Stock image company Shutterstock has a market valuation of $1 billion and operates 11 offices around the world. So imagine the surprise that customer Mars Dorian had when a complaint tweet about the brand was met minutes later by a reply directly from founder and CEO Jonathan Oringer.
Dorian, a contributor to www.businessgrow.com, wrote in a blog that he took to Twitter to complain that he couldn’t purchase a bundle of images on the company’s German website. The interesting thing is that the tweet was neither addressed to Shutterstock nor the CEO. Oringer promptly replied, and the next day Dorian received a phone call from Shutterstock’s German office with a plan to solve his problem.
Needless to say, this direct attention from the CEO and proactive customer service went a long way to solidify Dorian’s satisfaction with and advocacy for the brand, even after a poor initial experience.
The story is an example of how a firm can meet the needs of today’s customer by using new voice of the customer sources, digital data, immediacy, and involvement from all levels of the organization. This issue of the Customer Strategist journal explores how companies mix the old with the new to capture and act on a more complete customer picture.
We interview other CEOs who, like Oringer, interact directly with customers to gain valuable feedback. We discuss how traditional feedback mechanisms like surveys and mystery shopping are evolving to meet new expectations, and we share insights companies like Spotify, FitBit, and Pandora are leveraging through streaming data.
Businesses have access to so much information. The magic comes from putting the pieces together to get a fuller picture of who your customers are and how best to serve them.
