“Excuse me, but do you mind filling our customer comment card”, said the waiter as he handed me the check. “Certainly”, I replied but what I should have said was, “Are you kidding? I already Foursqaured it, tweeted about it, and Facebooked it …”
Why should I fill out a customer comment card when I have already expressed what I thought about the food, the service, the lighting, the menu choice, and much more with millions of people online? Besides, what will you do with my comment card? You’re probably going to hide it away in a box, until you have enough in there to go through them, and when you actually do, you realize that I hated your food and I said I will never come to your restaurant again, and it took you a month to realize that! In the world of NOW – where every second counts, you are ancient history in my book!
I conducted a very small experiment – I looked up on Twitter (using Hootsuite) the words “Restaurant + Bad”, and below is a screen shot of what I got. I deleted the handle names for privacy purposes, but made sure to reflect that @K’s message was re-tweeted with comments – this points out the viral nature of customer feedback online. Try it for your other brand, I gave McDonald’s, SUBWAY, Burger King a shot – you’d be surprised at the enormous amount of feedback out there (both positive and negative).
NEW Facts to remember about customer feedback:
- Customers are not waiting for you to solicit their opinion about your service or product
- Customers are sharing their feedback about your service or product pre/during/and post their experience
- Customer’s voice is bolder and louder than ever, and echoes very far, and for very long
Drop the comment card and the tips below to better navigate your brand in this new era of engagement:
- Create a brand listening station to monitor what is being said about your brand
- Listen to what they’re saying about your competitors
- Location based social media networks (like Foursquare, Facebook Places, … etc.) allow you to locate and champion your brand ambassadors
During my work at SUBWAY®, management expressed their desire to be on social media but they also expressed their fear of losing control if they do! One thing companies do not seem to understand about social media is that empowerment of your customer is not something that belonged to you for you to give up. Customers are in control of your brand, and they can make it or break it. Cliché but true: “if you can’t beat them, join them”. Your brand is being dissected online whether you like it or not, and ignoring that will not make it go away. Think About It!
That is right, the customer are no longer waiting for a premission to express their opinions. This is good for both, the customer and the restaurant.
Absolutely Luay, businesses should perceive this as an opportunity rather than a threat! Back in the days, we used to have to pay exuberant amounts of money to have a market research company collect information about the perception of our brand, now it’s at our finger tips, all we need to do is engage and the rest will follow.
thanks for sharing your comments buddy!
Great post John, you’re right, people now proactively share their experiences online with all the new mobile tools and services available and the brands that are “afraid” should join in and pay attention to what people are saying about them, they should defend themselves! the cost of not paying attention is greater and these trends will only grow as the mobile tsunami continues to hit hard to consumers.
I think that when a consumer has a bad experience they are more likely to share or talk about their experience than when the customer has a positive one. This makes the online social arena a perfect place to complain and tell exactly what you feel. If companies are not replying then who wins? the consumer leaving the bad comment!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Felipe – true the loss of business owners that don’t engage in social media is much greater than their fear of taking part of it.
Very smart, John. The only thing i would add is that one of the reasons that a restaurant has a comment card is to ask ‘specific’ questions (ie not just general feedback/response). So, i would take this post one step further and say restaurants/businesses/brands should not only use social media to listen to customer feedback, but also to ask their specific marketing questions. If someone tweets about the food, ask them about the service. They will be much more willing to share when the communication is happening in their chosen environment, and we are still in the phase of social media where businesses get social cred simply for responding.
Great post for sure.
-Eric
I totally agree with you Eric – companies that are engaging in social media are still using the very tip of that iceberg … imagine how grateful you would feel if you were at home and you expressed your interest in having a Big Mac for example. Then suddenly your phone rings, and it’s McD that is located closest to you (based on your GPS location). The operator asks you if you’d like fries with that :)? I’m not saying they should do this with all the customers, but imagine rewarding the Foursquare McD Mayors by doing so … this is what i referred to as championing your brand ambassadors.
You are right, customers share their experiences even if you don’t allow them to and they do it via tons of different channels. Knowing the perceived value of your company/brand is important and in most case, the gap between what you try to tell and how it’s heard is huge. However, there are still some companies who are ‘afraid’ to know the ugly truth. They think that if they don’t ‘know’ it, they will never need to deal with it and as your previous employer Subway, they fear to lose control for letting their customers to tell their experiences out loud, probably they already assume that their customers would only speak the bad and never compliment. What they don’t know is that customers nowadays are rational and fair. Try to look at those websites for restaurant reviews, they appreciate and praise for good dinning experience (of course they would be harsh about the bad). Instead of avoiding comments, like you said, companies should find every possible way to track down what have been said about them and make improvements accordingly. I like what you said about companies should also look into what have been said about the competitors. Most companies seem to care only about themselves and forget it’s also important to know what their competitors have done right and wrong and make it to a ‘do’&’don’t do’ list.
Christy, it’s been ages since I read a comment from you. Glad you’re back! I love how you highlighted in your comment that businesses tend to forget that they will also be flattered (not just bad mouthed), in turn they should react to those as well – for example, they can learn that a lot of people like their new salad … it’s like the misconception about criticism – people think the word is synonymous with dissing a piece of work, when in fact to critique something is to provide your objective opinion about it.
once again, it’s great to see you sharing your thoughts with us again.
Great post. Well said!
As always, this is great. RE: control… by engaging online & working to make your service better, you are taking control. the folks you worked for previously are nuts!
Always the voice of confidence to my brand 🙂 thanks Kelly! You should definitely read the new book by @briansolis called ENGAGE – great examples there!
It doesn’t take long for a business reputation to be in tatters due to poor customer service and this has escalated through the use of social media and word of mouth online. In my mind companies can no longer be fearful of social media and cannot ignore what is going on. Whether a comment is right or wrong if a company is listening to any discussion surrounding their product, brand or service they can take action and be seen to turn a moany customer in to an advocate. Great blog post too : – )
Absolutely Melanie – proactive action on the company’s part can turn a grumpy customer into a brand ambassador. Believe it or not, all that is required is a touch of sincere attention – in most cases, this is all that is needed. As you said, social media (or e-WOM) has provided us with an unprecedented opportunity to identify these customers.
thanks for sharing your thoughts on this – by the way, I think your blog http://scarlettamedia.wordpress.com/ has very interesting posts – I particularly liked the “The man behind the tweets” post. I had a similar discussion pertaining to avatars that is being followed by a survey about avatar perception http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/avatarsurvey > I would love your input.
thanks for sharing your thoughts Melanie.
Hey John,
You raise some interesting points in your post. A relevant story would be the recent “turnaround” campaign by Domino’s Pizza in the US. They did a great job at listening to their customers feedback, online and offline. Not only did they respond, but they also went the extra mile of changing long used recipes to prove to their customers that their feedback actually mattered. They communicated those changes and interacted with their customers across all available channels, facebook, twitter, youtube, flikr, you name it. They confidently embraced criticism and used it to their advantage.
Bravo John!
N
great example Nat – actually, I addressed the subject in an earlier post entitled NEGATIVE is POSITIVE > companies and individuals should embrace the negative feedback and see how they can make things better. I call it constructive criticism!
thanks a lot for your added value Nathalie
Great post John, a lot has been said already so I’m just going to throw in a couple ideas.
Are there any restaurants that have live twitter feeds on their website displaying what’s being said about them? It could just show all the tweets that have #Subway in there for example.
Also, why not create a very simple mobile survey that pops up on your smartphone after checking into the restaurant via foursquare or facebook places. I feel that if someone is eager enough to check-in, they probably won’t mind answering 5 or less questions if it’s right there on their phone. Or it can be a prompt from the restaurant encouraging them to go to restaurantname.com and filling out a post-survey. This way the restaurant can get answers to what they really want to know.
While we’re at it, have the questions on the website and show people’s answers. For a simple example: Did you enjoy the ambiance of the restaurant? 83% of voters said yes, 17% of voters said no.
Just thinking out loud…
Bryan, super added value. thanks buddy.
The Tweet stream on the restaurant’s website will reflect transparency which promotes customer confidence. I love it!
As for the pop up app, a similar idea was launched recently by Best Buy http://goo.gl/bD0G – I think the same module can be replicated to serve different business purposes, be it feedback, promotion, up-selling, news, etc …
Once again, thanks for such great input Bryan
Bryan and John
Nice post – thought I disagree fundamentally with the title. Social media is flawed because it is largely unstructured free-text so hard to analyze. Actionable, structured feedback and analysis via the cell phone when the customer is experiencing the service or consuming the product – it already exists – check out http://www.opiniator.com for instance. Let me know if you want more details.
First off I’d like to thank you for your comment and subscribing to my blog. I’m honored and humbled. Secondly, I’d like to congratulate you on the “Opiniator” – I read the interview you had with @cbwhittemore – I have to admit it is quite an interesting service software.
I agree with you, Social Media lacks structure on the surface, but creating listening stations can help in solving that problem. On the other hand, the flaw that I see in the “Opiniator” is that it is “still asking” for my opinion. What social media has created is an unsolicited sharing platform – i don’t have to buy, beg, or bug you for your attention, i earn it – and that goes for both the positive attention and negative attention. The benefits of the Opiniator are certainly many, but customers are expressing themselves in a magnitude of ways, and as difficult as collecting this info might be, if you (as a business owner) care, then you wouldn’t mind investing in your “sweat equity”.
Needless to say, I think Opiniator has a very bright future …
thanks again Matt for sharing this software with us!
John,
Absolutely nailed it. And the other comments are very insightful. Thanks for posting.
Hey Ken,
Glad you found it to be useful. And I have to agree with you, the comments are very insightful and add so much value.
thanks
Great post! I’m working my way through the posts I missed. Eric made a good point that the comment cards should be used to ask specific questions, but too often they are not. Too often they are very general. So, what we are dealing with is not just a lack of acknowledgment of social media but improper use or understanding of the comment card tool. It’s rather a shame, too, considering that as a non-online, non-joining the conversation tool, a comment card isn’t too bad. Obviously, the stuck-in-a-box-for-a-month method isn’t recommended, either.
Great post! As a relative newbie to SM & Branding, I make it a priority to learn as much as I can about this powerful, new medium. For those who think SM doesn’t matter, think again. Millions are using this resource and opinions are formed every day based on the info they see in their feeds.
So true Christine, social media serves as a goldmine when it comes to customer feedback. I respect people’s opinion when they view social media as to chaotic and getting any real value is substantially difficult, but that doesn’t mean it’s not doable. It requires dedication and effort, but the unsolicited feedback is by far more genuine and useful than those squeezed out of them!