Venting About Your Customer Service: Sunday Statistics Ed. 8
Posted by Erica DeWolf on May 5, 2008
Welcome to another edition of Sunday Statistics!
Okay. You got me. It’s not Sunday. Forgive me, as I am a full 24 hours late in writing this post.
However, I hope you can still utilize the following information to help you in your marketing decisions and audience profiling.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about writing some bad reviews of some companies who have disappointed me greatly within the past few weeks. Because the services and products provided by these companies would not entirely relevant to my readers, and because I’m sure it would turn into a venting session by me, I decided against it, and instead, retold a story I heard that is related, but more relevant to my audience.
Today I found a study conducted by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) entitled, “Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media,” which discussed the relationship between customer care and the importance of social media.
The Statistics
Says Dr. Ganim Nora Barnes, senior fellow at the SNCR, “… there is a growing group of highly desirable consumers using social media to research companies: 25- to 55-years old, college-educated, earning $100,000+…”
As social media becomes used by more individuals, consumers are using it even more frequently to share their customer service experiences and learn about others’ experiences before making purchase decisions.
- 74% of participants agree or strongly agree that customer care experiences shared online through social media is an important determinant in purchase choice. Only 8% disagreed with this statement.
- 59.1% of respondents use social media to “vent” about a customer care experience (Like I wanted to do!)
- 72% of respondents decide to research a company’s services and customer service before purchasing or doing business with a company, at least occasionally. Search engines are used most frequently when conducting this type of research.
- 81% of respondents believe blogs, online rating systems, discussion forums, and social media channels can help to give consumers a greater voice regarding customer care, and get the word out about a company’s good or bad customer service.
- less than 33% of respondents believe that businesses take customers’ opinions seriously
- Search engines are felt to be the most valuable online tools for this research
Statistics Summary
What should we take away from this? Your customers are using the internet and social media to talk about your company- good and bad. Your customers are using the internet and social media to find out what others think about your company to determine if they do business with you.
If you haven’t, sign up for Google Alerts- make sure you have an alert for your name and your company name, so you can be notified whenever anybody is talking about you in the blogosphere…good or bad.
(Photo Credit: by Matt Callow)
May 6, 2008 at 8:37 am
I’ve been thinking about writing a post on poor customer service, too. I feel like Erie is notorious for providing poor customer service. It drives me nuts! These people need feedback!
May 6, 2008 at 9:12 am
If you’d like a lesson in poor response time and generally poor customer service, deal with French manufacturing companies.
It’s about 4 days to one week to receive an answer. Not a quotation, just an answer to my email. Shipments are extremely late and post-purchase response flat-out sucks.
Then again, I’m sure some of my own customers have vented about lead times and the like. I always try to give quick responses, but can’t always guarantee quick products…