customer service

Three Companies that Started down the Trust Path with Customers First

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:04:50 -0400

They do it by talking about and engaging with topics and content that will make their customers smarter. Or they share tidbits that are fun and engaging, and share the love. These are the secrets of successful corporate blogs - and I’ll share then in less than a thousand words.

Five Companies that Fix their Story to Inspire Service

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:17:31 -0400

Branding as a strategy means little if the customer experience is not there. If your story doesn’t align with what you do, all of the clever tactics you can come up with to follow your lofty goal will not make the cut.

Unless you can fix your story by inspiring a culture of service from the inside. You instill a belief as well as make an example of behaviors to follow throughout the organization. You know that this cannot just be a grassroots effort, it needs to come all the way from the top.

Would CPG Brands Compete with their Own Channels for Customers?

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:52:46 -0400

AdAge writes an interesting article about going beyond online ads to eCommerce opportunities for CPG brands. Will it pay off? Services are easier to deliver online. A few product dot-bombs in the early 2000s made us keenly aware of that.

One of the companies mentioned in the article is Alice.com. Their model is to connect customers to companies directly. But this is not their main story.

Customer Issues and the Bottom Line

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:52:44 -0400

Many marketers spend a considerable amount of time calculating the ROI of campaigns by looking at cost per lead (CPL) or Web conversion numbers. You are probably quite smart yourself to the ways of lead nurturing and its importance in branding and customer acquisition. Those are known costs of doing business these days.

Yet many companies fall apart when it comes to opportunity costs.

Innovation and Failure

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:32:57 -0400

There is a good relationship between innovation and failure. As Monica Harrington shares, Microsoft Bob gave plenty of very smart people a run for their money - and lessons to take to their next project. Those are familiar lessons. Building on Harrington’s:

Mad Men and Trust Agents

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:16:12 -0400

They’re at the opposite ends of the conversation spectrum. The show context is that of media and advertising, two areas that are undergoing rapid change - some would call it a decline. Mad Men captivated the public’s imagination by its depiction of a long gone era - dare I say with a tinge of nostalgia?

Fluency in Customer Conversation is a Key Business Driver

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:15:40 -0400

There is a reason why this publication is called Fast Company. The US has an even shorter attention span than many places I’ve had the fortune of spending time in. I’ve been writing about customer conversation here for more than 18 months and I don’t get tired of saying it - fluency in customer conversation is a key business driver, one that will make or break a company’s tenure at the economic table.

How to Give Your Company Service Deadlines

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 23:12:02 -0400

Usually it’s the customers who give you deadlines - and sometimes ultimatums - on service. Needing something done by, support within “x” time, service at “y” time and place. What would happen if you turned that concept on its head and gave yourself a deadline instead?

How you can get the Most out of Customer Service

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:12:26 -0400

We spend so much time talking about how to improve customer service that I thought one post on how to improve customer attitude would be time well spent. If you think about it, we call a customer support line only when we have a problem - rarely if never to proactively say how much we love a product or a service.

Why are we so ready to give feedback when we have a bad experience and yet so harried and thoughtless when we have a great experience? Probably because we’re busy telling all our friends and do not think the company that gave us that experience might care.

How to Map to the Social Media Engagement Profile of Your Customers

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 17 May 2009 20:20:57 -0400

You probably already know that Forrester’s social technographics profile can help you analyze the social profile of your customer base. As authors Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li explain in the book Groundswell, people increasingly use technology to get what they need from each other, instead of relying on companies and businesses.

This is a social trend accelerated by technology, not the other way around.

How to Answer the Social Phone

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:53:15 -0400

It seems that if there are many ways to listen in the social Web, there are also many reasons with the ways to answer. Tom Asacker puts it well, we define ourselves both according to what we identify with and what we reject, and given the abundance of marketplace choice, we now choose interactions which we feel will produce the best story possible.

Are You Helping Your Customers or Driving Them Nuts?

Roberta Matuson — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:40:00 -0500

My 11-year old son has been waiting patiently to receive his copy of a newly released sequel from the library. I could have bought him the book, but I thought it was important for him to learn what a wonderful resource the library can be. I'm now having second thoughts.

Light My Fire

Julie Sue Auslander — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:03:39 -0500

Listening to the lyrics in The Doors song, “Light My Fire”, I think they might just have the answer to helping business through these challenging times. “Try to set the night on fire/The time to hesitate is through/No time to wallow in the mire/Try now we can only lose,” rings true.

What do you do when there are only embers? How do you stop worrying about wet matches? No fuel, no problem.

You Have Got To Be Kidding Me! Right? by Ted Eleftheriou

Ted Eleftheriou — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:41:34 -0500

Saw this billboard the other day for Holiday Inn Express (See Photo):

“Guest Rated #1 Shower”

They’re kidding… right? They mean to tell me that the showers at Holiday Inn Express are so good that their guests take the time to rate them? To say, "WOW? "R – i – g – h - t! I want Holiday Inn Express to produce the survey for me. I mean did it really have a question like:

What Happens If Apple Grows Too Fast?

Chris Dannen — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:39:54 -0500

CNBC is predicting that Apple may top Microsoft as computing's most valuable firm. But that kind of success might be self-defeating.

As CNBC rightly acknowledges, Apple has a long way to go before it can dethrone Redmond, but estimates that the guard may change as sooner than anyone could have predicted just two years ago. While Windows still wins the marketshare battle with around 90% of all PCs, Apple's annual revenue has more than doubled in the last four years, while Microsoft is growing more slowly.

Ability to Change by Ted Eleftheriou

Ted Eleftheriou — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 01:56:00 -0400

Microsoft's Looking Glass Tool Tracks Social Buzz for Companies

Chris Dannen — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:12:52 -0400

Yesterday we wrote about Squidoo's plans to put an end to organic Twitter PR. Now Microsoft has announced it's creating a competing tool--and this one might actually be a force for good.

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish

Roberta Matuson — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:08:28 -0400

My husband paid a visit to our local bank the other day to deposit a plastic bag filled with coins. This is something he does every few months. Only this time, he was informed that he would now be charged $5 for this transaction. Seems kind of funny that you have to pay your bank to take your money. Especially since they have a coin machine that processes the entire transaction.

Public Relations: Your Secret Weapon: Customer Service

Wendy Marx — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:14:18 -0400

So many companies give lip service to customer service not realizing that it is as important to their branding and bottom line as advertising. Today I want to give a shout out to a company that doesn’t just talk the talk but embodies it. I’m talking Carnival Cruise Lines.

Please and Thank you

Adam Contos — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:55:02 -0400

I travel for a living, like many business people here and I just have ONE little request from the people I encounter during my endeavors....USE SOME MANNERS. I know many people dislike their jobs, but that's no reason to make us travelers dislike them as employees. Why should they care? Let me tell you...

Customer feedback and the quest for continuous improvement

Shawn Graham — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 13:00:49 -0400

If you’re in a customer-focused business (and really, who isn’t?), you’re always looking for feedback. How was their experience when they entered your store? Were they able to easily navigate your website? Wal Mart (who knew they had a blog?) even asks whether the cashier greeted you before you swipe your credit card at the register.

How do You Find Out What Your Customers Want?

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:44:55 -0400

You could just ask, but that wouldn’t give you a product or service worth the money you might put into it - 50 to 90% of the product and service initiatives by US companies are failures. This costs in the magnitude of $100b per year.

And that’s taking into account that these companies have adopted customer-driven thinking. Innovation needs to be outcome-driven to create breakthrough products and services, writes Anthony Ulwick in What Customers Want.

Sprint Nextel Tells Customer “No” Data

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:20:55 -0400

Sharing the data you collect about a customer with that customer may be your single most important gesture of transparency - not to mention that it may give you the ability to convert more of those conversations.

I found the story while reading the Sunday edition of the Inquirer and it caught my eye. When a Sprint customer requested an itemized bill, the company refused to send the information. The answer, after some considerable waffling:

When it Comes to Customer Service, Action Speaks Louder than Words

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:36:12 -0400

Social media is rarely the work of only one person, especially when it comes to implementations done by organizations. Today however, I wanted to talk about the difference that one person made in each of three companies - even though they worked in concert with a team that supported them.

Coupon clippers: care and feeding guide

Lynette Chiang — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:05:26 -0400

A trendspotting firm recently asked me if I had any insights to share regarding customer service in a recession. No need for my second hand opinion - just stand in line anywhere in the city and you'll witness some elementary customer service blunders - in a time when companies can ill afford them.