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How to destroy yourself on the internet in 24 hours
IainB:
In Marketing 101, there is a lot of solid recommended best practice for handling customer complaints.
This discussion thread seems to be about an egregious piece of customer complaint handling - it's more like a classic example of how not to do it.
From notes that I pulled from EDS' Intranet (marketing community library resources) in about 1995 was this:
(I suspect the statistics are not credible though, as no source references were given.)
Why bother?
Each dissatisfied customer:
* tells 10 others.
* 12% tell up to 20 others.
* 95% won't tell you the "supplier" that they are dissatisfied.
* three quarters of these will take their business elsewhere.Each satisfied customer:
* tells 5 others.
* 95% of dissatisfied customers will become loyal again if their complaints are handled quickly and well.The bottom line:
It costs five times more money to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one.
--- End quote ---
And this is an interesting and relevant post Learn from Mistakes (2011-12-13)
(I have so far been unable to track down the RIA research referred to in the post.)
Here's the post content:
SpoilerLearn from Mistakes
By: Phil Sasso
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Everyone makes mistakes. Most customers realize that and are willing to forgive, if you are proactive and respond promptly and attentively to their complaints. Ignore customer complaints at your own peril.
For every customer that complains, an average of 26 more customers won’t tell you that they are dissatisfied, according to a Research Institute of America (RIA) study for the White House Office of Consumer Affairs.
Only 4 percent of unhappy customers will bother to complain—most will just leave quietly and never do business with you again. Why? Some people don’t want to make waves. Others don’t think it will make a difference.
Whatever the reason, it’s important to oil the squeaky wheels. And learn from them what you can do to increase your customer satisfaction. Successful shops don’t just do good work, they create happy customers.
The RIA study says that 70 percent of complainers will do business with you again if the complaint is resolved—95 percent will stay loyal if they feel you resolved the problem quickly and completely.
It’s important to try to avoid treating a complaining customer as an adversary. Think of the complainer as an advocate representing other quietly dissatisfied customers. Listen despite their possible angry tone or harsh words to understand why they’re frustrated. Have a system to quickly resolve problems. And make sure everyone on your staff who deals with customers is trained and empowered to resolve simple problems.
One approach is what I call the Triple-A method:
• Avoid interrupting as the customer explains the problem. (Letting them vent can help diffuse the situation.)
• Acknowledge that you understand how your customer feels.
• Ask them what they believe would be a fair resolution. (In most situations, the customer will ask for less than you would have offered.)
Remember: your customer has choices. Do everything you can to be the one he chooses.
--- End quote ---
IainB:
Sort of relevant:
Whilst I was looking up my old notes for the above post, I came across the converse of "best practice" in business. These could be useful to learn, so that we could avoid it.
Five Easy Steps to Destroying Real Value:
From Jul./Aug. '95 HBR article by the management guru Prof. Henry Mintzberg.
Five Easy Steps to Destroying Real Value (any step will do):
====================================
* STEP 1: Manage the bottom line (as if companies make money by managing money).
* STEP 2: Make a plan for every action. (No spontaneity please, definitely no learning).
* STEP 3: Move managers around to be certain they never get to know anything but management well, and let the boss kick him/herself upstairs so that he/she can manage a portfolio instead of a real business.
* STEP 4: When in trouble, rationalise, fire and divest; when out of trouble, expand, acquire and still fire (it keeps employees on their toes); above all, never create or invent anything (it takes too long).
* STEP 5: Be sure to do everything in five easy steps.
--- End quote ---
40hz:
I have so far been unable to track down the RIA research referred to in the post.
-IainB (December 30, 2011, 09:03 PM)
--- End quote ---
Good luck finding it. It was commissioned from RIA by the White House Office of Consumer Affairs. AFAIK there no longer is a separate Office of Consumer Affairs in the federal government. IIRC it was transferred to the Department of Commerce around 1971 - and apparently vanished sometime after that.
Are we surprised? :-\
Edvard:
As much as I would like to have some measure of sympathy for the guy, I have to agree; he brought all this on himself by acting like an ass, no questions.
Stressed or not, you don't speak like this to a paying customer.
Ever.
IMO, if this hadn't gotten to the internet, then the folks who hired him would have eventually caught on and canned the guy, though admittedly not as quickly and not as thorough ass-whuppin' in the process.
That said, kudos to the original 'Dave' who politely requested that folks cut him some slack (after all, all he wanted was the controllers he ordered).
P.S. The memes are still rolling in...
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/paul-christoforo-ocean-marketing-emails
@IainB:
Awesome, and solidly relevant.
The Five Easy Steps are largely why I'm being let go from the company I'm at.
The business they are running is operating in a slowly dying market, and though they are quick to take up new technologies to provide relevant services to existing customers, they are panicking over a slippery bottom line, firing when training would take too much effort, and moving managers into areas where they have no expertise but management.
If I ever work up the chutzpah to start a business, that's getting printed poster size, framed and put on the wall opposite my desk.
:Thmbsup:
IainB:
My daughter Lily told me about an amusing game she was playing (operating on a soft toy rabbit) on a site here: http://10mg.nl/
Curious, I took a look at their "About" notes:
About us
10mg | interactive is a small web agency based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We create highly interactive web campaigns for some of the worlds most leading brands.
10mg stands for minimal effort with maximum effect. We believe that if you use the internet's capabilities well, it doesn't take a lot to reach a great result, It only takes 10mg.
--- End quote ---
In a way, that's arguably what happened in Christoforo's case, except in reverse. All he had to do was 10 or 20mg of psychopathic-type stupid, and he sorta brought a backlash - the wrath of the Blogosphere - down on himself. But if it had been a different kind of stupid - i.e., not the psychopathic-type one - then the outcome might have been quite different.
I don't like the look of what happened to him - it is/was not a nice thing. It's as though he's been set upon and torn apart repeatedly by packs of wolves - lots of whom may feel themselves to have been actual/potential victims of borderline psychopaths - other Christoforos. That's a reflection of what we call "humanity", I guess. Collectively removing the danger.
What happened, in the long run, might be a good thing, if it acts as a lesson to other borderline psychopaths - potential Christoforos out there. But I don't think it will, because psychopaths are unable to have any empathy with others and cannot help/alter their psychopathic behaviours. They are incapable of learning the lesson. They can see nothing wrong - nothing that needs changing - in their behaviours. So they do not - cannot - change. That's why society locks full-bore psychopaths up in lunatic asylums.
As an afterthought, knowing what I do know about the Dutch, I suspect that could be 10mg of crack.
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