Couple of weeks ago a friend emailed me about a disturbance in her neighborhood. Seems a gunman had taken over the bank just down the street. The interesting thing is, the guy didn't want money. He let all the bank patrons leave, the tellers as well, and locked himself in the bank. Why? Turns out he had a list of grievances with the bank and wanted to air them as publically as possible.
There's got to be a better way to understand your customers than that.
I don't mean to make light of a tragic situation. The incident I've described is regrettable for all concerned. But it does underscore the need to listen to every customer and resolve their issues as quickly as possible. Sometimes it saves the relationship you have with just that one customer and keeps them coming back. More often, proactively uncovering issues saves the relationship (and the revenue) with many more customers—including those whose future business you might have lost due to the issue.
There are lots of ways to listen to your customers. Website feedback forms, social media monitoring, recording call center activity—all of them very powerful tools for understanding customer experience. But it's important to remember that only a fraction of your customers go to the trouble of actually telling you when there something wrong—and it’s usually not until they're already very dissatisfied. Of course, we'd tell you a better approach is to detect and remedy the struggles of all your customers, not just the vocal ones.
By the way, ironically or maybe fittingly, I received that friend's email about the bank incident while I was moderating a track at a Retail Financial Services conference. There were a number of great sessions on improving the online customer experience and we were glad to meet with several of our financial services customers who are using Tealeaf to do that very thing. Thanks to all who spoke on our behalf.
There's got to be a better way to understand your customers than that.
I don't mean to make light of a tragic situation. The incident I've described is regrettable for all concerned. But it does underscore the need to listen to every customer and resolve their issues as quickly as possible. Sometimes it saves the relationship you have with just that one customer and keeps them coming back. More often, proactively uncovering issues saves the relationship (and the revenue) with many more customers—including those whose future business you might have lost due to the issue.
There are lots of ways to listen to your customers. Website feedback forms, social media monitoring, recording call center activity—all of them very powerful tools for understanding customer experience. But it's important to remember that only a fraction of your customers go to the trouble of actually telling you when there something wrong—and it’s usually not until they're already very dissatisfied. Of course, we'd tell you a better approach is to detect and remedy the struggles of all your customers, not just the vocal ones.
By the way, ironically or maybe fittingly, I received that friend's email about the bank incident while I was moderating a track at a Retail Financial Services conference. There were a number of great sessions on improving the online customer experience and we were glad to meet with several of our financial services customers who are using Tealeaf to do that very thing. Thanks to all who spoke on our behalf.
