Industries that provide the Best and Worst Customer Service

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Customer Reviews get you Found in Google (and other search engines)

You know that search engine marketing is important, right? But did you realise that 80% of purchases for all goods and services start with a search on the internet! (Neilson Netratings). So if your business is not generating a significant amount of business online (whether you sell online or not), you're probably missing out on a huge opportunity.

Getting onto the first page of Google search results is every business owner's dream. But many businesses approach search optimisation in the wrong way...

A mistake businesses often make is to search for their own business name. If customers know your business name, they've probably already decided to use you. It's the other searches that you should focus on...

More important is to search for "[business type], [suburb]" or "best [business type], [city]" or "[business type] reviews, [city]", or even "[business type] [service speciality], [suburb]". In other words, don't search for "Lisa's Hairdressing Salon" - yes, your business should be found easily but this should be pretty easy when people type in your business name. Instead, search for "hairdresser, Eslternwick" or "best hairdresser, Melbourne", or "hairdresser reviews, Melbourne", or "hairdressers with play areas, Melbourne".

Getting found for very specific phrases and especially phrases that include "best", "reviews" and other similar words is something you can either employ the services of an expensive SEO business to help with, or you can enlist your customers to write reviews for you.

Customer reviews are an extremely effective way to optimise your business information for Google.

It's not magic. Customer reviews work to get found in Google because they're real people describing your business, in real people's language. They're also fresh information, which Google loves.

When people search for businesses, they use terms that you're unlikely to find on most business websites. But these are often the exact same words that your customers use to describe your business. For example, the website for Mike's Sports Physiotherapy might say something like "We provide professional physiotherapy services and treat all kinds of sports problems. We offer thorough assessment and treatment which can include stretching and strengthening programs."

On the other hand, a customer might write a review saying; "I hurt my shoulder playing tennis and decided to see a physio. Turns out my injury was quite easy to treat and only took 2 sessions. I was nervous at first but Mike was extremely gentle - I'd recommend him to anyone in the Eastern suburbs."

If a potential customer was searching on Google, they might type "gentle physio for tennis injury in eastern suburbs". Mike's website would fail dismally but his listing on WOMOW would have a great chance of being one of the top results. This is an extremely powerful way to substantially improve your positioning on Google.

Surprisingly, it can be extremely difficult for a business owner to know just how their potential customers are searching on the web. One case in point was a dog trainer. He had a great website but when one of his customers reviewed him on WOMOW and referred to him as the "dog whisperer", his web traffic soared.

And when people find your business, they see a whole lot of your customers telling them what fantastic service you provide! There's simply nothing more convincing than that.

So what are you waiting for? Start building up a bank of customer reviews and watch your traffic and new enquiries soar. The more reviews you get, the better this works...

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.