Two latest Apple products are generating a lot of press and some of it is decidedly negative – iPad and iPhone 4. This writing will focus on the analysis of the iPad devices. When you try do “comparative” analysis one starts with a list of products to compare and iPad makes it very difficult as it seem to be positioned to compete with e-readers as well as tablets. The tablets category definition presents us with yet another challenge, so for the purpose of this analysis I decided to compare iPad with popular e- or digital book devices as well as some tablet devices that do not have a physical keyboards. Some popular retail website offer a very useful hint to see what percent of people who looked at a product actually purchased it, and if not what was the product they did, however in the case of iPad or Kindle such information was thoughtfully removed from every site I have checked. I also am very disappointed not to find any customer reviews on the Apple store website. It is very hard to believe that none of over 3 millions of  iPad customers did not write about their product experience on the manufacturer store site. The only possible explanation of that can be found in accusations that Apple actually censors the iPad customer discussions the same way as they accused of doing for iPhone4 here and here. It is very disturbing if it is true.

So here is the list of products I have decided to compare in terms of them meeting their customers expectations. You can make it larger if you click on the report.

Here is the scale legend for better understanding of the report.

iPad did not meet expectations of their customers, who wrote the reviews with 53% reported negative experiences (0.91) related to Reliability, and 65% of comments about Support were negative (0.94). To be fair, the customers are overwhelmingly impressed with screen readability (100% rated 1.81)  and usability of the device (96% rated 1.53).

I know the Apple just reported 78% increase in profits, but with 63% of their flagship product customers reporting that its value did not meet their expectations (0.98), I can’t help but wonder how long it would take for Apple to start loosing it’s “freshness”.

This is an example of how our algorithms translate qualitative data (Word of Mouth, Customer Feedback, Voice of Customer) into quantitative, structured information. Our customers are using this tool to do pre-survey research, to identify the questions the subsequent survey validation.

DVD and Blu-ray devices analysis by Chris Haugley

Sylvania NB530SLX Blu-ray disc player wins 2010 Piplzchoice Award

So far it gave birth to hordes of consultants and marketing services that promote ideas of influencer chasing and reputation management monitoring technologies, however the “scream” of offerings seem to counteract the idea of increasing the volume of the voice of customer.

One example is a number of websites, offering depository of customer reviews about products and/or services, outnumber the customers who are willing and capable to contribute to these depositories. The end result seems to be counterproductive as consumers who look for such information are hassled to sites that have no content to offer.

Some companies spend substantial energy to explore and pursue some form of activity involving Social Media and there are very few, but loudly celebrated examples of those. However that doesn’t seem to change overall reputation of these companies. One of my favorite whipping “boys” – Comcast is still rated dismally for the delivery of their customers experience, despite heroic efforts of their Social Media team on Twitter and Facebook.  Here is another example, a darling of the Social Media mavens – LinkedIn. Based on Customer Service Scoreboard scores

LinkedIn is ranked #253 out of the 273 companies that have a CustomerServiceScoreboard.com rating with an overall score of 19.35 out of a possible 200. This score rates LinkedIn customer service and customer support as Terrible.

There 56 negative comments vs 1 positive one and most of them by paying subscribers, who cannot get their issues resolved. Ironically the 19.35 score is below the LinkedIn lowest monthly subscription fee of $24.95.

I know that 56 complains is a very small number considering millions of people who use the network, but I wonder what is a percentage of them who actually use it actively enough to care, and even more interesting is how many actually pay for it. I personally am one of them and my experience is one of neglect. I have an issue outstanding for almost two years without resolution. The issue resurface from time to time and causes me a lot of aggravation and waste of time. I finally decided to use LinkedIn Inmail to escalate the problem to the founder of the company, Reid Hoffman.

On 7/2/10 12:18 PM, Gregory Yankelovich wrote:
——————–
I am expending a valuable Inmail credit and hope that you will read it.

This is the 3rd time I am erroneously locked out of my ability to ask for Introduction. I am paying customer, but I cannot get resolution for almost 2 years. The 1st time I have experienced this problem, I reported it 10/27/2008 and I am having problems with it once again and it negatively impacts my efforts to bring my product to the market.

I rely heavily on my network to reach out to potential customers and partners. However every time I encounter this problem I have to wait for 2-3 days for your Customer Support to reset the system’s counters. 2-3 days are a long time to waste in the life of a startup. I understand the power of reputation more than most people and don’t want to scream #fail all over Twitter. Please help.

To Reid’s credit he responded

Gregory,
I am reading it; I’ll put your issue into the executive escalations. Since I don’t know what you’re doing that hits problems, I don’t know if we support what you’re doing or not. (For example, not saying that this is what you’re doing, but we have very clear messaging limits to prevent spam.)
Hope it all works out. (And, btw, you can write what you feel is right on twitter: I apologize for where we step when we’re wrong or slow.)
all the best,
Reid

However his response was the only one, I am still waiting for any contact from the Customer Support. I eventually did express my frustration on Twitter:

Wasted yet another day waiting for help from #LinkedIn technical support – still no love.

What is a reasonable response time for #customersupport? Does anyone else has #LinkedIn Introduction Withdrawal or is it just me?

and here the reaction I have received

@piplzchoice Do you have a free linkedin account? If so, be thankful you get to use linkedin at all. Just sayin.

I did not write this to whine about my “misfortunes”, but to explore what, if anything, is actually changing with advent of Social Media in respect to the treatment of the customers. Advertisers keep complaining how difficult it is to gain share of consumer attention, yet when a company like LinkedIn or Facebook, does manage to do it, and end up raising enormous amounts of capital based on that fact, our attention doesn’t seem to be that valuable anymore. Let’s face it, Social Media is nothing more than another communication channel, like a next generation of telephone, radio, TV and email. All of these improved our life experiences at some cost to our privacy or quality of life, but how we use these channels is the only thing that may influence how Market delivers our Customer Experiences.

Portable USA PU-10W
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
26.8% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

Below is the list of the runner up products

2010 Piplzchoice Award for Digital Frames

and a sample of the Customer Satisfaction Index distribution from average for the best and the worst performers
Digital Frames Reputation – Deviation from average CSI

According to the research of Bruce Temkin, former Forrester analyst and an authority on Customer Experience management,

In Forrester’s 2010 Customer Experience Ranking of 133 companies, Comcast came in 126th for it’s Internet business and 125th for its TV service. It also came in 105th/109th out of 114 companies in the 2008 rankings and 95th/101st out of 112 firms in the 2007 rankings.

The point of this writing is not to bash Comcast, even though it definitely deserves bashing, but to ask an important question: Does the Customer Experience (or Customer Satisfaction) really matter if in spite of its miserable scores a company like Comcast can produce healthy profits?

These financial statements show steady growth in revenues and profits over the same periods, and the numbers do not provide any evidence to support the belief that mistreatment of the customers is a good business practice.

I have posed this question to Bruce and his response

“@piplzchoice Good question. Cust exp is a long-term asset. Comcast (and others in the industry) are squandering it. It will catch up to them.”

This response is encouraging, but not entirely satisfying because it appeals to emotional belief (faith). I would prefer some empiric evidence of correlation between profitability and customer experience ratings or reputation.

I have heard about Claes Fornell of CFI Group who has done very interesting work in that field, but yet to learn more about that methodology.

To be fair, one example, particularly of a company that operates in rapidly growing market with very few competitors, does not offer any meaningful insight and I would love to find some other, more representative examples.

Woody Allen once said – “I would gladly accept existence of God if he would give me some evidence of his existence, like transferring $5M to my Swiss bank account”. Please let me know if you are aware of any definitive studies and/or methodologies that quantify and/or predict financial performance based on the Customer Experience – I am still faithful, but yearn for evidence.

Motorola H680
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
44.5% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

For full list of products in this category and Customer Reviews used for this research, select “Accessories & Supplies > Telephone Accessories” Category in Product Reputation Market Intelligence Reporter on this site. The is only one runner up in this category – Jabra EXTREME Bluetooth Headset as the rest of the products failed to clear our filters.
2010 Piplzchoice Award for Bluetooth Headsets goes to Motorola H680

Like never before, Social Media is providing a colossal platform allowing us to hear what our customers are saying.   It is quickly becoming one of the best ways to engage a customer and gain valuable insight into their experience with our products as well as those of our competition.  Are you listening?

This explosive technology could permit any business to identify competitive threats or opportunities through information that might not otherwise be detected without listening to thousands of customers.  Historically, formal focus groups were utilized as the most common means of collecting this data in-person from the end user.  Perhaps one could imply that today social media is quickly becoming the new “focus group”.

Consider for a moment that while traditional focus groups draw in customers to discuss their experiences, so are Social Networks providing the same information.  Is there really a significant difference?  The value of a focus group depends largely on quality of questions posed to the participants with all the biases that are incorporated into a question. The main disparity is that social media presents a very public review of a product or company’s benefits and even shortcomings.  However, we must not ignore the exponential numbers of consumers who are vocalizing this valuable data.  It is often more candid than any focus group could provide.

Getting connected with them is just part of the solution.  Connecting & engaging within these social mediums is relatively easy part.  Nevertheless, just like any other ‘marketing” effort, its success is not realized without measurement.  Therefore, the opportunity exists in figuring out what to do with the unstructured data.

Fortunately there is technology available to “interpret” this valuable data. Utilizing a multi-dimensional analysis, we convert various forms of feedback into an actionable plan then we take it one step further.  We are examining customer ratings across the market of nearly 20,000 products.  Many of the companies who have attempted their own translations had to invest very significant amounts of money into text mining implementation projects that allow handling feedback about only their own products.  With more than 2 million reviews, our database can deliver satisfaction scores from real world consumers about your products as well as that of your competition.

Self help author and motivational speaker, Robert Kiyosaki,  was quoted last year as saying ‘I am a bit old to focus on social media now but I spend an average of two hundred thousand dollars monthly through hired employees or consultants on social media, online reputation etc’.  While the use of social media as a marketing tool is still in its early stages, let’s not ignore this novel opportunity to act on customer feedback.

Piplzchoice award for Photo Printers goes to Canon IP90v