The Year of the Customer
IN AN AGE WHERE BUSINESSES HAVE LOST MUCH OF THEIR POWER DUE TO SOCIAL MEDIA, MAT WYLIE BELIEVES THERE’S STILL A WAY OF REGAINING CONTROL.
A POWER SHIFT has occurred. Gone are the days of ‘buyer beware’ – now, we’re well into the age of ‘seller beware’. The customer is in complete control, thanks to the digital age.
This redistribution of control has broad sweeping implications on the business world, with a much greater focus needed on gathering validated, trustworthy feedback.
Only by proactively influencing what future customers hear online can companies navigate the minefield of customer-dominated business.
THE REAL IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA
A decade or two ago, when a customer received poor service, they would walk out of your store grumpy, and never come back. Research suggests that they would tell an average of ten friends and family about their negative experience.
Not great for your business, but also not the end of the world.
These days, customers still walk out the door. The difference is, now, if they’ve had a particularly unpleasant experience, they may post on social media – at which stage, the damage is only limited by the amount of Facebook friends, Instagram followers, etcetera a person has, or how many followers a company has.
One bad experience can potentially be seen by 100,000- plus potential customers.
Social media’s evolving. On the bright side, it’s seems like less and less of a ‘Wild West’ – as users are maturing and waking up to the fact that what they say has consequences. They can do serious, and sometimes significant, damage to a company's reputation.
Even if the customer later regrets making a comment in hindsight, it may well be too late. It is already out there. The Catch-22 is that there will always be people who have malicious intent, and wield this power recklessly. That’s why it’s important to take control of your company’s online reputation before a disgruntled customer does it for you.
SHIFT IN EXPECTATIONS
People now trust other people's opinions more than they trust a company’s marketing. There has been a shift in expectation from buying blind, to buying heavily informed.
Customers now expect to be able to jump online and read reviews before deciding which restaurant to eat at. Rather than negative reviews filtering only as far as the grapevine allowed, customers are now proactively seeking out online reviews on a daily basis.
One major problem this causes is that the information may not be up to date and could well be years old and not a reflection of who you are now.
Just think about the last time you went travelling. Did you simply book a tour guide and a hotel? Not likely. You searched “best tour guide in Paris” and read a bunch of reviews on different guides, before choosing the one which had the least negative reviews that fit your budget.
The same is true for thousands of industries, making public review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp! immensely powerful.
So what can you do to provide a more balanced and up to date perspective to your current and future customers?
CONTROLLING THE ONLINE NARRATIVE
Thankfully, there’s a silver lining to this shift in expectations. Companies which act fast enough can control their own online narrative, and harness the power of customers’ new expectations. This is done through gathering validated, trustworthy feedback, then using this to manage your own reputation.
Provided that businesses are accessing the right kinds of feedback from customers, they can potentially manage negative or reviews offline, by building up a wealth of positive and recent testimonials. One common way is by constantly updating testimonials on your company’s website or social media pages, or, as some of our customers are starting to do, having a live feed of real reviews coming through from those you ask for feedback.
Online reviews aren’t always a complete picture of the customer experience, and even though customers are susceptible to being manipulated by negative comments, a large quantity of positive feedback will go a long way to countering this.
In an age where businesses have lost much of their power due to social media, there’s still a way of regaining control.
Gather validated customer feedback, use it to manage your reputation, and influence the narrative yourself.