Psychology of customer defection in a digital world

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Customers who are dissatisfied with your service and don’t feel listened to are increasingly using social media to voice their complaints publicly. They aim for a high reach and a fast response. Organisations are generally using social media as a marketing tool, blasting their followers with marketing messages but ignoring those customers that are truly trying to raise a need.

The customer relationship is your brand
Whearas in consumer goods the product is your brand, in services, the experience you provide and the relationships you build are your brand. When customers take the time to voice their complaints on social media they usually have already tried to contact you via email or phone without success. When they land on social media they are already pretty upset. Ignoring them may cause an escalation and a wider spread of negative feedback, impacting negatively on your brand.

There will always be failures – the handling makes the difference.
You know you will get it wrong at one point. Customers will experience an incident during their lifecycle of using your service. That’s a given. How you handle it makes the difference. Listening to your customers, showing you care about them and being empathic and helpful can turn a negative experience into an extremely positive one. On the other hand, ignoring them can affect your brand dramatically. For example, the use of hash-tags such as #BrandFail is common practice among customers that are active on twitter, turning it into a tool for spreading a negative reputation that is often difficult to control.

Command-center_02 Listening to your customers, showing you care about them and being empathic and helpful can turn a negative experience into an extremely positive one.

Customers often don’t complain. They’ll simply leave you.
On average, acquiring new customers costs five times more than retaining your current ones. Being able to listen to your customers and creating meaningful relationships with them is the key to show you care and to retain them. 96% of unhappy customers won’t bother to complain about a dissatisfying service – they will simply defect. Research has widely proven that dissatisfaction mainly emerges in the immediate period of time that follows the sign-up to a service. By actively following customers during this period, and actively stimulating complaints you can dramatically improve your retention rates.

96% of unhappy customers won’t even bother to complain about dissatisfying service, they will simply defect.

The cost of not listening to your customers
Customers who interact with your brand on social media want to be listened to and expect a fast response. On average 96.5% of consumers get directly affected by the comments on your social media pages, while 83% of users abandon a purchase after poor customer service via social media platforms. Conversely, research shows that when providing a satisfying experience, customers interacting with you on social media sites are likely to spend between 20 and 40% more than those who don’t. Providing a satisfying social customer experience has the potential to become a significant competitive advantage.

Empower your social customer service staff
Once customers decide to raise a complaint on social media, what upsets them even more than being ignored is a standard/not customised response. Staff that are obliged to adhere to a rigid script during customer interactions online the ability to show the empathy and understanding customers require. Empowering employees to use their own judgement and creativity to respond to customers’ queries is the first step towards showing the humanity behind your brand. Service design methodology and tools are a key resource for organisations to develop the right guidelines to direct employees towards goals and help them to reach them Enabling staff to draw from personal experience and respond to people as individuals makes the difference between an average and a superior customer experience.

Be proactive or fail customers
Social media platforms have the potential to become not only a centre for fast resolution of customer problems, but also a tool for monitoring and engaging proactively with your customers. People are talking about you online, often without addressing you directly. By monitoring this public conversation you will have the opportunity to be proactive in anticipating complaints and resolving issues before they are raised. Shifting front-line communication from marketing to customer service, training staff on how to monitor, handle and anticipate customers needs on social media sites, becomes key to provide a superior customer experience.

Customers follow you on social media to interact with you, not to be fed information.

Start to truly help your customers
When customers choose to take time to voice their dissatisfaction on social media, they expect to be listened to, understood and helped. In reality however, what they often get is a scripted, standardised response that usually upsets them even more. By empowering your staff to use their own judgement and creativity to respond to complaints on social media you will open up an additional opportunity to create a relationship with your customers. This will enable you to build on customers existing behaviour, by being where you customers already are.

Well resolved incidents create loyalty Customers accept that product or service failures can occur. Perform above expectation by making them feel taken seriously while resolving their issue to their satisfaction and you are performing above expectation. Customers that have experienced a well resolved service failure are more loyal than customers that have never experienced an incident. Using incidents as an opportunity to construct relationships, contributes to customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Well resolved incidents create loyalty
Customers accept that product or service failures can occur. Perform above expectation by making them feel taken seriously while resolving their issue to their satisfaction and you are performing above expectation. Customers that have experienced a well resolved service failure are more loyal than customers that have never experienced an incident. Using incidents as an opportunity to construct relationships, contributes to customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Melvin Brand Flu
Melvin Brand Flu is an author, business, and strategy consultant with over 30 years of experience working for startups to global brands and governments. He advises management and leads projects on the cutting edge of business and technical innovation in industries ranging from telecommunication and financial services to the public sector and insurance.

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