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Business Week on Consumer Vigilantes: Customer Service, Emotion, and CGM in Focus

Business Week's 3/3 edition (available online now) features a very important cover story by Jena McGregor entitled Consumer Vigilantes: Fighting for truth, justice, and the right to speak to a manager. The issue also includes an annual ranking of "Customer Service Champs" -- many of whom, interestingly, have been profiled in either this blog or my forthcoming book, "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000!"  -- as well as a provocative (and spot-on) op-ed by Jeff Jarvis entitled "Love the Customers Who Hate You".  Importantly, McGregor writes:

"The sting of a bad experience can cut so deep that it transforms an upset customer into an activist no longer interested in just a refund." 

As we've probed many times in this blog (see tagged links), and in nearly a dozen ClickZ columns, marketers and business executives have yet to internalize the critical symbiotic relationship between brand/service "experiences" and "media" output (and I'm not talking about paid media). McGregor's piece helps make that connection more obvious and transparent.  The propensity to speak out (hence generate CGM or social media) is inextricably tied to depth of consumer loyalty or disloyalty, and its powered by the web's growing arsenal of megaphones that seem to get even more powerful every day thanks to the advent of multi-media (e.g. video, audio, photos) as well as "I second that emotion" community and social-networking capability.    The upside of extreme loyalty and brand emotion might be found in places like Facebook's 40,000+ member Southwest Airlines group or the nearly 70,000 member "Addicted to Starbucks" group (more perspective here). The downside of extreme disloyalty and boiling emotion -- what McGregor describes as "venom-spewed tales of woe" -- can be found in tens of thousands of places on the web's digital trail, from message boards to blogs to YouTube.  (As Jarvis suggests, just go to Google and add the word "sucks" to a brand query.)

So What Next?  Business Week does a great job diagnosing the problem, and the "winners" part shines light on a host of best practices (Fairmont, Lexus, Trader Joe's, Lands End, Enterprise), but I still worry whether there's a big missing piece of the conversation around "what next."  Importantly, are the marketing leaders -- the owners of the biggest discretionary budget, and arguably the most influential drivers of change in large enterprises-- internalizing the message, and translating these new insights around consumer behavior into better "media" models.  If "service is the new marketing," as they say, what's the blueprint for re-engineering the marketing department along these lines?  How should the CMO -- or the constellation of communications agencies (media planning, advertising, PR, digital) -- be incented to move in this direction?  And will there be rewards and recognition for the mostly undervalued (and typically non-strategic "cost center") owners of the call-center, email feedback, and more?   

First Things First: Since 2000, I've attended over a dozen conferences of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, one of the largest industry group's representing corporations and brands that own the "listening pipe." While not nearly as glamorous as the "new media" or Web 2.0 confabs and conferences, these SOCAP events always hit me like a refreshing cold-shower because they are grounded in the real nuts and bolts of listening, training the front-lines, adapting to an increasingly diverse (e.g. Spanish speakers) and demanding consumers, developing fair and consistent methods for responding to consumers, and navigating impenetrably complex legal barriers (and fear).  I have also learned that this department is consistently underfunded and under-resourced, and mostly divorced from marketing.  As boring and mundane as their work seems, it's hard not to conclude that if a company can't nail the "basics" of consumer listening they'll never get it right, or be credible, in the far more vexing and volatile social media zone. (Remember, most of the vigilantes Business Week's McGregor highlights initially reached out the company, but those experiences were poorly managed and only made the situation worse.)  So you have to start with the source.  That said, like the CMO, the consumer affairs and customer relations leaders also need to step up to the plate, a point I underscored last fall in a SOCAP keynote entitled "Wake Up and Listen to Consumer 2.0."  If they want more budget, more respect, more leeway to nurture meaningful consumer loyalty -- and hence positive word-of-mouth and CGM creation -- they need to make their case, and do so now at a time when the resource-rich marketers are dotting every third word in speeches and memos with the word "conversation."  My book lays out a host of strategies for making such a case, but short of even reading a book (or Business Week's story) business leaders simply need to take a long, hard stare at today's consumer and negotiate a new relationship.  The good news is that there's a growing laundry list of best practices in this area I like to refer to as Listening-Centered Marketing, from Dell's Ideastorm to the 800-number-all-over-the-place Zappos.com.  We're also seeing new metrics and measurement protocols (this is part of what I do in my day job) that make it far easier for brands to understand and act upon varying degrees of consumer emotion (the building block of consumer loyalty or even defection) flowing across the CGM landscape.

Final Question: And so I end this post with a simple question: how do we shift from consumer-powered "vigilantism" to company-powered "service vigilance."  Business Week's piece fires up that conversation, and I really hope it continues down the right path.

This Brand May Be Monitored for "Quality Purposes"...and Other Lessons in Consumer-Surveillance

In my ClickZ column this morning, Adapting to Consumer-Controlled Surveillance, I volunteer a dosage of tortured ambivalence about today's marketing environment:

"I often worry that in our sometime irrational exuberance over the benefits and wonders of conversation, brands are blind to what it truly means for consumers -- our coveted buyers and lifetime revenue streams -- to be constantly watching, monitoring, evaluating, and talking about us. At the end of the day, consumers are monitoring brands and companies "for quality purposes" 24/7, far more attentively than companies recording toll-free calls. And that has enormous consequences for how we promote, protect, and manage brands."

It's not that I lack excitement about "participation" and "conversation." I just worry that brands and their agencies -- and other brand stakeholders -- all to often sidestep the more difficult questions around how to truly manage and interact with consumers in this age of "consumer control." Romanticism sometimes suffocates realism. Marketing claims often simply betrays the facts.  This is big theme in my upcoming book, Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000: Running a Business in a Today's Consumer-Driven World.  This isn't to suggest I have the answers, but I do know we need to get this particular "conversation" going sooner or later.  In my column I outline six key rules and principles to warm up our thinking. They include:

• We must rethink what it means to be truly credible. In a world of 24/7 consumer surveillance, credibility is everything. Today's infrared-enabled consumer can find every chink in the brand armor. My book outlines the six drivers of brand credibility: trust, transparency, authenticity, affirmation, listening, and responsiveness. Getting these drivers right not only neutralizes the impact of piercing consumer radar but also lays a foundation for a win-win.

• We must become better listeners. Marketers must shift from a paid-media marketing model to a listening-centered marketing model wherein all early signals, whether extreme or ostensibly insignificant, are absorbed and internalized across the brand franchise. This requires both internal brand radar, and processes and tools similar to what my own firm (and many others) provide for external listening.


• We must reposition customer service as the new media department. You can put Dove Evolution, Dove Onslaught, every Doritos consumer-created Super Bowl ad, and dozens of hugely popular user-generated ad spots into a blender, and they still won't come close to filling the Olympic-sized pool of negative media in the conversational airwaves implicating bad customer service. In categories like banking and financial service, conversation indicting customer service owns upwards of 40 to 50 percent of all discussion volume. In electronics, the number is around 20 percent. The consumer-controlled surveillance culture is actively taking notes on customer service, and the narrative -- the content it creates -- can cut in either positive or negative directions depending on how well brands nurture this arena.


• We must rethink the value and importance of indirect marketing, including human resources and operations. In a surveillance culture, consumers see three levels deeper into the brand. What they see has less to do with the message's polish and more with the brand experience's foundational drivers. Products that work require a superb operational backbone. Meaningful service experiences require a service profit chain of well-trained, motivated, loyal employees. Smart, interactive, responsive online interfaces require excellent business processes.


• We must close or integrate the silos. Brands need a united, cooperative front to contend with the elevated power and leverage of the consumer-controlled surveillance culture. At some point, it's just not going to work to have PR firms, advertising firms, digital agencies, and other supplier groups messaging against or with these new currents. We can't have eight different groups managing and interpreting influencers. We probably need to refashion and recast what we mean by holistic communication.

Here's a link to the full article.

Is Customer Service the New Marketing? In CGM Land, You Bet!

Is customer service the new marketing?  That's certainly been a long-standing contention in the blog, and it's the theme of a one-day conference taking place in early February.  A firm called GetSatisfaction is the primary host, and it looks like a promising -- if not long overdue -- confab.  The timing is for this conversation is just right, and I frankly hope we'll see more of this in 2008.  My upcoming book (which I'll start previewing in future blog entries), Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000, hits this very theme right smack in the strike zone.  In particular, it makes a forceful argument that marketing in the age of consumer control needs to be completely realigned around customer service and consumer affairs.  With millions upon millions of CGM comments across the web indicting (or complimenting) varying degrees of customer service, or brand listening, there's plenty of empirical evidence to support such a direction.  The key for brands is to draw specific linkages between key dimensions of the service experience and what I like to refer to as the "CGM echo effect."   Such analysis is critical to drive investment or media-mix reallocation.  In the wireless category, for example, customer service issues related to "billing" tends to have a higher word-of-mouth or viral impact that other issues.  This became obvious to me starting in 2000 while analyzing hundreds of thousands of letters on PlanetFeedback.com and more recently across thousands of online expression venues. Certain issue hit core emotions more than others, and customer service is at it heart consumer emotion. (See article: Attention! I Don't Want Your Freakin Attention!) Conversely, brands like Amazon and online shoe seller Zappos.com tend to be rewarded by great service delivery or shipping.  (See recent NY Times story entitled Put Buyers First, What a Concept.) What's needed is a new science of "cause and effect" around the service experience that heavily factors in advocacy and word-of-mouth.  Consumer affairs and customer service departments, in partnership with marketing, can help lead that charge, and that was my hold-no-punches challenge in my October keynote to the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP).  The CGM revolution and Web 2.0, I argued, is finally lending credence and strategic relevance to consumer affairs -- so it's time to lead and set the new agenda. We'll revisit this issue at Ad-Tech San Francisco in April, so stay tuned.  (I can't attend the February conference, but I'm jealous of anyone who can.) For more fun reading on this topic, see: 

• Consumer Affairs: The New Advertising Department

• The Conversational Divide

• Postcard from the Welcome Mat: Levi's Wall of Letters

• Servicing Search: A Better Ad Model

• Postcard from the Welcome Mat: Sheraton Solicits Photo Experiences

• The Science of Talk Value

• Listening Centered Marketing

• 2006 Agency of the Year: Nobody (Max Kalehoff)

Customer Service Oldies But Goodies: "Attention? I Don't Want Your Freakin' Attention!"

Last week work overload prompted me to miss my usual deadline for my ClickZ marketing column, so my editors published an "oldie but goodie" entitled "Attention, I Don't Want Your Freakin' Attention!"  The article resurfaces at a time when the topic of customer service is elevating to a new level of debate and discourse in marketing circles. The topic is loaded with irony, and I think the pseudo "conversation" here well reflects that.  If you want to get a taste of real interactions (at least from the consumer side), you might want to peruse some of the letters and comments on PlanetFeedback.com.  Customer service ironies ooze throughout the site.  (Disclosure: I founded PlanetFeedback, and am darn proud about that!)  Other good resources for getting smarter in this area is the website of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP), as well as website of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).   

MarketingProfs Podcast: Debating the Great "Conversational Divide"

Precipitated in part by a post by my friend and fellow WOMMA board member Jim Nail questioning whether whether social media is scaling the Hype Curve -- a topic I also took on recently in a ClickZ column (Sustaining the Conversation?), I was invited by MarketingProfs Ann Hadley and Paul Dunay to participate in a spirited podcast on the subject.  Jim also participated, although it would be a total stretch to suggest it was a debate, since we agreed on 99% of the points. In a nutshell, I reiterated many of the same points you keep hearing from me on this blog: we're just not credible as marketers on the "conversation" front until we make meaningful investment in listening infrastructures (consumer affairs, relationship marketing).  Too many CMOs and industry pundits are waxing poetic about the power of conversations while the consumer gets snubbed at the brand welcome mat or feedback pipe. We need to get beyond such "conversational divides" and drive more consistency and credibility. Other folks engaged on this topic include Joseph Jaffe and Jen McClure of the Society for New Communications Research.  Here's a link to the podcast

Three Inflection Points on Consumer Affairs

Today in ClickZ ("Guess Who's Knocking on Marketing's Door") I attempt to answer the following very important questions:

If conversation is advertising's new sweet spot, should consumer affairs play a more central, strategic role in the marketing equation?

My answer is a big yes, and I reach this conclusion by citing three major inflection points over the past several weeks: a trip to the annual conference of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP), a visit to the monument of letters (see my earlier post) at Levi Strauss's headquarters, and the highly energizing panel I moderated last week at Ad-Tech.  Read on!

Postcard from the Welcome Mat: Levi Strauss's Wall of Letters

This is Tom Asher, head of consumer relations for Levi Strauss & Co, standing in front of an absolutely amazing -- dare I say engaging -- monument to consumer letters written to his company. The exhibit sits in the main foyer of the Levi-Strauss building in San Francisco.  Trust me, you just can't just dodge by this exhibit -- you have to stop, look, and soak it in.  It's quite powerful, and it basically amounts to a pre Web 2.0 monument to the true foundations of consumer conversation.   

“Levi's consumers are so passionate. Our goal has always been to engage with consumers, help connect them to our brands and our products, and gather insights to help improve our consumer experience.” Tom explained to me. “We receive calls, letters and emails from Levi's consumers, some of whom have been wearing our product for decades. Others tell us that their grandparents and grandchildren wear Levi's.”  Tom's so passionate about the listening mission that he's also the president of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP).

While I noted to Tom that the new world of consumer-generated media brings huge new challenges and opportunity to the table, he hardly disagreed - in fact, that's why he he invited me to lunch with several of his colleagues. That said, he did remind me of a few important fundamentals that we as marketers sometimes lose sight of in our glorification of all "new" conversational techniques.   “Some of our most meaningful and successful connections with consumers," he said, "are via old school methods.” For example, he said Levi’s frequently sends “written thank you cards to some consumers after they call us.”

Of course, the answer rests in both the old and new, but I have to admit, there was a certain authenticity and sincerity in mission that came across for me as I toured this great wall of letters. As a consumer, sometimes it just feels more meaningful to receive a real letter in the mail, with a real signature.  Email alone doesn't always cut it!  It clearly depends on the situation and circumstance.  The key is to master the art of the response, and that requires a requires not only active listening, but a deep understanding of the relationship between emotion and word of mouth.  After all, is it purely rational that all these denim buyers over the years have written letters to Levi's?  To some extent, yes, but brand emotion is a far bigger driver, and this come across clearly in the letters themselves.  That's also what's happening throughout the web today, across all multi-media formats.  Some of the most viral videos on the web related to brands, in fact, are deeply rooted on consumer emotion (both positive and negative).

Back to Basics: But back to the wall.  As I finished walking around all four corners of the exhibit, I just keep thinking to my self: this is where marketing truly begins. 

Servicing Search

Does online search magnify the impact of customer service?  The answer is a big yes, and this is the theme of my ClickZ column today entitled "Servicing Search: A Better Ad Model."  Here's my basic argument.  If you look across the landscape of search results for major brands --  especially in high-involvement categories like auto, electronics, or wireless -- you'll find that CGM related to "service" or "customer service" fills a big chunk of the search pipeline.  Put another way, service experiences leave an aggressive digital trail, which in turn "echoes" back to consumers via search results.  While the Jeff Jarvis meets Dell example is probably the most extreme and well publicized example of customer service bleeding into search results, this happens in smaller, more subtle ways all the time. Customer service is one of those issues that uniquely hits emotional chords, and emotion, we know, is one of the biggest drivers of word-of-mouth.  What's critical for brands to understand is the degree to which their service operations -- whether through CSRs, 800-lines, or online feedback loops -- factors in the "viral effect" of satisfaction or dissatisfaction.  Just think about it: how much would you spend to ensure a dissatisfied consumer never took his or her case to YouTube?  As I note:

 "If you want a better, more inviting billboard when consumers search your brand, think hard about your own welcome mat. Remember, you are what they search."

Postcard from the Welcome Mat: Sheraton Solicits Photo Feedback!

I love this example by Sheraton of soliciting consumer feedback around the hotel experience, photo upload included. After all, in an age of digital cameras and mobile cameras phones, how can the lame "tell us what you think" card at hotels possibly convey the full experience of a great (or horrible) hotel experience.  This is a classic example of exploiting what I call the "Ex-Spot"...or "Moment of Experience."  Recall my earlier blurb about taking photos at Peet's Coffee.  This is also why I think consumer affairs is becoming (or needs to become) more central to the overall marketing mix.  This is a key message I intend to deliver to the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP) at their San Antonio conference this spring.  And while I'm writing about hotels, you might want to take a peek at Starwood Hotel's "TheLobby.com," a compilation of travel stories sponsored by Starwood and ElectricArtists.  Good example of the hotel industry nurturing conversation related to customer needs and interests.

My "Top Ten" List of ClickZ Articles for Today's CMO

In my latest ClickZ marketing column, I take a rare break from trying to come up with something "new and fresh."  Instead I look through the rear view mirror of my sixty or so columns and aggregate what I think are my the ten most important reads.  At times, we just need to keep internalizing the same message and lessons.  Hence..."Ten Columns Every CMO Should Read," and they are as follows:

1. "The Pocket Guide to Consumer-Generated Media"
2. "Irrational Blogguberance"
3. "Attention? I Don't Want Your Freakin' Attention!"
4. "Practice What You Search"
5. "TV is Dead, Long Live TV"
6. "The Pocket Guide to Chatterbacking"
7. "The Third Moment of Truth"
8. "Real-Beauty, Real Breakthrough in Consumer-Fortified Media"
9. "Movimiento Marketing: On the Radio Dial"
10. "Time for a New Marketing Model: Listening-Centered Marketing"

As I note in my opening, I have sought to keep my commentary focused on a few key themes I believe are mission-critical for today's CMOs. Themes like marketing in an era of consumer control and consumer-generated media; managing media fragmentation and new marketing models; and, most important, leveraging and exploiting the untapped power of listening. I've tried to be self-critical, wary of hype, and mindful of the danger of bagging the truth against a backdrop of dynamic change. If there's one area in which I've been unapologetically righteous, it's been in my message that if we further erode trust or credibility in consumers' eyes, we're toast -- end of story.