They don’t just talk anymore, though: they type—they type and tweet and update their Facebook pages and leave online reviews on every review site they can find. They email their friends. Those friends tweet, etc.
In the case of Jenny Haniver (see link above), the biggest part of the problem was how far she had to go (posting about the problem publicly and inadvertently creating a media circus around her situation) to get any sort of action taken. Even with repeated calls and emails in to customer service and support teams, she couldn’t find out whether or not her complaint had gotten farther than being registered with the system.
This is not the sort of thing you want people to equate with your company.
The biggest part of preventing this is, obviously, having a stellar customer service team on staff. In addition to being available, you need to train your customer service and support departments on how to help the people who send in feedback feel heard. Imagine how much better Xbox Live could have fared if its team kept customers happy and buying by following up immediately with people who file complaints.
Sure, there’s room to acknowledge that Xbox Live is a huge company and probably has to deal with thousands if not millions of tickets submitted every day. They probably employ a large number of people to handle, at least on a superficial basis, the tickets that get filed. It’s possible that they even outsource a large amount of their customer service duties to call and support centers. They can do that because their company has gotten so big that—even in the wake of this recent slough of bad press—they know that people will keep playing even when they mess up (at least for now).
You probably don’t have that confidence just yet. Unlike Amazon, you don’t have the dough to hire a couple thousand more customer service agents. So what can you do? How do you make sure that your company’s online presence and reputation are as solid and positive as possible?
The best way to ensure that you don’t have to deal with the level of bad press that XBox Live recieved is to be proactive. Solve problems before they can grow. If you don’t have the staff power to take care of that in house, follow the big guys’ leads and outsource those duties to companies like Brand.com who do have the staff on hand to manage your presence and reputation.
Make sure that, whoever you employ to handle your customer service and support—in house or outsourced—understands how to make sure that the person filing the ticket feels taken seriously. How do you do that?
1. Have the team respond immediately and personally. A quick, “thanks for your feedback” note that features the person’s name and a couple of details about their issue will suffice.
2. Follow up. It should be customer service policy that no complaint or raised issues go more than forty eight hours without a follow up. Even if you don’t have anything new to report a simple “we’re still working on it” will get the job done.
3. Keep the person in the loop. Letting the person know what you’re doing to fix the problem goes a long way toward building trust and rebuilding the relationship.
Imagine what would have happened if XBox Live had just used these tips!
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Alex Woods is a freelance writer who most often writes about smart business choices. You can find him on Google+.
