Are we changing how we complain, or just how often?

A New York Times article “Consumer Complaints Made Easy. Maybe Too Easy" sparked some dialogue yesterday on the nature of complaints, complainers and service recovery effort.

I joined Wim Rampen, Arie Goldshlager & several others to discuss whether social media has indeed made it too easy for customers too complain, and if this has led to “social bullying”.

My quick take: Social media hasn’t made customer complaints “too easy”. Instead, good service businesses are happy to have yet another way for a customer with a complaint to have that complaint heard and responded to. Companies suggesting that it’s too easy for customers to complain may not have the right service orientation in the first place, which leads to those scores of complaints that they’d rather not hear.

In a related post on Arie Goldshlager’s Posterous, he commented on the proliferation of easy, uncommitted complaints and “social bullying” as a potential resource drain on well-meaning service organizations that tried to serve all customers to their fullest extent.

With the rise of social as a venue for complaining, the ground may be shifting on this one. If a company responds to customers that are complaining for popularity reasons and aren't looking to engage them, they may waste valuable service resources chasing service experiences that can’t be recovered with customers that aren’t looking for resolution as much as they are a chance to use their social media bullhorn.

Pndering the issue for a few more hours, I’ve got one more issue to add to the body of work.

Complaining about failed experiences is easier with the availability of social media than it was before, no doubt. But in any service experience, customers themselves play a role in a successful outcome. When a customer with a failure complains directly to a company, the company has the ability to help fix problems that began with the customer not accepting their role or not playing it well. But when the interaction happens in full view of social media, there’s less opportunity for that type of customer coaching.

Will social media move companies toward limiting customer role in production of their own experiences, making service more servant-like & less collaborative?

I sure hope not. The customer, because of their unique knowledge of their needs, has the potential to be the most productive resource in the service experience, if & when we make good use of the shared effort. It would be a shame for businesses worried about the complaints that could be best fixed through better company-customer interface to design the customer out of the fulfillment process completely.

Domino's shows me my pizza.

Domino's may not yet be considered complete, but I’ve been a fan of the move to quality they've made in full view of their customers and the public.

Quality improvements are often made by companies that have had these issues, but Domino’s has addressed their public perception with a humility and sincerity that we can identify with and cheer for.

Whether through its public apologies for “the video”, public solicitation of feedback via showusyourpizza.com, or the dramatization of their willingness to win back customers one at a time through their advertising, Domino's has demonstrated transparency, personality and a connectedness with its customers trhat few service brands are (sadly) willing to risk.

Yet while I had admired Dominos' recent track record in addressing service quality, I still hadn’t used them in a couple of years, until my wife called me at work with an emergency, “we-left-the-baby-sitter-hanging” situation.

The selection & ordering process at dominos.com was simple. The menu was completely customizable and - even better - I didn't need to register as a frequent customer just to order a pizza.

But what happened after I ordered made me a fan and, more importantly, a returning customer.
After the order submitted, a timeline popped into the order confirmation screen, showing the order preparation & delivery process and the status of my order as it moved. The tracker might be dismissed as gimmicky, but it personalized the service in a unique way, particularly when stage 2 informed me that "Stephen began custom-making my order at 5:12 PM."

Adding a tangible personalization of the experience in the form of greater visibility to the service process, (including using the names of the people involved), are elements of the domino's experience that gave me more assurance over the quality of the outcome. It demonstrated in a for me that their responsiveness to their customers over the quality concerns is not just a marketing or social media response, but a strategy consistently carried out across service touchpoints.

Are you ready for your customers to be your Marketing Dept?

In a service design group Slideshare presentation posted by UK design group Engine, I read the following line:

"The service economy is here, but it's just not very well designed yet."

True, but it’s quickly becoming an understatement.

Sure the service economy is here. >70% of GDP is represented by services. Even in product-based businesses, service and services are the differentiators that separate category leaders from the commoditized also-rans.

Here’s where I’d go farther.

In a service economy enabled by the connectivity of social media, companies need to put the best marketing tools in the hands of front line service employees AND customers themselves in order to prosper.

Unique to services is that the line of production also serves as a company’s primary marketers. The faces providing the service experience are the face of the brand. And because the “product” is intangible, customers’ only reference is the feeling they were left with after having used a service. What they say to others will be determined by the outcome of the service and how they were treated while receiving it.

Social media has connected us all. It has it enabled a greater depth of interaction between companies and the customer they serve, and a MUCH greater connectivity between past and prospective users of your service.

Instead of allocating marketing budgets to all of the traditional activities, companies need to be spending time, effort and capital on putting the best marketing tools in the hands of the people best suited to market the service - front line service employees and customers themselves.

Does a cement maker need social media?

What companies is social networking important to?

It seems more important in a B2C environment than a B2B environment, though I have a feeling that is about to change. Think about how your friendly neighborhood Project Manager could be using a value-chain “social” network to manage workflow, and you can see where this could be headed.

I would argue that social marketing is more important in a services environment than in a products environment.

This owes to the intangible nature of services. Because the end result of a service is the feeling you have after experiencing it, our standards on service quality are difficult to compare across experiences and companies. Customers getting together to describe the service processes they experienced and how they made them feel start to overcome those challenges.

Most service companies that until now have enjoyed the veil of vaguely defined quality are in for a rude awakening.

It also owes to the fact that in the service environment, the customer plays a role in successful service delivery. Effective dialogue between company and customer can improve the customer’s understanding of what role they are supposed to perform, which would ultimately lead to more service success and a greater rate of overall satisfaction.

Beyond these elements, a company’s customer base also matters.

Whole Foods and Ritz-Carlton are world-class service organizations / experience crafters. In the twitter environment, Whole Foods has over one million followers, while Ritz-Carlton, as of last night, had 214.

That seems about right.

Whole Foods has a collective movement aspect to their experience. The company is open to suggestions from the customer base about how to better serve the market. They’re also hopeful that customers will interact with each other to help and educate each other on everything from new recipes to sustainable consumption.

Ritz-Carlton doesn’t have the collective support element to their experience. In fact, theirs is built on a perception of individual attention, care and privilege as a guest of their hotels. It’s an experience that infers some exclusivity – a club like feel amongst those can afford it. (I was going to say that you wouldn’t see the Skull and Bones Society with a public website, but my factchecker proved me wrong)