Last week, I attended a webinar titled “Brand Building in a Digital Age”. I was expecting a “how-to” seminar on incorporating social media and other new technology tools as part of the marketing mix. As it turned out, the webinar was more about the power of the customer and the importance of good customer service in an era of instant access to millions of potential customers via the Internet. But that’s okay, because the webinar did give me some new insights and appreciation for the importance of doing and saying the right things with customers.
I have always counseled my clients and trained my staff to be sensitive to the importance of balancing expectations with the reality of the brand experience. Creating the right expectation can cover a lot of areas, but the most important are these:
- Understand your customer’s needs and wants.
- Don’t over-promise what you can’t deliver.
- Be transparent about your policies and procedures.
- Make it easy for customers to alert you to problems.
- Listen to the customer and do your best to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
- Fix the problem so that it doesn’t happen again.
Okay, none of this is brain surgery, but I am still amazed at how many companies ignore one or all of the above. And the potential negative impact on your brand has never been scarier than now. As last week’s webinar pointed out, we are all doing business in a virtual bazaar where customers have the ability to positively or negatively influence thousands of potential customers.
Several years ago, a Yankelovich study concluded that a positive customer experience was generally shared with 2-3 people while a negative experience was shared with 15. With the power of the Internet, those numbers are now mind-boggling as witnessed by the MotrinMoms reaction to a Motrin commercial they found offensive and insensitive.
If you missed the brouhaha last November, here’s a quick recap. On a Saturday morning, Motrin launched an on-line ad via their website touting Motrin’s effectiveness in relieving back pain in mothers who carry their baby in a sling. While the basis for the ad was probably true, they chose to use sardonic humor and a flippant tonality to imply that “baby-wearing” mothers only use the sling to make a social comment to others that they are an “official mom”.
Online moms did not respond to the ad by racing out for Motrin. They were offended by the suggestion that they carry their babies just to be “fashionable”.
By Saturday evening the ad had created a firestorm in the Twitter community, was the most talked about subject, and led one Tweeter to comment: note to self … never piss off moms … especially twitter moms … they can be a nasty bunch ;)
By Sunday morning, a MotrinMom had posted a video response on YouTube and at last count has generated at least 61 additional YouTube responses that have been viewed by over 575,000 people. The negative response also dominated the blogging community for days, and will continue to be available to millions via the “Google penalty” as one blogger termed it.
Even though Motrin responded quickly by pulling the ad and issuing official apologies to the general community as well as to specific email protesters, there is no telling how much damage they have inadvertently done to their brand. And they didn’t over-promise, they just did something stupid.
So what does that say about retailers who loudly proclaim their “once-in-a-lifetime” sale that happens again next week? And again the following week? Are you listening department stores? Or what about the automobile dealers, mortgage companies and all the other advertisers who trumpet their incentives and hide behind the fine print. The old-fashioned notion of caveat emptor (buyer beware) has been replaced by seller beware that you don’t ruin your brand and your business in a blind quest for profit because your customers will tell the truth to the world.
The rapid growth of customer review sites like Yelp and Angies List and the emergence of customer feedback sites like Measuredup and Planetfeedback should be enough for marketers to wake up and smell that coffee.
The customer is not only in charge, they are in the driver's seat.
