How to Grow Your Small Business with Online Reviews

Small businesses can struggle to get an edge over larger competitors.

They don't have the built-in name recognition of a big brand. Advertising dollars are limited. The latest technology is expensive beyond reach. And many aren't able to compete on price.

But there is one area that the big chains consistently overlook—online review sites like Yelp, OpenTable, and TripAdvisor. These sites can be the great equalizer by allowing small businesses to advertise a superior customer experience at little to no cost. 

And the best part? Most of the big companies don't get it.

I recently partnered with Jess Greene-Pierson, Director of Go To Market at the customer insight software firm, Womply. We facilitated a webinar to answer three key questions:

  1. Which review site do customers depend upon the most?

  2. How can negative reviews help your business?

  3. How can you earn more positive online reviews?

You can watch the webinar to get the full story, or read the highlights below.

Customer giving five stars in an online review.

Which review site do customers depend upon the most?

This data comes from a recent survey I conducted of over 1,000 adults in the United States. You can read the full story or just skim below.

The number one review site, by far, is Google:

Pie chart showing the most popular online review sites.

What makes it so popular is Google is the place to go when people search reviews without realizing they were looking for reviews. You can try this yourself with a little experiment:

  1. Think of a type of business you might need to find (restaurant, dry cleaner, mechanic, or anything else).

  2. Try Googling the type of business. Ex: "pet store"

  3. Notice what comes up after the ads.

Google suggests top-rated businesses with high ratings that it things are near you. The results show the star rating for each business along with a handy map.

A couple of years ago, I needed to find a pet store as I was driving through Tucson, Arizona. Look at what happens when I Google "pet store tucson." 

Google search results from “pet store tucson.”

Notice these are all local businesses. The big chains like Petco and Petsmart don't show up. This is the small business advantage!


How can negative reviews help your business?

Many small business owners live in fear of a negative review.

Customers exaggerate. Some reviews are fake. Negative reviews can feel like a personal attack. And even legitimate complaints stay online long after you've learned from the problem and fixed the issue.

The good news is negative reviews can actually help!

Researchers at Northwestern University discovered the optimum rating on an online review site is 4.2-4.5 stars. That's because 80 percent of customers seek out negative reviews when evaluating a business. They want to see what customers complain about and how the business responded.

During the webinar, Jess shared an example from Seafood Kitchen in Atlantic Beach, Florida. The owner, Nathan Stuart, regularly responds to negative reviews and asks upset customers to give the restaurant another try.

Slide from online review sites webinar.

One customer, Alvin F., changed a two-star Yelp review to four stars as a result of Nathan’s outreach. This is arguably more powerful than a five-star review because it shows a customer was upset (that happens) and the owner made an effort to make things right.

You can’t expect every customer to change their rating, but you can still make a positive impression on other customers by responding professionally and helpfully. It turns out, there's a quirk in psychology that makes other customers more likely to empathize with you if you handle the complaint politely without getting defensive.


How can you get more reviews of your business?

Jess suggested several straightforward dos and don'ts on the webinar:

Slide from online review sites webinar.

Yelp specifically forbids asking customers for reviews, but many major platforms are either silent on the issue or actively encourage it. Google, the most important site for reviews, actually publishes this guide to help you get more!

Take Action

To summarize, your business is more likely to get noticed if:

  • You have an active profile on Google and lots of positive reviews. 

  • A few negative reviews can give your business credibility.

  • Be proactive, but professional, about asking customers to review your business.

If you don't have an active Google My Business listing, you can easily get started with this handy guide from Womply.

You can also watch the webinar replay.

Customer Service is Not Life or Death (Until it Is)

I had just crawled into bed, exhausted after a long day. 

My four-month-old puppy tried to get comfortable in her crate next to me. She was still getting used to her new home and was full of pent-up energy. The torrential rain we'd experienced that day didn't help and she had worn me out.

Plop.

A drop of water landed on my shoulder. I looked up and saw a patch of ceiling above me was soaked through. Dragging myself out of bed, I got a ladder from the garage and climbed into the attic. 

There's not a lot space up there. Certainly not enough to walk around. I had to crawl over duct pipes and under beams to get to the right spot. When I got there, I found water dripping from the roof and pooling in the attic right above my bed.

Water leaking into the attic.

It was a frustrating moment. The roof was just four years old and still under warranty. Two year ago, I had noticed a leak in the same place after an unusually powerful rainstorm. The roofer came out and told me he had fixed it. Apparently not.

I sopped up the water and laid towels in the attic to absorb the continuous dripping. Then I crawled back into bed even more exhausted, after making a note to contact the roofer in the morning.

The next day, I sent an email to the roofer with pictures of the leak. The rain had stopped, so it was no longer an emergency. I figured he would have his hands full with similar requests and might take a day or so to get back to me.

He never did.

Service failures like this are almost never just one thing. It wasn’t just the leak that frustrated me:

  1. A new roof was leaking.

  2. The roofer told me he had fixed the roof, but it wasn’t.

  3. I was exhausted and trying to sleep when I noticed the leak again.

  4. I worried about damage to the ceiling (it turns out, there was).

And now the roofer wasn't returning my message.

I tried calling. A recording said the number was disconnected. I went to the website, but the website no longer existed. I did a web search of the company name and saw it had gone out of business.

Damn. There goes my warranty. This leak was about to become an even bigger problem because I would have to find another roofer and pay for the repair out of pocket. Part of the ceiling would need to be replaced as well, after water soaked through it.

Out of curiosity, I searched the roofer's license on the state licensing board website. Perhaps the license was still active and the roofer had moved or sold the business. Or maybe I could just track the guy down and give him a piece of my mind.

The search result was not what I expected: "This license was canceled on the death of the contractor."

I'm not sure what happened. He wasn't an old man. I imagined his family missed him, deprived of his presence earlier than expected. He had employees, too, and I imagine they all lost their jobs.

Suddenly, my leaky roof wasn't as important.

We all face frustrations as customers. Some of us lose patience and rant and rave as though it's a matter of life or death. It almost always isn't. This experience was a reminder.

I've worked with a couple of clients where service really was a life or death matter. The service they provided literally contributed to saving lives. So I've seen the difference between that and a leaky roof, an undercooked steak, or a flight delay. 

The experience made me reflect on a few things:

  • Customer service is not life or death, unless it really is, so act accordingly.

  • It’s important to treat others with empathy—you never know what they are experiencing.

  • Every job is a part of your legacy, so always do good work.

I'm still not happy. And I'm a bit conflicted between my empathy for the roofer's family, friends, and employees, and the knowledge that his legacy in my mind is a service failure. But I'll try to maintain perspective as the next storm rolls in.

How To Empower Customer Service Employees

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Have you ever made a purchase you regret?

I bought a jacket, wore it for two months, and just didn't like it. Fortunately, I bought the jacket at REI, so I was able to take it back for a full refund.

That kind of empowerment makes a lot of managers nervous. 

They worry about losing money. Or they wind up spending too much time watching over employees, which doesn't feel much like empowerment. One customer service leader told me her team works in a highly regulated environment, and she just couldn't let employees do whatever they wanted.

Employee empowerment was a big theme in the companies I researched for The Service Culture Handbook. One thing that stood out was how customer-focused companies approach empowerment much differently than typical organizations.

Here's how they do it, and how you can, too.

Silhouetted team assembling two giant jigsaw puzzle pieces.

How Customer-Focused Organizations Define Empowerment

Customers hate to wait.

In 2014, the cable company Bright House Networks answered just 50 percent of customer calls in 30 seconds. Imagine a customer frustrated because their cable or internet wasn't working, and now they have to sit and stew on hold.

It's traditional to think of empowerment as giving employees extra authority. But you could give these agents gobs of authority to make things right and they would still struggle to appease customers who were irritated by the wait plus whatever prompted them to call in the first place.

While researching customer-focused companies, I found a new definition of empowerment:

Employee empowerment is a process of enabling employees to deliver outstanding service to their customers.

Authority is just one of three key ingredients an employee needs to be fully empowered:

  • Resources

  • Procedures

  • Authority

In 2014, Bright House customer service reps lacked the resources to answer calls quickly. They were also hamstrung by a time-consuming approval process required to issue account credits, and didn't have the authority to issue many of those credits on their own.

Resources

Like many cable companies, Bright House grew from acquiring smaller companies with different systems. By 2014, the company had two billing systems running six different versions to support its customers.

This meant calls could only be routed to agents trained to handle the particular system. Sometimes, agents supporting one system might have a lengthy call queue while agents supporting another system were idle.

Bright House leaders recognized the issue and invested in a major initiative to consolidate the billing systems into one. This gave the company far more flexibility to route calls to available agents. Just one year later, 90 percent of calls were answered in 30 seconds.


Procedures

REI has a procedure for accepting returns like my jacket.

As an REI member, my purchase history is automatically stored. So it was easy for the associate to find proof of purchase even without a receipt. Refunding my money took a few keystrokes in the computer and a signature from me.

The associate also asked me a few questions. This wasn't an interrogation. Rather, the questions were designed to determine why I was unhappy with my purchase. After sharing some feedback, the associate recommended a different jacket she thought I'd be much happier with. 

I promptly bought it. Plus a few other items since I was in the store.

Leaders may worry about customers abusing returns (and some do), but look at what REI has done with its simple return procedure. It brought me back into the store, where I immediately spent the money I was just refunded plus a little more. I've been back many times since, and I'm giving them positive word-of-mouth by telling you about them now.

Without that return policy and simple procedure, I may not have returned the jacket, but I'd feel the pang of regret every time I wore it. I might not return to the store as a result.

Procedures can seem counterintuitive to empowerment, yet they're essential. Think of them as capturing best practices that can be consistently used across the organization. 

For example, I once worked with a client where it would take one rep 30 minutes to solve a particular problem while another rep figured out how to solve it in just five minutes. These reps had the authority to spend as much time on the phone with a customer as needed, but as a customer, wouldn't you rather get your issues resolved quickly?

The 30 minute rep wasn't fully empowered until someone shared a best practice procedure with him so he could also resolve that problem in five minutes.

Authority

When Bright House Networks implemented its new billing system, it also empowered its support agents to issue account credits up to $1,000 without prior approval.

This was a significant amount of authority, but notice it also had a limit—$1,000. And there were still guidelines to be followed when deciding when to issue a credit and how much. 

The agents also needed the right resources. The new billing system made it possible to issue credits up to $1,000 without getting a manager override. This was something that wasn’t possible in the old systems.

There were also procedures in place to monitor the credits. For instance, any credit over $250 was automatically flagged on a report for a manager to audit. The good news was six months into the new procedure, not a single credit over $250 was deemed to be inappropriate.

Conclusion

By the end of 2015, Bright House Networks led its larger competitors in customer service on the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Empowering its employees had a lot to do with that success. (The company was purchased by Charter Communications in 2016.)

Let's go back to that definition of empowerment for a moment: empowered employees are enabled to provide outstanding customer service.

The starting point to empower your own employees is to look for areas where they are not able to make customers happy, even if they are doing their jobs correctly:

  1. Start by identifying your top customer complaints.

  2. Identify any complaint an employee is unable to resolve.

  3. Investigate what resources, procedures, or authority is required.

The end goal is to make sure that employees are able to make customers happy. Defective products, broken systems, unfriendly policies, and a lack of knowledge can all get in the way no matter how much authority you provide. Clear those obstacles out of the way and your employees can soar.

How to Help Your Team Cope with Empathy Fatigue

Customer service often involves empathizing with customers.

It can be highly rewarding to connect with someone and help them feel better. Sometimes, you can almost see the weight leaving their shoulders or hear it in their voice over the phone.

But we all have our limits. Empathizing all day, every day can be exhausting. 

A Customer Service Tip of the Week subscriber recently contacted me because she was concerned her team was experiencing empathy fatigue. They were getting worn out and she was looking for resources to help.

Here are a few suggestions if your team is in the same position.

Emotionally exhausted person wearing a paper bag over their head.

What is Empathy Fatigue?

Let's start with a basic definition. It's often referred to as compassion fatigue, which is defined this way by the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

the physical and mental exhaustion and emotional withdrawal experienced by those who care for sick or traumatized people over an extended period of time

Think about situations where you or someone on your team has to empathize with angry customers all day, every day. You listen to their story and absorb their anger. You apologize, try to help them feel better, and then look for a solution. And repeat. And repeat.

A resource article from Psychology Today lists several symptoms that really stand out:

  • Feeling burdened by the suffering of others

  • Blaming others for their suffering

  • Difficulty concentrating

  • Physical and mental fatigue

  • Feelings of hopelessness or powerlessness

  • Poor self-care

  • Beginning to receive a lot of complaints about your work or attitude

Yikes! None of these sound like an ideal recipe for a happy and helpful customer service representative.

Coping with Empathy Fatigue

There is some hope for those who spend their day empathizing.

One of the biggest impacts of empathy fatigue is we dehumanize the person we are serving and stop caring about their problems. A 2015 study from researchers C. Daryl Cameron, Lasana T. Harris, and B. Keith Payne discovered that we are less likely to dehumanize someone if we feel that empathizing with them will be rewarding. 

In other words, it becomes easier to empathize with a customer if we believe helping them will make us feel good.

Customer service leaders can make empathy feel good in a variety of ways:

One leader I recently spoke with encourages employees to share success stories during a daily team huddle. It helps people work through challenging times and stay focused on remembering all the people they help each day.

Other leaders engage their team in iceberg hunting. This involves investigating unusual issues and looking for practical solutions. Employees feel empowered and a sense of pride when they can solve an iceberg.

Some clients I've worked with have become experts at customer storytelling. For example, a medical device manufacturer has large posters covering the walls of its office with pictures of patients whose lives have been saved by the company's products. These stories are often shared in meetings and company updates, to remind employees they are helping to save the lives of real people.

Take Action

It seems like there's always something wearing us out. Empathy fatigue is just one of several types of fatigue that can hurt customer service.

Customer service leaders can take action in a number of ways:

  • Find ways to make empathy feel rewarding (see above).

  • Encourage employees to take breaks and recharge.

  • Create a customer service vision to give the team purpose.

To discover more hidden, counterintuitive, and unusual obstacles that stand in the way of great customer service, check out my new book, Getting Service Right.

How Invisible Ropes Ruin the Customer Service Experience

The prank was pure genius.

Two boys, each about 12 years old, stood on opposite sides of the road. As a car approached, the boys would pantomime picking up a rope and pulling it taught across the road. 

This caused speeding cars to slow down as the drivers perceived they were about to run into whatever the boys had stretched across the road. They couldn't see anything in front of them, but the boys' actions told the drivers' subconscious brains that some danger lurked ahead.

Of course, there was no rope. The drivers were reacting to their perception, not reality.

Customer service is often the same way. The experience is almost always amplified for good or bad by invisible ropes—things that alter your customer's perception of reality.

This post will help you identify invisible ropes that might annoy your customers and ruin their experience.

Sign asking customer to wait to be called.

Wait Time

Customer service often involves waiting. Waiting in line for help. Waiting in line to make a purchase. Waiting on hold for a customer service representative to answer the phone. 

Long waits tend to make customers very unhappy, but there's an invisible rope here.

A 1996 study by researchers Ziv Carmon and Daniel Kahneman revealed that people overestimate wait times by as much as 36 percent. They discovered several factors in particular that increase our perception of how long we've been waiting:

  • Expectations: The wait time is longer than we expected it to be.

  • Fairness: People are cutting in line.

  • Competition: Another line appears to be moving faster.

  • Movement: The queue is moving slowly.

  • Line Length: We can see a long line.

  • Boredom: Our wait time perception increases when we are bored.

  • Unpredictability: There is no information telling us how much longer it will be.

The easiest fix is to shorten the actual wait., but that's sometimes not possible. So some companies have found a set of techniques to make the wait time feel shorter.


Contact Friction

Customers must often deal with an unnecessary amount of friction to contact a company, even for the most basic of transactions.

A 2015 study from Mattersight found that 66 percent of customers who called a contact center were frustrated before they even started talking to a live person. The amount of phone menu hoops we have to jump through is ridiculous.

I recently tried to sign up for a webinar that looked mildly interesting. The registration field for this free event contained 20 required fields. Suddenly, I was no longer interested.

A certain florist has been sending me several spam emails per day, ever since I made the mistake of ordering flowers through its website. I never signed up (hence, spam), and I've clicked "unsubscribe" on multiple emails. All to no avail.

Perhaps I can send a simple direct message on Twitter? Nope! The "primary" Twitter handle directs customers to the customer service Twitter account. That account still uses outdated techniques, such as requiring customers to email, or follow the account so the customer can san a direct message. 

I won’t be ordering from that company anytime soon. (Side note, if your company uses Twitter, make sure your account is set up to allow customers to send you a direct message without following you, like mine.)

In reality, this extra effort might add an additional minute or two to the interaction. That's really not too much, but it's the perceived waste that really annoys us.

The solution here is simple. Make it as easy as possible for customers to contact your company. If you’re having difficulty getting support to make necessary changes, ask your executives contact your company through the same channels your customers use. That should get their attention.

Friendliness

So many customer service situations can be solved or ruined based on the perceived friendliness of the employee. 

A restaurant meal can become "an amazing experience" or the "worst meal ever," depending on the rapport the server can develop with their guests.

A retail shopper can become "a customer for life" or vow to "never go back," based on the retail associate's ability to listen carefully to the customers' needs.

A cable company can ensure a problem is "quickly solved" or deliver "nightmare customer service" based on the technician's ability to solve a problem and make customers feel okay in the process.

Yet getting employees to be friendly isn't as simple as demanding or expecting it from the people who report to us. They need a work environment where they can actually be happy. They want to feel respected, and support products and services that make them proud.

And when they don't feel great, acting friendly can be incredibly difficult.

Conclusion

You can see an example of the invisible rope prank in this short video. It's a great example of how perception can alter the way we see reality.

Look for invisible ropes in your own organization. A sure sign is when customers complain about something unreasonable or their complaint seems untrue. That's often an indicator that an invisible rope tripped them up somewhere along their customer journey.

Another solution is improving your ability to set clear expectations. You can identify some situations with this short video:

Lessons from The Overlook: Trust, But Verify

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

It's sometimes tempting to dismiss problems when you find an easy explanation.

A few months ago, I received a call from the water department. The water meter reading for The Overlook was unusually high. Even worse, it appeared the meter was running when an employee took the reading.

The news wasn't initially too concerning. I had gotten the same call after the last billing period, only to discover the culprit was an error reading the meter. So perhaps another mistake had happened.

I also wasn't too worried about the meter running. The meter reader had noticed lights were on at The Overlook, and I verified with our property manager that a cleaning crew was onsite prepping the cabin for our next guests.

It seemed like the problem had been solved, but there was a nagging doubt in the back of my mind. What if there really was an issue?

In business, we often rely on others to get things done. It's important to trust our employees, colleagues, vendors, and contractors to do what they say they will do. It's equally important to verify it gets done.

This is the third time the coffee table needed a repair.

This is the third time the coffee table needed a repair.

The Broken Coffee Table

One of the services our property manager provides is inspecting The Overlook before and after guests stay with us.

The pre-arrival inspection is to make sure the cabin has been properly cleaned and everything is in good working condition. The post-departure inspection is intended to look for any potential issues, such as this broken coffee table. The guests had somehow broken the face off of the drawer (how, I have no idea) and did not report it. They simply left the broken piece for someone to find.

This is a trust, but verify system.

Our property manager generally trusts the cabin is fully cleaned and in good condition, but a final inspection just before guests arrive verifies it truly is. Likewise, our property manager generally trusts that guests will share any issues or concerns, but an inspection can sometimes reveal an unreported problem.

A Slow Leak

Let’s go back to our water issue. The water department re-checked the meter reading, just like last month. This time it was correct. We had somehow used four times as much water this billing period as we normally do. 

Two of our toilets had recently been repaired. When I got the call from the water department, I quickly contacted our property manager and asked her to check on the cabin. In particular, I asked her to check out the toilets. Trust, but verify.

It's fortunate she did. One of the toilets had a small leak in the tank that caused it to constantly run, but the leak was so small you could easily miss it. The problem was immediately fixed once it was identified.

Set Up a Verification System

Managers have become so afraid of the dreaded micromanagement that they go too far in the opposite direction. They delegate without any follow-up.

Verifying work isn't micromanagement, it's validation. You can praise people when work is done correctly while having the peace of mind that everything is okay. And when something goes wrong, you have the opportunity to give feedback and help your team make any necessary corrections.

We have an inspection checklist we use each time we visit The Overlook. The cabin is a two hour drive from my home, but I try to go at least once every six weeks. Most of the time, I’m simply verifying our property manager is doing a terrific job maintaining the cabin and my feedback is, “The cabin looks great!”

However, there’s always something to improve or repair, and it’s easy for one person to miss something.

That’s why our checklist covers quite the gamut, from checking for leaks, looking for burned out light bulbs, checking dishes and glasses for damage, and making sure the furniture is in good condition. There are also preventative maintenance items, such as changing the furnace filter and treating the septic tank.

I did an extra inspection of the plumbing system the next time I visited after the toilet leak. The toilet appeared to be in good working condition, but I discovered some other issues. Pipes can freeze during the cold mountain winters, and I found two places where exposed pipes were uninsulated. 

This one was on me. I thought I had insulated all of the exposed piping, but I clearly missed a couple of places. The lesson here is trust, but verify is helpful even with your own work. Having a system in place, even a simple checklist, can help you do that.

How Lyft Drivers Provide Great Service Without Training

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

I started using Lyft about 18 months ago.

One thing that immediately surprised me was how consistently positive my rides have been. Drivers are almost unfailingly friendly and courteous. We often have a conversation that makes the ride go faster—something that rarely happened in all my years of riding in taxis.

I wanted to see if my experience was unique, so I posed a question on LinkedIn to ask people about their experience using services like Lyft, Uber, and Grubhub that rely on independent gig workers. Most people felt service quality was good, though somewhat inconsistent from city to city. 

Which leads to a big question. How do companies provide outstanding customer service without giving their service providers any formal training?

I took a closer look at Lyft, since I'm a big fan. What I found was the company shares several key attributes with the customer-focused companies I profiled in The Service Culture Handbook.

Image courtesy of Lyft.

Image courtesy of Lyft.

Culture

Every driver has their own story. 

Some are retirees, making extra income to pay for their next trip or just keeping busy for a few hours a day. Others are putting themselves through school. Many use Lyft to supplement what they earn from a full time job.

A driver in Dallas told me about his plans to become a music producer. He was driving for Lyft to make enough money to get his business off the ground. One of his idols was Shark Tank's Daymond John, and we talked about the power of John's entrepreneurial message. Coincidentally, I had just finished reading John's incredible book, The Power of Broke, so I gave it to my driver.

I’ve never started an impromptu book club in a taxi.

The thing that unifies all these drivers is a clear purpose. They share a sense of personal ownership, no matter what their reason for driving. Lyft promotes the vision, Drive toward what matters to you on its website. The website features several video profiles of drivers' stories like this one of Lamont, who wants to travel the world.

A team lead on Lyft's customer support team shared some additional insight on the Lyft culture with me. "I think our secret is that Lyft's platform attracts like-minded people from the get go. Our core values embody the principals of inclusion and celebrate diversity. Our drivers believe in those same core values and, in return, show it through the service they provide to passengers."

Feedback

There are some unusual features in Lyft's feedback system that help promote great service.

Passengers are asked to rate their driver on a scale of 1-5 stars at the end of each ride. One thing that stands out is the way Lyft defines the scale:

5 stars means the ride was great and met Lyft standards. Anything lower than 5 indicates that you were unhappy with the ride, so we want to know why! Use the comment box in the app after the ride to leave feedback.

These ratings contribute to the driver's overall rating. Consistently low ratings put drivers at risk of deactivation, and Lyft suggests drivers aim for an average of 4.8.

Having a scoreboard gives drivers natural motivation to earn good ratings. The rating is an average of the driver's last 100 rides, so drivers know that each ride can have an impact on their score. Passengers can leave additional feedback, and drivers get a weekly summary of that, too.

Passengers also see a driver's rating when they request a ride are matched with someone through the app. Seeing a high rating (typically 4.7-4.9) naturally primes the customer to expect good service. This is a psychological trick where our expectations are likely to become self-fulfilling. If we think service will be good, we’ll probably think it’s good.

Another unusual feature is drivers also rate passengers. Mutual ratings tend to promote better service perceptions. For example, a study from Boston University on vacation rental ratings discovered that when customers and service providers rate each other, ratings tend to go up. There’s also a practical reason for people to be good Lyft customers—a low passenger on Lyft rating can make it more difficult for you to get matched with a driver when you request a ride.

Product

An excellent product makes customer service so much easier.

The app generally works very well. I've used it to get rides from airports, hotels, office buildings, and restaurants. Wait times are typically minimal, the prices are very reasonable, and the automatic payment process is easy.

The few times I've had a small issue, such as the driver arriving at the wrong pick-up location, the driver was almost always knowledgeable enough about the app to make suggestions to improve my experience.

One time, I was charged a no-show fee even though I was standing in the correct location and the driver never appeared. A quick message to customer service cleared that up immediately.

In fact, I've found Lyft's customer service team to be very helpful and empowered the few times I've needed them for something. While it's best to avoid problems, having the support you need one something goes wrong can be the difference between an angry or a loyal customer.

Conclusion

There's a lesson here for internal teams.

Customer service leaders tend to over value the importance of training. As a training professional, I'd like nothing better than for training to solve every problem. But the reality is there's more to great service.

Lyft delivers consistently great service with a strong culture, consistent feedback, and a good product.