How to Increase Customer Satisfaction Like Apple and Amazon: Proven Strategies

How to Increase Customer Satisfaction Like Apple and Amazon: Proven Strategies – MyHostingProivder.com

Who or what determine customer satisfaction? Some might argue it’s customer service that wins out. Others might argue that it’s price point and value.

In the end, it’s the customer who determines if they are satisfied or not and that can range wildly from one end of the spectrum to the other. But more on this later, and how we can control customer satisfaction.

The research firm ForeSee recently conducted a survey on customer satisfaction, and guess who came out on top?

Apple and Amazon ranked highest in customer satisfaction in 2011

You would think that Apple and Amazon have some of the best customer service teams in the industry that drove them all the way to the top of ForSee’s research.

In my personal experiences with these companies, I wasn’t impressed with their customer service.

So how did these companies climb to the top of customer satisfaction?

Apple charges an arm and a leg for their cutting edge products. As for Amazon, their sales people are clueless and can’t even help you compare, buy, or return products.

So how did they attain tops in customer satisfaction? They easily provide the best customer experience.

They’ve cracked the code for customer satisfaction – and you can too.

Amazon and Apple have figured out what their customers want, and they deliver it every single day.

In the case of Apple, their customers want to feel cool and cutting edge. In the case of Amazon, their buyers want to be thrifty with their money.

When you can align your products or service to what your customers want, you can DO NO WRONG.

Connecting to your customers.

Being successful as a web hoster has everything to do with connecting with your customers. If you can’t connect to them your company won’t have the stickiness that Apple and Amazon have created.

Web hosters can create stickiness and connection by aligning their product or service to what the customer wants. Seth Godin wrote about this briefly on his blog in what he calls ”The Alignment Pivot.” The concept is that alignment creates unbreakable customer satisfaction, even when you aren’t perfect.

Have you ever been to a restaurant where the menu has a bit of everything? Chinese, Italian, American, Thai, Mexican. The restaurant has an identity crisis and doesn’t know it’s customers. They are trying to please everyone (which we know is impossible).

The restaurant is not aligned with their customers and they generally close pretty quickly. However, the restaurants who know who they are and specialize thrive and get rave reviews.

Customers visiting the everything under the sun restaurant quickly realize it has an identity crisis. It has failed to align itself with it’s customers.

The same goes for web hosters who offer everything in the hopes they can grow their business. The fact is, customers when shopping can smell this and are turned off by this. If they want a virtual private server, they will choose a vps only host over a web host who offers everything. Again, they know what they want – a vps – and want to feel the host understands vps.

And this is what customer satisfaction is about — aligning with your customer wants.

Losers in alignment.

The biggest loser this year has to be Netflix. I was a big Netflix fan and loved their service.

No more late fee’s. Keep it as long as you like. No driving to video store and the movie you want is rented out. Inexpensive.

Netflix was kicking everyones ass for years. In fact, they drove Blockbuster to the brink of disaster (remember the one who seemed invincible and had their own blimp).

Netflix had aligned with its customers by focusing on the elements that it’s customers wanted.

No more late fee’s. Keep it as long as you like. No driving to video store and the movie you want is rented out. Inexpensive.

So how did it all go wrong?

Netflix forgot who it was.

They increased prices. Cut services. Played hardball with content providers.

And in a bizarre move, announced they would separate their mail order DVD service from their online streaming service. Qwikster would be a new brand and separated from Netflix.

It failed.

When they realized they screwed up, it was too late. Their brand had been tarnished forever. A dark cloud over it.

It ain’t free if there’s a fee.

This isn’t the only time I’ve seen this either..

I used to work for a Web Hosting Company who was thriving in the domain registration arena. This was before GoDaddy had began to sell domains at a virtual loss or break even to boost its customer base.

Essentially we offered web hosting with a domain registration. You would get free hosting as long as you maintained your $35/year domain with us. At the time, the margins were pretty good because of the $35 price tag and the volume we had built up.

At first, sales were slow, but the Free Hosting with Domain caught on. We were doing several hundred sales per day – and most importantly building a huge customer base.

We had filled a customer want. Free web hosting matched with their domain purchase. We knew who we were (I sound like Denny Green from Arizona Cardinals here).

More importantly – the customers were satisfied and getting what they wanted. They were getting free hosting with a domain for a great price.

The customer base in my opinion was worth much more than the profit made from the domains. These new customers could be sold other products (GoDaddy did this with low cost domains). Had it been allowed to continue, this would have been one of the largest web hosting companies in the world today.

However, the decision was made by the higher ups to raise prices on ‘free hosting’. You can already see the smoke clouds from disaster can’t you?

Well, no reason worked with management and the price hike went in to effect. Sales slowed and eventually trickled to a halt. The goodwill we had built up with the customers was gone and destroyed. We had no hopes of selling them anything on top of their domains because we had broken their trust.

Free hosting wasn’t forever (used in our ads at the request of management).

It was good while it lasted and had it been allowed to continue, our customer base and email list would have been enormous and allowed us to sell all kinds of add ons to these customers.

It was impossible to generate any substantial increase the sales after this move and really hurt the credibility and trustworthiness of the brand we had built.

Greed got the better of Netflix and this other company and it ruined their names.

If you can align your products and services with your customer wants – YOU CAN’T LOSE.