tell3000

Apple Case Study: Turning Service Painpoints into Competitive Advantage

Every couple weeks I'll be writing an article for Ad Age on the interplay between marketing and service.  My first article, How Apple is Blurring the Line Between Marketing and Service, dropped last week, and I deliberately picked an offline case study to underscore how good experiences echo online, and vice versa.  More specifically, I note:

Things once considered the dark side of Apple, such as tech support, are on the verge of becoming strategic assets, with the Apple Store's geek-stocked Genius Bar able to tackle just about any issue or concern your have. And the process of planning that interaction is more akin to scheduling a haircut or spa treatment than calling those inaccessible tech-support lines.

It's too early to declare total victory here, and it's clear there's still a ton of experimentation going on at the Apple store, but a few key lessons do emerge.  (1)  Service is marketing. As marketers struggle to "engage" consumers, service may well be the easiest and most gratifying starting point -- and one with high sales conversion potential. (2) Problems are opportunities. Tech support is an emotional experience -- so why not capitalize on that insight by openly and enthusiastically solving problems, giving reassurance and showing compassion for the pain and frustration. A satisfied consumer might just buy something else while making the trip. (3) Employee authority and passion aids selling. When employees "walk the talk" in using the product they sell, credibility goes up -- and credibility drives persuasion. Passion and evangelism also move the needle.   Here's a link to a few reactions to the article, and here's a video blurb from my actual visit.  I welcome any ideas for future articles. 

Rebecca Lieb Reviews "Tell 3000"

Rebecca Lieb just wrote a highly favorable review of the book in a lead ClickZ column entitled "The Customer is Always Talking."   While complimentary, she correctly pinpoints a key missed opportunity, and I've now heard this from a few folks.

In fact, if I have a quibble with the book, it's this laser-focused concentration on big-brand superpowers. While the aforementioned corporations bring a lot of credence in the C-suite, plenty of smaller and online-only companies, craigslist for example, would have been worthy of mention while underscoring the book's arguments about listening and stellar customer service

Still, she notes, "None of this detracts from Blackshaw's central argument: credibility plus authenticity plus transparency equal success, and that listening to and promptly responding to consumers are an absolutely essential element of doing business, particularly as the world becomes increasingly wired."  Again, here's a link to the article.

Whither Twitter (& Service Outages)

Is Twitter having a customer service identity crisis?  More importantly, what's the cost.  Many of you may have noticed that this popular social-media instant messaging platform is suffering from almost unbearable site stoppages and delays?  What should we make of this?  Is it a sign of success (e.g. so popular it can't meet demand) or another sign of putting service on the back burner.  I'm going to be writing an article on this topic so input welcome. 

From "Dell Hell" to "Ring the Bell"

Brian Morrissey of AdWeek today writes a story that's spot-on with the book themes entitled "Hearing Test."  He brings us up to speed on Dell's progress since the infamous "Dell Hell" customer service meltdown.  Interestingly, Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000 opens up with JeffJarvis Dell incident.   Since at incident, remarkable progress has been made.  Writes Morrissey on Dell's first blog initiative:

Pearson's team had a mandate to not only communicate Dell's viewpoint, but to help customers who are having problems. It started with figuring out who was talking about Dell. It turned out quite a lot of people were: over 15,000 posts mention the company per day. So Dell implemented blog-monitoring software from Visible Technologies. Now, when someone blogs about a problem with a Dell product, it's routed to a member of Pearson's team. The unit, acting as what Pearson calls "an early warning system," can respond to as many as 100 posts in a day.

And this on taking ideas and suggestions, long before programs like MyStarbucksIdea.com:

Another focus for Dell has been enlisting consumers' help in improving the company, remaking its online community section to let people answer each other's questions. It takes a page out of the book of social media Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. If a user posing a question chooses another's answer as helpful, it gets marked as an "accepted solution" to the problem. Dell now lists over 6,000 accepted solutions for a wide range of issues.

Yes, there's hope, and even the largest of organizations can make big things happen with the right level of initiative and leadership.