Attention, holiday merchants! Your customers are tweeting---LOUDLY! Twitter traffic increased 256% on Black Friday and 202% on Cyber Monday. According to this article, the Tealeaf company which monitors twitter traffic and trends,  reports that 24% of twittering customers “cursed and complained” their way through the process of buying online.

Customer tweets show customers were frustrated by website errors, faulty coupon codes, and other common customer struggles.

With these issues plaguing their online experience, "retailers are unwittingly driving customers away resulting in more than $44 billion in lost revenue over the course of a year,” said Geoff Galat, vice president of Worldwide Marketing for Tealeaf.

What I want to know is: How many merchants are LISTENING intently to this active feedback---to respond, reach out, and resolve these issues their customers are putting out there?  With online shopping in full swing this season, and with customers' megaphones firmly implanted in their hands tweeting out their experiences, this season will show the difference between a company who just wants to sell stuff and one who wants to build relationships. (Previous Tealeaf research revealed that 51% of online shoppers said social media has influenced their online transactions.  And 74% of surveyed consumers said a negative online comment influences their likelihood to do business with a company.)

Has anyone out there tweeted about an experience and then heard back from a company to resolve their issue?  If you are a merchant, is "active listening" and responding to customer issues a skill and a practice you are putting to work?  It will show your true colors, and it will grow your business.


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1/4 of Online Holiday Shoppers Are Frustrated With Customer Service

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Jeanne Bliss
Jeanne Bliss began her career at Lands’ End where she reported to founder Gary Comer and the company’s executive committee, ensuring that in the formative years of the organization, the company stayed focused on its core principles of customer and employee focus. She was the first leader of the Lands’ End Customer Experience. In addition to Lands’ End, she has served Allstate, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker Corporation and Mazda Corporations as its executive leading customer focus and customer experience. Jeanne has helped achieve 95% retention rates across 50,000 person organizations, harnessing businesses to work across their silos to deliver a united and deliberate experience customers (and employees) want to repeat. Jeanne now runs CustomerBliss (https://www.customerbliss.com), an international consulting business where she coaches executive leadership teams and customer leadership executives on how to put customer profitability at the center of their business, by getting past lip service; to operationally relevant, operationally executable plans and processes. Her clients include Johnson & Johnson, TD Ameritrade, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospitals, Bombardier Aircraft and many others. Her two best-selling books are Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action and I Love You More than My Dog: Five Decisions that Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad. Her blog is https://www.ccocoach.com She is Co-founder of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. www.cxpa.org