"Always Remember: If customer don't have effective way to voice complaint, they just quit doing biz w/ the co."
This sentence is a quote from @tedcoine I found out on Twitter. I believe it is a very interesting one in term of customer relationship management. Indeed, social media have changed the way companies interract with customers.
They can not anylonger avoid listening to angry customers, and they must now deal with it. This is the job of community managers, a new trade which is blossoming.
It is not a natural behavior for a company to let its customers to speak out its complaints and issues. A company sells products, and is seeking for efficiency, which implies standard processes in order to save time and costs.
But ultimately, customer satisfaction is the key factor which will bring success or not to one company.
A lot of companies have looked for ways to silence unhappy customers. They believed that by doing so, they will be able to keep the happy ones happy, and that eventually, unhappy ones would come back.
But it is no longer possible. And this is the reason why they must deal with it now.
This is the reason why it is important to have a strong feedback management system. A one which is able to deal with the large number of media one customer may use to get in contact with the company:
- A call center if it is via telephone.
- A customer service if it is by mail or email
- A community manager if it is by a social media
- A sales person if it is in a store
- An after sales service if it is because of a broken product.
Those media are expensive to manage, and to keep active. But they are vital, because it will minimize the lost of clientele in case of problems.
Also, something very important to think about is how to manage and leverage the large amount of information you may get from all those different sources.
The infromation will come from various ways, but it is important to have a tool which will allow the analyse of all the dysfunction customers may experience.
