Once upon a time, embarrassing little slip-ups in customer service could be swept under the rug. If your brand was able to maintain a generally consumer-friendly reputation, you didn’t need to worry about isolated incidents doing much to damage that rep.

In a world where the internet and social media reign supreme, however, this is no longer the case. Particularly bad experiences will be shared with the world digitally, going viral and causing major headaches for your PR department.

For instance, one foolish employee types in a racial slur on a receipt for a pizza delivery.  A photo of the receipt gets posted to Twitter, retweeted by thousands of people, and turned into a national news story.

In another case, a single lazy deliveryman carelessly tosses a package filled with fragile cargo over a fence. The security camera recording is posted to YouTube and viewed by over 8 million people.

There are plenty of other notable examples, and if you’re one to peruse social media, you’ve undoubtedly encountered several.

The toughest thing about these incidents is that they’re extremely difficult to avoid, from a company standpoint. Papa John’s and FedEx both put considerable effort into fostering a customer-centric culture, and are generally successful in that regard, but it’s nearly impossible to protect against rogue employees who stray from that culture. One embarrassing incident such as the ones above can undo years of work toward building a desirable image.

The best answer? Make sure your hiring and training processes are top-notch, and that your customer-centric ideology is actively promoted, so that these kinds of situations can be avoided. When they do arise, have a strategy in place so that you’re ready to respond swiftly and firmly.

When I go shopping, I have some pretty strict rules that govern my choice of store, given the product selection I’m looking for.

For example, where do I go for groceries – Cub or Rainbow? The Cub store nearest me has easy access to parking, the aisles are wide and the checkout process is usually pretty fast and painless. My local Rainbow?  The parking lot is a nightmare, the aisles are crowded and illogical, and the checkout process takes forever. So, no brainer, I go to Cub.

I use the same rules to decide if I go to Office Max or Office Depot, Target or Walmart, and so forth.

However, when I run out for lunch, I repeatedly go to a local restaurant where it regularly takes a 10 minute cruise to find a parking spot, the lines are long and checkout can take anywhere from two minutes to 10 minutes. Why?

The answer is quality and service. The food is always good, the people behind the counter greet me cheerfully and remember my favorite meal choice and I always feel better after going there.

This store has managed to get me to break my own rules by providing benefits that outweigh the negatives when I’m making a choice.

I often imagine store management rubbing their hands together in joy when they see a packed parking lot, crowded aisles and long checkout lines.  I wonder if they also know what percentage of their customers is thinking, “I’ll never come here again!” and what percentage is thinking, “This is bad, but it’s worth it.”

If I were them, I’d make sure I did know, and I’d engage my entire staff in decreasing the first and increasing the second – convincing customers that the end result is worth a bit of pain.

Car dealerships and car salesmen get a bad rap for being crooked, uncaring and even slimy. However, this last spring my husband and I had a wonderful customer experience with the purchase of our 2011 Jeep Liberty.

We were previous Jeep owners and we were partial to purchasing another Jeep. However, with all of the changes in the SUV market and the cost of gasoline, we were hesitant. After spending weeks looking through advertisements and test-driving other vehicles, we headed to a Five Star Chrysler Jeep dealership near our home. A friendly salesman greeted us and as we discussed our concerns he answered our questions and recommended we start our decision process by test-driving a Jeep Patriot, which he told us to take for the day.

Upon returning the vehicle, we explained our aversions and he scheduled us to test-drive a Dodge Journey the following Saturday, again for the day. After returning the vehicle and reviewing the pros and cons, we went back the following week and took a day to test-drive the Jeep Liberty, which we ultimately decided to purchase.

The salesman made it a point to create an easy and stress-free customer experience. He was engaged with our concerns and worked with us to ensure we made the right decision rather than just selling a car. The real difference was test-driving a car for a day without a sales rep in the passenger seat. In my opinion, this tactic creates trust between the customer and the dealership.

Our exceptional experience didn’t end there. A few days later we received a call from the dealership asking for feedback on our sales rep, our purchasing experience, and what they could do to improve things in the future. That same week we received a hand-written note from the General Manager thanking us for our business. A few months later, we received a call from our salesman asking if we were still happy with our choice and reminding us that our first oil change was complimentary. Then last month, when my husband brought the Jeep in for service, the salesman greeted my husband in the customer lounge, asked if he needed a ride home rather than waiting, and offered to help my husband with his Christmas shopping – he had a brand new convertible in the show room that was just my color, and he was sure I’d love it. As expected, a few days afterwards, we received a friendly call from the dealership asking how our service was and if we had any concerns or suggestions.

This dealership obviously puts an enormous amount of emphasis on the customer experience and the customer relationship, even after the sale of the car. Because of this, we feel good about our purchase decision, as well as taking our vehicle there for service, and we have referred this dealership to others. I wish the retailer that sold us our big screen TV had the same customer experience and engagement policy!

Last week, the New York Times sent out an email to about 8.6 million people urging them to reconsider their decision to cancel home delivery and offering a discounted renewal rate.

The problem: most of these folks had never received home delivery from the Times, or hadn’t canceled. Confused, receivers of the email went about contacting the newspaper for an explanation. They received one – too hastily – as the company quickly tweeted the following: “If you received an e-mail today about canceling your New York Times subscription, ignore it. It’s not from us.”

Did the newspaper really expect readers to simply ignore the fact that their email addresses had apparently fallen into the hands of an outside party, which was now spamming them? In a consumer world where trust is essential, the Times seemed to have a real problem on their hands.

Later in the day, a correction was made, as the corporate communications department informed people that the email was, in fact, sent from the Times, and that a message intended for 300 people had accidentally been sent to their entire distribution list.

A regrettable mistake, to be sure, but far less alarming than the idea that their list had been hacked and their data compromised. Dispersing bad information for the sake of a quick response proved to be a very poor choice.

The entire snafu showed that even an organization as respected and sophisticated as the New York Times is not immune to massive missteps in public relations. When your customers’ trust is at stake, it’s incredibly important to get all the details right.

My wife and I have been looking for a new TV over the past few months and have spent considerable time researching online. After much scouring, we finally found the product we wanted on sale at a large electronics retailer. We were ready to buy.

Our first attempt to make the purchase was through the company’s website, where I learned that I could not order this particular product online. When I attempted to have it sent to the nearest store I was informed that it couldn’t be sent to any of the stores within the state of Minnesota.

This seemed odd since the website said the TV was available, and we really had our hearts set, so I called our local store to see if they might be able to acquire one so I could make the purchase in-store.

The associate there told me that their store had eight coming in on a shipment, but that it wasn’t clear whether any were available. Really? I’m sitting here, ready to spend, and your computer can’t even tell me whether the televisions you’re receiving are available to purchase?

Frustrated and nonplussed, I hung up and decided to try one more store. Here, I was connected to a much more accommodating associate who went to great lengths to try and track down the product I wanted, looking through their inventory and checking with several other stores.

Eventually it became apparent that I would not be able to purchase this item without driving out of state. The disappointing news was made easier to swallow by the helpfulness of this employee, and I ended up purchasing a different TV from the store.

Overall, it was an uneven experience, but fortunately ended well thanks to a positive final interaction. A less patient customer might have given up after the first try, however. This serves as a reminder that quality customer service should be uniformly applied across all operations, because a company’s promise of customer-centricity only works if embraced by every employee that interacts with the customer.

Here’s a reminder for all of us in the marketing mob. Every time I hear one of those insurance TV commercials touting that individuals can save $411 a year on average if they switch to brand X car insurance, I want to rip my hair out. Equally annoying are those ads that state that a person can save, on average, $795 a month if they switch to a “new and improved” drug prescription plan. Now maybe I am just a stats nerd, but for an individual to make a decision based solely on the average (in any scenario), seems absurd to me. Here’s why.

Let’s assume the insurance carrier in the TV ad provided us with the amounts of money people actually saved when they switched to their awesome car insurance (see table A). Notice that the average yearly savings for the nine individuals is $411. Great, let’s switch! Notice also that the standard deviation of the data (relax, standard deviation is an easy statistical concept) is $27.50. This amount gives an individual an idea of how spread-out the data is from the average. The larger the standard deviation the more widely the data varies. In scenario A, a standard deviation of $27.50 indicates that the yearly saving amounts for all nine participants were relatively close to the average of $411. Based on these figure (average and standard deviation), an individual is at least justified in looking into switching insurance carriers.

However, let’s assume the average yearly savings for the nine individuals looks a bit different (see table B). Notice that the average savings is still $411, but the standard deviation has increased drastically from scenario A –$27.50 to $539.05. This indicates that in scenario B the saving amounts are varying much more substantially from the average. An individual may still save $411, but their chances are lower than in the first scenario. An average yearly savings of $120 seems more probable in the second scenario, based on the figures provided and assuming a non-biased sample.

It’s a good practice for marketers to remember that average values tell an individual only half the story. Some companies (not just insurance) are betting that customers will change/switch/buy based on only this statistic. Using these tactics, the company might make a sale, but will it build customer loyalty once the person finds out how little they’ve saved?

Knowing how dispersed the data is (aka standard deviation) tells the other half of the story. Together, averages and corresponding standard deviations will help marketers make more accurate and credible claims.

So you’ve just spent several weeks conducting an intense study of your customers to better understand who they are, what keeps them up at night, how your brand supports their needs, how they make their purchase decisions and so forth. Congratulations.

You’ve followed up by delivering actionable insights to the key people in your organization, such as decision-makers and front line employees, to ensure that business priorities and actions are aligned with your most valuable asset: the customer. Wonderful.

Additionally, you’ve started to apply those insights to your marketing programs and tactics to target the right customers, with the right message, at the right time and through the right channel. Fantastic.

But what’s next? How can you be sure that the insights you’ve uncovered hold true as market conditions change and your customer evolves? It’s simple: Talk to your customers – always. Voice of Customer data and the insights derived from that data must be embedded into the daily operations of a company.

Where are the opportunities for your company to capture ongoing VOC information? Every interaction with a customer offers a window, whether it’s a call into customer service, a guest at checkout, a review on your website, or a post in social media.

It’s important to remember that VOC is not a stand-alone research project that is done once and then sits on the shelf; it is an evolutionary resource for your business. Continue your VOC journey today by establishing data captures across all customer touch points, and incorporating the information you obtain into existing customer databases to discover new insights, confirm existing notions or showcase trends.

This will allow you to foster a truly customer-centric culture.

I took my pet to the groomer last week. It was my first time visiting this particular location.

Several days later I received a card in the mail from the groomer’s office. I opened it, expecting to find some sort of upsell or promotion, but there was none of that. This was a true, traditional ‘Thank You’ card, expressing earnest gratitude for my business. How refreshing!

These days, many companies are so focused on turning new customers into money-generating tools that they skip the middle step of solidifying a relationship. Too often, I’ve soured on a brand experience because the employees had been trained to start cramming membership upgrades and offers down my throat right off the bat.

Sending ‘Thank You’ cards after doing business is a small, inexpensive step that can go a long way toward leaving a good impression and encouraging future transactions.

As with any relationship, moving a customer from first-time buyer to loyal brand advocate requires time and effort. The fact that this company held off on trying to upsell me in our initial interaction increases the chances that I’ll become a devoted customer of theirs over the long run.

One of the chief tenets of brand building is to make it easy for customers to engage with and experience your brand. No one would be at all surprised to hear a company CMO or CEO say, “Our brand has to be accessible, easy to relate to.” But what if it wasn’t? What if a brand was difficult to know? Inscrutable, yet intriguing?

This is the question that Grant McCracken, a research affiliate at MIT and the author of Chief Culture Officer, asks in his Harvard Business Review essay, Medieval Marketer.

In medieval times, it seems, people were accustomed to looking for meanings embedded in things, hidden messages. “The medieval world took for granted that the universe was filled with secret messages, placed there by God and correspondences on which the world was built,” writes McCracken. This changed dramatically in the twentieth century with the rise of modernism. The new rule was, “Keep it simple, stupid.” Everything was pared down to the essence of simplicity and practicality. Hidden meanings were seen as arcane and distracting.

McCracken argues that times have changed, and that today, there is a resurgence of interest in secret messages and hidden meanings (not to be confused with subliminal messages) especially reflected in modern entertainment. Where McCracken gets really interesting is when he discusses this phenomena in relationship to marketing and especially brands.

The article is a surprising spin on conventional wisdom related to brands. Could a brand that is layered, packed with meaning both explicit and implicit, actually draw more people to it? McCracken says, “Maybe.”

The takeaway for businesses looking to become more customer-centric is that today’s consumers are not yesterday’s consumers, and there is a need to constantly re-evaluate your target audience. Raised with computers and video games, many of today’s consumers are experienced at, and enjoy, searching for hidden messages and solving puzzles. The fact that we may be moving away from the simplicity of modernism into an era of more complex symbolism and meaning-infused art and entertainment is an important factor to take into consideration when marketing a product or your brand.

It’s fair to say that this hasn’t been a dream year for Netflix. The online movie rental service reportedly lost 800,000 subscribers in the third quarter of 2011, and while this was undoubtedly attributable in large part to a significant price hike, the company didn’t help itself by implementing a confusing separation of services and name change around the same time.

There are a number of considerations to be taken into account when rebranding your company, and the customer should be top-of-mind throughout this process. Here are four important areas where Netflix went wrong:

1) Walk in your customer’s shoes.

The idea of turning the DVD-by-mail service into a separate entity with a different name – “Qwikster” – might have sounded good in theory, but you have to wonder if Netflix took the time to look at it from a subscriber’s perspective and recognize potential points of confusion or frustration. They could have better anticipated the backlash through focus groups and customer surveys.

2) Establish a firm plan and stick to it.

If Netflix had a strategy department guiding this process, it’s difficult to tell. The entire ordeal was a hodgepodge, with company CEO Reed Hastings sending out emails to customers apologizing for the handling of both the price hike and the name change.

3) Leverage brand equity.

After spending years climbing to the top of the industry, Netflix made the very curious decision to change the identity of the DVD-by-mail segment of its service, which was the very offering that brought the company where it’s at. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to rebrand the newer instant streaming service?

4) Communicate effectively with customers.

This is probably the area where Netflix erred most, and really it’s a combination of everything mentioned above. Throughout the entire process, they just didn’t do an effective job of clearly communicating to customers what was going on and why.

The rebranding process was intended to spur company growth and meet the evolving needs of customers, but in execution the company failed to put their No. 1 asset – current subscribers – at the forefront of their planning. It clearly demonstrates that even an industry leader can falter when it forgets to put customers first. Hopefully this hard-learned lesson is helpful not only to Netflix, but to any other company following a similar path.