Thursday, March 06, 2008
Trust - it's all important on the Internet
How much do you trust the web sites you visit? You trust the BBC perhaps? Or you could trust Google to deliver the goods. Or maybe you trust Amazon? But whichever sites you trust, you probably have a "gut instinct" for some sites you visit that makes you doubt their voracity.
So where do we get that "gut instinct" from? Well, a large slice of it is built from what we hear, see and feel about particular businesses. For example, the other day I got a phone call from Talk Talk - a UK broadband supplier. They told me not to worry, they were not trying to sell me anything, then immediately tried to sell me broadband. When I complained and said "Hang on a mo, you've just said you're not selling, then you try to sell me broadband", the caller said it wasn't a sale because I would be saving money and sales only happen when you spend it.
Now apart from this leap in logic that astounded me, I didn't want to continue the call. Why? Because I no longer trusted the company. The caller had clearly lied to me; but also I knew in the back of my mind that Talk Talk was not the best of breed in its marketplace. In other words, my prior experience informed my feelings for the company.
So, think how surprised I was today to discover that PlusNet has been awarded the "best customer service" award for UK broadband suppliers. I used to be with PlusNet and the main reason I departed them was their dreadful customer service. In fact I now pay more per month for my supplier, Zen Internet, but I cannot fault them on speed or service, so I get value for money.
So how come PlusNet has been awarded this prize I thought. Well, the prize comes from Broadband Choices - a price comparison site. The site looks good, has some professional features, so makes you feel reasonably comfortable. But my prior experience of PlusNet makes me doubt them; the trust I could have in them is being nibbled away at. It's made worse if you search for "PlusNet customer service" on Google, because you will discover page after page that include words like "dreadful", "terrible" and "inconsistent". So, not only does my personal experience not match the Broadband Choices suggestion, it seems I am not alone.
If you delve into the Broadband Choices web site you discover that they earn their income from the suppliers who advertise on their site. They claim that the awards are based on their site user views and have nothing to do with the fact that people advertise on the site. But my supplier, Zen, with its great customer service, does not advertise on Broadband Choices, so they have no ability to win. As a result, the whole business model of Broadband Choices means that its results will inevitably be biased and skewed. So do I trust Broadband Choices? Well, what do you think?
In fact, price comparison sites generally cannot be trusted. Only those who review their entire marketplace and make their money in other ways - true independent sites - can be trusted. And there are precious few of them.
So, here we are in a situation where I have little trust in a site. That lack of trust comes from a combination of personal experience, a bit of Googling and reading a web page or two. For your business it means that your web site's success depends upon similar factors. So, what experience do people have of your business. If you fail to answer the phone promptly, or if you provide poor customer service, or have telesales agents who are stroppy, then all these things will influence whether or not your web site succeeds.
Too many businesses believe that web site success is down to Google ranking. That's the least of your worries. Your online success is much more to do with people's overall experience of your business. Get that right and your web site will do well. Get that wrong and you'll be like PlusNet with dozens of web pages and links saying you are rubbish - which outweighs any awards they might receive.
Labels: internet, internet marketing, internet psychology
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Readers' Comments:
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March 06, 2008 12:47 PM 
Michael Phillips said…
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March 06, 2008 4:47 PM 
Graham Jones said…
Michael, thanks for the clarification. I take your point. However, even though YouGov is respected their survey method you describe means their results are inevitably biased towards only the big suppliers. It means that the best customer service could well come from a smaller company, but they never get known for it because the survey excludes them.
Selecting samples on the basis that YouGov did makes their job easier, but actually makes their results rather meaningless. You say that the risks of getting the data wrong are far too high. I agree. The problem is that the way the study was conducted (sample choice) inevitably means the data is wrong.
The way to have done the study would to have taken a random sample of, say, 1-2% of customers from every broadband supplier and then compare the results. To exclude certain suppliers on the basis of size means that the results would not be representative. It ultimately means that this survey is rather useless as an indicator of anything.
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March 07, 2008 9:16 AM Michael Phillips said…
Hi again.
I completely agree with your final point. When we do the next round of survey (in a few months) I plan to approach smaller ISPs to provide a list of customers to be part of the survey, thus making the results more interesting.
I disagree that the results are meaningless. Most consumers are drawn to big brands, so it helps to have our data to chooase between these brands, although it would obviously be better if the league was larger.
Thanks for posting my commments, I really appreciate it
Michael
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March 08, 2008 8:09 AM Graham Jones said…
Michael, it's good to hear that you are planning other research. However, could it be that consumers are drawn to big brands because surveys like yours only include the big brands? In other words your survey denies people the choice because the information they receive is limited. Hence your new survey is essential.
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March 10, 2008 3:53 PM Neil Armstrong said…
Hi Graham,
Firstly, I found your article a really interesting read - I totally agree that trust is of increasing importance in most product and service purchasing decisions. I particularly agree with your conclusion paragraph that 'real' customer comment far outweigh the value of any award.
The internet with its plethora of blogs, review sites, comparison engines and discussion forums provides a wealth of information for prospective customers. There is no way to hide from the truth and marketing spin just doesn't work in the 21st century. We've long believed in The ClueTrain Manifesto and Seth Godin's philosophies. Our business is fundamentally built on the karma of good service experience leading to sales through recommendation.
I repeated your search on Google and noticed that almost all of the negative views regarding PlusNet stem from 2006, which I think is also the year we gave you particularly poor service? If no-one did at the time, I’d like to apologise for whatever we did that caused you to leave dissatisfied. If you’d like to email me your old username or give me some details I’d be very interested to see what we did wrong and I’ll do what I can to try and fix it.
2006 was certainly our annus horribilis. You might be interested to read an article I wrote in January that looks back to PlusNet's dark days:
http://community.plus.net/blog/2008/01/24/flashback-to-the-dark-days/
We’ve spent 2007 rebuilding our business, treating our customers far better and trying to improve our reputation to win back the trust. And I believe we’ve come a long long way (but not all the way yet). If you have a look around almost any comparison site or discussion sites you’ll find that today, our reputation is widely considered to be massively improved. The latest blog alert I got from Google for example was this:
http://sirbendy.jemjabella.co.uk/2008/03/09/bloody-hell-im-impressed/
So, winning awards isn’t the endgame for us. But awards are useful indications that we’re heading in the right direction. ‘Winning’ for me is regaining the trust of ex-customers such as yourself enough that you’d risk giving us a second chance.
Thanks
Neil Armstrong,
Products Director,
PlusNet
narmstrong at plus dot net
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March 10, 2008 4:13 PM Graham Jones said…
Neil
Thank you for your comment. It's very kind of you to explain things. You clearly had some "dark days" as you say and I'm sure you are glad they are over.
However, the Google results don't make comfortable reading for you. Even though they are from 2006, many come up on the front page. People rarely go beyond this. As a result, their reaction is likely to be negative towards you - in spite of your improvements.
You appear to be in a situation that many companies face. They have moved on, but the legacy of the Internet has not. What this really means is that most businesses are not doing anything near enough to make sure their online reputation matches their current position. An article here and a blog there which is positive about a business does not compensate for dozens of pages which are negative and which have become "sticky" to Google.
So, it's obviously good that things have improved for your business and the the award recognises your recent changes. But it's not so good that the Internet still thinks you are stuck in 2006. Those reviews on comparison sites frequently don't get indexed by Google; so good as they are, they are only worthwhile to a point.
As for giving you a second chance, thanks for suggesting I do this, but you would have to offer something remarkable to take me away from Zen.
I am Product Director for BroadbandChoices.co.uk.
I would like to point out the data was put together by uGov (a well respected independent research company). We do not have any influence over the data for commercial gain.
The reason the list is limited to 10 is due to the minimal number of customers ISPs like Zen actually have, this means their customers don't get picked up in the 4000 people surveyed. (4000 is a very good sample size)
We do make our commissions from ISPs, but no one ISP makes our businss succeed.
We have to be honest in presenting these results, the risks of getting this sort of data wrong are far too high.
I hope this helps
Michael Phillips