How I find the RIGHT type of Customers for my Business

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Australian Consumers Demand Better Service (but grant second chances)

When it comes to customer service, it turns out that we Australians are some of the the least tolerant customers in the world - second only to Mexicans. In fact, almost 9 out of 10 Australians say they would stop using a business if they receive bad service! Just the punch in the face you needed? Don't worry, it's not (quite) as bad as it sounds...

A recent survey(1) explored preferences and attitudes of customers from Australia and eleven other countries. The findings show that 28% of Australian customers are only willing to excuse one service lapse before blacklisting the company. However, a large portion of Australians (48%) will allow two poor customer service experiences before deciding to end their relationship with the business altogether.

This prospect of a ‘second-chance’ provides businesses with a great opportunity to improve the service and provide more value to their customers. Most reasonable customers understand that there are occasional lapses in the level of service delivered, but if customers realise that a bad experience is an exception rather than the rule, they will be much more understanding and inclined to give the business another go.

The research also found that customers are more forgiving of poor service if they've generally experienced good service with the company over time. This finding highlights the importance of building lasting relationships with each customer and understanding the value of each customer rather than just the transaction.




The Barometer also shows that contrary to popular opinion, a good service experience has a greater impact on customers than a negative one. Consumers are more likely to give a company repeat business and to speak positively about the company after a good service experience (96%), than they are to never do business with a company again (88%) or speak negatively about the company (89%) after a poor experience.



This brings us back to the importance of collecting feedback. Your satisfied customers are usually very happy to refer your business to others (either verbally or online) for nothing more than the gesture of goodwill towards their friends and the business. This feedback then not only brings new customers to the business, but also reduces the impact of a poor customer experience.


Surprisingly, the study found that when bad service is received, Australians are unlikely to provide direct feedback to the business. In fact, compared to the other countries, Australians are among those who are most unlikely to speak to the business’s owner or manager about the incident and even less inclined to write a letter or an email to the company. So you can't rely on customers proactively telling you they're unhappy, you need a system for collecting their feedback.


After experiencing poor service, 35% of Australians say they will post a comment online such as a blog or social networking site. Although is not such a high proportion, it is incredibly influencial when you consider that 90% of people go to the internet first when they need a product or service! It’s therefore extremely important for businesses to have a great track-record online.


When things do go wrong, the study found that the most important thing a business can do is to acknowledge the mistake. In fact, more than half of Australians rate financial compensation second to that of an apology. An apology can go a long way in making a customer feel that their problems are being addressed and that they are valued and appreciated.
So, to make amends for a poor customer experience:

• Acknowledge the poor service and provide an apology. Ideally, this should be done by the person at fault, or by the manager / owner.


• Plan, plan, plan. Have a plan to deal with unsatisfied customers. This should be something the business owner or manager discusses with all employees. It only takes one employee to turn a good experience into a bad one and vice versa. Every employee has the power to build or destroy relationships.


• Resolve the issue speedily, effortlessly and courteously. Consider the value of the customer rather than the transaction.

Yes, we're a picky bunch but let's face it, it's not that hard to get right most of the time and make amends when we do slip up. Come on businesses - let's rise to the challenge of servicing a nation of hard-to-please consumers!

Find out more about promoting your business with word-of-mouth.

(1) Conducted by the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer

Our Business Survey: The Results Are In

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Remind me again, why am I doing this?

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One magic question that could turn your business around

You've probably heard the saying about marketing - half of it works, the problem is knowing which half. Although we now have more data than ever before, marketing is still a black hole for most small businesses (and many larger ones). We're constantly bombarded with ways that we can spend more money promoting our businesses - but most of the time we're making decisions blindly. However, there is a fairly simple method that can help us evaluate our current marketing and guide future decisions...

You simply need to ask customers;
"How did you hear about us?"

Not clever, not perfect, but also not difficult.

And if you're not already doing this, asking this simple question really can transform your business.

Of course, there are a thousand reasons why this is difficult to do in your own business, but let's forget perfection and realise that having some data (imperfect as it may be), is an enormous improvement on having no data. Here are a few ways that this can be implemented easily within any business (including yours);

• Include an extra column in your bookings book - there's a hairdresser I know that does this and uses a single letter code for her common sources of customers (this same hairdresser continues to swear that she gets 10-12 new clients every week from WOMOW)
• For online orders or computerised bookings include a field in your data structure to capture this information
• If it's too much to ask every customer, run a week-long drive twice a year and focus on asking every customer during this period only. Involve staff and make it fun to quiz customers on how they came to be using your services (I know a restaurant owner that does this with great success)
  
• Spend a day on the coal-face yourself (or if you're already there, give some focus to this subject for a few days). Question each customer you come into contact with as to how they first heard about you - even customers that have been using you for a while.
  
• Remember to drill into responses - if someone says, they found you 'online', ask what website they were on or what they were searching for. Likewise, if someone says 'word-of-mouth', ask who it was that referred them (you might find that certain customers are key referrers and it would be a great idea to send a thank-you)
  
• Build the question into your forms so that sales/customer service staff will remember to ask the question (if this field is left blank, you should be asking some questions!)
• If you're a retailer and can't easily build this into your POS system, consider running a mini contest between sales staff to see who can collect the most responses. Or put a prominent reminder on top of the bags or packaging so that staff are prompted to ask this question while they're chatting to customers. You can just have them fill out an paper sheet listing the purchase amount with the source of the customer.

Of course, marketing is not quite this simple as various elements usually work together and often it's not until a customer has seen you in several places that they decide to actually use you. Nevertheless, this simple question can give you some great insight and may provide some unexpected results. One mechanic I spoke to recently said "I never thought that so many people would be looking online for a mechanic - boy was I wrong!"

Be warned though, the results you get from asking customers how they found you will usually raise more questions, and you'll probably need to get a bit more scientific to answer those (which we'd encourage you to do). But likewise, it's an area where the Pareto Principle usually applies, meaning that you'll get the bulk of the benefits from this small snapshot of data. So it's an extremely worthwhile business discipline that you can implement this week!

Good luck and feel free to drop us a line to let us know how you go.

The Best Startup Business is...WOMOW - Word Of Mouth On the Web!

Last week, we were thrilled to hear WOMOW announced as the WINNER of the MyBusiness Best Startup Award!

We've now been running for 3+ years this is further evidence of the impact we're having on the Australian business landscape.

The Best Startup award was sponsored by ANZ and the judges were impressed by WOMOW's unique, word-of-mouth marketing platform, and by the win-win value proposition we offer to both consumers and businesses.

In 5 years time, we hope you'll be saying "I was onto WOMOW before most small businesses even understood what 'online reputation' was!"

Look out for us in the November MyBusiness magazine.


(Photo: Fiona Adler accepting the Best Startup Award from ANZ)

Marketing doesn't work like that!

The inspiration for this article is a conversation I had this week from a business cancelling their Happy Customers Program on WOMOW. Their reason? They had "tried it for a month and it hasn't worked" - that's right, they said one month! (And in fact, it was slightly less than that.)

I'm sorry Mr Premature Evaluator, but Marketing just doesn't work like that!

As much as we'd all like a magic tap that we could turn on and off as our business needs changed, I've been looking and I haven't found one yet! Yes, there are a lot of campaign formats that can be turned on and off easily, but the effect that they have on people is almost always cumulative. Occasionally, it happens that someone sees an ad for the first time and places an order, but that scenario is rare.

Most of the time, marketing tools work in conjunction with each other, and involve some repetition and time. For example, a prospect might;

• hear about you through one medium, but promptly forget the name of your business
• later, when they have a specific need, they search online, come across your business and click as it sounds familiar
• then they do some more searching to see what kind of a business you really are
• and finally decide to call after finding some information that convinces them you're a great business
  

Another prospect might;

• search online for your service because they have a specific need
• come across your business and be impressed by your stellar reputation and professional website
• promptly get distracted (ie check Facebook / read an email / attend to children / answer the phone)
• later hear about your business through another medium, remember how impressed they were when they found you, and decide to call (and then it still might take a meeting, proposal and several emails and phone conversations before they actually purchase!)
  

The paths customers can take are rarely straight forward or linear so the key is to choose several key marketing tools and get them working together. This is combination of tools is your marketing strategy. Yes, you should definitely track and measure your marketing, but you definitely can't do this over one month!

Using WOMOW to promote your business is all about using word-of-mouth to;

1. Make sure that when people search for your business or, more importantly, for a service that your business provides, that they find you
2. Present your business in the best light possible - with great reviews from your customers (the most trusted form of marketing there is)

And it should be noted that the more reviews a business has, the more traffic they get and the better this works (the Happy Customers Program also helps businesses get customer reviews).

So, Mr Premature Evaluator, with just one review and a 1 month trial, is a loss to WOMOW but sadly, his loss is far greater. I'm sure that word-of-mouth on the web would have been a fantastic way for this business to get more prospects and earn their trust (incredibly important in his industry), but unfortunately, he will probably never know and will probably continue to waste time and money trying various different things, without really trying anything at all.

There are plenty of businesses successfully using WOMOW as their only form of marketing, but they've built their profile and reviews up over a few months. Here's one we heard from this week...

"We get 90% of our work from WOMOW and we're growing fast! We don't have a shopfront, any signage on our vehicles, or even a website, but with WOMOW heaps of people are finding us online every week. On average we sign up 3 new customers a week and now have over 200 clients with regular cleans. WOMOW has been the best thing we've done for our business!"
Sandy K from Let Us Do It 4 U Cleaning

WOMOW is not a gimmick. It is part of a long-term marketing strategy to build a place on the web that shouts your praises and helps people find you. It will not (necessarily) work overnight, but with some time and some reviews, it will almost certainly help any business that provides good service where trust and word-of-mouth are important.