Remember the days when after your flight landed, you could walk out of airport gate and straight into the arms of smiling and welcoming family members? Well, security measures have made that impossible in this day and age. And if that was even possible, last weekend, those family members awaiting your arrival were likely to have been taking naps in uncomfortable terminal chairs, waiting hours upon hours for you to arrive. Flight delays and cancellations due to weather woes, made easy pick-ups from the airport virtually impossible.
Passengers wait for a delayed flight to Seattle at Los Angeles International Airport.
Analysis indicates that this was the worst holiday travel season in years. Today, airline performance watchdog FlightStats.com, released numbers indicating that nearly 8,800 flights were canceled between Friday, December 19th and Sunday afternoon on December 28. A week ago Friday, winter weather conditions led to airline delays up to 10 hours. Flights across the country were canceled and the entire Milwaukee airport closed due to incessent snow fall.
I experienced this chaos firsthand last Friday as my flight home for the holidays from Newark to Kansas City, connecting in Milwaukee, was canceled. I wasn’t able to fly out until Monday night — and still experienced delays on top of that. Despite the misfortune, I was home in time for Christmas, which is what really mattered. And, I surprisingly had very good experiences with my airline’s customer service hot line. Sure, I had to wait up to an hour when calling, but once an agent got on the line, I was greeted with a friendly, helpful, and understanding representative. I must have called the reservations line eight or ten times over the course of the week. And really, each time, I talked to an informed and understanding person. Read the rest of this entry »
And here you were thinking you had to be dirt cheap to be successful in this economy.
Predictions that only Walmart would be this holiday’s only victor were soon shattered when we woke up on a brisk Friday morning, the day after Christmas, to reports that this holiday season was Amazon’s “best ever.” Ah, lucky number 14.
The company’s press release uses nary a hyperbole as it illustrated just how much stuff consumers purchased:
- Twilight Series’s “Breaking Dawn” books: “stacked end to end they would reach the summit of Mt. Everest eight times”; - GPS devices: “…combined weight of 151 Mini Coopers”; - High-performance headphones: “…everyone attending the last three Super Bowls could grab a set and rock out”;and, perhaps a favorite for many in our office – Coffee: “…enough to give each resident of the highly caffeinated city of Seattle a cup per day for two months.” (Metropolitan area population of 3,263,497, according to Wikipedia)
If you think about it, the news is not so surprising considering Amazon’s track record of consistently being the retailer of all retailers. In a conversation I had with Richard Owen, chief executive officer of Satmetrix, Amazon, and its neighbor Starbucks, have focused on the customer experience to drive their business — and especially since the economy depends on the (happy) customer, that’s not such a bad model to have.
He adds that Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com has been “relentless” in his assertion that the company will grow because “[its] customers have good experiences and they will call [their] friends. You [rarely] see Amazon commercials on TV,” as they focus instead on word of mouth economics as a mechanism for growing their business. Though Amazon’s initial investments suffered criticism from financial analysts in the beginning, Owen says, suffice to say they made some smart choices.
Still, we can probably count on a few companies that will continue to have a slightly skewed version of what creating a good customer experience really means. Companies, perhaps, that think like Dwight Schrute,who may strike a few wins, but for how long?
‘Tis the season for charitable giving, right? Despite the recession, nonprofit organizations and other charities still have a job to do — even if it will be harder to get many to give the same amount, if any, as years past according to a New York Times article.
In order to do my small part, I decided last night to donate to a particular charity — which shall remain nameless — this holiday season. (As an aside, an excellent online resource to determine which ones are legit as opposed to others that will take virtually all of your money to fulfill operation costs is Charity Navigator.)
Instead of calling up and donating over the phone, or mailing a check that could get lost in the mail, I wanted to go onto the organization’s Web site and use my credit card to instantly submit my contribution. I have high-speed Internet; this should take about two minutes, right? Wrong.
The Web site was extremely difficult to navigate, and actually rejected my submission three times by bouncing me back to the homepage or flashing an error screen.
First time, sure, maybe I made a mistake. I decided to double check all the information I had to enter and click all the proper buttons. The second time it failed, I started to simmer but decided that maybe, just maybe, I did something wrong.
By the third time I was absolutely furious, and actually closed out the window, refusing to try again. A charity should be like any other organization, right? If it cannot get its process working properly then they don’t deserve my business. I know I’m not alone in this, virtually every story I did this year about customer service touched on, in varying depth, just how increasingly demanding consumers are when it comes to being serviced properly.
My conscience got the best of me, though, and eventually I found a back-end way to submit the donation and actually have it go through.
While I decided to stick with it, albeit begrudgingly, I wonder how many individuals did not. Unless your last name is Gates, money is tight for everyone and most people are assessing their potential expenditures with much more scrutiny. All companies — especially charities — must ensure their Web sites are optimized and running smoothly in order to cull the most business as possible.
For either vendors or end-customers, have you run into the same issues? If you are a nonprofit organization, have you found your donations dwindling or staying the same during this time? While many media organizations can only hypothesize right now, it’s always better to get first-hand accounts to sense where the market is at this time.
——————————————–
With that said, this will be my last post until after the New Year. I’m heading back to New York State for the holidays, not unlike the commute I used to make before moving to Jersey City. I’d like to thank all of you, the readers, for your support — I hope you all have a fantastic holiday.
OK, that’s out of the way. To me, the best part about Halloween is that it marks the unofficial beginning of the holiday shopping season. At Macy’s in Herald Square, just a quick jaunt around the corner from CRM magazine’s office in Midtown Manhattan, you can already see Christmas lights being strewn up in preparation.
Not only are people getting a head start on hanging lights to spread holiday cheer, but they are also shopping earlier. With an economy that make many say “no, no, no” instead of “ho, ho, ho,” consumers are looking for the best prices as early as possible as their budgets for discretionary purchases continue to shrink.
With less than two months left until floors are littered with torn wrapping paper with images of sleighs, Charlie Brown, snowmen, and other images of holiday yore, many small businesses looking to cash in during this usually prime shopping season seem to be increasingly focused on shoring up the customer experience it provides to those poring through their shelves — or online catalogs. As my fellow CRMer Lauren McKay points out in an earlier blog post, the stakes are even higher this year for businesses because of the economic downturn.
A study conducted by RatePoint, a Needham, Mass.-based customer feedback solution provider for small-to-midsize businesses (SMB) finds companies are getting the message loud and clear:
more than 80 percent said business reputation and solid customer support impacts their ability to attract and retain consumers;
forty percent report they are hiring up to five new employees for customer support over the holidays to help manage inquiries, orders, and returns; and
most will spend an average of 10 hours monitoring their reputation to safeguard against any possible early warning signs of customer issues.
To Richard Turcott, chief marketing officer or RatePoint, this shows him many in the SMB segment are realizing the importance of forging quality customer relationships, as he says this is directly correlated with company reputation. He was particularly shocked by the second survey nugget, the fact that almost half of SMB owners say they’re hiring up to five new employees despite the economic environment.
While he admits the new hires may not all be full time, it is the principle that matters most. “The SMBs are sticking their necks out, providing exemplary support, and demonstrating they are customer-centric businesses,” he says. “These [new additions] are primarily part-time employees, but [nonetheless] provide a great view in which the small business community sees feedback and service as an important driver to helping them stay strong through this tough economic climate. These [organizations] are building equity rather than short-term hits.”
In a time when Web 2.0 technology is the soapbox du jour for many consumers sounding off about a company’s products or services, having a strategy to proactively cull and act upon customer feedback is even more important. “The prevalence of social media perpetuates the ease in which competitors and disgruntled employees can say negative things about a business,” Turcott says. “For small businesses, it’s more a necessity than a luxury to actively manage its online reputation. If they don’t know it now, they will very soon.”
For the SMBs — and also larger enterprises — out there gearing up for the holiday season, what strategies are you using to manage customer feedback and consequently improve the experience your shoppers have?
RSS Feeds
Feed
