“Markets that don't exist don't care how smart you are.” - Mark Andreessen
You can be as good and tested as you want, in a tight market you’ll need to really figure out if there is a market for your product or service. The ...READ»
I’ve been thinking about the recent announcement that Robert Scoble is joining Rackspace to run building 43, a place for people fanatical about the Internet. If you’re not familiar with the name, Rackspace is the hosting company ...READ»
The problem with customer conversations is that they are often not seen as instrumental to customer conversions, which are the bread and butter of a business. Instead, they are considered intangibles, in the same way as relationships ...READ»
In my professional role, virtually all of the people I come in contact with could be considered customers. Given everyone’s work load and internal demands these days, the easiest people to deal with are by far the company’s ...READ»
Customer loyalty should not be just a program, it should be part of the DNA of your business to earn as reward. There continues to be a gap between the percentage of people who say they are satisfied with a company and those who ...READ»
Thanks to plenty of helpful advice everywhere you turn, monitoring and listening to conversations is now the first thing you may think about doing online. This reminds me that in the public space, we’re taking eavesdropping to a ...READ»
It’s not a secret that customer service has become more and more self-service. In certain situations that is quite alright. If we are in the service of each other within a community, for example. It is counter-intuitive, yet we tend ...READ»
Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Google, FriendFeed - there is no scarcity of networks and services that are free to users who enjoy a connection to the World Wide Web today. What happens when one of these services we have come to rely on experiences a problem? How does customer support for free services work?
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Customers suffer and so does the business.What can you do to get back on track? The first thing you need to learn is to listen to your customer champions in the service department. This will be a tougher year if you’re not willing ...READ»
I was researching The Body Shop for my post on National Day of Service and community at Conversation Agent and came across their Twitter account in the US. Perhaps it was started by a fan of the company? It looks sort of abandoned or ...READ»
Mass personalization in customer care works only if your name is “mass”. Other customers may have been fine with a different kind of response, but they probably did not have the exact problem or question the customer in front of ...READ»
Let’s say you have a problem with a system or a product that contains several components from different companies. To fix the problem, you need to contact different providers. What if those providers employed community service ...READ»
It’s easier than ever to find out what consumers are talking about when it comes to your company or type of business today. Log online and run a Google Search, or a Twitter search - better yet, program Google Alerts with your ...READ»
The term quality is one that every single business likes to claim, yet since fewer and fewer come through when it’s time to back up that claim with execution, it has joined the list of other once powerful and now empty words ...READ»
“With few exceptions, every job people need or want to do has a social, a functional, and an emotional dimension. If marketers understand each of these dimensions, then they can design a product that's precisely targeted to the job. ...READ»
We live in uncertain times. Open a newspaper, turn on the TV or listen to what people are talking about and you will hear concern, preoccupation, and worry. Many of the things we had taken for granted in recent times - making major ...READ»
Customers can be the service for your organization, if you let them. Are you open to treating your interactions with them that way?I posed the question to people on Twitter - a service for friends, family, and co–workers to ...READ»
Almost a year ago, I wrote about how Best Buy handled a situation that could have snowballed in much more than an embarrassment - it could have become a PR nightmare. Yes, customers today have a wider reach than they ever had. The ...READ»
It seems that not a day or an hour goes by without a company thinking about asking customers to help design and define not just the marketing tactics for their product, but the product itself. Are we taking co-creating too far? Are we ...READ»
It works because it’s customer-made. Can anyone tell me how to stretch a pair of boots? This is a question I could have easily asked. A life-long athlete and runner, my calves never seem to fit in the fashionable styles. Instead, it ...READ»
Companies need to give their customers a voice and a way for them to engage in order to create valuable relationships with them over time. How does a business do that?
A recent Consumer Experience Report by Razorfish highlights ...READ»
In a comment to my last post on how to own your customer service experience, Dave Alston states:
Many brands are going to be pressured to reduce the amount of money they are investing in marketing and PR. So will they see social ...READ»
It’s the secret of every wildly successful business, and the keystone to profitable growth. Those who have it, thrive. Those who don’t, have a very hard time keeping up with competition. Wouldn’t you want to have it, too? ...READ»
Since last week was national customer service week (hat tip to Toby Bloomberg), I thought of writing a top ten list of customer service success factors.
You are successful in customer service when:
1. You’re doing all the ...READ»
Many of the tried and true metrics adopted by call centers for customer support center around customer avoidance. They reward those reps who can get off the phone quickly, for example, but there is no metric built around the customer ...READ»
