Customer Experience - How Good Is Yours ?

Customer service is easy to do when things are going well. I think it is when things go wrong that companies really show their true colours.

Recently one of the tools (Market Samurai) that we use here at Small Acorns started to have a few problems. Pretty much all of the functionality stopped working or was severely crippled. This problem was totally outside of their control as it was a change at Google that caused them the problem but one of the first things they did was alert their users to the problem going into great detail about what the probelem is, what they were doing to fix the problem.

Follow up:

As is usually the case in times such as these, the vultures start circling and their competitors start to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (which is really, really bad marketing by the way).

However, one noticeable thing about the Market Samurai team was that they didn't publicly retaliate. They stayed focused on the problem while responding to people in the comments of the blog post and over twitter. A few days later they posted another very comprehensive blog post detailing that their software was about 90% working again and what they were doing about the remaining 10%. At every step along the way they offered their customers a get out by providing them with the option of a full refund:

.... if you’ve recently purchased Market Samurai for Rank Tracking and feel you didn’t get value from your purchase you’re entitled to a refund.

All of this got me thinking about how well the Market Samurai team handled the situation and how well they dealt with their customers no matter how unreasonable they were. It made me think if there are any general lessons to take away from all this. The above example is very problem oriented but there are obvious parallels to what we should be doing when it is business as usual. Here is what I have come up with:

• If you have a major problem that impacts your customers contact them as soon as you can and be open and transparent.
• Don't wait till you have a problem before you contact your customers. There may be something you can do for them today.
• If you have a problem, keep your customers updated at every step of the way wherever they are - twitter, google+, facebook etc
• Don't resort to fighting with competitors. Focus on the real problem and the people that matter
• Provide them with a way out if they need it.
• Your customers will have an experience when they work work with you whether you have defined that experience or not. Maybe it is time to sit down and define what you want your customers to think and feel when they work with you.
• Every customer is important - the new one that has just started working with you and the one that has been with you for years. Don't forget your loyal customers.

I think that is a good start and I am sure there are others. It is certainly something to think about. Go and define your customer experience now and implement it in your business.