Monday, February 14, 2011

Tello: A New Way to Give and Receive Feedback


Tello is a new smart phone application that allows customers to easily rate businesses solely on customer service experiences.  We think this concept is pretty interesting.  Here’s why.

1. Businesses can reward employees based on positive feedback.
2. Businesses can receive negative feedback about their customer service and revise their customer service strategies accordingly, even potentially compensating legitimate complaints with coupons.
3. Employees, since they can be rated by name, have further incentive to provide excellent customer service.
4. Customers, who often feel frustrated by poor customer service and their seeming helplessness to do anything about it, have a controlled environment in which to express their concerns.

Drawbacks?  Yes, we see a few.

1. Often customers are more interested in sharing negative experiences than positive ones, so ratings may be slightly skewed.
2. Businesses who opt in or are opted in by customers will need to extend the resources necessary monitor their ratings – and subsequent reputation – closely, in order to prevent one bad spoonful of poor customer service from spoiling the whole pot.
3. The app doesn’t include experience aspects besides customer service, and you have two options: thumbs up or thumbs down.
4. While customers are rating particular employees’ customer service, we hope that businesses take equal responsibility for any poor ratings as a reflection of potential company cultural issues or weak customer service strategies, rather than simply attributing problems to particular employees called out by name.  After all, there’s no smart phone application for rating customers.

What do you think of the new customer service review app?

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