Church of the People recently reposted this graph depicting the changes in where consumers place their trust in the last year (click through to their page to see the graph larger).  The biggest changes that are evident here are the sharp decline in rtrust of company/government spokespersons and marked rise in trust of “someone just like you.”

What does this mean for businesses, smal and otherwise?  Charles Green, guestblooging at 1to1 Media, suggests that the solution to the decline in consumer trust in businesses is simpler than you’d think, and begins by trusting your customers.  How can a business put that into action?  Read on for some of Green’s suggestions and read his full post for more insight into the inner mechanics of trust.

There are many ways you can begin to trust your customers. Give a penny, take a penny is a very small retail example, but you can scale the idea, too. Try offering more free information. If someone asks a question (e.g., “how much does it cost unbundled?”), answer it. If you don’t offer a feature, say so. Make more information available on your website. Offer guarantees, no questions asked. Give out free samples; give out free advice.

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Smashing Magazine delivers a great long form article on upping the ante with customer service.  The article has both broad strokes, including advice like “If we do not engage with our clients in a real, personal way, then we are just another vendor — and vendors are easily replaceable with better cheaper options,”  (emphasis in original)  as well as case studies, like the work they did with the Tori Lynn Andreozzi Foundation.

A new customer service interface called Desk.com could be a powerful asset for small businesses in particular because it streamlines the various streams of communication that your customers might reach out to you through.  Desk.com’s parent company Assistly (a recent acquisition of Salesforce) works well with massive companies like Starbucks and Bank of America, but Desk.com is more tailored to smaller customer service teams, including those at TED, Spotify, Yelp, Vimeo and Instagram.

Tech Journal shares their thoughts on the concept of “customer blind spots,” and speak firmly in favor of continuing to wow customers after the point of purchase in order to avoid them switching to competitors.  They surveyed a number of customers, and identified that in particular “Wireless phone, cable and gas/electric utilities providers each experienced the greatest increase in consumer switching – five percentage points.”  They determine that the blind spots come from this observation:

The study found that consumers rate “having the service experience match the promise a company makes to me up front” as one of the most important areas of customer service. Yet the greatest service frustration cited is a provider’s failure to deliver on the service experience promised up front.

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Some great posts from stalwart content creators in the last week or so in the realm of customer service:

Ron Kaufman, guestposting at Who’s Your Gladys?, writes a great piece on overcoming initial defensiveness when faced with customer criticism and how he got beyond that to create an engaged customer.  His anecdote is as telling about himself as his methods, and worth learning from.

Lisa Barone articulates a nuanced point here about the difference between being the face of a company or a brand and “injecting personality” into your social media.  A serious misstep from a well-known brand to learn from here.

At Duct Tape Marketing, Jon Jantsch gives an overview of how to create both a shared sense of ownership between employers and staff as well as guidelines for actual, brick and mortar shared ownership.  A bit controversial, but easy to see the benefits of “…remove[ing] politics and free[ing] people to stretch far beyond the confines of the normal job description.” 

The Susan Boyle intro, while a lovely story, actually seemed to distract from the point made by Cynthia Clark over at 1to1 Media about centering the customer’s voice in company reflections.  Click through for case studies including Avon and Boston Scientific.

Some articles we’ve been perusing at ARMA:

Ivana Taylor at OPEN Forum wrote an article including great tips on improving customer service, particularly through website design and navigation.  If you’ve been struggling with how to bring the mobile and digital experiences to your business, this could be a good introduction.

Marilyn at Who’s Your Gladys? has a consistently fresh perspective on customer satisfaction.  Her most recent article on company vision is no exception.  She starts by asking a question that makes you groan, but then smartly turns around and demonstrates that she knows very well that its groanworthy.  In the interest of broadening company vision to include the perspectives of employees, she poses a few questions that you could as well.  One in particular stands out:  “If you were to take 5% more responsibility for creating a happy work place environment this year, what would you do?”  Your employees’ answers might surprise you.

Ginger Conlin at 1to1 Media has issued a call to arms, particular for those who frequent NYC, to chime in on your most customer-centric venues.  Head over to give your two cents or just check out the list!

The question, of course, is whether the customer is happy, and by extension, whether they’ll come back.  Like most companies, both customer-facing and B2B, ARMA wonders if the folks we work with and provide services for are happy.  And we ask them in a variety of ways, in an effort to get the best sense of how they feel about our services. 

John Mariotti suggests that the best way to ascertain customer happiness is to make it simple.  He boils most of it down to the classic query “Would you recommend this to a friend?” followed by a request for a typed answer rather than picking only from a list of drop downs.  Read the rest of his post for the rationale, but he could be onto something. 

How do you measure customer satisfaction with your services?

Some wisdom gleamed from posts around the web that caught our eye:

Don’t be shy about talking pricing, in person and on your website, according to Susan Payton at Small Business Trends.  Withholding that information can lead to customer frustration and waste both your customers time and your own.

People2People remind us of the ways CRM can be used throughout the process of gaining and retaining customers, especially to make it as easy for your clients to contact you as possible.

Rohit Bhargava at OPEN Forum talks about the how to stereotype your customers successfully.  The word stereotype is sort of bombastic in this sense, but the technique she describes is a useful one.

And from Lifehacker, we learn from a technique they teach consumers about how to get something from us, providers of services.  The lesson for us, is that a little bit of positivity goes a long way towards easing the reception of criticism.

Over at Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch offers up an unusual mantra that really struck us here at ARMA:

“…the secret to success is to be willing to do the things that others aren’t…”

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Its the sort of line than can have a quite negative connotation, but the positive connotation is, we think, one that can be learned from.  That the extra steps you and your business take, beyond what others are willing to do, is what makes you and your business successful.

We like it.  Does anyone else have any other unusual business mantras they’d like to share?

Phone-based customer service is constantly changing, particularly in the shift towards internet-based services, butis still utilized by numerous small businesses.  Check out this infographic borrowed from the aptly named Infographic List with some customer service facts and figures, with particular relevance to folks who run phone lines. 

A few unusual or off-the-wall customer service tricks and tips caught our eye at ARMA recently:

Scott Ginsberg wrote a post with four tips concerning customer engagement that could probably all be put in this post.  One suggested he makes in particular is to “lower the threat level.”  Its definitely a bit of pop psychology, but we think there’s something propping it up.  Ginsberg thinks, “People have been sold, scammed, conned, manipulated and used too long—and they’re tired of it,” and he’s probably right.  So look at your processes, look at your workflows.  If there’s a juncture where you can decrease the possibility of confrontation and make it easier for your customer, do it.  Check the link for an example of how.

Mila D’Antonia at the 1to1 Blog emphasized the importance of acknowledging consumer power.  The tip here is somewhat implicit, but spelled out its pretty simple:  Pay attention to sea change.  Netflix is the easiest example of a recent giant that fell to the empowered consumer bloc.  Don’t let yourself make the same mistakes.

From the Consumerist, what we have is more of an anti-tip.  They recently reported on a story where an airline passenger’s laptop was “lost” somewhere between checking in and arrival at her destination.  “[The airline representative] immediately told me [the airline] was not responsible for checked computers and she wanted to know why I had checked my computer, which was a real clincher.”  Without discussing the wisdom in checking something so valuable, its pretty clear that this is customer disservice.  Let’s talk about what the passenger did.  She used Craigslist to locate her laptop and in conjunction with police, they discovered that the folks who had stolen the laptop had another 10-15 more that were later identified  to be stolen from the same airline.  This was obviously not one person’s mistake, which means that the airline needed to step it up. 

How would you have dealt with the lost laptop, either before or after the discovery of the other stolen computers?

We enjoyed this video interview with Tina Valdez about utilizing technology to  increase customer service by the 1to1 Media Team: