Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

I witnessed a spectacular bit of customer service this past weekend, which made me appreciate the concept of following up as a customer service tool.

I wanted to share this story, because it impressed me. Firstly, I am a data junkie. I have learned to love reports, but I know that I can be flooded with information which is useless. Sometimes finding that nugget of information and its importance can be hard. For example, I have an ad running on one website, and the click through rate is not all that great, but I noticed that searches for my name and phrasing in the ad has increased since the ad has been running. There may or may not be a correlation; more data is needed. And there is my problem ladies and gentlemen: more data. This causes me to search out ways of obtaining more data.

    I read the Google Analytics blog, because I figure why not go to the source when looking for ways to improve my Google Analytics reports. Also, that blog has links to many good sites with further ideas. When I read an article about Pion, I thought that this may be a good application to try out. From what I read, I thought Pion would provide me with data that I was attempting to find by other means. I might love my data, but I admit that I do not understand everything about data collection on the net, so some items on the set up were unfamiliar to me. I completed the Pion set up as best as I could, deciding that I would go back to correct.
    That could have been the end of my experience. With some applications. I might give up if I really do not need them, but I will go back to work with programs that I believe will benefit me. I think that I would have gone back to Pion, but I did go back sooner than expected. I received an email from a representative from Pion asking about the download. When people ask for feedback, I typically respond, so I replied about what happened. I then received an email back with suggestions of what to do. This went a step further. The representative had contacted others to make sure that she was providing the best information. Now I have Pion working, and I am happy. I have to say that I do not always get a response once I send off my email.
    Now I am an advocate that website owners should use Pion. One, it is a good program, but two, I know that there is a team behind the product to help users. For me the lesson is one in follow-up. Effective follow-up can turn a consumer into an advocate. Effective follow-up can also impress those who never respond to you. In my home inspection business, I may never meet my clients, or only see them briefly. However, I do try to be good at following up when the opportunity exists. This has led to more jobs over time. The key here is when the opportunity existed. I try to stress my willingness to follow-up, but not all of my clients may realize that fact. I think most of us try to be good.
    What did Pion do right? First, the initial email did not come from an automated system, or maybe I should say that it did not appear to be automated. The email came from a specific person’s email account, not a generic account. Most follow-up emails that I receive come from company-name@company-name.com. You immediately distance yourself from the recipient. If they need to contact you, they will be contacting a faceless entity. Look at a lot of sites, and you will see that normal email addresses are info@ or service@. By making the address a name, a person becomes responsible. Next, the email came on a Saturday. This may not surprise some people, but I know many firms that are closed and do not respond on the weekends. Customer service though is 24/7. When I obtained a response to my email shortly after sending it, the idea of this is not automated was reinforced. The idea that a person was there to help, that someone was responsible,  had a profound effect.
After the first response, which pointed me in the right direction to search on my own was good enough for me, but then something else happened. The representative had contacted another person who could provide better information, which was forwarded to me. This meant that I did not have to go on my search.
    Considering this interaction, I thought about all of the people that we interact with through our websites. Most will never contact us, but our faceless website will be leaving an impression. Maybe we do not have the opportunity to follow-up by the means described above, but think about your website. Would the consumer feel that one person is responsible? One person that they could contact? Does your website function as it should? Do you check that fact? If you examine how people interact with your business either through a website, through direct contact in a store, or through a service provided, you will find ways to follow-up. Look at the BingWebErrorPHPtoolkit as an example. This provides a method to keep users on your site when you have 404 errors. There are many ways to follow-up, and they need to be part of your business process.

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