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Twilio, the developer-centric communications platform that successfully IPOed earlier this year, published a new study today about how consumers want to use tech to talk to businesses and brands. The study, which the market research firm Vanson Bourne performed for Twilio by surveying 6,000 consumers in Europe, Asia and North America, shows that nine out of ten consumers would like to be able to use messaging to talk to businesses. The majority of businesses, however, don’t yet have the infrastructure in place to do so right now. Given that it’s Twilio’s bread and butter to provide this kind of infrastructure to businesses, it’s worth taking the results with a grain of salt, of course. What they do highlight, though, is that while consumers overall prefer messaging over face-to-face interactions with businesses (and millennials even more so), businesses haven’t quite caught up to this new world yet....
Companies need to focus on three key qualities in order to deliver highly relevant customer experiences at scale, according to Accenture. And those who succeed significantly outperform the market.
The company has shared the information in an interactive infographic culled from a study called Digital Transformation: Re-imagine from the Outside in which it outlines the issues. The full report is also available for download...
LivePerson, a provider of digital engagement solutions, today announced the results of its second annual Connecting with Customers research, a comprehensive global study examining trends in online behavior and consumer expectations. The survey revealed that 69% of consumers are more likely to be loyal to a brand that provides live, human assistance at critical moments, and 82% indicate their perception of a brand improves when live chat is available.
Most significantly, the research shows the window to win or lose brand loyalty is a mere 76 seconds. Consumers expect access to real-time help within 76 seconds, and if they don't get it, they choose the slower, more frustrating option of email or abandon the site entirely, according to the research....
...If you read the profiles of many of the heads of customer service on LinkedIn (or the service areas of their company’s websites), you might be forgiven for concluding that they were almost all focused on the lofty goals of “exceeding customer expectations” and/or “creating customer delight”. Maybe your organisation claims the same.
But ground-breaking recent research by the CEB (the organisation that brought you “The Challenger Sale”) makes a strong case for all this talk of delighting customers being a stupid and – for almost every company on the planet bar a few shining stars – ultimately unprofitable strategy. As anyone who has had cause to phone O2’s customer service line (note: other mobile phone companies offer an equally awful experience) will recognise, I think most of us would be prepared to sacrifice the occasional opportunity to have a truly “wow” experience in return for not ever having to suffer any more of the much more common “doh!’ experiences....
An inevitable consequence of the push to achieve sales through multiple channels is that businesses must also be prepared to deliver multichannel customer service. But is social there yet?
An inevitable consequence of the push to achieve sales through multiple channels is that businesses must also be prepared to deliver multichannel customer service.
Poor levels of service can ruin the overall shopping experience and mean that the customer is lost forever, so online, in-store, mobile and all other channels must work together to deliver an excellent overall customer experience.New research from eDigitalResearch examined how consumers prefer to contact companies and then compared the various response times and satisfaction levels.
The survey asked more than 2,000 UK respondents how they expect to be able to contact a business - 92% selected email, followed by telephone (71%) and by post (45%). Fewer than one in four (22%) said live online chat and just 11% said social media....
How clients interact with a brand has changed significantly. Now the customer experience extends far beyond customer service, and so it should....
If you didn’t know better you could be forgiven for thinking that the line was for an über cool nightclub. World class underground House music is pumping from the speakers and there is a doorman looking after the crowd outside. Unlike a nightclub doorman though, he is offering free gelato taste tests to help ease the decision making process once inside.
Even if you can’t make it to Surry Hills or Darlinghurst on a chilli winters night, the customer experience extends across the globe via their popular Facebook page. Messina’s Facebook audience enjoys (amongst other things) a personalized level of social media customer service that makes them feel like they are part of the brand. I guess you get the idea. Messina is nailing their customer experience.Forrester Research’s study ‘The State Of Customer Experience Management‘ suggests that over 90 percent of companies rate customer experience as a top priority moving ahead.
So what separates customer experience from customer service and what can your business do to improve your customer experience?...
What do you do when you have a problem with a brand’s product or service?You go online, right?
You’re not alone. Close to six in ten (57 percent) of customers search for a solution online before taking any further action, and they’re increasingly reaching for a brand’s social media outposts. Almost half of social media users (47 percent) have received customer care on a channel such as Twitter or Facebook, and 37 percent now prefer customer service through social media rather than by telephone.
But brands still have work to do. While 80 percent of Twitter users expect a response to a consumer service enquiry within a day, just 40 percent of tweets to the 25 largest online retailers are answered within 24 hours, and many are ignored altogether....
Case study: Virgin America is using its Twitter presence to handle everything from seat changes to cocktail requests—even at 35,000 feet.
Steve Jenkins was waiting for takeoff when he noticed it—his boarding pass for Virgin America Flight 753, bound for San Francisco, was missing his frequent flier number. He could have flagged a flight attendant. He could have called customer service. Instead, Jenkins, the CEO of a Seattle-based gaming company, decided to pick up his phone and tweet.
Four minutes later, Virgin America responded:Jenkins messaged @VirginAmerica with his ticket details. He was all set before the plane left the tarmac."It would have taken me longer to call, go through the whole phone tree, find someone, and authenticate myself," he said. "And if I hadn't done it when I thought about it, I might have forgotten about it."...
Figuring out how much content you need is a tough question, but Jay Baer supplies an easy formula to get you started...One of the three ways to create Youtility – marketing so useful, people would pay for it – is to answer every customer question. Your prospective customers have TONS of questions they need to have answered before making a purchase. This is true for all businesses, but perhaps most so for B2B, where the stakes are higher and the consideration cycle is longer.
In the book, I have lots of case studies about answering customer questions, highlighted (of course) by Marcus Sheridan from River Pools and Spas, who revolutionized his business and the swimming pool industry by focusing on teaching, not selling.So I was going through this principle, and talking about Marcus and other examples when a gentlemen in the St. Louis audience asked this very good question:How many questions do I need to answer?...
Sure, you have a business, but whether you sell a product or a service, you must provide SERVICE. What makes you so much different from your competitor that your prospects are knocking down your door? Or are they?
Solving problems is your real product not your widget or your services. Anyone and everyone does that. It is you, your service and your ability to meet the customer/prospect needs that will drive your business.You already know that people buy from people. You are “people” not just your brand or your company. It is your responsibility to meet needs, solve issues and instill a level of comfort and trust with your audience.
The buying decision occurs in the emotional environment.“Too many business owners and sales people try to sell their product or service, neglecting the fact that their customer is a person. In fact, the customer is a person who has feelings, influences and a mind of their own. They want to be connected with, and to trust and believe the person from which they are buying.” Rebecca Wilson....
...Yes, there is a lot more to content marketing than just one campaign, but the lesson from this very simple idea is as solid as they come – it doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to relate to your clients and give them some value. Next time you are racking your brain struggling to think about what you can write about, take a moment, look around ask the people on the front lines of your business what they think. Take the pressure off – a little creativity and fun might just solve all your problems and win the hearts of some new fans. Giving that little extra...
It’s not even just e-commerce sites that allow reviews either. Local Directory sites allow customers to review businesses, whether the business encourages them or not. For a lot of businesses the ease of getting reviews from clients should be an opportunity to grab with both hands. Surprisingly, many businesses are ignoring this. More worryingly, if past clients have gone online to complain about poor service publicly on a third party website some business owners are taking the attitude of “out of sight, out of mind”. I even spoke to one business owner who said that if anyone read online reviews about his business he wouldn’t want them as a client anyway! So do people read reviews, and more importantly do they believe them? PeopleClaim have put together this Infographic looking at some statistical measures of ratings and reviews. They were curious as to how many people were searching for reviews, what they were finding, and what type of decisions they were making based on this information....
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Social media is still a young platform when it comes to customer service. Both customers and companies are in the “figuring out” stage, where both parties are trying to understand how best to communicate with each other.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that social media platforms have their own “rules of conduct” and “language”. Learning social media etiquette is an extremely important aspect of customer service on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Equally as important is learning how to best manage your communications over various social media platforms.
With the right mixture of tools and a willingness to keep a tab on all conversations with customers, you can ensure that maneuvering your way around various social media channels and communicating with customers is as effective and efficient as possible.
Hitorically, financial services companies have not been on the frontier of innovation. On the contrary, in the current era of digitization, too many companies think they have enough time to adapt to this new environment. In many boardrooms ‘digital’ is still associated with selling products over the Internet or cost-cutting. But this is only half the story. Digital transformation impacts the entire enterprise. It is about the way a company assesses risk or how it automates its service functions. It is how sales are supported digitally by tablets, for example.
A recent Mckinsey report stated that for the simple financial products, digital channel use in Europe will rise to an average of 35%. Moreover, the total cost reduction could run up to 20% percent when the benefits from digital transformation are factored into the equation. That is why it is important that financial services companies start assessing what digital transformation could do for them....
A new study from social software provider Lithium reveals 53 percent of consumers expect a brand to respond to a tweet within an hour. That number jumps to 72 percent of consumers expecting a response if the tweet is a complaint about the brand or its products.
Lithium commissioned Millward Brown Digital to conduct the study evaluating consumer expectations when interacting with brands on Twitter. Surveying 501 respondents who claimed they actively engaged with businesses on Twitter, the study found a brand’s response time to tweets can significantly impact the brand’s overall reputation.
When asked how quickly a response is expected from a brand on Twitter, 65 percent of the survey participants said they want a response in two hours time or less, with 20 percent expecting a response in 30 minutes or less....
Did you wake up one morning and think, “I wish I had a phone that would not only allow me to text and call, but play games, get directions, read books, allow me access to all social media and take pictures?” Not likely. You wanted an iPhoneteens_working because Apple put it on the market.
Jim Clifton, CEO at Gallup, says this is no small point. Our economy isn’t waiting for consumers to want to start purchasing things again; it’s waiting for entrepreneurs to create demand.
Growth doesn’t just happen, and it’s not necessarily driven by demand. Growth comes from innovation and from entrepreneurs who create demand. Just look at the iPhone....
Domino's and Bank of America show that having humans handling social media doesn't mean they'll act human.
Last week, Domino’s stepped in it on Facebook. A customer took to the brand’s Facebook page to compliment the chain, which then responded with a rote “Sorry for your bad experience” response. Digiday, along with others, covered the snafu, which appeared to point out the perils of relying on automated responses in social media.
And yet the error was actually a mistake made by a human, according to Domino’s. In much the same way as Bank of America screwed up last month by having a social media team sounding a lot like robots, a Domino’s employee mistook the compliment for a complaint. The employee then, it would appear, gave the default response for social media complaints. Domino’s, to its credit, tried to regain its footing by taking it in stride. The rub with brands in social media is that they’ll need humans, who are prone to make mistakes....
Is your company using social media to provide a better customer service experience and respond to customer outreach? Many are not! As Ferris Bueller said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” And if you are not paying attention to your customers use of social media get customers service issues resolved, then you could be caught with your corporate pants down!
42% of consumers who complain on social media expect a response in under sixty minutes. (Source: Edison Research) So, do you really need to worry about using social media for your company’s customer service program? Why staff a socially savvy group of service reps when you already have a web site, email and a phone? Well, if your customer service program is like Cameron’s (from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) home “”The place is like a museum. It’s very beautiful and very cold, and you’re not allowed to touch anything”, then you need to reconsider your strategy.
Your customers are on a changing customer service-seeking journey and are abandoning the old-school waiting for the “customer-service desk” experience. They are tweeting themselves to the front of the virtual customer service line. And, with 95% of people commiserating with others about their sub-par customer-service experiences, then that would mean a resounding … you need to do something about it!
Zendesk, a cloud-based customer service software platform, thought that finding out this information was so important that they commissioned Dimensional Research. Customers also share great experiences too, with 87% sharing good interactions with others. So, it’s not all bad news....
Brand relationships are no different. Keeping a fiery connection takes some work.
To unlock long-term love for our brands and set the stage for strong lasting connections, one simply has to look at and apply basic human relationship principles. Here are five ways you can keep the spark alive and forge a devoted, lasting connection to consumers....
...Why read Jay’s book and not others? A few reasons: 1: Jay’s a great writer. I’ve been a big fan of Jay’s blog for years (even though I’d love to see him write more lately). Partly because he’s a smart guy. But partly because he’s also a great writer. 2: The concept of the book resonated with me. So many companies are focusing on using social media to sell. And then here comes Jay talking about companies using social and digital tools to HELP. I’ve always loved that approach, so I was immediately interested in Jay’s book. 3. Stats to back up his thinking. Since I’ve been a reader of Jay’s blog for years, I knew he’d definitely be backing up his opinions with good, old-fashioned research. No willy-nilly opinions here.
So, how was the book, you say? Here are six quotes I think sum up Youtility to a tee...
The transition from traditional marketing techniques, however, hasn’t been without some challenges. The shift in mindset to engage their audience online (as opposed to simply broadcasting) has been a fairly confusing proposition. Although the concept of engaging and interacting with their follower base is new, most will agree that it’s an important component to adopt if they’re to actively create brand advocates.
But what is considered engagement? In it’s purest sense, engagement is the ability to cause another person to respond. Because of the wide variety of social media platforms, a brand follower can conceivably respond using any (or a combination of) the following methods:...
The internet gives everyone a voice, and that’s a beautiful thing. However, the things people say online can actually have a bigger impact than they think. When an unhappy customer goes online and leaves a bad review of a business, other customers take it to heart and the company loses business– maybe just a little at first, but when companies start to develop a bad reputation online, it can spread and grow in the blink of an eye. Luckily there are ways that businesses can help prevent that....
With business priorities you manage, how important are online reviews, really, for you? Answer: Very. The stats very clearly show why.... You know generally that reviews are important for your business, and you may even know that they are becoming more imperative every day. But with all the day-to-day business priorities you manage, how important are they, really, for you? Answer: A lot. A great infographic just came out on this topic with some great statistics to share here. Depending on how your reviews currently stack up, some of these numbers are good and some are bad, but all are noteworthy: - 75% of reviews posted on review websites are positive. - 95% of unhappy customers will return to your business if an issue is resolved quickly and efficiently. - 71% agree that consumer reviews make them more comfortable that they are buying the right product/service - 70% of people consult reviews/ratings before purchasing....
After doing this awhile, you get to see the signs of the self-promoter and the quick name-for-themselves artists. You also – with more rarity – get to meet the real deal. So, I was very pleased when he agreed to sit down and chat on topics ranging from the new directions for marketing, listening and relationships, and why “lurking” in social is a good thing....
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Consumers prefer using messaging to talk to business.