Do Grameen Bank and Facebook offer lessons on how to scale a customer centric business?
March 22, 2011Reconnecting with old customers is better when it has context
March 29, 2011
About 3 weeks ago i wrote a post called How Consumers Give Feedback, which featured some research from Bruce Temkin across at the Temkin Group, a US a customer experience research and consulting firm.
One of the stand out things of the research, for me, was that:
“37% of all respondents said that even after a Very Good experience they did not tell anyone about it.”
That troubled me and I wondered why. Michael Cowen of Ravetopia left a really insightful comment where he said:
“I do think it is in our nature to spread the bad news rather than the good news, whether it is gossip, what bad things people have done or how someone has hurt us.
I think part of the reason is that we have to “show up” when we recommend something positive. We are putting our own personal reputations on the line. We don’t want to be wrong or accused of recommending something that is bad. Of course, when something is bad and we say it is there is nothing to lose and our reputations and our relationship stay in tact.”
So, if sharing is risky in the minds of customers, how can we make it as risk free as possible?
Could it have something to do with the emotional bank account idea, where before we feel able to share or recommend someone or something we need to build up our trust credits in them?
If you haven’t heard of this idea it was popularised by Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and it basically means that we hold a personal “emotional” bank account with anyone that we have a relationship with be they family, friends, colleagues, customers etc. This account will naturally begin at zero and like any bank account we can make deposits and withdrawals. However, instead of dealing with units of monetary value, we deal with emotional units.
However, the emotional units that Covey is referring to are centred around trust. So, when we make emotional deposits into someone’s bank account like doing great stuff for them and not just to them. Then, if we do that on a continuous basis, their fondness, trust, and confidence in us grows and our relationship develops and grows.
Is that the way to get our customers to talk about us and share us? Do we need to think about building that side of the relationship, that level of trust if we want to build our word of mouth marketing?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Thanks to purplejavatroll for the image.
18 Comments
I like Stephens idea about the emotional bank account and to believe it is true in personal relationships. But I do not agree that is fits into a corporate view in this instance.
I think people will share their experience if it is worth sharing. If they are surprised by the quality of service or the product they will probably be open to telling someone about it.
The problem is that they don’t always have a reason to.
If they do have a reason, like a friend who would be helped by the product or that they feel as though they would gain respect by telling people about the product.
I don’t think trust is the problem, I think it is about status, if we raise our status by sharing our experience, we will, if not we won’t.
I do not really know a solution to the problem of getting people to share their experiences, but I believe continuously over delivering you will get enough people to share you.
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for your comment and your perspective. I agree that how, why, what and when we share things with our friends and family can come down to many things. I think you make some good points that have made me think a lot deeper about this issue. No resolutions yet but I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks again,
Adrian
Please do Adrian.
We all need a solution.
Hello Adrian
Another way of looking at the statistic is that almost two thirds of the sample surveyed actually do talk and share their positive experience. That is pretty good going. Look at it this way, if you have 100 customers and deliver a great experience and 63 of them sing your praises then that is terrific word of mouth advertising and brand building for you.
As for those that do not share, I believe that some will be put-off by the rick of recommending a company and then finding that it fails to live up to the recommendation and this hurting their personal standing in their social circle.
Another reason may simply be that some of us simply expect to be treated well – all the time. And so we take great experiences and wow moments for granted and as such do not see that there is anything to sing about.
Perhaps another reason is that we simply want to keep it our little secret. Maybe we don’t want to drive lots of customers to our favourite little cafe and then find we cannot get the kind of service that we were used to getting.
I expect you get the idea. There is unlikely to be one reason. There are likely to be segments in the 37% and each segment will have its own reason including my favourite: I simply cannot be bothered – the so called ‘free rider’ issue.
Regards
Maz
HI Maz,
Thanks for your comment and great ‘half glass full approach’. You are right that we have to step back and realise what we have and not just what we have not got.
I guess what I was really interested in was the difference between the 23% that did not share after a very bad experience as compared to the 37% that did not share after a very good experience.
Maybe that’s a lot to do with risk.
Adrian
That makes a lot of sense, actually. It takes so much more to get someone to share a good experience than a bad one. And the trust factor is something I’ve never thought about but it rings true.
Hi P.S.,
Thanks for dropping by and leaving a a comment and that the observation rings true when compared to your experience.
Hope to see you here again soon,
Adrian
My own unscientific observations of watching twitter feeds based on ‘poor’ and ‘good’ service is that those that like to publicise their experience do so in almost equal measure.
That said if I’m upset I have an agenda that motivates me. Having a very good experience is nice but not necessarily newsworthy against all the other events in a busy day. Expecting vocal advocacy every time the brand gets it right sets the wrong expectation
Hi Martin,
Thank for your comment. As Disraeli said: ‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’. I guess we could find as many stats as we wanted to prove or illustrate whatever we wanted if we looked hard enough.
Don’t you think it is interesting that good experiences are not as newsworthy as bad experiences? Are we hard wired to enjoy bad news?
Adrian
Adrian,
There is no doubt that the research makes you think WHY. I tend to be in the camp of the ‘glass half full,’ in other words, I would rather spend my time with those folks that do! I think Marcus Buckingham (http://www.tmbc.com/mb/biography) does a good job exploring why it is important to focus on strengths rather than weaknesses. In this case it’s those that refer vs, those that do not.
Something to consider: does it make sense to figure that out?
Bill
.02
Hi Bill,
That’s a good question and I am not sure that there will ever be a definitive answer.
What I was trying to understand and question was around the issue of understanding why people don’t refer us then perhaps it may help us understand how we can get people to refer us more.
Adrian
Hi Adrian
Some interesting thoughts and glad to add some value via the comments section.
I was reading Robert Caldini’s book on the Psychology of Influence and he looks at reciprocity. Maybe the emotional bank account is built on that idea. A bit of tit for tat.
What makes it really interesting is that it is not necessarily a two way street. We know that about 30 % of word of mouth is based on other second hand experiences. In other words, if my wife tells me something in a field that she has credibility i will likely pas it on as my own opinion. (of course this does not apply to the dishes :)).
This is the beauty of networks, they flow in multiple directions.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for dropping by and sharing with us the 30% statistic. I didn’t know that. Does it come from Robert Cialdini’s research?
Adrian