The Ideal Privacy Policy?

June 8, 2015June 14, 2015 Phillip Nones Business, Direct Marketing, Marketing Communications, Security, Social Commentary, Social Media Customer Care, Customer Satisfaction, Cyndie Shaffstall, Privacy, Privacy Policy

Recently, I came upon a column written by software entrepreneur and business author Cyndie Shaffstall in which she proposes the following policy for any company to adopt that truly cares about its customers’ privacy:

The Ideal Privacy Policy:

1. We have on file only your first name, last name, and e-mail address.

2. We ask for nothing else.

3. We send you only e-mails you request.

4. We have nothing to share with others – and wouldn’t if they asked.

5. We won’t change this policy without prior notice – ever.

Thank you for being our customer,

~ Your Grateful Vendor

As Shaffstall herself acknowledges, she’s never actually seen a policy like this.

But if a company actually adopted such a policy, it would certainly make people more comfortable about purchasing its products — particularly things like phones, wearables and other products that capture and process user-specific data as part of their functionality.

Unfortunately, Shaffstall is correct in asserting that few if any companies would actually adopt such a privacy policy. Because if they did, they’d be voluntarily walking away from so much of what makes the online world such a lucrative business proposition.

But think for a moment: Wouldn’t it be absolutely wonderful if we didn’t have to consider such privacy policies “too good to be true”?

Do you know any real-live examples of companies whose privacy policies come close to this ideal? If so, please share them with readers here.

Online customer care: Is retailer responsiveness going in opposite directions at once?

April 6, 2015April 6, 2015 Phillip Nones Branding, Business, Marketing Communications, Social Media Customer Care, Customer Satisfaction, customer service, Eptica, online customer care, Retail, Retail Industry, Retailing, Twitter

An interesting shift is happening in online customer care: Response times are improving on social media while they’re getting worse in e-mail communications.

That’s what a new analysis by customer interactive software provider Eptica, as outlined in its 2015 Multichannel Customer Experience Study, is showing.

What Eptica has found is that retailers’ response times to answer customer queries posted on Twitter have improved dramatically in the past year.

Today, a customer query is being answered in an average time of a little over 4 hours.

That’s more than twice fast as in Eptica’s 2014 study, when the average response time clocked in at just over 13 hours.

In addition, the number of tweets successfully handled by retailers stands at around 43%, which is a full ten percentage points higher than what Eptica found in its 2014 study.

While more improvement is needed, the trend line is looking pretty good. And it makes sense, since the “immediacy” of social media platforms is where many people believe a quick response should be forthcoming.

Crossing Lines

But while customer care response times via social media are improving, the opposite appears to be the case in e-mail customer service – and startlingly so.

Eptica’s evaluation shows that the average time it takes to respond to customer service queries submitted via e-mail is significantly longer than just a year ago.

Then, the average response time was ~36 hours. Now, it’s nearly 44 hours – or nearly two days.

And while more e-mail customer service queries are successfully handled via e-mail when compared to tweets (~58% versus ~43%), that figure is worsening as well. Last year, the percentage of e-queries successfully handled was ~63%.

More broadly, there continues to be a pretty significant disconnect between the “ideal” and the “reality” when it comes to online customer care and service.

Nearly all retailers provide an e-mail channel through which consumers may contact them. But … less than three-fourths of them actually answer the e-mail messages they receive. Moreover, the responses they provide – often automatically generated – don’t answer the customer’s question.

For a consumer with an issue or a concern, there’s little difference between getting no answer at all and receiving one that’s a “non-response response” in answer to a specific query. Both seem to convey this message, “We don’t much care, because your issue just isn’t that important to us.”

Turning to social media, nearly 90% of major retailers have a presence on Twitter. There, the “ignore” factor is even bigger than with e-mail: ~45% don’t respond to their customers’ queries.

So while the social media figures certainly look better now than they did a year ago, it turns out there’s still a good ways needed to go.

Burgeoning social activity is no reason for retailers to take their foot off the gas pedal when it comes to supporting their customers via e-mail. E-mail may not be the most exciting channel, but it’s the way millions of consumers prefer to communicate with retailers, companies and brands. It’s counterproductive and foolish to diss them or treat them like second-class citizens.

In my own personal experience I’ve experienced the exact dynamics as described by Eptica at work – and I’m not afraid to name names. TruGreen^® Lawn Care did a stellar job of avoiding responding to my e-mail and phone queries … but it took less than two hours to get a response from someone at the firm after I posted a not-so-happy tweet about the company’s (lack of) responsiveness.

For me, the “public shaming” aspects of Twitter turned out to be far more of a squeaky wheel than the “private pleading” of an e-mail or phone message.

Do you have personal anecdotes of your own about the dynamics of online customer care? Please share your thoughts and experiences with other readers here.

Which are America’s Most Disliked Companies?

January 28, 2015January 28, 2015 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing Communications ACSI, American Customer Satisfaction Index, Bank of America, BofA, Branding 24/7 Wall St., Chevrolet, Comcast, Corporate Image, Corporate Reputation, Customer Care, Dish Network, General Motors, Glassdoor, Glassdoor.com, JCPenney, McDonald's, Sony, Spirit Airlines, Sprint Corporation, Uber, Wal-Mart, Zogby Analytics

More than a few perennial “favorites” … plus a couple newcomers.

I’ve blogged before about the companies Americans love to hate. And now, 24/7 Wall St. has published this year’s list of America’s most disliked companies. As the equity investment data aggregator and investment firm describes it:

“To be truly hated, a company must alienate a large number of people. It may irritate consumers with bad customer service, upset employees by paying low wages and disappoint Wall Street with underwhelming returns.

For a small number of companies, such failures are intertwined. These companies managed to antagonize more than just one group and have become widely disliked.”

In developing its list each year, 24/7 Wall St. reviews various metrics on customer service, employee satisfaction and share price performance.

Only companies with large customer bases are evaluated, based on the premise that for a company to be widely disliked, it needs to be known to a large number of people to begin with.

Among the sources reviewed by 24/7 Wall St. are the following:

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) scores
Zogby Analytics
Glassdoor for employee satisfaction opinion scores

This year’s list of the most disliked companies includes the following:

#1 General Motors — More than 30 million recalls pertaining to vehicular problems that have been linked to more than 40 deaths brings this company to the top of the list … along with a lot of dissembling about the issue.

#2 Sony — The hacking of the company’s computers and the resulting chaos surrounding the (non)-release of the movie The Interview was just the latest in a string of bad news, including a string of financial losses and fruitless reorganization attempts that seem more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic than a recipe for righting the ship.

#3 DISH Network — Super-poor customer service ratings along with ongoing fights with the Fox network, leading to the blackout of popular programs that have done nothing but rile the customer base even more.

#4 McDonald’s — Its menu has lost favor with consumers — particularly when compared to competitors’ offerings. Negative press about low employee wages doesn’t help, either.

#5 Bank of America — BofA can never seem to score above the average for its industry. In fact, it’s been the least popular big bank in the ACSI surveys for years. Even worse, Zogby Analytics has BofA with the second lowest share of “poor” reviews of any business in its 2014 customer service survey. On top of that, the bank continues to have major problems in the mortgage sector, with a slew of fines levied to clean up mortgage practices that ran afoul of the U.S. regulators

#6 Uber — No doubt, this app-based ride sharing service is wildly popular with many users, even as it’s the bane of the traditional taxi business in major American and European urban centers. But few companies so popular have faced as much controversy at the same time. Perhaps it’s a natural side effect of being a disrupter in the market, but it’s caused many enemies for Uber in the process.

#7 Sprint Corporation — “The great disappearing phone service” might be one way to describe this firm. Sprint has lost nearly 2.5 million customers in just the past two years. In fact, it’s had 11 straight quarters of net decline in subscribers. The result is lost employee jobs (2,000 and counting), along with reduced customer service and industry competitiveness. And the share price of Sprint stock has fallen by half in the past year.

#8 Spirit Airlines — Imagine this list of maladies in the airline industry: flight delays, long customer lines, invasive security, lost baggage, hidden fees. Now imagine them all wrapped up in one air carrier and you have Spirit Airlines. Enough said.

#9 Wal-Mart — According to ACSI, few companies have lower customer ratings than Wal-Mart. It’s low even in comparison with other big-box discount and department stores, as well as supermarkets. Its own employees also rate the company low — and there are 1.4 million of them, so their opinions really matter. Meanwhile, some consumers see Wal-Mart as hurting or destroying local businesses wherever it chooses to open a store in a new community.

#10 Comcast — Whether we’re talking about its television or Internet services, this company comes in with really horrific customer satisfaction ratings. They’re “standout bad” in an industry that’s infamous for poor customer care. It didn’t help when a phone recording of a Comcast customer service representative went viral — the rep who took up nearly half an hour refusing to help a customer cancel his service.

[Interestingly a few companies that were on 24/7 Wall St.’s list last year no longer appear — notably retailers JCPenney and Abercrombie & Fitch. For Penney’s in particular, it seemed a slam-dunk prediction that it would remain on the list this time around, but the company is actually in the midst of a modest turnaround — and consumers and investors have noticed.]

There’s another interesting and perhaps ironic factor about America’s “least liked” companies. It’s that four of them also appear on the list of the ten most-advertised brands in the United States.

That is correct: Based on 2013 U.S.-measured media ad spending as calculated by AdAge, Chevrolet (General Motors), McDonald’s, Walmart Stores and Sprint rank in the Top Ten list of the most-advertised brands:

#1 AT&T
#2 Verizon
#3 GEICO
#4 Chevrolet (General Motors)
#5 McDonald’s
#6 Toyota
#7 Ford
#8 Walmart Stores
#9 Sprint
#10 Macy’s

Evidently, “all that advertising” isn’t doing “all that much” to burnish these brands’ image!

Airlines Continue to Struggle with Customer Relations

November 13, 2011 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Airline Industry, Airlines, Business, Commercial Airlines, Customer Care, customer service, News, Satmetrix, Virgin Airlines, Virgin America

I’ve blogged before on commercial airlines and their penchant for treating customers in a careless fashion. Everyone understands that the air travel industry is a challenging business – and a far cry from the halcyon days of yesteryear when traveling by air was an enjoyably memorable experience. Sure, tickets were pricey. But crowds were few, the atmosphere pleasant, and people felt pampered and special.

Now, commercial airline travel is more like a trip on an overcrowded city bus or, worse yet, being in the middle of a cattle call.

On top of this, it seems that airlines are their own worst enemies when it comes to customer service.

Take Virgin America, for example. It’s only the most recent example of airline customer relations that are essentially in the toilet. Recently when the airline changed over to the Sabre reservation system – no doubt to save money as much as for any reasons pertaining to improved operational accuracy – it did so in a way that left consumer satisfaction completely out of the mix.

When the switch was flipped over to the new Sabre system, many customers couldn’t access the website … and many of those who did were provided wrong boarding passes or other inaccurate information.

Even the airline’s own crew members were given incorrect information about when to show up for work.

Billing procedures? They were equally compromised. Some customers found themselves being invoiced multiple times for the same flight; the most egregious example was one woman who ended up with nine separate charges for the same flight.

The phone system was totally overwhelmed, as would be understandable. With the crush of customers attempting to call the airline to work out scheduling snafus, people found themselves being placed on hold for hours at a time – then mysteriously cut off.

Wouldn’t interfacing with customers be a situation tailor-made for harnessing the power of social media? In the abstract, yes. But in the case of Virgin America, they bombed on this score as badly as everything else.

To begin with, the company’s PR posture was that customers were experiencing only minimal problems with a “smooth transition” to the Sabre reservation system. But consumers were telling a completely different story on Twitter and Facebook.

When things like this occur, smart companies monitor social media platforms diligently and jump in to respond to individual and group concerns immediately. They understand that a disgruntled customer can be turned into a brand evangelist if “service recovery” is done effectively.

Doing this well means two fundamental things:

 Validating customers’ concerns by acknowledging that the problem exists, and taking responsibility.

 Providing real relief. Refunds, discounts, rewards, additional air miles – it’s all part of the arsenal of offerings that Virgin America could use to “turn lemons into lemonade.”

It’s wise to take social media seriously. That means assigning people with brains and a sincere interest in customer care to take charge of social media, and also giving them the authority to respond with honesty, integrity and empathy.

From the looks of things, it appears Virgin America did it all wrong. It quickly became apparent that the true details of the Sabre conversion were at major odds with the “happy face” posture and the company’s claims.

But what happened to customers who voiced their real concerns via social media? They found their posts being deleted. Failing to address customer complaints, while dissing them by kicking them off your Facebook page: How is that a recipe for success?

Consumer research tells us again and again that when companies lose customers, it’s because of what happens “on the ground.” Like Virgin American, they may spend millions on advertising, but those ad dollars are often better spent to improve customers’ personal experience.

Satmetrix, a San Mateo, CA customer experience research and software company, found recently that consumers stop doing business with a company for a variety of reasons … but product or service quality concerns represent a distinct minority of the cases:

 Rudeness or dishonesty: ~34% cited for stopping relationship
 Unexpected charges or fees: ~20%
 Product or service quality: ~20%
 Unfavorable return or refund policies: ~3%

But back to Virgin American. When the airline was first announcing its shift to the Sabre reservation system, it came up with a catchy, irreverent tagline: We’re shaping up our back end. How ironic does that all-too-cute messaging sound now?