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May 2018

LoyaltyLoop migration update

In our winter newsletter, we announced LoyaltyLoop, our new and improved platform. LoyaltyLoop has been built from the ground up, incorporating many enhancements and suggestions from you. We encourage you to check it out on our websiteor call for a live demo. You'll find LoyaltyLoop will be a fresher and more intuitive experience than CustomerPulse.

We have begun the process of migrating all customers over to LoyaltyLoop. There is no cost to migrate, and there is nothing you need to do.  For additional details please visit our migration page.  Here is the general migration order:

  1.  March through July:  Subscribers of...
    • CustomerPulse with Marketing Module with a single location accounts will be migrated to LoyaltyLoop promoter plan
  2. August through October:  Subscribers of... 
    • CustomerPulse with Marketing Module multi-location (and multi-survey) accounts will be migrated to LoyaltyLoop promoter plan
    • CustomerPulse (base service) accounts will be migrated to LoyaltyLoop basic plan
    • Corporate dashboards will be migrated to updated corporate dashboards 

Per the migration process outlined in our migration FAQ page, be on the lookout for your company's migration date email. 

Use our notifications to drive team behavior

If you're new to the world of customer feedback, or just wondering how to make the time to use your LoyaltyLoop data when you have so many other things to do running your business...help has arrived!  Here are 3 easy steps you can take to incorporate your customer feedback loop into your everyday business processes.  

1. Build good habits from reading our service notifications 

Your service is configured to send various email alerts to you and your team.  Try building the good habit of reading these notices.  This is a simple and time-efficient way to stay in the loop and drive company behavior focused on your customers.

2. Give immediate attention to Poor Survey alerts 

When we talk about building good habits, this is one of the most important.  When you receive a Poor Survey alert, you should review the customer feedback right away to determine the appropriate level of follow-up.  Some are urgent, others are less so.  I would suggest treating Poor Survey alerts as either:

  • Urgent (follow-up right now), 
  • Important (follow-up within 1 day of customer's response), 
  • Not Important (no follow-up needed). 

Poor Survey Alerts that require follow-up should be handled by a senior staff member.  Unhappy customers want to know their issue is heard by someone of authority, and someone in position to correct the problem within your company.  This follow-up is the perfect task for owners.  If delegating the follow-up to someone other than senior staff, remember to circle back with the person following up to ensure proper handling of this unhappy customer situation.

Poor Survey alerts are sent immediately to you, and you could be speaking to this unhappy customer within minutes after they submitted their survey response.  When viewed through the eyes of a customer, this type of quick follow-up, particularly if the follow-up is handled by the owner or senior staff, can be extremely powerful in demonstrating that your company cares about this customer and is committed to understanding what when wrong.  The very act of following-up can go a long way to regaining the customer's trust and satisfaction.  

    

3. Read your Weekly Summary email 

This is probably the best habit your can form: reading your Weekly Summary email sent to you each Monday.  Reviewing the data in that email with your team is a great management tool to ensure proper customer focus, and proper follow-up on all necessary issues.  Here are some of the benefits of sharing the Weekly Summary with your staff:

  • educate staff on the meaning and measures of your Net Promoter ScoreSM, customer satisfaction, and the importance of listening to customer feedback;
  • discuss corrective action plans based on this real customer feedback, giving you the opportunity to make continuous improvements throughout the year that aim to improve customer satisfaction;
  • use as reminders and to set follow-up activity to publish new testimonials to your site, follow-up on new leads and referrals, and double-check that Poor Survey alerts were handled appropriately.

You also receive New Feedback alerts when anything new has been submitted in prior 24 hours. This is helpful to stay on top of things as they occur, but given our busy lives I always recommend that owners read the Weekly Summary each Monday to stay on track and in the loop

Update to Google's text reviews guideline

Google recently added a line to their Text Reviews guidelines that states "Don't discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers."   In addition, they have removed the capability to pre-populate stars in the Google review link you can send to your customers.  It is unclear if and how Google will enforce these new guidelines.  Like any other web property, Google could simply remove your reviews if they suspect they violate their guidelines.  Here is our take on the Google guideline. 

Today, most businesses need to do 3 things relative to managing customer experiences and satisfaction: 

  1. Employ a process to regularly solicit honest customer feedback to be used in continuous improvement efforts;
  2. Employ a steady process that encourages customers to be promoters of your brand via online review sites such as Google;
  3. Employ methods that allow you to actively manage dissatisfied customers so you have the opportunity to convert them into happy customers.

Online review sites play into all 3 elements.  Let's break down the Google guideline.  The first part states "Don't discourage or prohibit negative reviews".  Whether you're employing a customer feedback process or not, anyone can find your Google My Business page and post a review - positive or negative.  You cannot stop nor prohibit that from happening.  But you can influence it.  When you ask a customer for a Google review, do it in such a way that does not offend your customer's intelligence or turns them off.  At one time or another we've likely all been in a situation where you're asked to post a review or fill out a survey where the person asks you to do so only if you can give them top marks.  I cringe every time this happens, as it is exactly the opposite instinct of what that business should do (which of course, I explain to them).  This is a form of discouragement of negative feedback.  How do you feel when someone asks you to do that?  If you're like me, you feel awkward and uncomfortable.  Don't do that. 

The second part states "Don't selectively solicit positive reviews from customers."  Through our feedback process we help you identify those customers who are happy and those who are not.  More specifically, using Net Promoter Score parlance we help you identify your Promoter, Passive, and Detractor customers.  In our experience, there are specific actions required for each customer set if your goal is to proactively manage and improve your customer's overall experience with your business.  

By default, your service is set to engage promoters in the review process (passive and detractor customers can be included at any time if you so desire).  Should they choose to post a Google review, your promoters are free to express themselves in their own words and with a star-rating of their choosing.  The service simply asks them to consider posting a review, it does not ask them to post a positive review.  

But you may ask 'what about unhappy customers slamming my business with negative online reviews'?  We've all been that unhappy customer at some point in our lives.  But what was your first instinct?  Was it to slam the company online, or contact the company to have the issue addressed?  When it comes to unhappy customers, most unhappy customers are looking to express their concerns in a way that they are heard from someone of authority at the company.  In absence of a means by which your customers can express their concerns to you, the only other venue are public forums like Google and Facebook.  

While anyone can post anything they want open sites like Google and Facebook, the correct approach to proactively managing your customer's experience is to make it easy for all your customers to give you their honest feedback - the good, the bad, and the ugly.  If you acknowledge and listen to the concerns of all customers including your unhappy customers, you will be in a far better position to a) address their concerns (which could be affecting other customers who opted not to express themselves), and b) avoid the public shaming of negative online reviews.