Inside the Customer Experience

Google Surveys: Used As A Gatekeeper, It Might Not Work

Google Consumer Surveys are a great, inexpensive tool to capture some broad feedback from consumers. This survey program has been around for some time, and according to Google’s website, it shows that you can create surveys, target the demographic you’d like to get data from, and Google will pretty much take care of the rest.

Our company has tested this service in the past and thought it to be easy to use, and gave us some data on a broad level to work with for a small study we conducted last year. However, I recently came across a method of using Google Consumer Surveys that gave me pause, as I realized that this particular methodology might me giving us some invalid results.

Let me back up a step and say that once demographics are selected, Google will strategically place survey questions on partner sites that cater to the demographic you’re interested in. It will display one question from your survey for the user to respond to. When placed appropriately, it may draw attention and encourage a response.
However, when used as a gatekeeper, as I call it, the results might be different. I was browsing the online publications last week, as there is news regarding a local high school that I have been following. I came across a local online publication that had a recent article. Interested, I clicked on the link to read it. This is what I saw:

Looks like I can read the article, but only if I answer the question at hand or login as a member. If I’m a member, I guess this is no problem – I login and move on to read the rest. But I’m not a member, and don’t want to register, so I’m left with the option to answer the question or find another article.

In this case, it’s a question that could be relevant to me, and I might be inclined to answer if I really wanted to read the article. But, what if I was in a hurry, or for whatever reason wanted to get to the article. I could just click on any response and move on. Quick for me, but not very useful for the company who is running the survey.

This is one way in which I do not think placement is very effective and may be giving companies false data, or at least not the most accurate data possible. It’s important to make sure that responses are voluntary, and not used as a gatekeeper of sorts to get where the user ultimately wants to be.

Like I said, Google Consumer Surveys can be a great tool to capture broad consumer data; being careful with placement makes a difference, and it’s something to keep in mind when using this product and looking at the data coming in.

Don’t Try To Upsell When There’s Trouble

I’m all for upselling and cross selling, and I know employees are trained to do this at every opportunity. Done in the right fashion, it’s very effective and can even make the customer feel as though you have their best interests in mind.

There is a time for everything though, and making this attempt when there’s an issue with service may or may not be the right time, depending on when it’s done.

Consider this…

A customer calls because their internet is suddenly not working. They’ve tried turning the modem and computer on and off and all of the standard things before calling the customer service line. The call was placed simply to see if there might be an outage in the area, since it was just working a short time before.

The customer reaches a service rep, who offers to assist. She checks the connection and determines there is no outage. Instead of doing additional troubleshooting, the rep immediately suggests switching to their newer, high priced product and gets ready to switch the customer over to a sales rep to discuss the matter further.

In theory, this is okay – the rep is trying to tell the customer that there is something better out there, and they have a promotion to save money and internet speed. That’s great, but maybe trying to fix the issue first would have been the better way to go.

As a customer, this felt as though the rep was simply saying, “You’re right, it’s not working. Time to get a new service!” The immediate need was fixing the service, and perhaps at the end of the call suggest that there is a newer service that the customer may want to take advantage of.

Instead, when asked about the promotion and what it would take to solve the current issue, The rep suggested that we “just take care of switching to the newer service now” since they are getting rid of our current DSL package. When asked how soon that would happen, thinking it would be very soon since the rep made it sound urgent, she explained it would be phased out by the middle of 2015. That’s more than a year away. It can wait for a while…please just help with the current issue.

The rep continued down this path, encouraging the customer to speak with a sales agent, and did not seem at all interested in helping. When it was clear the customer was not going to take her up on the promotion, she ended up offering to send a technician out to help with the issue. The customer said they would do additional troubleshooting on their own and call back if that was needed.

In the end, it turned out that unplugging the DSL cable and plugging it back in did the trick, but the customer figured this out on their own after working with the modem and computer for another several minutes after the call.

Why did this tactic not work?

1. The rep didn’t put an emphasis on fixing the issue at hand outside of suggesting a new service. The rep lost the customer’s trust by making it sound like an urgent manner, when in fact the phase out wasn’t happening for another year.

2. When asked more about the promotion, the rep was encouraging and upbeat about the promotion. However, when the customer mentioned receiving a mailing about bundle packages, the rep said this was not possible, as the cable TV portion was not available in the area. When the customer mentioned it was, based on the mailing, she seemed surprised. This was not the fault of the rep – she was not given enough product knowledge to be effective in encouraging new sales. She was offered very limited information it seemed, only related to one specific component of their service line.

3. In the end, an additional sale was not made, and the customer’s issue was not resolved or looked into beyond the initial diagnostic. This was a lose-lose situation.

Timing can be everything, and training staff to be able to sense the right timing can mean the difference between additional sales and customer dissatisfaction. Arming staff with enough knowledge about the full service line can also be helpful. It was an attempt that I’m sure was trained on and managers expect reps to use, but in this case it fell flat. Maybe next time…

Some Commercials Should Never Be Aired

Let’s face it – sometimes even negative buzz is good buzz for companies, and really bad commercials can do the trick. Take, for instance, the new Old Spice Commercial….

Definitely got people talking, and it’s pretty creepy, but it’s attention getting. However, it’s not quite as bad (maybe) as some of the worst commercials of this holiday season….

Take, for instance, probably the #1 worst commercial this year. Yep, you guessed it – Kmart’s version of Jingle Bells:

This, for me, was the all time worst commercial. I had to look away or change the channel whenever it was on. Unlike the Old Spice commercial, this one goes beyond quirky or creepy – it’s just too much.

The other notable bad commercial that had people buzzing this holiday season was for Honda. When you think of Honda, what comes to your mind first? Michael Bolton? I thought so! Apparently so did the advertisers who created this commercial, which a Marketing Manager who blogged about this believes that this commercial “was the number one cause of depression in America today.”

What are some of your other favorite worst commercials for this holiday season? Join in the conversation and weigh in on the worst commercial of the season!

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