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SEPTEMBER 18, 2000

BOOK EXCERPT

Mark Breier: Make Feedback Your Friend
The 10-Second Internet Manager -- Survive, Thrive & Drive Your Company in the Information Age (Part Two)


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Just after taking over as CEO of Software.net (which became Beyond.com a few months later), I sent out the following e-mail to a number of recent customers:

Dear "K": I would like to introduce myself, say a brief thanks, and ask for your advice. I recently joined Software.net (http://www.software.net) as president and chief executive officer (formerly, I was VP of marketing at Amazon.com). I'm very happy to be here.

So let me begin by saying "thanks" for shopping with us. I know firsthand that having lots of happy customers is the key to our success. My personal goal is for each of you to be an ecstatic customer.

I would like your advice on how to make Software.net the absolute best place to purchase software. In recent weeks, we've made some improvements. We made our Website faster and easier to use. We added a quick-buy feature for returning customers, and, most important, we made it easier to download software. I am sure that you have other ideas on how we can "wow" you. Please visit our improved site and tell me what you like, what you don't, and share with me any new ideas you have.

Again, thanks and I look forward to achieving your highest satisfaction.
Mark Breier, CEO



It didn't take long for "K" to respond:

You are full of shit, sir.
You never answered my e-mail and I can't reach anyone at your business to help me! I will be speaking to our state's attorney.
K

I absolutely hate what happened to "K," but I love his letter. And I love showing it to people who think that customer service and feedback aren't important. Unfortunately, though, that's not an attitude shared by many businesses today. They don't focus enough on customer service and they don't spend enough time trying to figure out what customers want. Worst of all, they don't ask for feedback. Instead, they let themselves get defensive, bureaucratic, and lazy. And in the process they leave the door open for fast-moving, customer-focused outfits to eat their lunch.

Word of mouth is the single most important customer-acquisition tool companies have. It's better than television, radio, or any other type of advertising or promotion. When we asked new customers why they came to our site, the number one answer by far was, "Because a friend told me about it." The same was true at Amazon, and I'll guarantee you that it's the same at AOL or eToys or any other e-commerce site.

And I'd bet that the opposite is true, too. If we could ask people who had bought their software from one of Beyond's on-line competitors why they hadn't bought from us, one of the top reasons would be "because a friend told me not to." From the sound of it, "K" probably sent his e-mail a few months before I asked for his feedback. And while we were ignoring him, he was telling his friends about his miserable experience or posting angry comments about us on chat boards. I can't say exactly how much of an impact treating "K" badly had on our business, but I'm sure we lost a few potential customers.

When I was responsible for marketing Kraft marshmallows, soliciting customer feedback was an extremely time-consuming and expensive process. We'd get a monthly recap of phone calls and letters and it would take literally six months to figure out whether a promotion worked, and even then our only clues were changes in warehouse volumes, which were measured by the ton -- hardly the most subtle way to gauge anything, especially marshmallows.

To get customer feedback, we'd have to hire market-research firms to send armies of clipboard-toting interviewers out to malls or grocery stores, or hire dozens of telemarketers to survey thousands of people, many of whom don't even buy marshmallows. Tabulating the results would take months. And making any changes would take even more months, assuming we were able to change anything.

In the Internet world, though, getting feedback is fast and easy and a lot cheaper than the clipboard method. In minutes we can gather statistics on the exact number of customers who buy from us, what they buy, how much they spend, and whether they come back. As a result, we could tell almost instantly how well a particular promotion is working. You should be able to automatically gather and analyze this kind of data in-house. There are also several third-party companies -- Accrue and E.piphany are the best known -- that can set you up.

More important, you can solicit customer feedback and complaints and get an up-to-the-minute look at exactly how you're doing from the people you're trying to please. If Beyond.com made a site improvement, the site department would put together a short questionnaire that we asked customers to fill out at some point during their visit. If we were introducing a new product, our new product department would put the questionnaire together. The questionnaires consisted mostly of questions customers answered on a 1-to-7 scale (How happy are you with our new look?), and a very few narrative questions (What about the look do you like or dislike?). But before any survey would go out to the site we would test it in-house by having ten employees go through it and let the appropriate person know if the questions were clear and if the process of answering was smooth and painless.

Once the data started to come in, the speed of doing business on the Internet would allow Beyond.com to respond and make any necessary changes virtually overnight.




Excerpted from the book, The 10-Second Internet Manager -- Survive, Thrive & Drive Your Company in the Information Age. Copyright 2000 by Mark Breier. Reprinted by permission of Crown Business. All rights reserved.
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