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Your Clients Want to Hear from You
Author: Lauren Bittner
May 17, 2007
When it comes to relationships with business associates, customers or anyone else, remember this: Communicate early. Communicate often.
That is a key takeaway from Vox’s most recent case study of one insurance company’s quest to execute a strategy for ongoing, personalized customer contact. The company found that the initial resistance of its agents to support the strategy and the willingness they later demonstrated was directly tied to how the company communicated with them. You can learn the details in the complete case study. (Note: link is a PDF.)
Lost in Translation…and Navigation
Author: Anne McLain
May 8, 2007
Recently, American Airlines (AA) launched a website just for women travelers. It got dissed pretty quickly because of the initial lavender (non-AA branded) color scheme and lack of meaty content for real women travelers. I agree. There is the start of some good content, but there is still so much more they could include. I’d love to see some actual commentary from women travelers so you feel connected as a community. Research shows that female consumers are more likely to seek advice or information from others before a purchase, so this has huge potential!
But one issue still stands out above all. No one has mentioned that the site is just lacking some good, old-fashioned usability. There are 3 silos of information, but each time you want to navigate through the site, you must hit the back button to return to the microsite’s home page before you can move to another section—or even within that section. How frustrating! The site also resides within the already busy AA.com web interface so you could easily click out of the microsite without even knowing it. If they haven’t lost women with content, they’ll lose them in navigation.
I give American a lot of credit for being one of the first to truly tap this $4 trillion marketplace. Now, just remember to talk with us, not to us.
A Positive Reaction Does Not Equal Satisfaction
Author: Michelle Dash
May 2, 2007
This weekend I received a phone call asking me for five minutes of my time to take a customer satisfaction survey. The woman on the phone said she was calling from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), so I agreed to answer her questions.
She began asking about my expectations of my electric company using a number scale to rate satisfaction. Honestly, I don’t really care who provides my electricity, I just want to know that if I pay my bill every month, my lights will turn on. I answered the questions arbitrarily; if I took the survey 10 times, I would probably have come up with 10 different answers. I wondered how many other people answer at random and if the results of this survey would actually be beneficial to the company.
Suddenly, she asked two questions that are valuable in measuring loyalty and satisfaction—my interest was perked! Both questions assumed the hypothetical situation that you have a choice of companies to provide service.
1. How likely would you be to choose service from you current company?
2. If your current company was raising rates and other companies was not, how much could your current company raise their price (using increments of 25%) before you would discontinue service?
I found the second question particularly interesting. I answered 25%, though I would have no problem switching for less than 25%. I have no personal connection to my electric company and it is a rare occasion that I have to contact them. I don’t care who provides my service, I want to pay the least amount possible.
It is important to remember that people often lie on surveys. Though one may say they are satisfied with a service, it does not mean they will be a loyal customer. Loyalty is based on emotional responses to products, companies and/or services. Asking questions that measure these feelings usually yields a better indication of satisfaction.
