Like it or not, our customers compare us on many dimensions across categories, not within categories. I think this is particularly true with things like contact centres where you speak to an agent, and online "contact us" kinds of help.
The new standard for B2B: act on feedback immediately
I'm experiencing some exceptionally responsive service right now from a technology company, and it got me thinking. FocusForums has kindly loaned me the use of their platform to use in a student project I'm handling right now, which will culminate in an afternoon seminar for some post-grad research students. They asked if I would take some notes on my experience with their application and share any feedback that they could use to improve navigation or functionality. So I've been capturing stream-of-consciousness notes and e-mailing them every day.
Note that this is not a new business -- they've been steadily improving this application for four or five years or more.
The incredible thing is that they started responding to my feedback immediately. They didn't say, "thanks, we'll put that into the hopper for the next development cycle". They said, in effect, "let's get somebody on this", and they have already made several improvements to navigation. WOW.
Let me just emphasize one more thing here. I'm not their customer yet. I think they would like me to be a customer, but right now, I'm just a prospect.
The new standard for B2C: respond like you mean it, and be quick
Here's a few examples of excellence in the B2C world.
The Ask-Us button:
I recently sent an e-mail question to the "ask us" address at a not-for-profit centre of excellence associated with a university. I thought I might never hear back, or might get a pre-loaded response. Nope. The next day, I had a personal, detailed response with links to additional helpful resources.
The Help ticket:
Typepad, the folks that provide this platform, invariably respond to help tickets the same day. A personalized response. With a name. Recently, I sent them a request for a feature. They asked for clarification. I provided it. And they said, "I will certainly pass this feedback along, it's a great idea." This all happened in the space of a single day.
The help forum:
Not all web 2.0 tech companies can pull this off, apparently. I use Feedburner statistics. I use the paid version, theoretically "premium". The statistics jump around a lot, sometimes as much as 30% in a day. I have posted queries on their user forums. I finally sent them an e-mail one day. Their form letter e-mail told me to go look at the forum topic. Not personalized. And not very helpful. Most of it in geek-speak. You're a blogger, therefore you must be a geek, right? If not, you probably shouldn't play with these toys, you might hurt somebody.
Palm also has a help forum, filled with issues from users with problems. Here's one from October 31, with no answer yet. At least Feedburner monitors their forum and posts responses. Palm doesn't seem to see a need to do this.
The whole existence of a huge forum with problems and titles like "Known Workarounds" or "phpBB 2 Issues" just tells you what you need to know, doesn't it? What kind of a product or service generates tens of thousands of user problems, and then doesn't fix them?
More importantly, where is your organization on this spectrum?
