'Platform decay' - how to prove your business isn't just yet another cash generator for its shareholders

Tech critic Corey Doctorow has a much less polite name for this. But we will leave the inquisitive amongst you to find that out for yourselves. What does 'Platform Decay' mean in the context of running a modern business?

Let us describe it in terms that we can all understand:

1.  The business invests heavily in sales and marketing to hook the customer

2.  The business provides excellent initial service, delivered by a human being 

3.  The business then degrades that service, usually by substituting tech for in-person service

Ring any bells? We thought so. Why do so many businesses end up at No. 3? The answer, besides 'pure greed' is 'because they can'. And they know they can. They have often invested heavily in researching just how impersonally they can deliver their 'personal service' before they begin to lose customers. The word they love most is 'inertia', being the degree to which a customer will tolerate poor service before they up sticks and change their financial adviser/lawyer/doctor.

Think of your last interaction with any of those. Was the phone answered within three rings by a human being? Was your request for an appointment agreed to at a time of your choosing? Was the information you requested provided in an intelligible format and in a timely manner?

If the answer to any of these is 'no', then you are a victim of 'Platform Decay'. If your business cannot answer 'yes' to all of them, it is part of the problem. 

Before someone says, 'we introduced our automated [any] service for the benefit of our customers,' let us be quite clear: given the option to speak to a 'real' person or a bot, no one, in the history of the world, opted for a bot. 'Oh, but it frees up our staff for more important tasks,' we hear someone say. Again, 'no'. Nothing is more important in a service business than personal contact. The tech should be on the business's end for the member of staff to use to provide the service the customer was 'sold' in step 1 above.

Imagine? technologically feasible, but would you prefer it to your local?

If you don't believe what we have written in the previous paragraph, take a face-to-face business that we all understand: the great British pub. Supposing some bright spark decided that your local could provide a far more efficient service if they did away with all the - expensive - bar staff and replaced them with a line of fully automated drinks dispensers. Just swipe your card, and a pint is poured for you. By a machine. Instantly. No queuing. No waving a twenty-pound note to attract attention. In fact, have a terminal and a feed at your table and have it done without you even having to get up and walk to the bar, sorry, 'dispenser'. 

Businesses that 'treat their customers like humans' get far better reviews, leading to far better scores (Google especially), which in turn leads to far greater numbers of inbound enquiries and a far higher rate of conversion. What is not to like?  

This is effectively what businesses that have introduced Platform Decay into their models have done. Now, this article has not been written to convince those businesses to change, far from it. We are writing it to show those businesses that do provide a great service, right through from inception to fulfilment and throughout the customer lifetime, that there is a way to show prospective customers that they still exist. And it's called 'reviews'.

It is pretty easy to spot a business suffering from Platform Decay. They have reviews such as this:

As opposed to those that don't, that have reviews such as this:

But there are also great businesses out there that continue to look like this:

...and this for a business with well over half a million customers

So, the answer is simple: if your business is not a victim of Platform Decay, you need to mobilise your customers to write reviews like the one written by 'Sid' above. 

Pointers:

1. Choose a moderated mechanism (so you don't have to worry about factually inaccurate or misleading reviews seeing the light of day)
2. Choose a compliant mechanism (now that the CMA is on the warpath, the days of cherry-picking happy customers and only inviting them to write a review are behind us)
3. Avoid using review sites (the example above of the business scoring a woeful 2.8 is one such - 26 Google reviews from over 500,000 customers is an extreme, but nonetheless valid, example; and the regulators in both the UK and Italy have taken action against, or are currently in the process of investigating, two of the most prominent review sites)
4. Engage all your management and staff ('Sid's review is one of over 600 on Google and nearly 800 on their own website, whence almost all of the Google reviews derive, for a single branch of an estate agency)

Further reading:

• Joining HelpHound - what happens next? Our latest update.