The challenge of happy customers

Few major brands seem to know what to do with happy customers. Companies are so busy firefighting complaints, that all sorts of opportunities are missed by not following up their customers' enthusiasms. Thank you might be a way to start. Paul Walker reports on an insightful experiment in the US, looking at how companies relate to satisfied customers.

OVER THE PAST year, GCI Digital Media has worked with Dell, Nike, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Whole Foods and other leading US brands to implement programmes, often digital, to generate positive word of mouth while decreasing the negative.

In the course of our work we’ve come across a type of customer that is far too often taken for granted, ignored or worse: the Happy Customer. These are the customers that absolutely love a brand’s product or services so much so that they are willing to take the time to tell the brand via email, phone, ‘snail mail’ or blog.

Unfortunately, their ‘thank yous’ are more often than not for naught.

Our hypothesis

Major brands don’t know what to do with happy customers. They make it hard for customers to say thanks and way too often companies don’t celebrate and embrace customers’ positive gestures. And, if they can’t do that, how can they motivate them to tell their family, friends and peers how happy they are with the brands’ products and services?

Take the case of one Mr Burger. He bought a new Dell 19-inch flat-panel screen that he loved so much, he sent a thank you note via Dell’s website, which went something like this: ‘No problem! I just wanted to tell you that I just received the monitor … and it’s awesome … I can already tell that it’s the best $500 I’ve spent in a long time. Thanks!’ A few days later Dell responded: ‘Dear Mr Burger: Thank you for contacting us about your issue ... I sense you are not getting optimal performance from your system… I’m committed to resolve this issue with the monitor.’

Mr Burger may still love his monitor but now he has some questions about the company. He also shared his experience with David Pogue at the New York Times who featured Mr Burger’s story in his weekly column.

Think about it, there’s no ‘press 2 to report a great experience with our products and services’ command on companies’ phone systems; or imagine this: a ‘thank you button’ on their home pages so customers can escalate their amazing experiences. There’s no internal RSS feed for all employees around the world so they can enjoy a constant flow of ‘way to gos’ from happy customers. And, most brands just aren’t doing a lot to motivate and enable their vocal happy customers to tell their peers.

This lack of and/or poor response is a sad state of affairs for major brands. It is, however, partially explainable: we all want to take care of dissatisfied customers fast because we know they are going to tell a bunch of people – and that is going to cost customers, prospects and sales.

In fact, the Wharton Retail Customer Dissatisfaction Study 2006 showed that only 6% of shoppers who experienced a problem with a retailer contacted the company, but 31% went on to tell friends, family or colleagues what happened.

Overall, if 100 people have a bad experience, a retailer stands to lose between 32 and 36 current or potential customers, according to the study.

So, of course, it is vital that brands’ commitments to resolving the issues of dissatisfied customers continue. But this objective is so consuming that brands often pursue it while forgetting – or even ignoring – happy customers. More specifically, their most vocal happy customers. That’s a problem brands really should solve, for a number of reasons.

To determine just how widespread this problem is, we recently implemented a ‘secret shopper’ experiment with a twist – our researchers said ‘thank you’ to 100 major, consumer brands – the top 50 Fortune 500 and the top 50 Inc. 500 – via email, phone and snail mail (see above). We also monitored the blogosphere, forums and social networks to see if we could find any evidence of the 100 companies proactively saying ‘thank you’ to their customers (see page 57 for sample and method).

Then we sat back and recorded what happened. For each channel, a company was scored on a 0–10 scale, where 40 was the maximum possible score for a campaign.

Highlights

The most startling result is this: we did not hear back from 36% of Fortune companies and 60% of Inc. companies. Of those that did respond, no company achieved a perfect score of 40 by responding well to customers across all four channels.

Here are some other highlights:

• You’d be hard pressed to reach a real human being at about 30% of either the Fortune 500 or Inc. 500 companies, regardless of your intent. They just don’t pick up the phone; they make it impossible to contact them.
• Of companies that were contacted and responded via email, we never heard back from 36% of Fortune 500 and 60% of Inc. 500 companies.
• About 60% of Fortune 500 companies were quick with formal email letters that promised further followup, but 33% did not follow through.
• Of the companies that we were able to reach via 800-numbers to say thanks, almost a quarter seemed to be totally surprised and confused about how to respond.
• Only 10 companies of the 100 sampled sent an acknowledgement letter to thank you letters sent via the U.S. Postal Service.
• Only two companies in our sample were proactively and extensively monitoring blogs and online venues. Both companies opportunistically say ‘thanks’ to happy customers.

Top-percentile performers

There were only three Fortune 500 and three Inc. 500 companies in the top 95 percentile of our rankings. Overall, the top Fortune 500 companies were Kroger, JC Penny and Walgreen (see Fortune 500 curve). The top three Inc. 500 companies were Stirrings (cocktail products), Educational Outfitter (provider of school uniforms) and DollarDays (low-priced wholesaler) (See Inc. 500 Curve). A number of our middle-percentile performers might also be called – ‘thanks, but no thanks’. A number of them were solid on first contact, but failed to follow through. Sara Lee is typical of the ‘thanks, but no thanks’ brands. The Sara Lee phone representative was solid. She was a really happy lady who shared our researcher’s enthusiasm about its products. It was clear that she, too, was a fan. However, Sara Lee followed up with a form letter that said it would ‘research’ the issue and get back to us. Since there was no issue, I wonder if we’ll ever hear anything!

Finally, here is a story from the blogosphere and one of our middle tier performers: on 1 February, 2007, Jeremy Epstein (who happens to work for Microsoft), posted ‘Ode to Metamucil’ on his blog. He said his dad and brother helped him discover the benefits of fibre. This is probably too much information, but the trio created a German word to describe the ‘feeling of cathartic satisfaction that Metamucil yields … ’: Die Freilichemorgenausgang, which roughly translates: ‘joyous morning exit’. In any case, he and his family love Metamucil. The same day, P&G’s Metamucil brand manager commented on Jeremy’s blog post and said thanks. Bravo, P&G!

• A couple of weeks later the brand manager emailed Jeremy to say that his brand team loves his blog, and offers Jeremy samples of new flavour of Metamucil. Jeremy is ecstatic. He sends the brand manager his mailing address and excitedly awaits his package of fibre. 14 April (two months later): Jeremy outlines the situation. No samples have arrived. No further emails from P&G. Jeremy sums up his feelings: ‘I mean, it’s freakin’ Metamucil! What company wouldn’t want to stoke the fire of someone talking about their products? If you’re a company and you can’t take advantage of that, then you’ve got a problem. It’s not like it’s an iPhone.’

Two weeks later Jeremy reports that he just received an apology letter from P&G for the delay inside a ‘big ol’ box of Metamucil …’. Jeremy still uses Metamucil, but doesn’t feel as loyal after P&G’s ‘thanks, but no thanks’ behaviour.

Here are four actions to help brands become top performers in establishing relationships with their happy, vocal customers:

1. Test yourselves and learn more about your happy customers. Do a complete audit to understand the gaps that need to be closed in your major markets around the world. It would also be worthwhile to know how many of your customers proactively say ‘thank you’ and how many people they tell about their positive experiences – this is measurable today through research.

2. Immediately implement the ‘common courtesy business process’. Say ‘thank you for your thank you’ like a champ. Don’t miss an opportunity. This is not rocket science, but doing it well has a lot of upside potential. And, it’s the cornerstone of world-class word-ofmouth marketing.

3. Provide free happy customer ‘juice’ for employees whenever they need it. Pumping real customer ‘thank yous’ into the organisation is rich fuel for motivation, as well as innovation. It’s a good reminder for managers reengineering business processes that processes should be configured for happy customers, too.

4. Make your vocal happy customers VIPs. Once you ‘ace the basics’ of saying thank you, there is a significant opportunity to take it to the next level and make your happy customers VIPs. Give them an opportunity to preview new products, for instance.❦

This is an abbreviated version of a speech presented at the Dell Buzz Summit in August 2007, in Austin, Texas.

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Top performers overall

Here are some interesting stories from the top and above-average percentile performers:

•  Kroger provided one of the best overall experiences via phone, email and mail. While it did not thrill our researchers, it executed really well. Their contact information was easy to find. The 800-operator was polite and offered to take down our details in order to channel the praise: Sharon from consumer affairs sent a personalised, gracious ‘thanks for the thanks’ email. Ginger from consumer response sent us a really nice letter and a postage-paid card to encourage us to send our local store a ‘thanks,’ too. Overall, nicely done.

•  Nike performed admirably via email and mail. But it is probably number one via phone. The Nike representative sounded thrilled that our researcher was happy with her Nike Frees. In fact, she said she had the same shoes and she loved them, too. She suggested, ‘if you love those, then you should think about a Nike+ because I have one and I love it, too.’ Now the representative was a peer that loved Nike gear and not a representative at a big brand. I told a Nike executive about its good results. She reminded me that Nike gives 50% discounts to all employees, and they take full advantage.

• Middle-of-the-pack performer and clothing retailer Vineyard Vines’ agent also engaged in a casual, friend-to-friend conversation. In the course of the discussion she offered a ‘sneak preview’ of its fall line, which only a few VIP customers had viewed. Nice idea.

• Top percentile performer Anheuser-Busch managed to inject a little humour into its well-written response to our email: ‘we hope that you’ll crack open a cold one soon!’

• The school uniform provider Education Outfitters responded the quickest – literally minutes – with a sincere note from the CEO. He also politely asked for the specific store from which the uniform was purchased so he could tell them thanks, too. This was common among top-percentile retailers. How are you going to channel praise to your retail stores and retail partners?

•  Middle-percentile performer Kellogg’s sent us really modest tokens of appreciation: three vintage cereal bowls and a handful of ‘free product’ coupons. But the bowls had a real effect on our researcher. She acted as if someone had just bestowed Ming Dynasty porcelain on her! In short order, most of the people in the office knew about them and wanted to check them out. Simple, but clever gestures go a long way in keeping customers and generating positive word of mouth.

What separates top performers?

There are four major characteristics shared by the top scorers in our sample:

1. Though none of the top performers provided an obvious, easy way to say thanks, they also didn't make it a mystery. A happy customer should not have to work to say thanks to a company or fill out a lot of ‘paperwork.’

2. With finesse and speed, top percentile performers can tell the difference between happy customers trying to say thanks from dissatisfied, complaining ones. In an effort to respond in a timely manner, too many companies send this kind of form letter: "Sorry you are having problems… we'll get back to you as soon as we can…" That can amount to a slap in the face to a customer just trying to say thanks.

3. Top performers come off as real people. Nothing they do makes customers feel like they are dealing with an agent on script or an auto-response system. That's important, because it's easier for customers to have a relationship with a person than a brand.

4. Building on this, top performers personalised their responses across the channels (or at least made them seem personal)… Poorly written form letters were the norm for middle and bottom performers, and they probably do more harm than good.

Sample and method

Sample: Top 100 major consumer brands: Top 50 Fortune 500 and 50 Inc. 500 consumer brands.

Over the course of six weeks (July and August 2007), GCI’s research team reached out and thanked 100 companies for their product or service via four channels:

1. snail mail: Sent to corporate headquarters; addressed to the CEO

2. email: most relevant email listed at company’s Contact Us page; addressed to the CEO

3. 1-800 number: most relevant toll-free number listed at company’s Contact Us page

4. digital media: monitoring of the blogosphere, forums and social networks for evidence of the 100 companies proactively saying "thank you" to their customers.

For each channel, a company was scored on a 0-10 scale: 40 was the maximum

possible score for a company. Quantitative criteria for scoring included:

• ease of finding contact information
• accuracy of contact information
• time lapse of response
• completeness of follow through (eg leave a message, and we’ll get back to you
• degree of personalised, ‘humanised’ (as opposed to scripted) response
• reaction to and handling of the ‘thank you’ (live phone agent)
• offer of coupons, token gifts, complementary product/service (eg well, if you like that, you should check this out) or exclusive information (eg sneak peek at fall fashion).