I spent quite a bit of unproductive time on the weekend trying to resolve hot-synch problems on my Palm TX. When I saw "do you have a minute to take a survey?" you can bet I clicked. The last of about five questions was this: "would you recommend Palm Support?"
You've got to be kidding, right? Not "would you recommend Palm", but "would you recommend Palm Support".
The "would you recommend" question is a classic loyalty question often used to determine an overall rating benchmark in satisfaction and loyalty research. But putting it in this context seems like utter nonsense to me.
The only reason anyone would ever be on their support site is because they are HAVING problems. Even more important, the support site does not stand or fall alone -- it is part of the total brand experience.
Here are some better questions that would make this short survey more relevant and useful:
- Were you able to resolve your problem to your satisfaction?
- How much time have you spent on this problem?
- How easy or difficult was our support site to use in solving your problem?
- Would you recommend a PALM PRODUCT to a friend or colleague?
- Thank you for answering our questions. Is there anything you would like to tell us?
Number 4 is the loyalty question that matters. It's a short way of asking this:
Now that you have experienced some problems with our brand, how do you really feel? Do you still like us? Are you going to tell ten friends how irritated you are and advise them never to buy our product?
Was your experience of our support site so great that you actually like us even more than before, and you'll be raving to five friends about how great we are? Are you left feeling that you were fairly and justly treated? Or did we act like no-one has ever had a "runtime-error-r6025-pure-virutal-function-call" problem before?
When you have to replace this product, will you remember us as helpful and caring when the chips were down, or swear never to do business with us again?
If you solve a customer problem well, your customers will like you more than they did before. This is not just some squishy, feel-good marketing stuff, this phenomenon has been researched pretty thoroughly.
But the reverse is also true. You can make committed antagonists for your brand if you don't solve a problem effectively.
Yes, my Palm is now synching again. But only because I removed some software. And I'm wondering if I should have listened to my tech guy who told me to buy the Dell. If the TX can run flawlessly for about a year, I'll probably be loyal again. I'll let you know.
