Some practical advice from Graham Clark on how to become and remain customer focused in your business. I am particular heartened by his point that customer unfocused businesses are placing too much emphasis on outputs rather than outcomes, something I touched upon with relation to the public relations industry.

I very much like the concept that excellent customer service needs to be system wide, not just point of contact, and that customer focused businesses are relationships based, not looking to slash costs in the name of efficiency. In all, some excellent food for thought.

What do you think? Is your organisation customer focused? How do you do it?

Despite being two-and-a-half years old this video by Professor Coombs provides a very good primer on how to deal with a crisis using social media. All of the Professor’s points are still very valid now, the only difference from 2009, when this video was created, is that there are more people than ever that are using social media and are using it to complain, spread rumours and for activism.

Brands need to be prepared in having a detailed crisis management plan of action. They can no longer afford to thrust their heads in the sand and hope that social media is just a fad.

The hotel industry, like much of the service industries, are very dependent on knowing just what the consumer wants, hopefully before the customer knows it themselves. With wafer thin margins, increasing competition and constantly rising costs hotels need every advantage they can get to win customers and keep them.

Here are three social media tips for improving your guest’s stay and getting them to spread the word about your excellent level of service.

Mobile Site

If you’ve ever been lost in a strange city late at night searching desperately for somewhere to stay after a business meeting has run over time you’ll know the stress and frustration you experience as you scan through the online list of available accommodations only to find that none of them work on your mobile device. Even if the sites are not full of Flash Action Script bells and whistles (and most are) they are image heavy, poorly optimised sites that take forever to load over mobile broadband. Providing a version of your hotel website that is mobile optimised reduces these frustrations.

Mobile devices have actually outsold desktop PCs for over a year, so this is an issue that is going to become more prevalent. It is possible that your existing content management system (CMS) already has mobile site functionality (many do) so there might be only minimal additional costs involved in providing your prospective guest with the option of a text-rich mobile optimised site, whether as a replacement or in addition to your usual site. And because so few hotels offer a mobile optimised site you are already creating a point of difference with your competitors. It is a significant competitive advantage that you can utilised to offer special deals for weary travellers that are just looking for respite after a hard day’s work/travel.

• Pros: Customer focused and broadened market penetration
• Cons: Might be some minor additional establishment costs

Listening

Hotels wishing to fully realise the benefits of social media need to establish a broad-based monitoring program. It is not enough to just monitor for keywords on your established platforms (ie. Twitter, Facebook), conversations about your brand can happen across many platforms. In order to obtain a detailed overview of what is being said about your brand online you can use a range of tools to remain informed, whether it is through paid tools, like Radian6 or Brandtology, or free ones like Social Mention.

Once you have established an extended monitoring program it is important to listen to what the conversants are discussing. Only through listening carefully can we prepare the correct response. I cannot stress how important it is to listen and understand the nuances of the conversation. To a customer there are few things worse than receiving a scripted reply based around a peripheral point. This is especially true when offering customer service or feedback channels. So listen, comprehend and then respond, calmly and professionally. And don’t just respond to negative sentiment, positive feedback can also be responded to even if it’s just a short Thank You.

By listening and responding carefully to feedback and complaints, you move from being just a soulless brand to a real, caring person who is genuinely interested in improving rather than just trying to clear service tickets. Listening will provide you will invaluable and unfiltered insight into how you are perceived by your customers and will offer you practical improvements to increase service levels.

• Pros: Improves customer service and feedback channels. Generates goodwill.
• Cons: Time intensive. Paid tools can be expensive.

Influencers

It’s great when a celebrity or other high-profile figure recommends our services, but the likes of Oprah can’t visit nor recommend every hotel. You can, however, generate goodwill recommendations by targeting selected influencers, both online and offline, and offering them a service level similar to what you would provide to a celebrity.

Targeting influential guests can be achieved through allowing them to record their social networking details with their booking. Sites like Klout, Twitanalyzer or Grader can assist you in determining influencers. From there all it takes is a little research to offer a wealth of information. Is it their birthday or anniversary? Have they’ve just secured a major deal which they have announced on Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus? Maybe they’re just feeling low. Offering a little extra personalised service can bring bountiful rewards.

• Pros: Generates recommendations from a broad-based trusted authority at low cost
• Cons: Ongoing research can be time intensive.

As with all social media both expenses and returns must be accurately measured. It is vitally important that each of these implementations provide a practical dollar value return on your investment. Tracking mobile users through the site to sale, recording resolved customer service issues through social media and additional bookings from influencer recommendations can all be used to assist in the measurement and analysis.

By employing these ideas, along with the key concepts from A Social Media Strategy for Restaurants, you can offer new and better levels of service for your hotel guests. It will also provide you with new opportunities to become more customer focused.

Here’s a really good overview about how using social media as part of your customer service programs can benefit other departments within your company. It’s not just a resource to deal with unhappy customers, but it is an avenue to receive insightful R&D feedback, hold focus groups and to track your competitor’s frailties. Social media has become an indispensable business tool.

At about the thirty minute mark of my wife’s nearly two-and-a-half hours wait for a doctor this morning I came to the conclusion that there must be a better way to do doctor’s appointments. Being stuck in a crowded waiting room – usually full of sick people – is never any fun. Being stuck with a bored child is a clear and present danger banned under the Geneva Convention and the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights. It really is a ‘hurry up and wait’ situation as you’re required to be on call and remain in the immediate vicinity. Clearly this is a waste of everyone’s time, so what’s to be done?

Most waiting rooms have a range of ways to relieve the boredom. From ancient magazines to a token scattering of broken toys to the television stuck on the one channel. However the biggest problem is not the wait itself but the lack of feedback.

Consider a system where you’re told upon arriving for your appointment that the doctor is running behind schedule and that you’ll be SMSed or IMed when you need to return to the waiting room. Especially if you’re told the earliest return is likely to be in 2 hours. What would you do? Now, you could choose to stay in the waiting room anyway, but I bet most people wouldn’t.

Or how about a digital screen or board showing either the names in the queue or, if that’s too much of an invasion of privacy, a number that you’re assigned upon arriving for your appointment. At least you’d know that if there are five people before you in the queue it’s alright to dash off to the toilet.

Neither of these systems would be hard to implement. The medical staff already scan your documents and digitise the queue when you arrive, so why not keep the patients informed by making that data available? Even allowing for prolonged examinations and emergencies a 15-30 minute wait is much better than being on call for 150 minutes or more.

Medical practices are foremost a business, so it’s very wise for them to offer good customer service. Even in public hospitals it’s good practice to consider the comfort of of the patients waiting to be seen by the medical staff. Providing up-to-date information and feedback is a straightforward way to ease what is already for most a stressful situation.

This really is a great video demonstrating an impressive use of Second Life (or any other virtual world for that matter) for enhanced customer service. It does leave me wondering, however, whether anyone would choose to apply for mortgage and investment services in Second Life and just how secure the system is.

I also have to wonder about the choice of phrase ‘enhanced her satisfaction levels further by delivering other personalised services‘. In Second Life that really does take on a whole new meaning. That’s something that businesses need to be aware of when delivering their spiel.

I’ve been inspired by Bret Treasure’s post about Cafe Marketing with No Budget to have a look around my local cafes and eateries to see how they draw the crowds. I live amongst the cafe social set so there’s quite a choice. One of the things that struck me was that some of the places still had a corkage charge for BYO drinks. The question is why?

If you’re not familiar with the term, corkage, it is a small fee that eateries charge their customers when they choose to bring their own drinks rather than buy from the eatery’s selection. Usually it applies only to alcoholic beverages, but I have also seen it apply to non-alcoholic ones as well. The charge is supposed to encourage customers to choose from the house selection which is fine if you have a decent cellar. However, most cafes and restaurants have a meagre range of beverages to choose from and I’ve even seen one BYO restaurant attempt to impose the fee upon its patrons.

The restaurant and cafe trade are cut-throat businesses. Most operate on wafer-thin margins, so why would you choose to antagonise potential customers (or return patronage) by charging them additional fees? Instead of gouging them for every last penny that you can, why not adapt your range of beverages to something that your customers want to drink (you know instead of that old dishwater you picked up in bulk from your uncle)? Or better, why not realise that a cafe is never going to stock an adequate range, and encourage customers to bring their own at no charge. You can even do what the Globe has done and feature it in your marketing.