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Image via CrunchBase
Tell me again why I should monitor my brand online?

The spotlight — or maybe the flood light — shines on bad customer service online. Companies should worry about public complaints and reports of their brand failures more than ever, suggests a new report from RightNow and Harris Interactive. Contrarily, they stand to make more money if they can deliver a superior experience, the report says.

The Customer Experience Impact 2010 report reveals that 82% of consumers in the U.S. said they’ve stopped doing business with a company due to a poor customer service experience. Of these, 73% cited rude staff as the primary pain point, and 55% said a company’s failure to resolve their problems in a timely manner drove them away.

Almost everybody surveyed, a full 95%, said after a bad customer experience they would “take action.” 79% of U.S. consumers said they blabbed about their negative customer experiences in public and amongst friends. Of consumers who took to social media sites including Facebook and Twitter to publicly air a complaint, 58% expected a response from the company, 42% expected a response from a company within a day, but only 22% said they’d actually gotten a response as a result of griping there.

You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you want the rest of the story…

Consumers More Likely to Use Businesses Active on Social Media

Image representing Yelp as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Seven out of 10 consumers are more likely to use a local business if it has information available on a social media site, says a new study.

The annual study, called Local Search Usage Study: Bridging The Caps, From Search to Sales, is a joint effort of comScore and TMP Directional Marketing, a local search marketing firm. It includes an online survey of some 4,000 consumers, plus data gleaned from observing one million consumers who agreed to have their online searches monitored anonymously.

Having a page on Facebook is a start, but it’s not a one-time effort: 81 percent of consumers using social media say it’s important for businesses to respond to questions and complaints. And for the record, you do need to worry about reviews and ratings – 78 percent said they’re important when deciding what to buy.

What else do you need to be doing with social media? Nearly four out of five (78 percent) of users want special offers, promotions, and information about events, 74 percent want regular posts about products, and 72 percent want posts about the company itself. (Wondering about posting those photos of the company office—or picnic? Two-thirds of those surveyed want to see them.)

If this all seems too daunting, the survey also suggests a simple starting place: make sure there is correct information about your business in as many places online as you can (Google, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Social networkers are 67 percent more likely to buy something than general searchers, but one in six searchers is frustrated by the lack of reliable information about small businesses on the Web – either it’s not there at all, it’s incorrect, or it’s confusing or disorderly. One third of searchers give up on a business when they can’t quickly find the information they’re looking for.

Wow. Just wow. You can follow the ‘via’ link if you’d like to read the rest of the article. Comment, call or use the contact form to connect and discuss how this applies to your business. Thanks to Dana VanDen Heuvel for tweeting this…

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