Ernst & Young’s Pacific Northwest Entrepreneur of the Year and the Leader Award from CRM magazine. He was inducted into the CRM Hall of Fame in 2007. His books include Bootstrapping Your Business and Eight to Great: Eight Steps to Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience.

Contact information:

Paul Gillin

508-656-0734

paul@gillin.com

Twitter: @pgillin

Greg Gianforte

greg.gianforte@gmail.com

 

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