Refresh Events

Refresh Events encourages collaborative partnerships, fosters education at all skill levels and creates networking opportunities within Toronto's digital media industry.

Building Amazing Experiences, Part 2

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 | By: Justin Kozuch

First impressions are everything. I learned this from a very early age, and this lesson has stuck with me since my childhood.

The other day, I decided to take a break from Refresh for a few minutes and went for a walk along Bloor Street. During my walk, I came across a well-dressed gentleman by the name of Phillip. Phillip works at the Holt and Renfrew store at Bay & Bloor. His job (which he’s been doing for 11 years) is to greet pedestrians walking along the sidewalk and welcome them into the store.

I stood nearby and watched him work for a few minutes, and I was fascinated by how good he is at what he does. It suddenly occurred to me: Building a relationship with your customers is not something you do once and forget about it. It’s not a job you do when you have time. It requires constant attention, an effectual strategy, and consistent measurement of the effectiveness of your customer care efforts.

We put out a question to our readers: “Had an amazing experience lately? Tell us about it!”

Almost instantly, @missrogue tweeted about her amazing customer support experience with 37Signals.

What followed was a short, but insightful conversation about creating great experiences and how the attitudes of the younger generation has a demand for customer satisfaction.

A conversation with Tara Hunt

Does this younger generation (GenY as we like to call them) have a greater connection to a more ethereal way of dealing with customers? And if so, is there a connection to the apparent power of social media when customers are treated poorly? Or does social media have nothing to do with it? Is it a paradigm shift in the supposed attitudes that GenY’ers have? Where does it stem from?

We got a late story from Aaron Kaufman about his experience with Rogers. What started with less than satisfactory customer service, ended with personalized attention from @RogersKeith and a call back with from a Customer Support Specialist.

What about you? How do you create amazing experiences? How much freedom do you have in your organization to improve and measure the success of your organization’s customer care programs?

Possibly Related Posts:


If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment or subscribe to our RSS feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Category: Opinion |

  • I wonder when this common way of dealing with bad customer experiences on Twitter (ie. bitching about a company or calling them out on sucking) will overflow into Facebook. Haven't been keeping a close eye on it, but I don't think the dynamics of Facebook really allow one persons problems with a brand to be viewed in the same way.

    For instance, Justin could complain about Rogers in his news stream and all his friends would see it, but Rogers will not. Or Justin could post a complaint on the wall of the Rogers fan page, and all the other people visiting that page (since you don't subscribe to fan updates on a brand's page) will see that post, so will Rogers, but all the people connected to Justin on Facebook won't see that update.

    Combine that with all the really stupid ways that some brands are populating their Facebook pages with dumb contests and such... and combine it as well with the way Facebook is replicating feature after feature of Twitter, it just really makes me think if this customer service difference will be one of the only things to remain as a unique difference between the two services.
  • I think you've hit the nail on the head with this one, Malcolm.

    Facebook is a very different experience than Twitter, in terms of engagement and the findability of customer service issues (we'll use customer service issues for this example).

    Because of the sheer amount of content that is being posted to Facebook every minute, tracking these issues is a challenge at best. There is no "immediacy" when it comes to Facebook. What I mean by immediacy is that the marketing departments of brands (or their agencies) don't check Facebook every minute of the day, unless they are running a campaign of some kind. And even, they don't have eyes on it as frequently as they should.

    An effective social media strategy takes into account that positive and negative things can be said about a company on any platform, regardless of whether they have a presence there or not, acts upon it, and engages the customer in resolving the issue as quickly and efficiently as possible.
blog comments powered by Disqus