In the innovation game, finding and engaging in a community of innovators where you can get your questions answered is important. Otherwise, you face your biggest innovation challenge alone.
This weeks show centered around the answers to the most common listener questions. These questions included:
- What is the biggest innovation challenge (mistakes) organizations face?
- How did the “7 Laws of Innovation” come about? (Link to poster)
- What was your biggest innovation success?
- What was your biggest innovation failure?
- What was your biggest innovation challenge?
- How did you get into doing the Killer Innovations podcast?
- What is your opinion of the decision for HP to split into two separate companies?
- Given that you worked with Carly, what is your opinion of her?
Direct link to Season 11 Episode 35
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Killer Question:
Not that long ago, a passenger complaint letter to Virgin Atlantic circulated around the web. It was very long, fully illustrated with photos, clearly somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and very funny, but it made a few good points about the bad food and surly service this particular passenger had experienced. All these years later it still occasionally shows up as one of the most-read stories at telegraph.co.uk.
In 2009, another disgruntled passenger created a music video about how United baggage handlers had broken his $3,500 guitar. He uploaded the song to YouTube, and to date it has been viewed more than fifteen million times. United’s customer service department, which had originally denied him any kind of compensation, quickly changed their minds as the video went viral. They adjusted their tone from defensive to humorous and held a meeting with the passenger. Eventually the airline made a charitable donation to a jazz school in his name.
The problem is that none of their existing, former, or potential customers care that United eventually resolved the customer complaint. All they remember is that it took a funny song and nine million YouTube hits to get the airline to do the right thing.
The point is, it’s easier than ever to find out what your customers are thinking and saying about you these days. It’s also much easier for their opinions to go viral, so it’s imperative that you respond to your them with the same speed and immediacy they use to critique you. Social networking sites have fundamentally changed the nature of the customer complaint. Customer complaints are morphing from one-off exchanges between a customer and a service representative into ongoing conversations, often in real-time, visible to the public, and open to anyone who cares to comment. By monitoring these sites, you can hear what your customers are saying about you, without them even being aware that their opinions are being heard.
When I was still with HP, I found out about a notebook hinge problem through Twitter. How? I had HootSuite app up all the time, and I used it to search for any tweet related to HP. One day I was sitting in my office and a customer tweeted that he was having a problem with a hinge on his HP notebook. The complaint got my attention.
I put down what I was doing and went to respond to the tweet, but before I could even get my hands on the keyboard another customer replied, “It’s a known problem, HP has a repair protocol.” A few seconds later he used a second tweet to direct the customer to the customer-service number. What? I was the CTO of the PC division and even I had no idea that we (a) had a problem or (b) had a solution. Yet here was a customer who was at least two steps ahead of me.
I grabbed the phone, dialed the product manager for that particular laptop, and asked, “What’s this I’m hearing about a problem with the hinges on one of our notebooks?” The person on the other end nearly had a heart attack. His team was carefully preparing the internal e-mail describing the problem, and suddenly the CTO of the division is breathing down his neck asking him what the heck is going on.
The reality is, you can no longer keep problems like this off the radar, either within your organization or with your customers. Your only option is to engage with the people who care enough to make their feelings public. And don’t stop at simply resolving an issue.
The customers, who take time out to post their opinions, or direct others to solutions, are the ones who have actually thought about what you do, and how you do it. Odds are, if they’ve complained about what you’re doing, they’ve also thought about ways to do it better. So ask them.
Sparking Points
- How do you receive and respond to customer complaints? Do you ever see them directly, or are they filtered through a specific department?
- Are your customers having a real-time conversation on Twitter, Facebook, or Yelp about what you are doing, and what you are doing to engage? Do you have the flexibility to respond immediately to these conversations?
- Can you identify—off the top of your head, right now—the most common complaints your company receives?
- How do these complaints make their way into future products?
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.