I felt like titling this article “The Good Guys Win.” The Good Guys win because there is empirical evidence from a recent study that ties outstanding customer service to increased revenue. Really… being a good corporate citizen pays.

It turns out that Excellent Customer Service pays dividends — according to recent research sponsored by American Express, a majority of customers report spending 9% more with companies that provide excellent customer service. AMX recently published findings from its Global Customer Service Barometer research and there is great news here for businesses.

In this economy, you’d have to work awfully hard to increase customer spending at any level, let alone 9%. If you do business globally and serve India and Japan, the news is even better — 11% and 10% increases respectively.

American Express Global Service Barometer

Moreover, a majority are reporting that this matters more to them in our current down economic climate — just when you might think that the price would rule.

Good News for Online Competition?

While not specifically geared toward online buying — there are two additional insights that may help companies that compete online to gain a competitive advantage:

• Mind the Gap

The study reports a significant gap between the willingness on respondents’ part to spend more and the numbers of companies they believe deliver on that level of excellent customer service.

Additionally, repeat business — aka The Holy Grail of Business — goes through the roof when you provide outstanding customer service. 81% report giving a company repeat business when they have provided good customer service, whereas 52% say they will never do business with them again after a bad customer experience.

Minding the competitive gap between those that deliver outstanding customer service and those that fall short and scooping up the spoils while competitors are asleep at the switch (one of my Dad’s favorite expressions) seems like a winning strategy.

• Online Blowback

48% of the survey respondents’ reported “always” or “often” using online review site postings or opinions in blogs to get information about a company’s customer service. Great, you say. Except here’s the Online Blowback — they believe negative reviews more than the positive ones.

Once again, monitoring and managing online reputations matter to your bottom line. Negatives mattering more than positives (particularly when it seems as though just about any crackpot can then do damage) is a tough nut to deal with yet it is always better to know the impact and work from a position of knowledge.

So, being one of the Good Guys that simply believe Excellent Customer Service is the Right Thing to Do just got a little better, didn’t it?

Whatever goals you’ve set for your business website, there’s usually a constant need to gain greater online visibility to accomplish them.

You’ll want to make sure you have a workable plan to secure that growth. The first step you need to take in building that plan is to Identify your Online Competition.

This generally comes as quite a surprise to people we work with – who quite naturally believe they’ve got their competition pretty well scoped out. You may find some surprising — and aggravating — differences in how you need to think about competition online.

Any entity that stands between you and the top ranking positions online are now your competitors for visibility. And you will find that some of them aren’t competing with your products or services at all yet they own the high-visibility space you want.

More specifically, you need to take into consideration two distinct classes of competitors:

1. Businesses and organizations that compete against your products and services — your classic competitors.
2. Entitles that may not represent direct competition to you, yet they “hog” the top ranking positions in Search Engines.

Why does this matter? If a linchpin to your organization’s success is to drive higher volumes of relevant prospects to your website, you need to know which online channels represent the least degree of difficulty. This may mean thinking differently about Search Engines as a primary channel.

Some of these non-traditional competitors represent formidable obstacles that you might want to avoid — at least initially.

How do you know if the degree of difficulty is too high? Non-traditional competitors may be ceded great credibility and authority in the Search Engines, which is a factor in their ranking algorithms. They may have significant popularity, incoming links and media (again, ranking factors) that you will need to match or beat to get the visibility you want.

Examples of Non-traditional Online Competitors for Visibility:

• Government Entities, such as National Institute of Health (NIH)
• Professional Organizations, such as National Education Association (NEA)
• Educational Institutes, such as Stanford University
• Major media outlets, such as The New York Times or CNN
• Significant online portals, such as Wikipedia

Take a look at who owns the top positions for keyword phrases you want in Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Dissect their success. How many incoming links do they have? Do they have a lot of content that the Search Engines value, such as blogs, videos, and interactive elements? Is there evidence of thoughtful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) activity? You may want to read Smart Keyword Marketing for some fresh ideas.

Getting to the top of the Search Engines is a laudable goal. After all, you can attract many searchers who are quite possibly engaged in their buying consideration process — Nirvana! Yet competition and your situation may necessitate a different strategic approach.

Your Internet marketing strategy may need to factor in a more creative mix of online channels. With the phenomenal growth of Social Networks and the ease/low cost of creating new media, there has never been a better time to diversify your mix of Internet marketing channels.

That’s right, you read that correctly: Sentiment Analysis. And I think it’s going to be BIG. It is, however, a tool that is highly subjective and subject to the limitations of context.

A Working Definition of Sentiment Analysis: Sentiment Analysis (SA) is a tool that operates at the macro level, collecting real-time online communications about a company, product or issue and assigning a positive or negative value to the collective thoughts of the online commentary. Call it Market Insight.

Powered by technologies such as natural language processing, text mining and proprietary algorithms, SA search spiders retrieve communications from the growing host of Social Media sites on a real-time basis, score them using their proprietary algorithms and assign a value to the collective consciousness.

I’m using the term “conversations” here quite broadly to range from actual online conversations to things like ratings, and reviews retrieved from Social Media sites such as: Blogs, Business Portals, Microblogs (think Twitter), Forums, Message Boards, Review Sites, etc.

by Stablio Boss

As covered in previous posts, the world of citizen journalists can be pretty snarky, uninformed and downright mean-spirited at times. Staying on top of this can be daunting; companies and individuals need tools to help manage their online reputation.

Sentiment Analysis, as a nascent industry, is not perfect by any means. Industry insiders themselves say that the current state of performance has around 70-80% accuracy. Yet Web 2.0 has unleashed a monster. Easy to use Web 2.0 functionality enables pretty much anyone to weigh in with opinions on everything under the sun putting businesses and individuals (celebrities, thought leaders, etc.) at the mercy of this new capability. It requires new skills, processes and tools to manage.

Sentiment Analysis is a next step tool that expands upon the growing army of Online Monitoring tools and Online Reputation Management Strategy & Planning to aid organizations in their online reputation management efforts. Start-ups have sprung up to capitalize on the growing need for businesses, organizations and even individuals to understand the collective consciousness that can define their online reputation.

How is Sentiment Analysis Changing Online Business Competition?

• Actionable Intelligence – businesses can see what the concerns are AND get a qualitative handle on how much of a problem they have.

• Immediacy – informed by the collective zeitgeist; learning about and managing a problem in its infancy rather than in a full-blown crisis and put a rapid response plan to work correcting the problem.

• Competitive Intelligence – think of the tremendous advantage your sales and marketing team would have if you had the scoop on what customers thought about your competitors’ products and services.

• Brand Management – what if your sales are down for non-product related reasons such as concerns about the company or your key executives? Learn all about that with SA tools, get improvement programs underway and put your PR department to work.

New companies are popping up to claim your heart, mind and wallet as well as stalwarts such as SAS. Visit our Online Reputation Management Tools area for a list of companies – from free to $$$ — that offer Sentiment Analysis tools.

Yes — that’s the SEC as in Southeastern Conference — university athletic programs in the Southeastern United States. LUCRATIVE athletic programs in many cases. Big Money.

You have to wonder whether these folks ever took college business courses that covered case studies about the Horse & Buggy companies that failed to understand and adapt to (then) cataclysmic marketplace changes. Earlier this month the SEC attempted some really drastic suppression of Social Media use by fans at their games to protect broadcast contracts with CBS (reported to be worth $3B over 15 years) and their own interests.

They apparently see the fans use of Social Media, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. to be online business competition that would negatively affect CBS returns. Yikes! What planet have these folks been on? Well, there are many things going on here. Digital Rights Management issues are always troublesome, but they are missing a fundamental grasp of what’s at work here.

Round 1 — earlier this month the SEC produced this edict: “Ticketed fans can’t produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event.”

Well, as you can imagine, that didn’t go over so well with the fans. In fact, they were forced to back off that. After all, most of the people in the stands are not doing anything but networking online with their pals.

The SEC really wasn’t out to control casual fan use – but they did show an abyssal lack of understanding about major changes in consumer behavior when a smarter move would have been to encourage, facilitate and capitalize on fans viral marketing on their behalf. Presumably what they were really after was the growing body of professional & semi-pro Internet entrepreneurs who piggyback off of the high-quality material that strategic partners like CBS produce, add more to it, and then use it for their commercial purposes on fan sites, etc. It’s big business.

Round 2 — by mid-month the outrage among the fans caused them to back off that draconian edit, to a lesser stance prohibiting real-time distribution of photographs and video of their games. They let their fans become fodder in their larger online business competition battle — who controls the digital rights to myriad aspects of spectator sports. That won’t get resolved easily, it’s a battle that rages at all levels with some really stupid behavior involved, like this.

What I find most interesting is this: They Don’t Get It. Social Media can be a real Bonanza to any business when it is creatively leveraged. Fans that send live pictures of a great catch to friends who then all start chatting it up are what most businesses dream about — engaged customers who evangelize to others and get them excited as well. Think of the possibilities… $$$

Yes, new digital technology and how it may erode their control of the revenue coming from sports is a big issue — but there are probably far more gains to be made from creative leverage of that activity – at the fan level and with outright business competitors — than losses. At any rate, no one has ever won in the long run by trying to suppress technology advances. (well… unless you count oil companies )

The consumer is in the catbird seat now. And yes, that creates some different competitive challenges. This is not going away and you can’t ram edicts down the throats of those consumers caught in the middle and expect them to meekly obey. So much more pleasant to join them.

What are they doing? They’re doing a Twitter Opera!

The London Royal Opera House is asking Twitter users to help develop the libretto (the words) for an opera it commissioned to be performed live in September.

Why is this newsworthy? Because it is brilliant online business competition. Competition for Audience, Money and Creative Creds.

Courtesy: maelstrom4ever

They primed the pump with this beginning: “One morning, very early, a man and a woman were standing arm-in-arm, in London’s Covenant Garden. The man turned to the woman and he sang…”

Twitter users are requested to suggest the rest. In case you are interested in participating, you can contribute via the Opera House’s Twitter Feed.

So — What’s the Online Business Competition Angle?

• Audience — the arts have been hurt, along with the rest of the world, in this “recession.” Folks are just plain cutting back and someone has to lose in a category. Yet “the show must go on.” Stiff Upper Lip and All That Rot. How interesting that an organization as traditional as the Royal Opera has found a way to get a leg up on their competitors by broadening their audience appeal.
• M-O-N-E-Y — budget cuts galore in all organizations and yet the Royal Opera has rather brilliantly come up with an online viral marketing tactic that costs them, let’s see… nothing? No doubt it is also stimulating ticket sales, too. Cheerio!
• Creativity Creds — Well, it was pretty daggone creative but not original — Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra tweeted Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony a few weeks ago. I also read accounts of at least 7 other Twitter operas documented on YouTube. Nonetheless, it is pretty creative and tremendously engaging. I think they’re onto something that clearly differentiates from their competitors.

What’s this have to do with your business? You’ve got me — but surely this gives you some food for thought to prime your creative pump and build competitive advantage. Put another way — get there before your competitors do.

Why is it that so many people claim they “are not really all the competitive?”

I certainly am competitive. In fact, I think it is A Good Thing. However, my husband no longer will play monopoly with me… or as he says “Killer Monopoly.”

Competition is a subject that has always fascinated me. And so, when I ran across Psyched Out in The Economist – I was intrigued. It was tailor-made for me.

What’s it All About?

It’s about a study done by two behavioral researchers seeking to learn if the number of participants in a competition had an effect on the behavior of the competitors.

The Net/Net? They found that the level of individual competitive effort declined as the number of competitors involved increased. Very interesting.

If there were many competitors (or a perception of many competitors), participants in a competitive situation had a tendency to assess their odds as less favorable and scale back their efforts. In other words, they gave up hope for a strong win.

By: gfrphoto

The Takeaway? When assessing your business competition — online or offline — it might be good to evaluate the number of participants in your competitive field. Fewer competitors? You may need a different approach than you would with numerous competitors.

For Online Business Competition, consider these actions in tight competitive markets:

• Develop more sophisticated competitive intelligence observation skills
• Use bleeding edge competitive intelligence-gathering technology & tools
• Assume fast response to your moves — contingency plans anyone?
• Assess each competitive move and “checkmate” key moves — fast
• Be wary of price-down efforts that can permanently kill your profits
• Dealing with irrational competitors? Don’t go over the bridge with them!

Perhaps it goes without saying — yet if you find yourself in a larger competitive field — take advantage of this mental shift and move aggressively to build a competitive advantage for your business while the rest of your competitors hang back.