3 Ways Customer Listening Powers Marketing Effectiveness

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CustomerThink.com

Today customers can make sure that their voice is heard like never before. And, if marketers don’t have measures in place to listen, they are turning a deaf ear to potentially significant problems and missing out on essential insights for improving their customer experience.

Following are 3 ways to leverage customer listening and examples of how companies are putting these strategies into action.

1. Realize that Customer Listening (and Responding) is a 360-Degree Commitment.

Engagement with customers includes business partners who are also the face of your brand. So, how every aspect of your brand listens to the voice of your customer and responds is key.

For example, NASCAR made the decision to revamp its marketing and listening in five key areas. But that’s not where it ended. NASCAR also encouraged its business partners and drivers to do the same.

“We developed an industry action plan,” stated Steve Phelps NASCAR CMO, “… A plan for digital and social, a plan for driver star power–and within each plan, [we came up with] a number of different action items … [In an] effort to be thought leaders who provide the best available experience to our fans. We strongly encourage those across the entire landscape of the sport to embrace digital and social media — from drivers and teams to tracks and corporate partners.”

With new technologies NASCAR is boasting 6,000 tweets a minute, 565,000 posts per day and one million posts per event.

2. Customers are More Than Numbers, They are People, Talk to Them … (And listen.)

Data gives you a good view of what customers are doing. However, it is not going to tell you why or give you the emotional factors like a conversation. Personal interactions can be more valuable than all the big data you will ever collect.

Starting in October, Flow and Columbus Business Solutions, a telecommunications company serving the Caribbean, asked customers to tell them how they felt. Michele English, Columbus’ executive vice president and chief customer officer noted, “Our plan is to significantly enhance our customer ‘listening’ systems and ensure that feedback is integrated into our daily decisions and connected to our customers’ experiences across the organization… we have to design and implement [operational processes] to ensure that every customer touch point in the organization can support our customers’ needs efficiently and effectively… We now look forward to more customer feedback. “

The Company designed an easy to use online customer survey and sent communications to customers to encourage them to complete the survey and tell the company what matters.

3. Make Conversation (and Listening) Easy with Social Communities

Online communities enable the exchange of ideas in discussion forums, polls and social media. They provide brand information, mitigate problems and provide opportunities for a collaborative two-way conversation.

Southwest Airlines launched a Listening Center to monitor its online communities using a keyword-based listening tool that pulls in mentions from social platforms. The Listening Center monitors insights in real time to quickly identify issues and immediate engagement opportunities. Customers can connect their Twitter handles to their Rapid Rewards frequent flier numbers to get personalized services. Southwest Airlines also leverages the Listening Centers to send apology letters for delays, find new opportunities for engagement and implement company-wide customer care.

Alice Wilson, social business advisor for Southwest’s marketing organization notes that sharing the information collected is the key to listening success. “The customer feedback means something different to each [department] and can inform each group in a different way…From a social care standpoint, [employees] want to help assist and resolve. But somebody from the marketing team may be looking at that [data and ask], how do we alter communications to help these future situations?…The point is not to keep it as a silo.”

Keys to Effectively Listening to the Voice of Your Customer:

• Listening should be at the heart of your marketing strategy.Listening lets you understand the “why” of what your customers are doing and experiencing so that operational issues, communication, and experience can be overhauled for a more positive overall brand impression.
• Learnings from Listening Needs to be Shared with Every Part of your Business. Having data without acting on the implications does nothing for your business. Set standards for how the insights from your listening programs are regularly integrated and shared with all departments so that changes and actions are put in motion to respond to customer needs and comments.
• Meaningful Dialogue Based on Listening. Develop authentic, honest and direct conversations based on listening, which lead to meaningful connections and two-way dialogue.
• Use Listening to Develop Strategies. Once you launch programs to listen, develop means for incorporating these learnings into new strategies that address the issues identified in customer conversations. Put in motion ongoing review of the data collected through listening programs so that you have a clear roadmap that delineates what customers are expecting, their pain points and their current/future demands.
• Listening Objectives Must be Established. If you don’t know how you are going to listen, you will not be able to hear what your customers are trying to tell you. Whether you have the means to set up a full scale listening center, a social monitoring program, a survey, or a call center monitoring program, know what you are implementing and how you will regularly harvest and utilize the insights.

In summary, customers have a lot to say and they want you to listen. The good news is that customers generally have valid concerns and smart advice to offer. Marketers and customers will both benefit if the marketer creates multichannel ways of listening to customers and processes for acting quickly on their input.

5 Social Media Service Tips

The Challenge: In the past, brands addressed customer service issues by way of a primary channel -- the ‘call center.’ But now, companies must also monitor, respond, and engage in a variety of social channels.

If a brand is unskilled in social media customer engagement, adapting customer service programs to new channels can be challenging: brands might default to reactivity -- essentially, playing ‘defense’ -- when faced with disgruntled customers online.

However, making reactivity the foundation of your social customer service strategy causes brands to view customer relationships as things to ‘manage,’ rather than opportunities to proactively add value to the customer experience.

According to the 2012 American Express® Global Customer Service Barometer, consumers spend 21% more with companies who deliver great service -- compared to 13% on average.” Therefore, to achieve high impact in our social media world, brands must now view ‘customer service’ as an integral part of their overall marketing strategy that can have dramatic impact on the bottom line.

Key Takeaways for Marketers:

1. Make Passion for Service a Corporate Value
Customer Service is marketing. Customer Service representatives should view themselves as the ‘front line’ of a company’s marketing and branding efforts. Treat every service engagement as an opportunity to increase engagement and drive brand advocacy.

2. Surprise and Delight With Authentic Engagement
Recently named the #1 Best Small Company to Work for in the U.S. by FORTUNE Magazine in 2012, Oregon-based virtual receptionist services provider, Ruby Receptionists, lists the drive to “WOW” customers among their core company values:

“We’re about finding that special something that will knock your socks off, and giving it to you before you even know about it...Simply doing a good job isn’t enough for us.”

The company frequently engages with customers via Twitter and Facebook and regularly sends customers handwritten ‘thank you’ notes, demonstrating a truly ‘hybrid’ form of customer service.

3. Treat Every Service Interaction as a Marketing Event
Every service opportunity affects your brand’s reputation; thus, representatives must be trained to treat interactions as opportunities to communicate relevant and personalized messaging.

Based on learnings from Voice of Customer Research, leading provider of community-based preventative health services, Life Line Screening, discovered that customers wanted service interactions to demonstrate true engagement. As part of their commitment to transforming the customer experience, the Life Line Screening customer service center now reports to Marketing to ensure that the service experience is about engagement, not transactions. The result: 85% increase in returning customers and 40% increase in revenue per customer.

4. Prioritize Immediacy
Social Media happens in real-time.

Track brand mentions, concerns, and questions 24/7, and respond immediately. People will show their appreciation by retweeting your responses, broadcasting your good deeds to hundreds of others.

How Jawbone Uses Customer Forums to Improve Products

The Challenge: Ongoing feedback from customers is essential. Have you integrated Forums into your Voice of Customer, (VoC) feedback process?

As businesses including AmEx and Pinterest have recently demonstrated, socially engaged customers are the most valuable customers. But driving revenue isn't the only advantage of engaging your customers. Engaged customers are an essential source of VoC feedback, and product forums are an ideal way to engage them on a continual basis.

Product forums have been around for years. But mobile product designer Jawbone has pioneered innovative ways to use forums for 24/7 VoC research. In recent years, they had extraordinary success with their Bluetooth headsets and speakers. Unfortunately, Jawbone had much more difficulty last year when they launched UP, a wristband that tracked steps, meals and sleep patterns, and synced with user iPhones. It was a revolutionary idea, but it didn't work.

Jawbone offered refunds to customers who purchased the UP band, and they conducted a thorough survey of everybody who requested a refund. More importantly, they invited customers who took their survey to join an exclusive product development forum. By doing so, they ensured that their new forum would be populated by customers who were eager to engage.

Jawbone Insiders is an exclusive forum that allows customers to provide continual feedback into product development and design. It includes directed activities like surveys and polls, as well as forums where customers can freely contribute ideas and feedback.

Important new workshop Customer Experience Marketing: 5 Steps to Ensure Success developed by the DMA & Ernan Roman. Click to learn more.

Forums like Jawbone Insiders can give all marketers an instant snapshot of their customers’ desires and needs, as well as indicating areas that require more in-depth VoC research.

BEST PRACTICES FOR VoC PRODUCT FORUMS:

» Reward Engaged Customers with Exclusive Offers
Not all customers are or will be highly engaged with your company. When you find ones who are, make sure they know that you find them special. Reward them special offers, including exclusive access to in-depth product development forums like Jawbone Insiders.

» Create Incentives for Customer Engagement
Jawbone Insiders incentivizes nearly every survey and poll with drawings and prizes. The possibility of winning a free product drives customer participation—and it’s an inexpensive proposition for most businesses.

» Communicate How Customer Feedback Drives Product Development
To maintain long-term engagement, make sure your customers know how their feedback is impacting your product development. When you release new products, tell customers which features you owe to their feedback. And don't forget to say "Thank You"!