Referrals: Now 50% More Powerful !

Over the last number of posts, I have referred to the importance of customer reviews, and customer review sites (i.e. Bazzarvoice, Loudervoice,) They form an important part of the customers online search and evaluation strategy. Bazaarvoice claims that sales of a product go up from 16% to doubling just by adding customer reviews. The next stages are probably feature and price comparison and evaluation and customers are using tools for this as well, like Farecast. Going back to my old Marketing days, I'd say there is a great deal of brand-Halo effect going on, where we think we are getting good value, because the brand says so. With so much information, tools, and engines available, how on earth are we going to make decisions? It would seem to me that the overall Brand Reputation of a company will be paramount here, and Reputation will be driven by customer experience, the reporting of customer experience, and overall levels of customer advocacy. Customer advocacy is the result of customers getting exceptional service. 121media.com has a nice little piece on a US brokerage firm that uses direct personal contact to drive this sense of exceptional service. They don't have an IVR, or a cenralised customer service center. Calls are driven right through to the local branch where they are handled by trained and informed individuals. Now I am sure their are lots of infrastructure bells and whistles in the background to ensure that questions can be answered and clients serviced properly, but they key to the companies success is "driving contact", not "withdrawing from contact". So why do they want to draw the customers in?

financial services customers who make referrals tend to be worth 50 percent more than a typical customer, and a new referred customer is worth almost as twice much as a customer coming from other channels. Also, "advocates become more valuable and more loyal simply by making a referral, because they put their reputation on the line,"

Now back to some very old chestnuts: - how many of your customers would actively refer you to a friend? - do you know what interaction points provide the opportunity for exceptional customer service? - do you know how to identify, interact with, and leverage the power of advocacy? The Guys at BazaarVoice have a good entry on getting to grips with some of this stuff.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact

Great Service is Semi-Permiable

Agit Jaoker at Open Gardens is always interesting to read when it comes to the future of mobile communications. He has a great article on a conversation he had with a Vodafone executive. While their service were great, and he had no problem with them, Agit realised that the service was so great in fact that Vodafone had no real reasons to contact him. Yes, when travelling he received an announcement welcoming him to the new geography, but that's about it. This is one of the real challenges facing every virtual service:

If they (and by that – I mean any Operator) can work this out i.e. the ability to work with the best customers, interact with bloggers, be human, be open to feedback etc etc .. they have a good chance of succeeding in the next wave of Mobile data apps

I've always thought about this from a networked organisation perspective. It was called "having a semi-permeable membrane", i.e. people/ water could get in or out, but the boundary still had integrity. In a way, this is a useful way to think about click to call functionality and presence technology. Of course, being available on your desktop and IM is one thing, but to be really useful it has to extend to the mobile phone, and this is why Agit argues that "mobile 2.0" must be considered in tandom with and in the context of, Web 2.0.

technorati tags: customer, interaction, voice, messaging, customer, contact