Your customers have a say about your products and services. They are willing to express themselves and even let others know what they think about you.
This has been going on for many years, but during the last ones, this trend has exacerbated: Customers do want to be listened, and actually have more credibility than most of the media and advertising you can do. So, if this is the case HOW DO YOU MANAGE YOUR CUSTOMER CRITICS AND REVIEWS?
Some companies just ignore them. This is not only the case of companies that are not facing any competion (monopolies) , but also the one of many old fashioned business that pretend to know what is best for their customers. Should the latter have any complains, they will simply do not do anything about them.
Others, which are the majority, let whoever is in charge of customer relationship management (be it commercial people or customer care departments), take note of the feedback, congratulate themselves for the good one, and send nice apology letters when they get some critics (just think about how many times you have placed a complain and you just have got in return a polite letter apologizing).
You can also find companies (a minority as a matter of fact) that do something else with them: They analyze systematically the critics received, filter them, analyze them and act consequently. This will actually become feedaback and information for refining existing products and services, or coming up with new versions that will ensure the right customer experience.
Another option is introduced by companies that launch Beta versions of their products, unended products launched exclusively for a panel of experts that will polish it with their critics and ideas till getting something really valuable and contrasted.
The companies that do view themselves as smarter than the rest of the world, try to manipulate them. Yes, manipulate them y making them up in order to ensure that the right messages are converyed to the target group. Manipulation that is very likely to be eventually discovered, as it happened to Vichy in France when they created a fake customer that poured in the web the expected reniews and messages…
Of course, we cannot leave apart Celebrity. Which is similar to the former in the sense that you are using someone (in this case someone well-known and respected) to pass on the information you want and silence what other customers might have to say.
Product and service reviews by experts could also be included in the list. I personally strongly doubt about the objectivity used by most of these experts, but as long as the expert has a reputation, it works fine. Traditional reviews and losing ground to digital based ones (such as blogs).
And last but not least, you can publish openly what your customers say. Agressive and risky? Could be, but you will gain credibility and your customers will be able to acknowledge what they will be up to. In this regard, you can find Canon USA, which is publishing openly the pros and cons that his customers find to their cameras (Canon USA Customer Reviews). Cynics will say that there is also manipulation here through the filtering introduce, but so far it is helping Canon to strengthen their credibility and leadership in the camera industry.
WHERE ARE YOU IN THE PICTURE? ARE YOU IN THE TRANSPARENT OR THE OPAQUE SIDE? Think about it, but remember that this is the era of open information and customer engagement.
THINK DIFFERENT!!!
Ignacio Gafo
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