Think negative comments/reviews online hurt your company? Guess again.

I've had several conversations over the last few months from companies who have been somewhat retisent to enable online reviews on their ecommerce sites. Some excellent points are made in the article below, I've taken the liberty of bolding several sentences that I found exceptionally valuable:

Relationships in Business: Self-Service vs. Customer Service

My business partner Brian sent me a link the other day. The basic premise of the article on this tech site referred to a piece in Harvard Business Review called Why Your Customers Don't Want to Talk to You. Given that this concept flies in the face of what I talk about a lot—the importance of relationships in business—I felt that it was worth mentioning.

It turns out that the staff at Harvard Business Review have researched this topic extensively. They've found that corporations drastically overstate the extent that their customers want to talk with them. To quote the HBR article: "...companies tend to think their customers value live service more than twice as much as they value self service. But our data show that customers today are statistically indifferent about this — they value self-service just as much as using the phone. And guess what? By and large, this indifference holds regardless of their age, demographic, issue type, or urgency."

Ironically, I've recently come face to face with this very issue while shopping for a (somewhat esoteric) part for my car online. I spent about 45 minutes researching the part number, pricing and stock levels all from my laptop rather than driving 1/4 mile to the auto parts store. Why?

The writers in Brian's link proposed that there are three main reasons:

Convenience - Why stand in line to talk to the teller when the ATM is 10 feet away? Why would you wait for the checker when there's a self-service checkout area at the grocery store?

Repeatability & Speed - Let's be honest, if there is a task that you regularly undertake— buying a gallon of milk via the self-service line at the grocery store for example— you get pretty darn proficient at memorizing what comes next. "Enter your Club Car…thank you" "Scan your first ite…" Beep! "$5.99" "Enter your pay…thank you". I can buy a gallon of milk from the self-service line in less than 30 seconds. The checker is easily at least double or triple that.

Error, Embarrassment and the Human Factor - Fact: People don't like making mistakes in front of other people. If I can use a machine to get an answer without having to feel stupid for asking the question, will I use the machine? You'd better believe it. See the previous discussion about the auto parts store. I research parts to buy them online, BUT should I need to visit the auto parts store, I'll know exactly what I'm asking for and can thus (hopefully) avoid looking like I don't know what I'm talking about.

This system, however, is not without flaws. It breaks down when you have a problem. When I have an issue with a company, I want to talk with a live person. I want them to fix the issue and I don't want to fight my way through an automated system. Referring back to the link that Brian sent to me, one sentence stood out;

"If you want to build relationships with your customers, remember why they're there. [Hint:]They're not there to interact with you. They're there to get the service or product you're selling them. If interacting with you isn't helping them in some way, it doesn't matter how friendly you are: it's still a negative experience. Building relationships needs to be largely a byproduct of doing a good job, not the end goal in itself."

A ha! There's the kicker: Relationships ARE important. They're built as a result of setting and fulfilling a customer's expectation—regardless of whether it was accomplished via a machine or human interaction.

What do you think? Given the choice to use a self-service option to accomplish a fairly routine task, are you going to use it? Or do you willingly stand in line to receive "personalized" attention? Is there an instance where the service that you've received from an automated system has improved your overall experience and perception of a company? Drop me a line in the comments area below.

Thanks for reading.

—Jason @ Ideavise