Online ROI? It’s all about customer service.
There’s a lot of suspicion in businesses of all sizes about the value of spending time online. How does it deliver anything to the bottom line? Study after study has tried to nail down the return on investment (ROI) of social media activity, and advertising metrics such as click-through rates try to reassure companies that there will be some measurable return from activity.
But the returns on business time online aren’t clear-cut: investing your time and money here isn’t a simple numbers decision like capital investment in machinery, and many of the ‘traditional’ metrics come from a time when the relationship between a business and its customers was quite different.
From dictating to listening
We’ve moved from companies ‘dictating’ to their customers – traditional advertising – to an open forum where consumers talk back, and talk to eachother. There’s still a place for effective marketing and advertising to build awareness – but woe betide the company who fails to follow up by interacting with their client base. Regardless of what you sell, it’s the customer service that will keep building your bottom line – and this needs to encompass every communication channel from phone and email through review sites and social media.
Having to sort out some paperwork urgently from abroad last week, the customer service at the top of my list is the one who sorted everything out on a Saturday night via online chat (o2), and the one at the bottom is the one with no electronic links on their website and an 0845 number available only in office hours. Which am I going to recommend to others?
Three top companies who get the picture – and a new trend which caught one out!
Zappos : Working from the principle that if you get the company culture right, everything else falls into place, Tony Hsieh created a successful business which was communicative and outwards facing from the word go. Their customer services are legendary for going the extra mile – check out @Zappos_Service on Twitter. Their entire reputation was built on communicating with their customers, and this excellence in customer service delivered on the bottom line.
Nike : A household name that doesn’t have to try, right? But customer service is so important to them that they have a dedicated Twitter account, @NikeSupport and a Facebook app so that customers can contact them 24/7 and get an instant response from a human being.
British Airways : According to BA’s Chief Executive Keith Williams1, this global brand welcomes 100,000 customers every 24 hours, with 80 events happening per customer from booking to leaving their destination. So with 8 million potential hiccups each day, they have a very strong focus on customer service and maintaining their brand strength. However, a disgruntled passenger this week took to unusual step of buying a promoted post to complain about the lack of service on a lost baggage incident. The tweet went round the world hours before BA’s twitter reply came – a very slow brand reaction.
The luggage was found and returned with an apology – but BA and other global brands have learned a lesson. This is an entirely new trend – the first time that a customer has jumped onto an advertising platform to make their point. Communication has been turned on its head.
The Small Business Challenge
With a business to run, sometimes simply delivering the product or service takes most of your time – but customer service may be the difference between success and failure in a tough market. For some ideas on how to get the balance right, have a look at our recent blog “5 steps to simple, effective customer service“.
1 Speaking at Teesside University Business School, May 2013