How Fast Should a Business Respond to an Email?

April 7, 2020 Update: A newer version of this study is now available.

Email is a critical customer service channel.

A 2017 study from inContact revealed that just 43 percent of customers were highly satisfied with their most recent email customer service interaction. Those who were happy cited speed as a top delighter.

The average company takes 12 hours and 10 minutes to respond to an email, according to a 2018 study from SuperOffice. That's certainly better than the old one business day standard, but is it fast enough?

In April 2018, I surveyed more than 1,200 consumers to learn exactly how fast they expect businesses to respond to emails. The survey also examined response time expectations for Twitter and Facebook messages.

You can read the analysis below or browse the data yourself.

Study Overview

This is the first time I've done this study since 2015, when those results revealed the new email response time standard was just one hour.

The 2018 study surveyed more than 1,200 consumers to see if this has changed.

Participants were asked how quickly they expected a response when contacting a business via email. Response time expectations for Twitter and Facebook messages were also assessed.

Finally, the study examined whether response time expectations varied by age group. For instance, do Millennials expect a faster response than Baby Boomers?

The age groups were defined using definitions from the Pew Research Center. One note, too few members of Generation Z (ages 21 and under) and the Silent Generation (ages 73 and over) participated to include their perspective in the age group portion of the study.

Email Response Time Expectations

Businesses should target a response time standard of one hour, with 15 minutes representing world-class service..

This conclusion comes from looking at the response time that will meet the expectations of at least 80 percent of customers. 

This can be a little confusing at first because the top choice was one day, with 43 percent selecting it. But one day only meets the expectations of those who selected one day or 2+ days, which is a total of 56 percent. You pick up 14 percent of customers if you can respond to email within four hours, though that's still just 70 percent of the total.

A one hour email response time will meet the expectations of 89 percent of your customers. Companies aiming for world-class customer service should respond within 15 minutes or less.

The study looked at response time expectations by age. The responses were fairly close together, but there was a mild surprise. Baby Boomers want the fastest response.

A smaller group of 206 respondents was asked an additional question: How quickly do you expect a response when emailing a coworker?

Response time expectations for this group are very high and arguably unreasonable, with 41 percent of people expecting coworkers to respond to email within one hour. 

The pressure to respond quickly causes many people skim and scan emails from colleagues. They then send partial responses which generates a lot of unnecessary back and forth. One study found that the average email conversation at work includes 4.5 messages.

Which generation has the highest expectations for coworkers? Generation X leads the pack on this one.

Twitter Direct Message Response Expectations

Businesses should target a response time standard of 15 minutes.

Anything slower that 15 minutes risks disappointing a large portion of customers. This can present a challenge for businesses as Twitter is not as popular as more traditional service channels such as email, phone, or even chat. There may not be enough volume to justify staffing for a 15 minute response time. 

Once again, Baby Boomers have the highest response time expectations:

One note from the study is only 40 percent of participants message businesses via Twitter. That percentage is only slightly lower for Baby Boomers, with 35 percent saying they use Twitter for customer service.

Facebook Message Response Time Expectations

Businesses should target a response time standard of 1 hour, with 15 minutes representing world-class service.

A one hour response time may be adequate for most customers, but 17 percent still want to hear back more quickly. For Facebook, it's Millennials who want the fastest response.

Only 50 percent of participants message businesses via Facebook. Millennial Facebook usage is slightly higher than the group average, with 55 percent saying they have contacted a business via a Facebook message.

Get More Insights

I hosted a webinar where I shared some more granular data from the study along with several tactics for meeting customer demands for fast responses. You can watch the webinar replay.

Study: Executives Are Delusional About Customer-Centricity

There's a famous statistic that 80 percent of executives believed their organization delivered a superior customer experience, but only 8 percent of customers agreed.

This comes from this 2005 report from Bain, so it's a little out of date.

A 2017 study by Capgemini Consulting sought to provide updated insight into the so-called executive disconnect. A total of 450 executives and 3,300 consumers were surveyed, though this study focused specifically on the digital experience. This includes searching for product information online, using a company's app, or searching for technical support information on a website.

The results?

Executives still believe they are doing well, with 75 percent saying their organization is customer-centric. Just 30 percent of customers agree. On the bright side, it has improved since 2005! 

That's still a pretty big disconnect. Here's are three key insights from the report.

Insight #1: Experience is a Differentiator

Let's say a customer is trying to choose between two products, your's and a competitor's. 

The customer visits each website to learn more about the product, watch some tutorials, and see which one best fits her needs. That aspect of the digital experience is a key part of the customer journey, so it's important to get it right.

Capgemini discovered that 81 percent of consumers will pay a premium for a better experience.

Last fall, I purchased an ecobee smart thermostat for a vacation rental property I own even though my initial choice was a more well-known competitor. The reason was ecobee's website was intuitively laid out and the company's helpful support gave me far greater confidence that their product would work as intended.

Insight #2: Better Experience Boosts NPS

This may be obvious, but it's great to have data to back it up.

Net Promoter Score, or NPS, tracks how likely a customer is to recommend your product or business to someone else. Many businesses grow revenue through word-of-mouth referrals, so this can be an essential metric.

The study found that companies that used NPS results to regularly make adjustments to business operations enjoyed an NPS score that averaged 14 points higher than companies that did not closely link NPS and operations.

This is an epidemic in the business world. It seems like nearly every company surveys its customers, whether its NPS or another model. Yet much of that data goes completely unused.

The lesson here is your survey can be really valuable, if you actually use it. Here's an online course on how to design and implement an effective survey.

Insight #3: Poor Experiences Hurt Business

Losing a customer is a big concern when someone experiences a service failure. Similar to other reports, the Capgemini study found that 20 percent of customers stopped doing business with a company after a poor experience.

This should leave two important questions:

1. What about other 80 percent?

2. What are your customers doing?

A study by Dr. Venessa Funches shed some light on what angry customers do when they continue doing business with a company:

• 35 percent do less business

• 70 percent spread negative word-of-mouth about the company

It's up to you to find out the answer to the second question, what are your customers doing after a poor experience.

One tactic that will help is to make sure customers can opt-in to a follow-up contact when they complete one of your surveys. This allows you to potentially save their business and gain valuable insight into what went wrong.

Take Action

Studies like the Capgemini report are fascinating because they provide general insight into the world of customer experience and customer service.

My advice to customer service leaders is to use this data as a prompt to check your own organization. 

• How do your customers feel about their experience?

• Is a poor customer experience costing your company revenue?

• What can you do to improve?

How Malaysia's HappyFresh Created a Customer Service Vision

I recently received an email from Timothy Chan, Regional Fleet Acquisition and Retention Specialist at HappyFresh.

While I get a lot of similar emails, this one stood out for both his enthusiasm and the fact that my book had somehow made it all the way to Malaysia.

"Tim from Malaysia here. I work for an online grocery shopping company. I have just finished reading your book, The Service Culture Handbook, and I must say I enjoyed it immensely. 

"I have just recently been put in charge of managing the customer service team at my company (after being transferred from the logistics department). Just last week I took your advice and held a meeting to decide on a customer service vision—it was a lot of fun and I am very happy with the vision my team ultimately decided upon. Now begins my more difficult task of really embedding the vision into our culture."

I was curious to learn more about how Chan and his team used the concepts from the book, so we corresponded via email and he graciously shared his story.

The HappyFresh customer service team.

Q: Tell me a little about what your team does and the customers it serves.

"As Malaysia’s leading online grocery shopping company, our team is hard at work every day assisting and serving both our customers as well as our fleet of around 100 shoppers and deliverymen."

Q: What was the process to develop the customer service vision?

"I helped the team develop this vision by following the step-by-step guide provided in The Service Culture Handbook. Started by giving a presentation about Customer Service Vision which included a lot of stories from companies that have thrived by staying true to their visions (with particular emphasis on Zappos).

"The presentation was attended by representatives from the customer service and logistic team as well as the heads of Field Operations and HR. After the presentation, everyone was divided into 2 groups to draft their visions. By comparing the visions, we then decided on certain words that we felt simply could not be left out from the finalized vision and from these words our vision was born:

"Your professional, personal pal throughout our journey together."

Q: What does the vision mean to you?

"To me, the vision means that we should always strive to be a true friend—someone who truly cares and genuinely wants to help. However, we need to remember that we are also professionals and should always behave as such.

"The ‘journey’ part of the vision carries 2 meanings:

"Firstly, it is a reminder that we are on a never-ending journey of constantly striving to be as true to the vision as possible. Secondly, it reminds us that there are different parts to every journey (beginning, middle and end) and we should always act accordingly.

"What I love about the vision is that it can be applied equally well to the way we treat customers, our fleet of shoppers and drivers and also to the way we treat one another as colleagues."

Q: What are you doing to make sure everyone on your team knows the vision?

"I conduct regular 1 to 1 check-in sessions with each member of our small CS team. As we discuss how we can improve performance during these sessions, I try to refer to the vision as much as possible. Furthermore, one of our talented CS representatives, A.K., created stickers to stick on everyone’s laptops/desktops so that we can always clearly see our vision."

Q: What unexpected challenges or obstacles did you encounter throughout this process?

"It is not easy ingraining the vision into the psyche of a team. It takes a lot of effort to persistently champion the vision and to make other people start championing it as well. It is important to ‘walk the talk’, be willing to be vulnerable and be open to scrutiny."

Q: How has having a customer service vision been helpful?

"With so many KPIs, goals, frustrations and issues, having a customer service vision has been like having a guiding star to turn to whenever we felt unsure or overwhelmed."

Webinar Recap: Ask Me Anything About Building a Service Culture

On Wednesday, April 4 I hosted a webinar to answer questions about building a customer-focused culture. The goal was to help customer service leaders identify ways to implement concepts from The Service Culture Handbook. 

We had a nice discussion and were able to tackle a lot of great questions. You can watch the webinar below. (Click here if you don't see the video.)

Additional Resources

Here are some additional resources to go with some of the questions from the webinar.

Q: How do I get employees to buy-in to the customer service vision?

Employees are much more likely to buy-in to the vision if they get a chance to help create it. Here's a step-by-step guide that explains the process I like to use. Once you create the vision, it's imperative that employees can answer three questions about it:

1. What is the customer service vision?

2. What does it mean?

3. How do I personally contribute?

Knowing the answers to these questions moves the vision from an abstract statement to a clear and specific guide.

Q: How can you keep the customer service vision fresh?

I recommend customer service leaders chart out a communication plan to find different ways to share and reinforce the customer service vision with employees. You can use the guide on page 12 of this workbook.

Q: Should we have a separate vision for each team or department?

The short answer is not if you can avoid it! The most customer-focused organizations operate under a single customer service visions. It's okay to create a vision for your team if you don't already have one for your organization. Just beware of these dangers.

Q: Does a service culture apply to internal customer service?

Yes! The way we treat each other at work is a fundamental part of an organization's culture. It's unreasonable to expect employees to treat customers well if they feel poorly treated. Here's a blog post that explains a bit of the psychology behind that. 

Q: What are some tips for an effective customer service survey?

I've assembled several tips in this blog post. You can also view my training video on Lynda.com. You'll need a Lynda subscription, so get a 30-day trial if you don't already have an account. LinkedIn Premium subscribers can access the course here.

Q: How do we deal with customer feedback on the internet, such as Google Reviews?

Reviews on Google My Business can be a powerful way to attract new customers! Keep in mind that potential customers will read reviews about your business and decide whether or not to give your company a try. Staying active on Google My Business can also improve your business's position in search results. Whatever the platform, make sure you carefully analyze customer feedback to spot trends.

Q: How do we scale our service culture as our company is rapidly growing?

A customer service vision is essential to preserving your start-ups culture as the company starts to expand. Here's my guide to scaling your service culture.

Three Ways to Leverage Knowledge-Centered Service

A story about the tragic death of a pet hamster recently made national headlines.

Belen Aldecosea was traveling from Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale last November. She wanted to bring along her pet dwarf hamster, Pebbles, which she claimed was certified by her doctor as an emotional support animal.

When a Spirit employee told Aldecosea the hamster was not allowed to board the plane, Aldecosea flushed Pebbles down the toilet in airport restroom.

She claims she did this on the advice of a Spirit employee. Spirit adamantly denies any employee told her to do this.

Here's one thing that's not in dispute: Aldecosea contacted Spirit prior to traveling and was erroneously told by another employee that the hamster was allowed.

The stakes can be high when customer service employees are asked about seldom-referenced policies or obscure problems. They need access to the right information in the right place at the right time.

Here are three ways Knowledge-Centered Service can help.

Reduce Memorization

Knowledge-Centered Service, or KCS, is a process organizations can use to capture, structure, reuse, and improve critical information used to solve problems.

Reducing memorization is one clear benefit. Here's a short experiment to highlight a common challenge:

Name all of the planets in our solar system in order from closet to the sun to farthest.

Many of us will struggle to recall the first eight. There's controversy by the time we get to Pluto. Is it a planet or not? NASA's website is surprisingly unhelpful when it comes to settling this question.

We need clear, reliable information that's easy to find in situations like this.

One client of mine struggled to get employees to remember a three-step procedure for greeting office visitors via a security intercom system. They tried team meetings, emails, and written memos but nothing worked.

The solution was putting the right information in the right place at the right time. My client hung a sign next to the intercom with the three steps. Problem solved.

Another client struggled to get employees to remember complex technical information about the medical devices it sold. The solution was creating a single page with links to information sheets for each product so employees could quickly and accurately answer customer questions without memorizing the answers.

Shorten Training

If you're old enough, you grew up during a time when you memorized all of your friends' phone numbers.

Today, I can barely remember my own phone number. Important information about our friends such as phone numbers, birthdates, and addresses are all safely stored in our smart phones. 

It's a phenomenon called digital amnesia where we've become less adept at memorizing information.

That makes training much more difficult since traditional training often revolves around getting participants to memorize facts, procedures, and other information.

KCS can help solve that. Rather than memorizing piles of information, participants are taught to use a knowledge base to identify known solutions to problems. I've helped clients cut new hire training time by as much as 50 percent by switching from a memorization-focused training regime to a KCS approach.

The best part happens when new information is introduced.

Let's say your company releases a new product. You can do a short hands-on training meeting with the new product and capture everyone's questions into a searchable frequently asked questions (FAQ) document that anyone can access. 

Now your team can quickly recall what they learned about the new product and sound like an authority when answering questions just by accessing the FAQ. That FAQ can be updated and corrected as new insights are gained or you receive feedback from customers.

Improve Self-Service

Good self-service often runs on information, which means that self-service can fail when that information isn't readily available.

For example, some airlines allow passengers to book free stopovers. This is essentially an extra long layover that allows you to visit one city and then continue to another hours or even days later for the price of one ticket. 

Here's what happens when I search the Spirit Airlines website for information on stopovers. (Yes, I added the space on purpose.) 

Nothing useful here, not even a clear "we don't allow stopovers" policy. This will probably prompt a call to customer service if I wanted to find the answer.

A best practice is to routinely track what customers are searching for. So if you notice a lot of customers are searching for "stopover," "stop over," or even "layover" you can add a helpful resource that appears when a customer searches any of those terms.

Many customer service software providers have created an interim solution to help customers locate self-service. The Zendesk Answer Bot scans customer emails and intuitively suggests solutions before the customer hits send.

Conclusion

The principles around KCS have been around for a long time. I was first introduced to them 20 years ago and have seen first-hand how important knowledge is in the world of customer service.

You can read an overview of the KCS methodology here if you'd like to explore the topic further.

Why Great Self-Service is Backed by Humans

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Self-service technology is everywhere these days.

In Champaign, Illinois, you can go to the public library and check out a book from a self-service kiosk. Interacting with a human is entirely optional.

Library assistant Ruairi McEnroe explained, "We have self-checkout kiosks at the library where customers can checkout, make payments (using credit cards), and check their account status without the need for a staff person."

This is a win-win for both customers and the library. Customers can avoid waiting in line and are often able to check-out faster using the kiosk. The library is able to save money in an era where many libraries face chronic funding shortfalls.

That doesn't mean humans aren't needed. Great self-service is almost always backed by capable humans.

Ruairi McEnroe assists a customer at the Champaign Public Library.

Nobody Likes to Wait

Think of all the places where self-service helps us avoid a line.

We use the Starbucks app to order our coffee ahead of time. Airlines allow us to check in and display our boarding pass on a smart phone. Even the grocery store may soon eliminate checkout lines with the advent of Amazon Go.

Nick Francis, CEO of the customer service software company, HelpScout, told me he initially struggled with the idea of offering self-service.

"I felt like we wanted to provide the greatest personalized service, but at some point, that's actually quite inconvenient."

Over time, he realized self-service was an essential customer benefit. Customers didn't like the hassle of waiting on hold to talk to a person for something simple like answering a basic product question, tracking a shipment, or resetting a password.

The realization that self-service can often be a better experience prompted Francis and his team at HelpScout to develop some really good self-service tools. HelpScout and other customer service software companies now strive to make self-service as convenient and accessible as possible.

That doesn't mean humans are no longer needed. McEnroe told me that humans serve as a sort of service lifeline at the library in Champaign.

"Generally there is one staff member on hand to clear up account issues, take cash payments, or direct customers to the area they desire. We are often now able to help customers a lot more rather than having to send them to a different desk. There are customers who would rather have a person check them out, so we can also do that.”

Where Humans Are Essential to Self-Service

There are several places where humans are the key to great self-service.

Escalations

Kiosks at the airport, the grocery store, and other places often have a customer service representative standing by. These reps can dramatically improve the self-service experience when they are properly trained.

That's because self-service doesn't always work as intended. Sometimes it can get confusing while other issues can't be solved without a customer service professional.

The 2017 Customer Service Barometer published by American Express and Ebiquity revealed that just 23 percent of customers prefer to speak to a person over the phone or face-to-face for simple issues, like checking an account balance. 

That number jumps to 63 percent for difficult issues, such as disputing a charge.

Updates

Information drives a significant amount of self service.

For instance, let's say you're shopping for a pair of running shoes online. You spot a new model from one of your favorite brands and are about to order them in your normal size when you spot a helpful note suggesting you order a half-size larger.

You make the sizing adjustment, order the shoes, and they arrive a few days later. The shoes fit perfectly and you're very happy.

Think about what went into that experience. The retailer or shoe company had to collect sizing feedback from customers and then share that insight in a meaningful way to help guide other customers like you. If the sizing information had been wrong or out of date, you would have ordered the shoes in a different size and you would have been disappointed with the fit.

Humans are the key to identifying those insights and keeping self-service functioning.

Fixes

Self-service sometimes breaks or fails to work as intended. 

Snack vending machines are terrific until your bag of chips gets stuck. It just sits there, suspended on the rack, taunting you. This is exactly when you need a human to fix a self-service fail.

Some failures aren't so obvious. A customer might search a knowledgebase for a solution, fail to find it, and then contact customer service. The customer service rep might never know about the customer's failed attempt or the 100 more customers who experience the same issue.

In The Effortless Experience, authors Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick DeLisi detail a helpful exercise to help identify and fix broken self-service experiences.

It consists of three simple steps for customer service reps to follow:

1. Identify customer issues that could have been solved via self-service.

2. Tactfully ask customers if they tried self-service.

3. Note any feedback about unsuccessful self-service attempts.

This information can then be collected so broken self-service systems can be fixed.

Lessons From the Overlook: Beware of Easy Money

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

You'd probably listen if someone offered to put an extra $5,000 in your pocket.

My wife, Sally, and I use Idyllwild Vacation Cabins to manage The Overlook. I recently received a letter from one of its competitors offering us a guaranteed $5,000 in net income during our first year if we switched.

The competitor has about the same number of rental properties under management in Idyllwild. It is also a much larger company with more resources. The kind of resources that allow them to pay $5,000 customer acquisition fees.

Should we make the switch to the new property manager? Our decision was pretty easy. We never even hesitated for a second. Nope!

Here's why you need to beware of easy money.

Our property manager keeps the shaded deck clean and inviting.

How Magazines Derailed a Catalog

Twenty years ago, I supervised the call center training team for a retail catalog company. This was back in the days when the majority of customers called in to place an order.

Our vice president of customer service one day announced a partnership with a magazine subscription company. It was an elaborate scheme that would require our call center agents to offer free trial magazine subscriptions to customers at the end of each sales call. 

It seemed like an odd fit for an apparel catalog, but our vice president was chasing easy money. The magazine company would pay a fee that could cover the cost of each phone call if we met certain performance targets for new subscriptions.

This happened during a rough period for the company and the vice president was under pressure to cut costs and turn things around. Service wasn't great, sales were flagging, and the company refused to invest in e-commerce at a time when online shopping was starting to take off.

The magazine money seemed like an easy fix. In reality, it took resources away from the training, monitoring, coaching, and other activities the company needed to improve the sales and service experience. The magazines also did nothing to address the chronic operational issues that had been plaguing the company for years.

Things eventually got worse as the company continued losing money.

Do Your Homework

There's almost always a downside to easy money.

Sally and I contacted several property management companies when we first bought The Overlook. Our goal was to set up interviews with the local property manager as part of our vetting process. The local manager for the company that sent us the $5,000 offer never returned our call.

It's easy to imagine the headaches that would come with that one-time $5,000 bonus. Decreased guest satisfaction, increased maintenance issues, and plenty of headaches all seem likely. Something tells me we would lose a lot more than we would gain over the long run.

Sticking with our property manager was an easy decision.

Idyllwild Vacation Cabins takes great care of our guests and does a terrific job looking after our cabin. Communication is incredibly responsive and we've built a strong working relationship.

Those are the things that are most important to us and we know that other company can't provide them.

How Their Service Failure Can Be Your Problem

Chances are, you've had a bad customer service week. One where it seems like you receive bad service everywhere you turn. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it does.

Mine started recently when a company shipped me the wrong socks. I normally wouldn't think much of a shipping error. This one turned out to be just the tip of the service failure iceberg. 

That same week, I had to contact a local hardware store multiple times to find a missing part for a front door handle. Painters ruined several window screens on my home. A new microwave stopped working properly and required a service call, crushing my schedule between 8am and 12pm one day.

My patience began to wear thin as the week went on. It started taking more of an effort to be a level-headed, friendly customer as I tried to resolve each of these situations. 

It also made me realize something you may already know—an upset customer might not just be frustrated at your company's service failure.

Bad Experiences Add Up

The common denominator for all my bad experiences was time.

Each service failure required time to resolve that I hadn't planned on spending. It's frustrating to feel as though your time is being wasted. This can lead to anxiety if you are already busy with multiple tight deadlines.

Service failures often get amplified by multiple failed attempts to fix an issue. 

For example, the company that manufactured my door handle didn't include an installation manual or parts list with the handle, so I knew a part was missing but couldn't tell exactly which one. The company's website didn't have the information and the support team was closed by the time I researched the issue.

Imagine your company makes socks and I'm your customer. I've just experienced that runaround with the hardware store. Suddenly, a small shipping error with a pair of socks doesn't feel small anymore. It feels like the straw that broke the camel's back. 

The reaction might be disproportionate to the error. Oh boy did I have to work hard not to let that happen, but imagine a customer who wasn't so conscientious about how they treated your employees?

Kaboom.

Their Service Failure, Your Problem

A couple of years ago, I unearthed some fascinating research about how customers react to customer service situations when they are already upset about something else.

Two problems can occur:

• Customers are more judgmental.

• Customers become less open to ideas.

Neither is a recipe for a good service outcome. Judgmental customers are more likely to nitpick small imperfections or imagine service issues. We often need customers to be open to ideas so we can solve their issue.

A healthy dose of empathy is required to help many of these customers. Empathy can help cool down those negative emotions and convince your customer that you're on their side.

The painting crew won the empathy award during my recent week of service failures. 

The foreman was sincerely apologetic about the window screens. He then showed me how the screens' advanced age made them bend and tear easily. (In other words, he empathized with me, even though the problem wasn't his crew's fault.) He also came up with a way to temporarily fix the screens so they would look good cosmetically until I could get them replaced.

I appreciated his efforts and started to feel a little better. His creative fix took an immediate problem and put it on the back burner. And that helped put the issue back into a more appropriate perspective.

Create a Competitive Advantage

The crew from Peek Brothers Painting stood out in a positive way during my very bad week of service failures. The empathy and extra effort from the foreman to help with the window screens helped. I also received several compliments from my neighbors about how courteous the crew was.

And, of course, the paint job was beautiful.

Imagine your customer service team is an empathy oasis in an angry desert. You might take the brunt of a customer's anger or frustration when they are experiencing multiple issues. You can also be their hero.

Here's one way to take action:

1. Share this post with your team.

2. Discuss times you experienced multiple service failures from different companies. 

3. Think of ways you can make those customers feel better.

It often takes just one friendly, kind, and patient person to turn around a customer's perspective. Try to be that person with your upset customers. 

They'll appreciate your efforts and your company will suddenly stand out in a positive way.

The Surprising Consequence of Consumer Anger

Losing customers isn't the only thing to worry about when there's a service failure.

You've probably seen the typical angry customer studies. The numbers change, but the gist is X percent of customers will stop doing business with a company after a service failure. While not exactly an earth shattering discovery, these studies prove that good service is good for business.

But what happens to the angry customers who continue doing business with your company? There doesn't seem to be a lot of discussion or concern about this group.

That could be a mistake.

I recently discovered this study from Dr. Venessa Funches that reveals angry customers may continue doing business with your company, but they can still find other ways to hurt you.

Here's what you need to watch out for.

How Angry Customers Punish Companies

Funches gathered data from 732 people who were asked to recall a specific customer service situation that made them angry. The respondents were then asked what they did next.

As expected, a large portion stopped doing business with the company. In this study, it was 42 percent. The remaining 58 percent still did business with the company, but many changed their buying behavior (respondents could choose multiple options):

• 35 percent reduced the amount of business they did

• 25 percent stopped buying certain products or services

• 17 percent stopped doing business with a particular location

Then there's the 25 percent of customers who said they continued doing business with a company in the same way because they felt they had to. You will see no change in buying behavior from these customers, though they may still find other ways to hurt you:

Here's what else angry customers do:

• 70 percent spread negative word-of-mouth about the company

• 60 percent complain to the company

Negative word of mouth includes a lot of things business leaders don't like to see:

• Negative online reviews (Yelp, Google My Business, Trip Advisor, etc.)

• Negative social media posts (hello viral tweet!)

• Negative stories shared with friends

Notice that not all customers complain to the business. There are many reasons that angry customers don't complain, so it's never safe to assume that no complaints means all is well.

What You Can Do About It

Funches's study discovered that broken promises were the number one source of customer anger. If I'm a customer service leader, I start there and look for trends in service failures.

Many customer service departments react to one complaint at a time. For example, I recently bought a handleset for my front door. There was a part missing and, even worse, there was no instructional manual in the box to help identify exactly which part I needed. The company's website did not have an instruction manual for this particular door handle, either.

It took a lot of back-and-forth to finally identify the missing part.

The major failure is it's been two months and those support documents still aren't on the company's website. That means countless other customers have likely struggled through the installation process.

These types of issues are preventable. Smart customer service leaders do two things on a regular basis:

• They look for icebergs that are subtle signs of bigger problems, such as the missing handleset instructions. 

• They collect aggregate data on the top causes of service failures so those issues can be quickly addressed.

Another action step is to re-engage customers after a critical incident.

Years ago, I worked as a national account manager for a company that sold business uniforms. A customer called who was pretty upset about a mistake in an order she received. I apologized for the mistake and agreed to send out the corrected uniforms at no charge.

Many customer service professionals stop there. An even better move is to follow up again once the customer has had a chance to cool off. In my case, I called the customer right after her replacement order was scheduled to arrive. My last conversation was during a moment of misery, but this time I was talking to my customer during a moment of delight.

The replacement order had arrived safely and the customer was very happy with the outcome.

Take Action!

Customer-focused companies are constantly learning from angry customers. Try to find the source of what's causing their anger and fix it.

Another tactic is to try to prevent customer anger in the first place. This short video shares a technique called the Pre-Emptive Acknowledgement to help you do that.

Preventing negative emotions from Customer Service Foundations by Madecraft and Jeff Toister

Insider Perspectives: Brand Expert Denise Lee Yohn on Culture

I recently had a chance to speak with brand leadership expert, Denise Lee Yohn about her new book, Fusion: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World’s Greatest Companies.

Fusion is a wonderfully practical guide to aligning your company's brand with your organizational culture. The book makes three primary arguments why this is essential:

1. Employees work more efficiently when they share a common goal. 

2. Fusing brand and culture makes a brand more authentic.

3. Aligning brand and culture leads to better brand execution.

You'll find plenty of real-life examples to illustrate each concept and many helpful exercises that result in concrete action steps.

The book is now on sale through leading retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I took a few pages of notes when I read Fusion and I highly recommend it.

It's always fun to talk about culture, especially with an expert like Denise. Here's her perspective on brand-culture fusion.

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Q: A lot of leaders point to the importance of culture, but I don't know if we're always talking about the same thing. How do you define it?

"In the most informal way, culture is the way we do things around here.

"A more formal definition is the way people in your organization act and the attitudes and beliefs that inform those actions.

"One client I'm currently working with is a large technology company. They have a very process oriented and hierarchical culture, so the interactions between employees are more formal, structured, and preplanned. Another client, a senior living center company, has a nurturing and empathetic culture, so their employees are very concerned about how others are feeling and if they are growing and being cared for."

Q: What is a brand-culture fusion?

"Fusion introduces the concept of fusing brand and culture together so they are well-integrated and tightly aligned within an organization.

"Many companies focus on brand and culture separately, which can create silos where a brand doesn't really reflect the culture.

"The greatest companies fuse both of these together so they are working together.

"The culture and brand at Airbnb, the hospitality company, are one and the same—they're both about belonging. Airbnb wants customers to feel like they belong anywhere, wherever their travels might take them. It also wants employees to feel like they belong at the company, so its employee experience is all about community and comfort."

Q: This seems like a straightforward idea. Why don't more organizations do this?

"A couple of reasons come to mind.

"One is I think there's a misperception about what makes a good culture. Business leaders often cling to this idea that there's a right culture that focuses on things like being nice and supportive.

"That's just wrong. There isn't one right type of culture for every organization. For example, Amazon is known for being an incredibly customer-focused brand. They also have a challenging culture that's difficult for many people to work in because expectations for being customer-focused are so high. Amazon succeeds because it has a distinctive culture, but that culture is clearly not the right culture for everyone.

"I also think most leaders at the top would consider culture to be a human resources function and branding to be a marketing function. So it becomes dysfunctional where each department is doing its own thing and there's a lack of leadership to bring these functions together.

"A lot of executives tend to misunderstand both culture and brand. Many think of branding as just advertising or a logo. Culture can be the same way where executives liken it to ping pong tables or free beer Fridays. It becomes something that's tactical where you can just check it off the list rather than something that's fundamentally ingrained in your organization's core values."

Q: What's the connection between a brand-culture fusion and customer service?

"In Fusion, I outline nine general brand types. 

"One type of brand is Service, which are companies like The Ritz-Carlton that use service to differentiate their brand from competitors. So a service-focused culture becomes critically important for these organizations. 

"But all companies need to provide good customer service, even if it uses luxury, value, or another brand type besides service to differentiate itself. It's essential for all companies to have a brand guide or toolkit that helps all employees bring your brand values to life in all facets of the company.

"This helps people align their decisions with the brand and culture, such as how to interact with a customer."

(Note: You can learn more by taking this Fusion Assessment.)

Q: What is the one thing you really want people to know about the brand-culture fusion?

"Just one?! A few come to mind!

"The top one might be that your culture needs to be as unique as your brand. It's not enough to just be generic like friendly, supportive, etc. You need a distinctive culture to really produce specific results that are on brand and motivate employees to do what we need them to do.

"It's also important for people to understand there's a difference between simple and easy when it comes to culture-building. I think the concepts behind  brand-culture fusion are simple, but culture is not easy!"

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Fusion is a must-read for anyone interested in marketing, branding, or service culture. It's available in e-book and hardcover formats.