Until last Thursday, I was one of Virgin America’s biggest fans. TVs in the head rests! Wifi and power outlets on board! Yummy food to be ordered whenever I want! Comfortable and spacious seating! I have had some great experiences flying Virgin America, which is all the more reason why I was so disgruntled last week when my flight from San Francisco to New York (JFK) was suddenly canceled.

Upon arriving at the airport (close to three hours in advance, might I add) I quickly made my way to the electronic kiosk to print my boarding pass and pay for my checked bag. Strangely, the machine was neither accepting my credit card nor my confirmation code for identification. So, I asked a Virgin representative for assistance. He told me the machines are sensitive and to join the full-service line and an agent will take care of me. After about twenty minutes in that line, I heard some utterances of “Flight 22 to JFK…” Knowing that was my flight, I spoke up to inquire what the deal was. The same rep as before came over and told me something like this:

Flight 22 to JFK has been canceled. The plane coming in to SFO was damaged by birds. It will take more than 8 hours to repair. Please come stand in this other line to learn about your options.

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I don’t pretend to know all of the ins and outs of the financial industry. That said, I do feel that I know enough to get by — I can make a deposit, withdrawal, and check up on things online. I can even tell you what a CD is without complaining about the rise of the MP3. You know, those pesky certificates of deposit.

That said, when I made a deposit at a Wachovia branch Tuesday morning close to CRM magazine’s world headquarters in Manhattan, the receipt I got from the half-awake bank teller at 8 a.m. said “Deposit Date: 3/17/09″ and, this is important, “Deposit Effective Date: 3/17/09″.

Now, to me, “deposit effective” means that the deposit is in fact now available for use. Later in the day, I needed to check my Wachovia account online because this was a situation in which I needed the money rather quickly, so I wanted to make sure that it was actually in my account.

Well, it wasn’t.

Being that I’ve had some really nice interactions with Wachovia’s customer service in the past, I was looking forward to having the problem rectified — or at least let me know why the deposit hasn’t shown up on my online account yet.

Well, that wasn’t to be the case. I tried to navigate the online banking’s (different from the general customer service telephone number) hellish speech recognition system, and then I was finally prompted after three minutes of options to say “representative” to speak with a live agent. They couldn’t have just offered that up front? I digress.

Finally, I get a woman who simply says that “deposit effective” means the bank will process the deposit that day — but it won’t be available for use until the next day. I quickly asked her if she thought it was misleading. “Deposit effective,” at first glance, means the deposit is good to go … to me, anyway.

Her response? “Well, it is misleading if you don’t understand what ‘deposit effective’ means.”

Uh, no kidding. By the tone of my voice she could tell that I was not satisfied with her reply, and asked if I wanted to be transferred to customer service. I agreed, and was transferred quickly.

I got another agent, and I explained my situation again. She affirmed the last agent’s response that the deposit would show up the next day. I asked again, “Don’t you think that is misleading for someone who is not attuned to the nuances of financial services?”

Her response, while said in a softer tone, was not any better. “Well, maybe with the Wells Fargo acquisition there will be a change in procedure.”

What? Why pass the buck to Wells Fargo?  Also, it’s not even a procedural issue. I have a very easy fix. On the receipt, instead of saying “deposit effective”, how about “deposit available” and then the date?

What bothered me more than the inability of Wachovia to see my point was the fact that, unless it ends up in a tagged recording somewhere, I don’t have confidence that the problem — or my suggestion — will be registered. There is no vocal suggestion box I can not-so-anonymously drop my feedback into. There wasn’t a post-call survey offered to me, either.

Essentially, I understood early on that I wouldn’t be able to use the money I deposited until the next day. What bothered me was that no one took my concern seriously. I just feel like my problem was discarded without any serious thought.

Have you run into the same problem as customers calling into contact centers? Or, on the other side, how do the customer service representatives and supervisors out there deal with calls like this? Do you have a feedback management plan in place so that calls like mine are not made in vain?

On Friday, Monster.com, the job search site, issued an important memo to its site users. According to Patrick Manzo, Monster’s senior vice president and global chief privacy officer, the Web site encountered a security breach that put its customer database in jeopardy. The data was illegally accessed and account and contact information consisting of user IDs and passwords, email addresses, names, phone numbers, and basic demographic data were taken.

What does this mean for consumers with Monster.com profiles? Monster is encouraging its users to change passwords the next time they log in. Here’s where it gets tricky — Monster has a policy of never emailing its members and asking to confirm log-in or password information. So, users must proactively seek to change this information in order to avoid any misuse of their data. Luckily, to date, no misuse or suspicious behavior involving the data has been reported.

I discussed the topic of security quite extensively with Gartner analyst Scott Nelson a few months back. Nelson predicted as social media continues to skyrocket, consumers will become more worried and cautious about security measures and the privileged information they share on the Web.

Nelson put it all into perspective:
“I think the key is one of trust. The more I can build trust as an enterprise relating to you as a customer, the more you, in turn, can turn around and trust me. If I show trust to you in the handling of your data, if I show trust you in what I reveal to you and what you might be interested in, and if I show trust in the feedback you give me … the more trust a customer can turn around and show back. I think one of the keys to the CRM cycle is going to be building trust over time. I think firms have really missed in that if you really build up that trust level, it’s highly unlikely a customer is going to leave you and go somewhere where they are going to have start all over again. On the flip side, you’ve got to be really serious because all it takes is one breach in that trust for them to say, ‘Okay, you’ve burned me, I’m not going to trust you again.’ [It's about] putting policies in place to really safeguard that, putting strategies in place to utilize that trust, and make it transparent to them.”

I love when online retailers allow for customer reviews. For me, details from consumers like me are way more important than any product details or photographs a vendor can provide. Very often, my purchase decisions will be swayed based on positive or negative product comments. Customer feedback is useful for customers and to organizations — but historically, there has been a disconnect between collecting customer feedback and actually acting upon it. Social media presents a whole new challenge customer feedback initiatives. Metadata, or unstructured data, is difficult for traditional analytics systems to evaluate or measure. And often, when social media data is analyzed, it’s on a statistical basis — and doesn’t get to the heart of what customers are saying. Leximancer, a young text analytics company, is hoping to remedy that situation with its Social Insight Portal product. Leximancer approaches metadata in a different way, and according to Neil Hartley, CEO of Leximancer, seeks the why behind customer sentiments. Hartley ventures to say that he knows of no other companies doing what Leximancer is with insights from social data. He does note, however, that the possibilities are tremendous. “Not only is there more direct feedback on micro- and social sites, but it’s a leading indicator of customer feedback,” he propones. “By the time feedback reaches [an organization] through the traditional method, it’s way too late.” 

The company describes its product’s purpose on its Web site:

Through a rigorous scientific process, Leximancer drills into textual data: documents, e-mails, call center transcripts, blogs, Web sites, etc., and extracts the main concepts, themes and causal relationships to provide the information needed to make critical decisions.

The Concept Map is the heart of Leximancer. It presents your data in an interactive graphic map that clusters key themes together, lists all the key concepts identified in the data and the statistical co-occurrence of concepts. Leximancer automatically generates a thesaurus for each concept that then enables a powerful, implicit search (i.e. searching the corpus under investigation for the intersection of two thesauri rather than simply two keywords). The pathway analysis capability identifies root causes of specific events and provides provenance via the original text from documents that the pathway references.

Hartley says Leximancer’s methodology is scientific and mathematic as opposed to traditional text analytics methology, which is more grammatical. What’s complex to explain actually boils down to a simple, intuitive, and visual product. “The technology used to analyze what peope are saying has to be massively easy to use,” Hartley says.  Below is the Leximancer Concept Map based on social insight gleaned from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf reviews on Yelp.com. It’s easy to see what main concepts were addressed in the reviews. Hartley said a more interesting and useful example was done for Dunkin Donuts. When analyzing a review site, the concept map showed “Boston” and “line” in great proximity, demonstrating that people were complaining about long lines in Boston Dunkin Donuts stores. Hartley says all of this is automated and could add great value to a CRM system — or even to a social media platform provider. The company is currently exploring OEM partnerships and basically exploring its options in the vast social media landscape. 

Leximancer Social Insight Graph for Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf

First, Happy Halloween!

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?