“Customers Are Rarely Lost –

Our Competition Usually Finds Them”

Anonymous

Tim Genovese

178 391 55 1168 2258 38 10 196 312 2 0

4,697 Hotels / 686,873 Rooms

77.4 million IHG Rewards Club Members

3,616 Hotels / 451,424 Rooms

699 Hotels in our Development Pipeline

My team is responsible for Guest Experience and Brand Consistency

We host approximately 141,372,500 guests a year

Our customers sleep with us....

24 hours a day, seven days a week

We go through approximately 22 million rolls of toilet paper per year

That is enough rolls to go from the earth to the moon approximately three times!

Social Media

Leveraging Technology to Enhance Customer Care

Online SurveysPost to

Social Media

96% of unhappy customers do not complain

A dissatisfied customer will tell between 9-15

people about their experience. And around 13%

tell more than 20 people.

………. But all that changes with Social Media

Statistics from White House Office of Customer Affairs

The Dave Carroll Story

70% of Americans read reviews before making any purchasing decisions (ZMOT)

Consumer reviews are 12 times more trusted than Brand generated marketing (eMarketer)

More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month

100 hours of video are uploaded on YouTube every 60 seconds.

Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month, which is almost one hour for every person on earth.

Twitter has more than 140 million users and

340 million tweets per day

Facebook reported 905 million monthly

active users

43% of Americans would give up sex for a

year as opposed to losing internet

connectivity for a year!

Establish team member(s) who are responsible for maintaining, monitoring and responding to social media for your organization

Respond to both positive and negative posts For the positive responses use company name /

product(s) often

Screen scraping technology exists to recognize your company name / product(s) and to pull contextual information around your mention and categorize the comments for analytics

Keep Web sites current and up to date Mobile compatibility critical

Go on the offense – establish Facebook,

twitter activity, blog(s), web site(s) where

appropriate

Frequent / relevant and engaging activity

Try to be less corporate

Establish mini communities with similar likes

which allows your products to become part

of the conversation experiences

Customers will engage, participate and promote

X-score, a real time value measurement of

how well known and liked a “property” is on

the internet – run by SponsorHub whose

software calculates the X-score

NBA Clippers had a 99 (out of 100) before

their PR crisis. Their X-score went to a 66

before the Commissioner acted.

Establish a social media PR emergency

“game plan”

Need feedback before customer interaction is done

A customer is 4 times more likely to defect to a competitor if the problem is service related rather than price or product related (Bain & Co.)

Dissatisfied customers whose complaints are taken care of are more likely to remain loyal and even become advocates (Strauss & Seidel)

96% of unhappy customers don’t complain; however, 91% of those will simply leave and never come back.

QR (quick response codes) built in Japan in

‘94 for the auto industry for assembly line

improvement

Allow offline to connect to online with a

mere scan of a smart phone

50% of Americans own a smart phone

36% of Americans between 25-36 years old have

reported scanning codes

QR codes have and are being tested for

customer immediate feedback during their

experiences allowing companies to respond

more immediately to their needs

Can be imprinted on anything

Potential next steps in customer service or first

line support

Use as customer FAQ’s

Easy to use if smart phone has the app

“Best Buys” uses QR codes to understand

associate mood’s for the day by asking; How

are you feeling today? Good / Bad

Could also ask customers - How is their shopping

experience going today? Good / Bad

QR codes have opportunities

Apple / Android do not ship phones with pre-

loaded code reading apps (account for 87.6%)

Use only in Wi-Fi zones

Not always linked to a mobile optimized site

Other “quick response” technology exists:

SMS or short codes (texting capabilities)

Mobile apps – such as UPC bar codes

Bluetooth and NFC (near field communications)

Visual recognition (VR)

New Market software has staff member

notification software allowing guest needs to

be known to associates via their phones for

immediate follow up and issue tracking and

escalation to resolution

Technology allows for “Anticipitory

Customer Service”

Manage to serve unexpected wishes

Demonstrates vigilant care by your company

towards your customer

Distinguish your company in the eyes and

emotions and memories of your customer

Examples are:

Alerts via vmail, email of flight delays or changes

Shipping delays of products

Examples continued:

Remind customers of something they should keep

in mind themselves

Scheduled maintenance for the car or house hold A/C

Re-order medicine, Reminder payment is due

Traffic warnings before social or sporting events

Pro-active new food products with links to recipes

Great Clips uses online wait time reviews by

zip code and pre check-in to lower wait

times – their #1 customer issue

Technology allows customer historical data

to be known to associates (CRM)

Customize response to individual

Better analytics to understand customer needs

over all and address any issues

Reminders for new staff of re-occurring issue

(holiday season, long order time, etc)

Technology does not replace appropriate

human interaction

“Customers Are Rarely Lost –

And by leveraging technology you can

give them a GPS to find your

product”

Tim Genovese