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Category: Customer Feedback

Bonuses Based on Social Media Data?

 

While many companies are realizing the benefit of monitoring social media sites for feedback about their company, it looks like the hospitality industry may be moving one step beyond that – including social media data left by consumers in employee bonus and incentive programs.

 

For the hospitality industry, this may be a bit easier to do thanks to popular consumer review sites, such as TripAdivsor and Yelp. However, by using a strong social media monitoring tool, it’s easy to find mentions of your brand, employees, or company on a regular basis.

 

In this article, Sean Mullin from the Noble House Hotels & Resorts, shares that social media is factored in when deciding employee bonuses. He went on to say that “We know the average rating of our social media sites. Then, we establish goals for the following year. Managers are incentivized to beat that score. We want to make sure all of our managers are paying attention to it.”

 

If an hourly employee is mentioned by name online as part of a consumer review, or a consumer talking within social media sites about their experience at one of the hotels, Mr. Mullin shared that they are given a monetary reward, typically $10 or $20, as recognition for positive feedback about their service.

 

The company still utilizes more traditional forms of customer feedback, such as feedback surveys and comment cards, but they have realized the power of social media as a feedback tool. Generally, people are more free and honest with their thoughts and opinions when talking with friends on Facebook, for example, than they may be answering questions about their experience for the company itself.

 

This article is telling in that we are finally seeing the shift in businesses’ thinking of social media. Up until now, it’s been more about engaging and getting your message out; with the realization that there is a good base of data out there that is easily obtainable, I anticipate more and more companies to use social media monitoring to gather customer feedback in the coming year.

 

 

 

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Hot Transfer For Customer Feedback

 

If you use a customer feedback program, you know the value of post transactional feedback from your customers. You provide a link to a feedback survey at the bottom of the receipts, on your website, and possibly even through POP signage.

 

How do your telephone customers provide feedback? You may want to consider a “hot transfer” program to incorporate into your existing feedback program.

 

Here’s how it works. Say you have a phone based feedback program in which customers call a toll-free number to provide feedback. Depending on your telephone system, this toll-free number can be programmed into your system so that once a call with one of your customer service representatives is complete, it will transfer the call to the feedback survey.

 

Sounds great, right? I’m sure you are also thinking of a few issues that may arise with the hot transfer system. Let me see if I can address them below:

 

1. Employees won’t transfer the call to the feedback service for all calls, especially the ones that don’t go so well: the hot transfer system will automatically transfer calls to the feedback service as soon as your employee ends the call – they do not have control over which customers get into the feedback system. Since every call will have the opportunity to provide feedback, this is not something you need to worry about.

 

2. Customers will be annoyed by this system: not at all! Customers, as you know, love giving feedback. It shows that you care about their experience and want to do better. Like traditional feedback programs, of course not everyone will want to participate. You can set your phone system to throw an automated recording (along the lines that you do for recordings: “This call may be monitored for quality control…”) that asks customers to press 1 if they would like to provide feedback at the end of the conversation. This not only makes them aware that you’ll be asking about their experience and make them more aware of the details of the call, but it gives them the option to participate or opt out.

 

3. Customers won’t provide negative feedback for fear the employee will know who left the feedback – after all, they typically have the customer’s account number: customers are opting in to take the survey prior to the call taking place. Yes, they can hang up if they change their mind, but assuring customers that their responses are completely confidential can help in obtaining negative feedback. You want to encourage this group as their feedback is what can best help you to improve.

 

If you haven’t considered the hot transfer method of customer feedback, or if your current provider doesn’t offer this service, please let us know and we’d be happy to help! You can leave a comment below or email us for more information.

 

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Net Promoter Score & Social Media: A Happy Couple

 

Many companies utilize Net Promoter Score to analyze their customer base. If you’re not familiar with Net Promoter Score, it’s very simple. By asking customers one simple question – How likely would you be to recommend this company to a friend or family member – and using a 10-point rating scale, customers can easily be grouped into three categories:

 

1. Promoters: these customers are typically rating this question at a 9 or 10, meaning that they are loyal fans of your brand. These customers are most likely to spread the word, refer your company, and keep coming back.

 

2. Passives: customers in this group often give ratings of 7 or 8 when asked this question. They may be customers who return on a regular basis, but they’re not tried and true customers. Something is keeping them from becoming true fans and can be swayed to do business with your competition.

 

3. Detractors: these are worrisome customers, as they will typically rate this question with a 6 or below. They have been dissatisfied in some way and their negative word of mouth may hurt your business.

 

We’ve seen this type of question asked of customers in feedback programs, as well as on mystery shopping reports. However, many marketers are starting to realize that this data can also be gleaned from social media research.

 

Incorporating data collected in social media can be helpful in measuring and monitoring your Net Promoter Score. Most programs offer a sentiment rating for each piece of conversation collected. While sentiment is not always 100% accurate when done automatically, manual investigation can be a valuable time expenditure.

 

Social media conversations are unstructured, and people tend to be more honest when sharing thoughts and feedback with friends and family than they might be on a customer feedback survey. This is a great opportunity to find honest feedback and incorporate it into your Net Promoter Score. To improve your numbers, there are some things you can do using social media:

 

1. Seek out those who are in the passive group and find out what might turn them into Promoters. Are there customer service issues or policies that need to be changed? Are your product offerings lacking in some way? By finding these customers online, you can learn more about their likes and dislikes and turn them into superfans.

 

2. Do some competitive intelligence. By researching what customers are saying about your competition, you’ll get insight into what customers want and need from you. In the same vein, research your passive customers using social media as well – what sites do they frequent? Do they talk about your competitors? If so, what do they like more about your competitors? Take time to analyze the information and you may find the key to turning the passives into promoters.

 

3. Compare your Net Promoter Score from traditional methods to that of your social media sentiment.  Often times results from customer feedback surveys will be from the two polar opposites – super fans and those who are extremely dissatisfied. Incorporating social media data and gauging sentiment will let you know if your Net Promoter Score is an accurate representation of your customer base.

 

It’s not foolproof and not a be-all-end-all indicator of customer satisfaction, but being aware of your Net Promoter Score is important. Using social media conversations to complement your NPS collection methodology can increase your odds of accuracy and help you gain the insight needed to ensure that your customers keep returning and spread the word about your business.

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