1. Customer Feedback: How to Value It in Your Organization, Part 2 of a 3-Part Series

    Friday, 11 Jun 2010 View Comments Posted by: Kira Wampler

    “Well, that is just customer feedback and this [insert business policy] makes us [insert revenue number].”

    Sound familiar? As a S.P.I.C.Y. leader in your organization, you’ve worked hard to use customer feedback to break down barriers within your organization, as described in part 1 of this series. But, it is inevitable that you either have heard or will face a customer vs. shareholder debate when it comes to reporting out on customer feedback and the root causes driving it. Price, product and policy issues that drive sales and negative sentiment are particularly tricky to navigate within the context of large organizations.

    What makes these conversations so hard and the barriers between silos so thick is that different measures of success are in play. Customer experience measures, derived from customer feedback, usually come in the form of satisfaction, resolution rates and brand favorability while shareholder measures are, well, all about revenue, expenses and profit. And, the concept of missed revenue as a result of negative sentiment can feel very fuzzy for operations, finance and business unit leaders.

    Having an apples-to-apples discussion between the two camps is critical. At Intuit, we heavily used the Net Promoter methodology which asks a simple question – “how likely are you to recommend this [product, service, etc] to someone else”, and it is often used as a side-by-side measure with revenue. Over the last couple of years, Intuit’s research teams did extremely hard work to connect Net Promoter data to revenue.

    But, Net Promoter data is what people “say” they are going to do. What about what people actually say and actually do? Listening on the social web is the best way to understand this other side to the loyalty coin. Using tools like Radian 6 or Scout Labs, you can listen to what’s being said about your brand, apply sentiment scoring and use your real customers’ voice to show how they are, or are not recommending your products or services.

    In some cases, you have listen yourself in specific channels, like my team at Intuit did within Amazon. My team led the effort to have a 100% reply goal on Amazon reviews on Intuit’s flagship small business product, QuickBooks Pro 2010, and we developed a weekly dashboard, shared at senior staff, that showed key topics, number of reviews, sentiment and change over time.

    What that dashboard didn’t show was impact on sales. By adding in simple questions to several surveys that regularly go out to recent purchasers (and not) of QuickBooks, we were able to determine impact on sales.

    We found that online reviews had a double digit impact on sales – meaning that our customers said that reviews were the main & only source or the main but not only source of purchasing. Between the Net Promoter value work and the online review-to-sales research, our team had the opportunity to really connect customer and shareholder measures. Efforts like this enabled the team to drive closed-loop changes within the product that dramatically decreased negative sentiment.

    Valuing customer feedback is the second key step in breaking down the barriers within an organization. Next up, we’ll tackle responding to customer feedback!

  2. Wanted: a S.P.I.C.Y. Leader at Intuit

    Tuesday, 20 Apr 2010 View Comments Posted by: Kira Wampler

    Okay, I had to start my first blog post at Ant’s Eye View with a funny headline. In all seriousness though, as someone who’s just left a social media/community leadership role at a large company and was part of the interview team for my replacement at Intuit, the right person to lead a social media team is S.P.I.C.Y.

    Being a S.P.I.C.Y. leader is about successfully transforming corporate cultures to focus on customers while achieving company goals. It’s not about how many followers, fans, connections or Word with Friends’ games you have running. S.P.I.C.Y. attributes are:

    • Smart: Do you use good data to make decisions, and is the data fairly obtained and applied? I’ve seen a lot of snake oil, internally and externally, around data, or the lack thereof, and the social web, so smarts are required to make sense of it all. Smarts are also required to do the hard work of connecting the dots between customer success and your company’s success. Last but not least in the smarts category is rigor around the data. Are you rigorous in setting real business objectives or you do chase after shiny objects? And, if you’re someone who’s rigorously set priorities, then how do you adjust as you acquire new information?
    • Passionate: If you aren’t interested in talking about your products and services, then who the heck will be? It’s okay to care passionately about your products, services, company and, above all, your customers. In digital media, true passion, not smelly promotional passion, cuts through noise. Passion also cuts through the noise internally, especially when combined with the smarts mentioned above.
    • Interested: Are you naturally curious about the world around you, your customers’ lives and your products or services? Do you take a systematic approach for learning new “cultures” and new projects and, most importantly, then apply that learning to constantly improve on your teams and your work. And, my deep belief is that naturally interested people are naturally humble. We’re all learning our way here, and being humble goes a long way when operating in new cultures and partnering with internal teams. Speaking of…do you do more to recognize others than to gain recognition for yourself?
    • Caring:  A deep, enduring commitment to customers (and soon-to-be customers) is the hallmark of a S.P.I.C.Y leader at Intuit. Thanks to amazing folks like Roy Rosin and Scott Cook, I learned early on about the importance of caring for customers and prospects by learning from them directly – through follow-me-homes, Net Promoter studies and listening and responding to them on the social web. And, then taking that learning and doing something about it, even if it hurts.
    • Youthful: No, this isn’t when I tell you to hire someone who is 20 and has been using some form of digital device since birth. Not that there is anything wrong with those folks! In fact, what’s exciting about being youthful is the belief in the power of change. Change is a constant on the social web and in large corporations. Driving change, not be driven crazy by it, is the key to success in this role.

    Most importantly, spicy or no, be a leader. Whether you’re going to manage a large team or influence other teams, leading is key. Leadership encapsulates all of the above attributes with the critical addition of being willing to make tough decisions, stand up for your team and lead what is often significant change in a large organization. Leading is also about understanding that you can hold standards and goals high, while supporting your team and internal partners to make it happen. All too often, I’ve heard folks say that “you can’t do “x” because this is all new.” Well, if there was anything I learned from Battlestar Galactica, leadership is even more important when facing the unknown.

    Here are some examples of job descriptions for social media leaders, including the one I wrote for my replacement. And, in the great minds think alike category, here’s an excellent post from Christine Morrison, social lead at Intuit’s TurboTax on leadership qualities for social media folks inside companies.

    I’d love to hear about your experiences either hiring for social media/online engagement leaders at your organization or about trying to get one of those jobs. What did I miss? What’s off base?

  3. Is your Brain ready for Great Customer Service?

    Tuesday, 22 Dec 2009 View Comments Posted by: Sean McDonald

    Great customer service starts with a healthy brain. I believe if your employees are happy, informed, engaged, and energized; then they produce better products and deliver great service. If your employees have negative feelings, this clogs the Prefrontal Cortex in the brain,  where empathy and reasoning reside.

    I attended a great workshop from the Hand in Hand organization (a non profit started by Patty Wipfler). Hand in Hand is a parenting resource, but I saw many parallels to adult business relationships. Hand in Hand’s approach is based on the principles of respect, listening, leadership development and the importance of interpersonal connections. The way to break thru the negative emotions is to Listen on a personal level. Bad behavior can be a request for help.

    Case in point: American Airlines – I have flown over 30 segments with American Airlines in last 6 months and have been paying a lot of attention to the flight attendants, gate agents, ticket counter agents, and pilots (greet you at end of the flight). My service experience has been either great or terrible. Why? It comes down to the employee’s attitude– some are enjoying their job and others hate it. Unfortunately over the last 30 flight segments, about 75% of my observations appear to be hating/regretting showing up for work. This comes across as some rude behavior in boarding and in flight service (“HURRY UP take your seat”  “we can’t take off because YOU are not seated”, “Turn off your device NOW”). December 3,  I was on a flight from AUS to DFW, they started loading the plane 12 minutes before scheduled departure, then complained that the passengers were holding up scheduled departure. The reason was the late arrival of the plane (inbound to AUS) and late loading delayed the departure. Compare this to stories of Virgin America or Southwest – customers talk about the positive experiences. I met one business traveler in San Francisco that has changed his schedule to fly Virgin America over other airlines. So I asked why? What does Virgin America do differently? Answer: “they are nice to me, say hello, they smile”.

    People smile when they are happy. People are happy when they are informed, empowered, and energized. Management has a lot of jobs and get dumped on a lot. A management philosophy I followed (while in the U.S. Navy and at Dell, Inc.) was to listen to my team, remove roadblocks, praise in public, and counsel when necessary. If you take care of your team, they take care of you. What is yours?

    American Airlines: if you happen to read this, I would be interested in discussing some ideas to improve your customer service. As a frequent flyer, it is in my best interest (along with millions of other flyers to improve the status quo).  I believe your employees are not the core problem. Improved communication and engagement can help.