From the horse's mouth - Jenny Lunnon discovers how a new generation of 'spoken' testimonials can have a big impact on a business.
If you have ever been trained in customer care you have probably heard that unhappy customers tell up to 15 people about their bad experiences with companies. This underlines the importance of dealing with complaints in a way that limits potentially significant damage to a company's reputation.
Grumbling and complaining might be national pastimes, but we do tell friends and acquaintances about our successful dealings with retailers and service providers, too, often spontaneously, and with genuine enthusiasm.
Word-of-mouth recommendation is the best there is, and absolutely crucial for small and medium-sized enterprises with limited money to spend on advertising.
Two Oxford-based businessmen have spotted an ingenious new way of harnessing the power of the positive report, and it forms the basis of their recently-launched company Video Testimonials. Mark McDermott, managing director, and Sebastian Stern, assistant director, video short interviews with a company's satisfied customers to provide testimonials that are both more trustworthy and more persuasive than written ones.
The result is "a word-of-mouth marketing tool"; something akin to that ideal personal recommendation, yet accessible to everyone who has an Internet connection.
The pair got the idea from an experience Mr McDermott had when promoting his existing
film and video production companies, Creative Gold and Creative Corporate. Each year he made a promotional DVD, but last year, for the first time, he included three filmed testimonials from satisfied clients. The enquiry rate went up significantly and this persuaded him and Mr Stern that they had spotted a gap in the market.
They believe the service will appeal to many different kinds of business. They have already had interest from marketing and website design companies, and a property developer. It may be especially useful to companies that are offering services, rather than tangible products, and to those that only have a presence on the Internet and no physical premises where potential customers can meet them face-to-face.
One of their first clients has been Didcot-based
Etcom People Engineers, which offers physiotherapy and related services. The testimonial shows a woman talking about the positive improvement in her quality of life that has resulted from her tapping into the company's expertise. Even if you don't listen, but just look at her body language, such as the way she looks upwards as she remembers, it comes across as genuine and heart-felt.
The recommendation is for brief testimonials. Mr McDermott added: "We suggest about a minute long: short, concise, and to the point." Ideally, the interviewee will be "relaxed, open, and sincere" and focus on the specific benefits they have enjoyed, not just saying "the company was really good" in a vague way.
Filming only takes about 15-20 minutes of a customer's time. Business-to-business clients recommending the products or services of another company also benefit from having a mention on the other company's website.
The client receives viewing figures each month and if these are disappointing, Video Testimonials will work with them to see why - perhaps the testimonial could be better-placed on the company website, or maybe the whole site needs to be better-promoted.
Naturally, their own website includes a video testimonial about their video testimonials, from businessman Vince Golder of Goldnet Referral Marketing, who has also written an article for them about
the power of the testimonial.
The business is based on a very simple premise, the natural human desire to tell others when we recognise that a company has not only dealt with us honestly and efficiently, but gone the extra mile. Mr Stern said: "It can be so hard to find a company you're really happy with and, when you do, you really want to tell people about it."
Internet Research