Naomi Marr.com

There are two aspects of human nature that are always fascinating to me. The first is that people, generally speaking, rarely take immediate action when they have a positive customer experience. The second is that people, again generally speaking, rarely like to say bad things to someone’s face. Combine those two aspects of human nature and you’ve got the fuel for social media.

Regarding positive customer experiences, I am referencing the immediate-type responses like — “Wow! Dragonfly Farms just blew my socks off with the bag of vegetables they provided this week – nice work. #CSA.” You see them – but not as often as you hear the griping and dinging.  Positive customer feedback is often delivered when someone asks your opinion on a particular brand/experience at a later point in time. For example, next spring when people are considering joining a CSA and they ask my opinion, I willingly go on and on about what a wonderful job Dragonfly Farms did and how much value we derived from their products.

That positive customer experience is very important – don’t get me wrong – but don’t expect immediate feedback from your efforts. This is important for companies to remember when launching and maintaining social media efforts. You may not truly understand the impact of your actions on the customer experience until much later. And, you may never be privy to those conversations because they will happen between the customers. Don’t underestimate your role in the experience, though, just because you are not seeing direct feedback. I like to encourage folks to pay it forward with providing immediate positive customer experience feedback because it is very motivational for organizations and the people that work for them, but the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t always happen.

Regarding our tendency to hedge on saying bad things to someone’s face – in my opinion this is probably one of the most important reasons to participate in social media. Every negative comment is an opportunity to engage and turn that experience into a positive customer interaction. The minute you engage with the person making negative comments they step back and rethink the directness of their delivery and approach. I am not suggesting that they will not provide any feedback, but rather that it will have been inadvertently filtered if it’s not given spontaneously and more anonymously. People speak their spontaneous thoughts which may be more brutal than you would prefer to a broad anonymous audience, but in this situation there is an opportunity to gain critical insights into what your customers think of your business. Then, when you address the situation you have the opportunity to engage on a more professional level with the customer and hopefully improve the overall interaction.

I had such an experience when working from my home office. I had the windows open and heard a very heated and unprofessional exchange between two men installing cable at my neighbor’s house. A quick tweet on my part, detailing how awful I thought the situation was being handled was quickly downplayed when a representative of the cable company tweeted back within moments of my tweet hitting the “wires.” I quickly back pedaled and made my tweets more professional – you see, it is easy to forget that your negative feedback can have human impact until a human is actually talking to you and reminds you of that fact.

This brings me to the point of my post.

Customers will not knock on your door and tell you how much they love you, but they will tell you that you are not so bad when confronted after a negative post – even if they still cringe at the mention of your name. It is only your effort to rectify the situation that will change their perception.

Sounds a bit like seventh grade hallway conversations doesn’t it?