customer

, , , , , , , ,

Age of social media requires delicacy, professionalism

Social mediaThe United Airlines PR department has been extremely busy. All of us watched in horror as the police dragged a United passenger from a flight. The age of social media requires delicacy, professionalism, and, sometimes, rapid response. Companies and organisations must be on top of their game, including those of us in the non-profit sector. This United Airlines situation was not handled well by any stretch of the imagination.

None of us know all of the facts about this circumstance or fully understand the way US airlines overbook flights to try to gamble on revenue. Nonetheless, the manner in which this story went viral, including the subsequent handling of the situation, provides lessons for non-profit organisations to learn, including:

  • Twitter and Facebook are not just used for positive and social reasons.
    • Every company and non-profit needs to be prepared to respond to customer complaints/issues 24/7.
    • The joke emojis on social media continue more than a week after the incident.
    • This story likely went viral before the plane even left the ground.
  • eMail is never private and confidential.
    • eMail may be forwarded externally, as the United CEO found his internal eMail to staff forwarded to the media following this incident.
  • Blaming the customer is never a good idea.
    • Someone even investigated the passenger’s past and surfaced unrelated information. This information was released to the media. The focus of the story became about the man’s past rather than about the incident or the situation, which caused the problem in the first place.

In the end, the way United Airlines handled this situation caused them more harm financially than it would have cost the airline to hire two pilots to fly the passenger and his wife privately to their destination. The financial impact of this story goes well beyond the 100+ passengers on the flight. On top of the reputational problems United Airlines now faces, the airline will likely face a lawsuit and ongoing/further financial ramifications.

, , , , , ,

You are my customer and I am yours

Why is it people do not respond to telephone calls, email communications, or requests for meetings? Some take weeks to respond and others do not respond at all. It’s a source of frustration across most non-profit organisations – internally and externally – when people make contact with others and there is no response or the response takes days or weeks. The frustration is within our non-profit team members and also between non-profits and suppliers. We hear excuses like “I am flat out”, “I have been really busy”, “My schedule has been nuts”, etc.

Yet, these same people who are non-responsive often times expect others to be responsive to one another. They have a different standard for others than they have for themselves.

There may be legitimate reasons – holidays, meetings, and other tasks. These can be managed via out of office messages or other outbound notifications to set expectations. It’s the radio silence that is aggravating to people. The unknown.

You are my customer and I am your customer. We need to treat one another as customers. We ought to set service level agreements or standards of communication whereby we pledge to ourselves, and others, to be responsive in a certain length of time for online and offline communications. We can’t expect people to adhere to our standards when we do not have them for ourselves.

, , , , , , , , ,

Lessons for nonprofit organisations to consider

Snip20160423_52Many Australians shopped for new health insurance before 1 April when rates for most of us increased. When I received a notification from my insurer of my rate increase, I immediately called iSelect to seek a less expensive plan. I had bought my existing plan via iSelect and decided to start with this consolidator to find an alternative plan. The call was a success.

iSelect informed me of a less expensive plan, plus a plan with more coverage. It was a 20-minute call, which saved me ~$40 a month and brought me greater benefits.

About three weeks later I received a call from my outgoing insurer asking me why I was “leaving” their plan. When I explained it was due to cost, the caller said “why didn’t you give us a chance to find you a cheaper plan and alternative benefits?” I suggested customer retention was the job of the insurer, not the customer. I also suggested if there were alternate plans, which were cheaper and more beneficial, the insurer should send those alternatives out to the customer rather than simply send a rate increase letter. The caller suggested I had good points and ideas.

The call from this insurer suggests to me missed opportunities all around. Additionally, the call offers some lessons to be learned by the non-profit sector and retention of donors. The following are obvious lessons to me:

  1. Rather than give donors (in my case customers) a reason to “shop around” or go to another charity, work hard to retain the donor.
  2. Offer donors a menu of choices rather than restrict them to one option.
  3. The donor (customer) is likely to not call you to seek alternative ways to stick with you.
  4. Show donor appreciation before it is too late. Retaining a donor is less costly than acquiring a new donor.

Recognising donor and brand loyalty is critical. Once the donor is gone, it is often very difficult to gain the donor back.