When brand organisations say “sorry” it can be extremely powerful

I hate it when dealing with a brand organisation when they don’t say sorry if it clearly is the appropriate action. Instead they usually focus on protecting themselves...often it is the customer service people who regard it as a personal duel and an opportunity to prove how clever they are....

This is short-sighted and wrong.

They overlook the fact that consumers are far more likely to change their mind, view your brand positively and maybe even tell their friends (advocacy is a very powerful force) if it says ‘sorry.’

While on face value it might cost a little bit of money it is a great strategy to differentiate vs competitors.

The blogsphere is littered with stories where brands have got it wrong and suffered - see examples on a previous posting about Dell, Apple and Comcast.

I was very interested to see an article on Inc.co about recent research undertaken by the Nottingham school of Economics.

They asked hacked-off eBay customers whether they would prefer some sort of monetary compensation or a simple apology....the overwhelming response was a preference for a straight apology. (Check-out the report.)

Richard Branson understands the power of an apology. There is a great story about how he handled a letter of complaint.

It isn’t rocket science or difficult. It just requires a change in attitude and culture.

If you work at brand organisation I suggest you look closely at the brand experience your customer service department is delivering and work out how to improve it...saying sorry occasionally. It will potentially be more effective than most other forms of brand communication.

Delighting consumers is the key to business success

I talk a lot about the power of delighting consumers.

I believe if a brand can deliver a brand experience that over-delivers and delights - the consumer is more likely to buy again and may be even talk about your brand. (Many studies demonstrate that word of mouth is one of the most influential touchpoints).

Seth recently wrote an interesting blog about the paradox of promise in an age of word of mouth.

It is worth a read and he references a really useful MBA chart (above).

It is challenging but simple.

Brands need to be really smart about the promise they make and, when it comes to advertising, they must only talk about what their brand will deliver.

Then they must ensure the deliver what you promise every time.

Failure to do so will, at best, stop consumers buying again and, at worst, make them angry. Angry consumers can create a serious headache given that social media is like word of mouth on steroids (an excellent quote from the popular ‘What The F**k is Social Media’ slideshare presentation). Check out my previous article about United, Dell and Comcast

The best brands deliver every time and also work out how to delight.

This is not easy but it is worth the effort.

A good start point is to assemble all the key stakeholders who are involved in delivering brand experiences across the whole path to advocacy.

Align on a definition the brand experience you can deliver consistently.

Then ensure the organisation is in-sync and focused on delivering it.

This is what winning brand organisations do time and time again. [Think Apple, Zappos, Virgin]

Brand organisations ignore angry consumers at their peril

In years gone by brand organisations could ignore unhappy consumers.

When they delivered a bad brand experience, e.g. poor product performance, rude customer service, etc, it didn’t matter too much because consumers could do little about it, other than tell a few of their friends and stop buying.

If they got lucky their story might have got media exposure through newspapers or a TV consumer programme.

Fast toward to today and the things are completely different.

The digital age has put the consumer firmly in control.

The web is littered with examples of brands that have suffered because they have delivered bad brand experiences that have so incensed consumers they have found ways to use social media to get the attention of a wider audience.

Here are some infamous ones:

Dell ignored Jeff Jarvis’s complaints until he posted a ‘Dell Sucks’ blog. A large anti-fan club was born. [I’ve written about this before.]

United Airlines ignored complaints from an upset passenger who had watched his guitar being badly handled by baggage handlers. He posted a video and on YouTube got over 5 millions of hits. [see YouTube video]

Apple took no notice of early consumer complaints about broken glass covers on their newly launched Nano, until his consumer blog post generated massive backlash that they could not ignore.

A Comcast engineer was recorded fast asleep on a couch while on hold waiting for engineer support which has also had huge volumes of views and comments. [see YouTube video]

Last week there was a news story about how a disappointed holiday maker was ignored by Thompson Holidays until his ‘rant blog’ beat them on Google searches.

These ‘head in the sand’ stories always follow the same pattern:

Step 1: The brand delivers a bad brand experience (e.g. poor product delivery).

Step 2: The organisation compounds the problem by delivering further bad brand experiences (e.g.poor customer service, ignoring the problem, etc)

Step 3: The bad brand experience story spreads quickly across the world (via social media) turning millions of consumers off the brand.

Twitter has turbo-charged the speed and scale at which this type of story spreads. (See previous posting.)

Any brand organisation that permits these types of problem is likely to incur significant unwelcome extra costs to the business trying to put things right.

It is therefore vital to have people and processes in place that knows how to prevent this type of problem.

Better still, have people and process in place that know how to WOW consumers so they talk positively about your brand.

Brands with more advocates than competitors will win.

Brand Experiences to get a brand Chosen

Choose is the second stage of the Path to Advocacy and is about the process that the consumer goes through when choosing which brand(s) they are likely to buy.

This stage is about getting your brand onto the consumers’ short-list.

This used to be all about traditional media - using high impact, coverage, frequency, recency, etc. However, the internet now means i) consumers are very interconnected with each other, and ii) the way they behave and use media has changed. They don’t trust traditional media in the same way, they research differently (usually on-line) and actively seek relevant opinion/advice of others (e.g. friends & family and/or independent experts).

To succeed today brand owners must deeply understand their target consumers’ behaviours, particularly:

a) How and where consumers are getting information about brands

b) The consumers’ motivations for choosing. (These can be driven by functional needs e.g. specification, colour, price, etc and their emotional needs.)

The start point for marketers is making sure their brand is providing the right (usually functional) information, at the right time, in the right place. Effective ways to do this is include sampling or a good internet strategy (e.g. search, brand website, etc).

The other critical requirement is about making the brand relevant to the target consumers’ lives. It is where PR (Virgin, Marks & Spencer, Agent Provocateur), experiential (Electrolux), social media (Dell, Wispa, T-Mobile) and advocacy can play a big part.

Brand organisations must not under-estimate the power of social media

I posted recently about a great new book by Jeff Jarvis (What Would Google Do).

 

Another story in this book has helped me better understand the power of social media and how it is changing the game for brand organisations.

 

This story is  about what happened when Jarvis bought a dodgy lap-top from Dell in 2005. He explains that despite paying extra for at-home service, he spent hours on the telephone to overseas call centres, sent it back a number of times and had to start from square-one every time he called.

 

In desperation and to let off steam and wrote a blog untitled “Dell sucks.”

 

To cut a long story short what happened then was that others started to leave comments and links to his blog about their problem lap-tops. These actions took on a life of their own, soon creating a large anti-fan club that caused Jarvis’s blog to appear progressively higher in Google search and eventually reaching the first page under Dell’s home page.  

 

These conversations were starting to damage Dell’s brand.

 

Dell started to suffer declining customer satisfaction scores, revenues and share price. (Jarvis acknowledges that this was not solely down to his blog.)

 

Jarvis offered Michael Dell four tips:

1.    Read blogs about your brand

2.    Talk to your blogger consumers

3.    Blog yourself

4.    Listen then show us how you are going to improve and use bloggers to help.

 

If you want the full story and an explanation of how Dell turned it round, and loads of other good stuff, I suggest you buy the book.

 

For me his story clearly highlights 3 vital things:

·         Brands must deliver what they promise.

·         Brands must listen to what consumers are saying and use what they learn to find ways to work-out how to delight them.

·         Brands must not under estimate the power and importance of a good social media strategy.

 

My advice for anyone in a brand organisation with responsibility for building successful brand experiences is to pay very close attention to all the above.  

Is Jeff Jarvis right to say ‘your customers are your ad agency?'

I have just started reading an excellent book called ‘‘What Would Google Do?’ by Jeff Jarvis.

In chapter 3 there is a section called ‘Your customers are your ad agency.’ In it Jarvis says: “Customer service is the new marketing,” citing Dell and Google as evidence of the vital role customer services plays in building a successful brand.

I think he is half right.

There is no doubt that customer service is a critical stage of the consumer path to advocacy. Delighting consumers must be the goal. However, it is not the whole story, particularly for a lot of low involvement brands (Fast moving package goods, financial, white goods, etc).

The brand promise (to get noticed and encourage trial) is a start-point for these brands.

Then there is brand delivery (at 1^st and 2^nd moment of truth) which also has to be brilliant [read previous posting about Apple stores and service is marketing].

If you are working in a brand organisation look for others involved in delivering brand experience and find ways to work with them to break-down silos. It is a business imperative in this new connected world to ensure all parts of the Brand Promise, Delivery and Delight (PDD framework) are joined-up.