Partner Article

Keeping customers happy

Andy Mabbutt, managing director of customer feedback specialists Feefo, examines the importance of good customer service.

When we all bought from shops, we could examine the goods, try them out, ask questions of the assistant. We could make suggestions, talk to the manager, and knew where to return to complain if our goods were faulty. That all vanished when we purchased online. We gave up security for convenience. But the new wave led by Facebook, Twitter, blogs and reviews – both in review centres and on-site - has opened up a completely new level of communication, both between friends and from experts to friends. Retailers who ignore this, and who do not try to exploit this as fully as they can, are burying their heads in the sand. Branding is about telling people who you are and making friends, and the internet turns out to be an astonishingly powerful way of doing both.

But there is one golden rule. Be honest. News will pass from page to page with amazing speed and be picked up by news organisations faster than any other method. But so will bad news, and so will rumour.

There is only one way to respond to criticism and this is to be entirely open about any genuine mistake you have made. You must also be prepared to take action and make amends. Then, when a false accusation is made, you can point to your record and maintain the dialogue.

This applies too with reviews on site. There is a tendency among retailers to believe that there is an advantage in ‘moderating’ reviews, so as to keep the site ‘on message’. This ignores the fact that there are plenty of sites out there which have unmoderated reviews of your business and products, including Facebook, blogs and sites that are created for no other purpose.

There will always be companies which worry about feedback but the real pioneers are the ones using it to shape their business and evolve as a result. If you have a number of feedbacks about poor facilities or products, do something about it. Don’t pretend they don’t exist. Feefo enables you to see the root of the problem straight away so you can tackle it instantly too.
Encouraging feedback from customers helps reduce barriers and enables businesses to react instantly and build that ‘High Street’ rapport. It doesn’t matter if that feedback is good or bad – retailers can learn from it all.

People are much more interested in the customer service than they are the product. Products are generally good across most of the big name retailers but it’s the service that can be defining, especially if the product is exactly the same. A poor customer interaction may not necessarily leave someone fuming but they may not return. On the flip side, if something goes wrong and it’s corrected by great customer service then that person may return again and again. Don’t sweep bad reviews under the carpet…deal with them.

Good reviews are fabulous but bad reviews can help grow your business too – as long as you listen to your customers and do something about it.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .