In the first example, "United Breaks Guitars", Dave Carroll, a musician, created a song about his experience flying United Airlines when his guitar was broken at the hand of United Airlines employees, and how the airline offered no compensation. The song became an instant online hit with 3 million views in 10 days on YouTube.
Despite this evidence, a global customer experience survey undertaken by American Express shows Australia lagging behind when it comes to customer experience. Here are some of the findings:
- Australians think they would spend 8% on average more with a company that provides better service.
- 81% of Australians feel that that businesses are not doing anything extra to keep their business or are taking their business for granted.
- 75% were very likely speak positively about a company after a good experience in contrast to 59% who were very likely to speak negatively about a company after poor service.
- 81% would give a company repeat business after a good service experience whilst only 52% would never do business with a company again after a poor experience.
- the three most influential factors when deciding which companies they do business with include personal experience (98%), a company's reputation or brand (92%), and recommendations from friends and family (88%)
- It is evident from the research that more importance needs to be placed on customer experience.
- It is also critical that when implementing customer experience initiatives, companies look for new ways to solve improve customer experience, for fear that thinking about solving problems the same way will produce the same mediocre results.
- It is a logical imperative that organisations takes an Outside In approach to customer service, leveraging off the best practice methods used by some of this century's most successful companies.
References
- http://www.customerthink.com/article/return_on_customer_experience_investments
- http://home3.americanexpress.com/corp/pc/2010/barometer.asp