Anyone who understands the power of grassroots PR knows how quickly poor customer service can corrode corporate reputation. By mishandling service concerns, companies throw away business from existing customers and from anyone those customers talk to.
For example, customer satisfaction research and consulting firm TARP, Arlington, Va., finds that, on average, dissatisfied customers will tell as many as 16 friends or colleagues about bad experiences with a company.
"We see a link all the time between customer satisfaction and image," says Peter Gurney, vice president and director of research services at Service Intelligence, an Atlanta-based customer service consulting firm. Customer satisfaction starts rising about six months after a dramatic improvement in customer service, Gurney says, while corporate image or reputation show improvements another six to 12 months later, if better service is sustained.
High-quality customer service not only boosts a company's reputation, it also allows it to charge higher prices while retaining customer loyalty. According to John Goodman, president of TARP, General Electric finds that customers are happy to pay more for its products partly because of GE's Answer Center, an around-the-clock, seven-days-a-week call center available to purchasers.
Goodman cites another example: consumer electronics companies with which TARP worked find that customer problem calls dropped by 50 percent-and loyalty went up 20 to 30 percent-when companies improved the clarity and ease-of-use of operating instructions accompanying equipment.
This last example spotlights a surprising statistic: 40 percent of customer dissatisfaction with products is related to "customer incompetence," according to Goodman. So, whatever companies can do to better educate customers in the use of their products-through product literature or communications at the time of purchase-the more companies can cut complaints and improve satisfaction.
PR Role: Match Words and Deeds
While PR departments rarely oversee customer service operations, there are at least two areas where PR managers should focus to make customer service efforts more successful, says Gurney.
First, they should make sure that external communications are coordinated with the customer service actions and communications of front-line customer service staff. "I see it over and over that marketing and PR come out with promises that set [customer] expectations which front-line people don't have the resources to meet," he says.
PR people need to "stop thinking in a vacuum," agrees Jay Williamson, vice president of marketing at Kowal Associates, a Boston-based firm that helps companies improve their telephone interaction with customers.
Companies need to take "an integrated approach" to ensure that external communications match what is actually taking place in customer service.
Second, Gurney says that in customer service training materials and internal communications generally, PR pros can make sure that "the message going out to the customer also is brought in, so that everyone [in the company] speaks the same language." Furthermore, Gurney advocates training front-line people to speak in terms of "we," rather than saying "the company," and to "make factual comparisons" to competitors. "Customers want to feel that employees like the company, and are behind it," he says.
(Peter Gurney, Service Intelligence, 206/621-7367. ext. 222; John Goodman, TARP, 703/524-1456; Jay Williamson, Kowal Associates Inc.; 617/521-9000)