Category: Reality Check

Satisfied Customers Don’t Stay Loyal, Happy Customers Do

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Customer satisfaction survey is a big part of many companies’ operations. But do you know that as many as half of the so-called satisfied customers are still prone to switch? With lots of businesses attempt to improve their customer service, customer satisfaction is no longer a sufficient edge in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. One company stands out from the crowd, however, by pursuing a happiness philosophy rather than mere satisfaction. The company is Zappos, the largest online footwear retailer. Monday marks the “official” launch of a book by the company’s CEO Tony Hsieh titled “Delivery Happiness”. As a blogger, I received a few advance copies of the book a few weeks ago, with the expectation that I would write an honest review of the book. So here are my thoughts from reading the book.

What Is It About?

I consider this book a half-autobiography of Tony Hsieh and a half-biography of the teenage Zappos. It spans from Tony’s childhood all the way to when Amazon.com acquired Zappos as its wholly-owned subsidiary. The book is sectioned into three parts:

How to Lose Loyalty in 10 Days: Lessons from the Facebook Fiasco

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This month marks my first Facebook-less month. Like more than 35,000 other users who have signed up to do so, I closed my Facebook account on May 31. For someone like me who rarely participates in movements of any kind, Facebook has elicited in me an usually intense negative feeling. This has not always been the case, however. I had started as an early adopter of Facebook, partially due to the privilege of having a .edu email address as a university professor. In those early days, I was an avid advocator of Facebook and marveled at the revolution it would bring to the social landscape. What happened then? In a few years, I had turned from a Facebook lover to a Facebook hater. Reflecting on my own journey, I realized that there are important loyalty lessons here for businesses to learn.

Quit Facebook Day

Don’t Forget Your Roots

Like many media companies, one unique aspect of the Facebook business model is that the end users of Facebook are not the same people who pay the bills for Facebook. Facebook started as a social network intended to connect people and eventually grew into a business model deriving revenues from advertisers. Nobody blames Facebook for wanting to make money. After all, it is a business and it has to make money to survive. What Facebook did wrong, however, was to make every business decision based on money AND at the cost of its roots, the millions of end users. Continue reading “How to Lose Loyalty in 10 Days: Lessons from the Facebook Fiasco”

Promoted Tweets in the Loyalty Landscape

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Starbucks Promoted Tweet

  
Yesterday, Twitter unveiled its new advertising platform Promoted Tweets. The picture above shows a Promoted Tweet from Starbucks when searching for the keyword “starbucks” on Twitter. I pulled information from The New York Times, Twitter’s blog, and Twitter COO Dick Costolo’s talk at Ad Age, and here are some details that have emerged about Promoted Tweets:

Continue reading “Promoted Tweets in the Loyalty Landscape”