Get on Get Satisfaction Now

Normally my Life Cycle Updates include some fancy graphs and some basic statistical analysis. However, I’d like to get a bit more personal this week.

A brief digression. I just had an unbelievably bad restaurant experience. Inattentive service, attitude, incorrectly cooked food (that I could not send back due to an absent server), and plenty of excuses. I was not the only one who suffered. People were complaining all around us. Another couple left after not getting their entrees.

I was offered gift certificates for my troubles. I politely declined. Why would I come back to a restaurant that treated me poorly? It made me want to vent my frustrations on Twitter. So I did.

And this made me think of the opportunity provided to brands by Get Satisfaction which, with recent interface changes, is poised to enter the Escalation Phase of their New Media Life Cycle.

Long-term treatment, no more band-aids

Get Satisfaction has an easy-to-use interface that enables companies, brands, and individuals to provide a two-way communication forum for their customers. This communication is vital to a sustainable customer service experience. So although an individual customer on a broad platform, like Twitter, has the power to damage your reputation, he or she has just as much power to build it up.

Turn a potential negative into a positive. Listen to the complaints. Acknowledge them. Fix them. Encourage customers to come back. And do all this in such a way that everyone can see it.

“Treat everyone like a critic”

That’s how Dave Andelman ends every episode of his popular, greater-Boston restaurant review show, Phantom Gourmet. Nowadays, with Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, and Get Satisfaction, everyone is a critic.

In the past, you might get away with occasional slip-ups in service so long as you treated the right people right. While that isn’t the best way to run a business, the repercussions of a mistake were much more muffled than they are today. Critics were the only unbiased people with broad spheres of influence upon your business.

That has changed. Producers of valuable content quickly gain a broad platform on social sites, so anyone has the potential to at least moderately affect your business. When Best Buy denies a customer’s warranty claim, Consumerist can become a soapbox and megaphone.

The carpet is gone

You can no longer sweep your problems under the carpet and shrug it off as a bad day.

If the internet has changed any area for your business — and trust me, it’s more than one area — it’s the idea of customer service. If you’re still clinging to the model of one-on-one interactions to fix isolated problems, you won’t be able to keep up. Every problem you fail to fix will be amplified by a power of ten anytime you happen to fail with the right person who has the right platform. And spotting that person will not be easy. It could be anyone.

Things that consumers might have let slide before, when they didn’t have a mouthpiece, they won’t let slide now. Further, people are willing to listen to and trust other consumers, provided the information is presented in an objective manner.

Ignorance is far from bliss

Don’t think that your phone conversation will remain private. Don’t think that product issues will simply go away if you ignore them. Don’t get comfortable. Get careful. And get it all out in the open.

Get Satisfaction will work because it’s designed to enable valuable conversation with a specific goal: resolve issues. It’s a reputation-building tool as much as it is a customer service tool.

If your product is working to specifications, there’s going to be a conversation about it. If you ignore that conversation, it only fans the flames. But, if you can fix a potential problem before you get a flood of calls about it, it will be worth a brief sting to your ego.

The takeaway

Swallow your pride. Take the curtain off your company’s support experience. You’ll find there’s more to gain than to lose. Get Satisfaction is a great place to start interacting with your customers in a meaningful way.

My question to you

How do you deal with a poor customer service experience?

About the author

Brad Schwarzenbach -

As an analyst on the Tippingpoint Strategy team, Brad explores new opportunities for clients to build relationships with their customers. He’s always testing new social media channels, poring over analytic data, and identifying emerging trends. He also speaks at conferences & events about uncovering powerful messages hidden within brands' unique values.

Brad’s research has contributed to the development of content & contributor strategies for such clients as Breville, Rodale, Long’s Jewelers, and Fusionapps, as well as being a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint blog. He’s been “listening” to the way we communicate online since the old AOL People Connection days and watched the way that digital communication has evolved.

An English and Creative Writing major at the University of Connecticut, Brad’s spent most of his career creating web content and becoming intimately familiar with web theory for Bayard, Inc. and TomTom Inc., giving Brad keen ears and eyes to what, exactly, makes web content valuable.

Outside the office, Brad feels most at home with his beautiful wife-to-be Kristina, or on the golf course. “There’s a distinct pace and rhythm to the way people communicate online.  Understanding and taking part in them yields amazing opportunities for my clients to not only grow but to improve their business. I’m constantly looking for those opportunities.”