Today’s empowered consumers now wield greater power in determining a brand’s reputation than ever before. Successful brands must heed the increasingly strong voice of their customers. For brands that do not shrink from this new reality, adapting by offering open dialogue and encouraging customers to voice their opinions, there is an opportunity to cultivate influential advocates that will build the brand’s positive reputation.
To support customers in becoming true advocates, companies must build customer engagement strategies into every level of their business. The companies that are succeeding in leveraging the power of the customer are those that not only value the customer feedback and use it to drive internal improvements, but also provide opportunities and even tools for customers to share their delight with a broader audience.
Contrary to the pervasive negative customer narrative that dominates news cycles, our experience over the past decade working with the world’s leading multi-unit enterprises is that the majority of customers actually have positive experiences with the brands they frequent. While most brands must focus a great deal of resources trying to help unhappy customers, few provide much support for the happy ones. The smartest companies do both. Following are two specific ways brands can harness satisfied customers to elevate their reputations and improve business results:
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1. Embrace Online Reviews (while insisting on data integrity)
Online review sites have become common place, and are a great way for consumers to decide where to shop, dine and travel. However, it’s no secret that fraud has become a major issue with highly suspect reviews skewing feedback and making it nearly impossible for both brands and consumers alike to make well-informed decisions. Although the largest open review sites dedicate tremendous resources toward screening out deceptive posts, a recent Harvard Business School study found that some 16 percent of restaurant reviews on one of the largest sites are identified as fraudulent; other sources have found up to 30 percent of online reviews to be false.
Closed surveys taken only by real customers are the simplest way to solve this problem. They allow consumers to make informed decisions off of reviews they can trust and they also provide brands with real data they can then analyze to improve their customer experience.
2. Make It Easy To Share And Socially Celebrate Great Experiences
Creating a dialog with customers wherever and however they choose to communicate is critical to retail brands’ success. Ask customers to share their experiences with their friends and family, both online and offline. This can be done by giving the customer the tools they need (and the incentives they want) to share their experiences. More importantly companies need to pay attention to what their customers have to say and embrace it with a spirit of dialogue. Too often, businesses simply interrogate customers with long surveys. And customers in turn berate businesses with negative reviews, leaving issues too late to resolve in the moment when they should be addressed. It’s time to end this dysfunction and bring both parties into direct discussion. New social tools allow this two way dialogue to happen. By doing so, companies are potentially giving themselves the biggest competitive edge possible.
In today’s age of constant communication and open access, transparency has become a norm of the business world. Businesses should give customers the opportunity to share their experiences directly with the company through voice of customer initiatives, and with their own friends and families. The advent of social media, personal blogs and other digital tools give customers a much more expansive platform through which to share their experience. New social sharing tools that enable brands to harness the good will of their customers to a broader audience are now available. While negative feedback will always be part of this sharing, companies that are transparent and show their commitment to customers through openness will benefit.
When brands encourage customers to share their feedback in as many ways as possible, everyone wins. Brands get more and better information and build closer, more authentic relationships with customers. Consumers have access to more accurate information on which they can make decisions. By demonstrating leadership in this new age of constant conversation with consumers, brands not only build their own reputations, but enjoy bottom line benefits that come from understanding both their customers and their own businesses better.
Dr. Gary Edwards is Chief Customer Officer of InMoment — the company renamed following the merger of Mindshare Technologies and Empathica Technologies. Previously he served as Chief Customer Officer for Empathica Technologies.
