Many companies make it difficult to reach them when you have a comment or problem. You often have to dig deep on a website to find a contact number or email address. Not Starbucks. I’ve always been impressed with how the company goes out of its way to solicit customer feedback and engage in conversations. I was in a Starbucks recently and noticed a small brochure that said, “Share your thoughts with us.” I liked its message: “It’s how we know we’re making your experience at Starbucks the best it can be. So please tell us what’s working, or if there’s anything we could be doing better. Don’t worry. We’ll take it personally.”

Beyond that, I was impressed that Starbucks creates custom feedback brochures for each district that gives customers many ways to provide feedback:

• Main customer service number
• http://www.starbucks.com/customer-service/contact (a number of ways to reach Starbucks online, through social media conversations, etc.)
• Mailing address
• The name of the district manager (yes – you read that right)
• The district manager’s phone number (yes, really!)
• The district manager’s email address (yes, really again!)
• The store number you visited.

Beyond that, Starbucks takes the whole customer feedback and conversation strategy to the next level. Have you heard of mystarbucksidea.com? It’s an online forum that allows customers to share ideas on products, experience and community. Customers can post their ideas, comment on ideas (Starbucks does, too) and vote on ideas to give them points. Starbucks lets you know which ideas are in action via blog posts written by actual Starbucks corporate employees.

Do you know of any companies using great techniques to solicit customer feedback?

See our related post on Costco’s approach to customer feedback.

We noticed that QuickBooks Customer Care reps are engaged in product reviews on Amazon.com. In many cases, reps reached out to customers who left negative reviews by giving email addresses and asking the best way to contact the customers. Most Customer Care rep responses used these techniques:

• thanking the customers for their feedback
• writing responses in a compassionate tone
• acknowledging the customers’ concerns or frustrations
• offering to work with them to understand the situation from the customers’ points of view to find a solution

Instead of ignoring problems, QuickBooks worked quickly to try to fix them and address them directly with each customer. Have you noticed companies commenting on customer reviews? What else should companies do to address negative customer reviews?

The email began “First, the bad news.” That was good. Zappos.com did not tap dance around the problem. The company told me what happened and what steps to take. The CEO Tweeted about it. He has a big Twitter following. The company was not hiding the bad news. But Zappos didn’t dig in its heels there. It reached out and communicated in other ways:

• a company blog post which showed the internal email it sent to employees along with the information customers received
• a separate page on its website for customers about the incident
• a dedicated email address for employees with questions
• a dedicated email address for customers with questions

Communications and social media circles often discuss this company for its culture and empowering employees. Now Zappos.com’s latest email to customers is just the right fit. Other businesses should take a similar approach if the shoe is ever on the other foot.

In our first blog Public Relations:  Handling Customer Emergencies, we explained our encounter with a bank after depositing cash into an ATM but getting no receipt. The money at first was not deposited into our account.

We have two updates. As promised, the temporarily lost money was credited to our account by the crack of dawn. And when we returned to the bank today for the first time since the incident, a bank teller in the drive thru said “Hi Keith.” We looked at each other in the car, taken aback a bank teller remembered us. We don’t remember a teller ever beginning one of our bank visits with a “Hi Keith.” She then asked if the ATM accident was resolved.

Now that’s personal service and a nice touch.

Four days later, the video included around seven million views. We’re not surprised. After we watched it, we quickly forwarded the link to several people and posted it on Facebook. More than five thousand people have struck back with YouTube comments, including two video responses of how people’s dogs reacted to the dark side’s Imperial March theme.

Wait a moment … we’re watching the video once more.

Ok, we’re done. Our dog Molly watched the video with us this time.

Anyway, the video’s description includes this link: http://vw.com/star-wars-invite. The link leads to the video “Intergalactic Invite” and talks of inviting your friends to your Super Bowl bash “with a customized Star Wars title crawl.” We’re not even sure we understand the whole thing, but it’s all on Volkswagen’s page where someone can build and price, get a quote or find a dealer.

We don’t know if these dogs will help Volkswagen sell more vehicles or lead to a big return of the Jetta. But the company sure is giving it one heck of a try. Viral videos can feel like the force:  Only a chosen few can actually figure it out. But your business doesn’t necessarily need a viral video to get its sales out of carbonite. It just needs a good video … and maybe a few dogs or droids … to expand your universe.

I deposited cash in an ATM. The cash door closed and the ATM coughed out my card. That was it. The ATM never asked if I wanted a receipt or to complete another transaction. My money disappeared into the machine and I had no clue if the bank deposited the cash in my account.

I walked into the bank and explained what happened. Everybody was polite and apologized for the trouble. The bank allowed me to use one of its offices to call the “claims department,” which explained it would credit the money to my account by the next morning. As long as the money shows up in the morning, the bank overall handled my situation well.

When I first explained the situation to someone inside the bank, he gave me two options:  I could talk to a personal banker or call the claims department. He explained the personal banker was busy and he couldn’t fit me in for several hours. That’s why I decided to call the claims department. I suggested calling from the bank. I feared the claims department might send me into a black hole. Leaving the bank and calling from home might diminish my chances of someone sympathizing with my situation and resolving it quickly.

When the man inside the bank told me the personal banker was not available to assist me with my matter for several hours, I could feel the tension and adrenaline within trying to convince me to break my promise of keeping calm. I almost blurted out “You need to fit me in considering your ATM just took my money!”

Telling a customer the problem your company caused can’t be resolved face-to-face for several hours is, in most cases, a big blunder. Most of us have watched other customers piercingly make clear in a store or business how they feel a company screwed up. Everyone listens and stares. When someone walks in still in “calm” mode and respectfully explains your company’s slip-up is costing him both time and money, solve it. At least try to resolve it. Telling customers they need to wait in line or call someone else sitting in a cubicle at an unknown place is asking for trouble. People, especially these days, live on short fuses, and you don’t want other happy customers Tweeting about the guy screaming in the lobby.

We all appreciate schedules. But you shouldn’t plan a trip so you arrive at that important business meeting with one minute to spare. You build in extra time. So you shouldn’t staff your office and schedule their hours in a way that prevents your business from handling unexpected issues. Customers often become your biggest fans when you handle tough situations fast and fairly. Don’t fail that test. The next guy who walks in worried his hard-earned cash just disappeared into the magic money machine may otherwise decide to address the situation with a few four-letter words no one really wants to hear.

When companies have a new product, they often spend a lot of time testing those products before they roll them out, especially when it comes to software and websites providing a service. They want to make sure everything functions properly and the end-user experience is the best possible one. So why not take the same approach with your communications – before you send them out?

You likely have some kind of review process for the materials you create. Your boss, your boss’ boss, your internal client, legal. What about your “end-user”? Whether you’re communicating a new company program or marketing a new product, someone from your target audience can provide invaluable feedback before they see the final email or the shiny new brochure along with everyone else. If you work in retail, for example, that target audience person can be a store manager, district manager or front-line associate. If you work in health care, that target audience reviewer can be a doctor, nurse, HR administrator or patient. If you are working on a marketing brochure, reach out to your network and find someone you know that fits the customer profile.

Giving your target audience a sneak peak of the product and how you plan to market and communicate it can save you a lot of time, energy and money. Because he or she is not as close to the project as you are, your target audience tester will think of questions you might not have thought about. He or she will hopefully be up front and let you know if something is unclear or sounds too salesy and not authentic enough.

Does your review process allow for testing your communications with target audience members? What works for you?

We called a company to request what the industry refers to as a “courtesy credit. ” We first navigated the phone system, which requires the talents of Indiana Jones minus the hat and whip. The feeling of finally finding a real person must be similar to Indiana’s relief when he’s defeated all obstacles and the treasure is safely in hand.

What we didn’t anticipate was a customer service representative who, intentionally or not, liked to lay down some verbal booby traps. He explained our account didn’t qualify for a courtesy credit. Why? He listed possible reasons. Which reason applied to us? He didn’t know.

We asked if we could speak to someone else who might further assist us with our request. He said yes, but our statement apparently wasn’t clear enough. After some silence, he asked whom we were interested in talking to. “Your mother! We would like to talk to your mother and explain you’re being difficult.” We actually asked for a supervisor, which we thought was obvious but clearly needed to spell out in more detail. After another pregnant pause, customer secret agent man double-checked if we wanted to speak to a supervisor now as if scheduling a call for next month might be an option. When agreeing to make the connection, he couldn’t help but point out moving up the chain might not help.

When the supervisor later joined us, she might as well been his mother. She was nice, sweet, professional and granted our courtesy credit as if she was handing us a batch of chocolate chip cookies with a glass of milk. Her son seemed more like Dennis The Menace or Mr. Mayhem we see in those insurance commercials laughing at us at the other end of the line. Yes, we got our courtesy credit but after how much frustration and time wasted?

Give your front line employees some authority to make simple decisions that require mostly a strong dose of common sense. If employees can’t give what customers want, give them the tools to specifically explain why. If customers want to speak to supervisors or someone’s mom, train employees not to treat the request like an act of Congress. And don’t encourage those on the customer service team to discourage customers from seeking a supervisor’s help. Employees often tell us supervisors may not offer us a different result but they almost always do.

We don’t have an Indiana Jones hat handy. But sometimes we desperately feel like we need one.