Michael Podolsky of PissedConsumer On The 5 Ways To Create a Wow! Customer Experience

Respond timely. Your customer service should be ready to respond quickly. Never try your client’s patience because nobody wants to wait for answers. Timely responses with instructions or explanations to consumers may twice reduce their frustration. If you check the support pages on Twitter of well-known companies like Adidas, Wendy’s, Alaska Airlines, their support teams usually respond quickly to most complaints posted. It helps them to preserve a good brand image. If the Customer Service does not have an immediate answer to the query, contact the consumer and share reasonable timelines, and keep those timelines.

As part of our series about the five things a business should do to create a Wow! customer experience, I had the pleasure of interviewing Michael Podolsky.

Michael Podolsky is the CEO and Co-Founder of PissedConsumer.com, a review platform and consumer advocacy website. He worked on Wall Street for 20 years going from a regular customer service manager to an independent entrepreneur. As an expert in customer service and consumer advocacy, Michael shares insights on how businesses can turn their complainants into brand advocates and ensure the best possible customer experience.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

After completing two degrees in Computer Science and Finance, I started as a Help Desk assistant on Wall Street and grew to be the Director of Investor Services technology for one of the Hedge Administrators. I was determined to become an independent entrepreneur.

Back in 2006, I got into an unpleasant situation when my family was sent on the wrong vacation. At that time, I experienced the frustration of being unable to resolve my issue as a consumer. Despite all efforts, my problem with a company remained unresolved. Such a negative experience has pushed me towards starting a business with a partner. We launched a platform where ‘pissed consumers’ could share their opinion of companies. The goal was to make it easy for consumers to voice concerns, attract the company’s attention, and for businesses, to better understand clients’ needs and resolve issues with customers.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

I would say that naming the business “Pissed Consumer” has its impacts. While being led by emotions when naming the business, I haven’t considered the fact that it may impact business at that time. Sometimes we are rejected the collaboration simply because our brand sounds “repulsive” or “inappropriate”. For example, with Metro media, we didn’t even get a chance to place ads. Their instant refusal was due to the brand name. The other case, which makes this mistake somewhat funny, was with the UK targeting because “pissed consumer” is interpreted by the UK audience as a “drunk consumer”.

Thus, we often have to explain our mission as a consumer advocacy website. Even though we were mentioned in Bloomberg, New York Post, The Washington Post, it is still challenging to get out there. We are locked in the negative side, but with increased trust. On the other side, US consumers know that if they are really “pissed off”, our website is the right place to express their grievances.

That being said, the main takeaway from this is you can be passionate about the idea but don’t let emotions control your decision-making process.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

From my personal experience, it is a collection of individuals. I cannot single out one particular person that drove me to success. There were clients of my first business who asked me to do something special for them. This request pushed me to open another business and succeed. I am grateful for the insights and lessons that came from direct interactions with my clients. Their feedback helped me grow.

Thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main focus of our interview. This might be intuitive, but I think it’s helpful to specifically articulate it. In your words, can you share a few reasons why great customer service and a great customer experience is essential for success in business?

Customer service is the most effective instrument for growth and expansion. If a business doesn’t take customer service and customer experience seriously, it will lose clients. Business can’t exist without customers. No matter what you sell or who you sell it to, you need clients just as they need you. Customer support has to respond to clients’ requests and satisfy their needs, or your clients will not use your products or service again. Instead, they get frustrated and spread the word about their issues with the business.

Great Customer Service should create a good working loop with the Marketing and Operations departments to consistently provide new ideas and innovations that are recommended by consumers. Negatively impacted consumers must be treated well and thanked for valuable feedback. When consumers share their negative experiences, it helps the company to correct weak spots. This is a golden opportunity for companies to improve.

When your business provides excellent customer service, your brand earns customers’ trust and loyalty.

We have all had times either in a store, or online, when we’ve had a very poor experience as a customer or user. If the importance of a good customer experience is so intuitive, and apparent, where is the disconnect? How is it that so many companies do not make this a priority?

Poor management and failure to reduce the pressure put on your customer service managers. People are the greatest asset of the business. However, when employees are neglected, their performance drops, and that’s when your clients get poor experiences. Your customer service team is the frontline workers so it is important to ensure they get support from the top management, especially when dealing with frustrated clients. There are procedural tools that every business shall employ to improve the quality of Customer Service. It is about Quality Assurance and proper tools for the Customer Service Department to do the job right.

Unfortunately, many companies primarily focus on products, services, and aim at profits while underestimating the impact of customer service on business success. It is not just about providing people with what they want, it’s about listening. Admitting a mistake, responding to issues, and offering a solution are core principles of high-level customer satisfaction. Not every business understands that.

Do you think that more competition helps force companies to improve the customer experience they offer? Are there other external pressures that can force a company to improve the customer experience?

Competition may force a company to reorganize or otherwise improve the customer service processes. However, unsatisfied customers and negative reviews have greater pressure and impact that leads towards customer service improvement. As a CEO of a review website, I’ve seen this happen with many businesses that got hundreds of consumer complaints. Most of which concern issues with customer service and the way customer support handles the issue. However, when a business pays attention, provides appropriate customer service, issues get quickly resolved with clients. Complainants turn to loyal customers.

Can you share with us a story from your experience about a customer who was “Wowed” by the experience you provided?

We provide consumers with an opportunity to voice their issues with companies by posting a complaint on a dedicated company page and by recording a video interview. Oftentimes, a consumer’s complaint or video interview attracts the company’s attention. The recent case dealt with a platform that provides verification services. Despite all attempts to contact their customer service, a consumer couldn’t resolve his issues for months. Once we posted a consumer’s video interview across social channels, the company got back to us asking to help them contact the reviewer. Thus, we connected a company representative with a consumer and his issue was resolved. The PissedConsumer team provided the needed support to both the consumer and the company’s customer service team. As a result, everyone was happy.

Did that Wow! experience have any long term ripple effects? Can you share the story?

The Wow! experience like that reflects our mission. We are aimed at building the bridge of communication between consumers and companies to help them find common ground. Every successful case strengthens this ‘bridge’.

Ok, here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience. Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Educate your employees. Make sure your corporate culture is passed onto the team at all levels so that every manager and customer service representative shares business values. At our organization, senior managers educate employees within their teams and help preserve the culture. If your employees fell in love with your brand, it will be easier for them to persuade your customers to fall in love with it as well. For example, employees at Salesforce are proud to work for the company because it has a strong corporate culture. In the same way, their customers are proud to be referred to as their clients.

2. Reduce the pressure on the customer service team. They are the ones who face the entire client’s frustration. Ensure the management support and all essential tools to simplify the communication between the client and management. For example, when the support team receives a client’s request, first, it’s necessary to determine the nature of this request. If it’s a technical issue, it is passed on to the technical team. When it’s a financial issue, it is forwarded to the financial department, and so on. All internal communication must be worked through and improved to the best effect possible.

3. Respond timely. Your customer service should be ready to respond quickly. Never try your client’s patience because nobody wants to wait for answers. Timely responses with instructions or explanations to consumers may twice reduce their frustration. If you check the support pages on Twitter of well-known companies like Adidas, Wendy’s, Alaska Airlines, their support teams usually respond quickly to most complaints posted. It helps them to preserve a good brand image. If the Customer Service does not have an immediate answer to the query, contact the consumer and share reasonable timelines, and keep those timelines.

4. Don’t use misleading advertising. If there is misinformation in the ad, it won’t be your customer service’s fault that your client’s expectations are not met. Make sure you advertise exactly what you offer. We’ve seen dozens of consumer complaints regarding misleading advertising, for example, for free trials when users were later charged for subscriptions and couldn’t cancel. Therefore, it is not about the customer service that now gets hundreds of complaints, it is about the misrepresentation in your offer used to lure customers into paying but eventually ruins the reputation of the business.

5. Provide an excellent customer experience and your clients will refer back.

For example, when a consumer’s issue gets resolved after posting a review on our platform, they refer us in social media posts or by word of mouth. It helps to develop the strong image of a brand.

Are there a few things that can be done so that when a customer or client has a Wow! experience, they inspire others to reach out to you as well?

A happy client whose issue was promptly resolved is most likely to refer to your business. The word of mouth works as a powerful advertisement. It is possible to ask the client to refer to your business in terms of rewarding programs. This is just another marketing tactic, which could be used in customer service as well.

My particular expertise is in retail, so I’d like to ask a question about that. Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise retail companies and eCommerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?

A competitive benefit is the best customer experience here and now. There’s a distance, time, and language barrier to challenge. The top complaints found on our review platform with non-US retailers concern customer support. Common issues that American customers experience concern logistics, returns, refunds, and lost packages. Amazon is also on the list of most complained about companies due to delivery issues. This opens a competitive opportunity for local businesses. If they provide timely and excellent customer service, consumers will be eager to pay more for the quality of service and products.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Inspire business leaders to improve their customer service, listen and educate their employees, and help businesses grow. Better engagement with clients, corporate values, and support as the key ingredients of success.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

You are welcome to connect me on LinkedIn, read my latest posts on Medium, and follow PissedConsumer news on Twitter.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!