This post is part of the Social ROI Blog Carnival at Think Customers: the 1to1 Media blog. Visit the blog carnival post at the link above to check out the full list of posts from numerous well-known social media thought leaders. There are many ways to measure the success of social media at an organization. Some of these metrics are often focused only on tactical results (ex: number of followers or fans). Other metrics tie directly back to the bottom line (ex: value of sales coming directly from Twitter). On occasion, we see true ROI calculated from social media initiatives. Most companies,…
Customer Service
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Most Topular Stories
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Measuring the Impact of Social Media
Customers ROCK!24 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm -
How Social a Social Customer Are You?
Think customers: The 1to1 Blog27 Jan 2012 | 8:26 amWhen it comes to considered purchases it seems that everyone--B2B and B2C buyers alike--wants a second opinion. In fact, 100 percent of the nearly 100 respondents to 1to1's recent survey "How Social a Social Customer Are You?" seek recommendations on occasion before purchasing an item important enough to research before buying. While only about a third of the survey respondents seek recommendations prior to every considered purchase, only 4 percent rarely ask for recommendations. There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog -
Customer service innovation
very best service16 Jan 2012 | 11:28 amCustomer service innovation has become increasingly valuable as a way to differentiate from the competition and avoid an all-out price war. The challenge for companies is to determine to what extent the service innovations should be radical and if they are not a re-hatched copy of what someone has done before, are they achievable? To succeed management needs to be daring yet make sure that every element has been perfectly assessed and calculated so that the newly built process stays in place for many years to come. Are you brave enough to have a go? -
What Keeps You up at Night?
Conversation Agent27 Jan 2012 | 5:00 amI'm a night owl. Often people will hear back from me in the wee hours because I get creative at around 4pm and then stay in flow for hours after that. By the time I realize I'm cold from the heating going to low for the night, it's way past bed time. When I get into flow, I shut everything else... [Click on the title to read this article in its entirety at Conversation Agent] -
Putting More Opportunity into Your Life
Kevin Eikenberry on Leadership & Learning27 Jan 2012 | 6:24 amLiving in Indianapolis, and being a sports fan, makes it easy to like Mario Andretti. Mario won one Indianapolis 500 (in 1967) and came close to winning several others. Mario won many accolades in his racing career, including being named by the Associated Press as the Racer of the Century in 2000. In other words, [...]
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Kevin Eikenberry on Leadership & Learning
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Putting More Opportunity into Your Life
27 Jan 2012 | 6:24 amLiving in Indianapolis, and being a sports fan, makes it easy to like Mario Andretti. Mario won one Indianapolis 500 (in 1967) and came close to winning several others. Mario won many accolades in his racing career, including being named by the Associated Press as the Racer of the Century in 2000. In other words, [...] -
What’s Your Word Count?
24 Jan 2012 | 2:00 pmSales trainers and professionals have said it for years. The best sales people talk less during their encounters with customers than others do. They get the prospect to share their thoughts and concerns. They recognize that the sale isn’t made by their perfect words as much as by the feelings and thoughts of the prospect. While this [...] -
The Case for the Bold Leader
23 Jan 2012 | 5:00 amIn 1776, the colonists in the British American Colonies were unhappy. So unhappy, that they formed a Continental Congress which suggested Declaring Independence from Great Britain. 56 men signed the document, and in doing so publicly announced that they were declaring treason on Great Britain. That is bold. Most of them lost their families and [...] -
Doing the Impossible: The 25 Laws for Doing the Impossible
23 Jan 2012 | 4:30 amToday’s Resource Recommendation is Doing the Impossible: The 25 Laws for Doing the Impossible by Patrick Bet-David. I’m not exactly sure how this book ended up in my Amazon shopping cart and then in a box on my desk. I don’t know nor had never heard of the author and don’t remember someone referring it [...] -
The Danger of Imitation
20 Jan 2012 | 6:58 amMaybe you wouldn’t state it this way, but chances are, if you are reading this, you want to become great at something. Maybe you’d use different words. Maybe “being great” doesn’t resonate with you. It doesn’t matter what words you put to it; if you want to become more effective and move closer to your [...]
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Conversation Agent
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What Keeps You up at Night?
27 Jan 2012 | 5:00 amI'm a night owl. Often people will hear back from me in the wee hours because I get creative at around 4pm and then stay in flow for hours after that. By the time I realize I'm cold from the heating going to low for the night, it's way past bed time. When I get into flow, I shut everything else... [Click on the title to read this article in its entirety at Conversation Agent] -
Keep the Faith. Demand Proof. Relentlessly.
26 Jan 2012 | 5:00 amThere are two aspects to doing business -- believing in what you're doing, and verifying that it works for your customers and clients. To succeed, you need to do both, relentlessly. When it's only about keeping the faith, you may be worshiping at the altar of hope (or its shady cousin, ego), and... [Click on the title to read this article in its entirety at Conversation Agent] -
How to Win Customers and Influence Word of Mouth
25 Jan 2012 | 5:00 amWhen I met Stan Phelps for coffee a little over a year ago, I learned for the first time there was a term -- lagniappe -- that meant a small gift given to a customers by a merchant at the time of purchase. It cannot be faked of forced, for it to work it must feel real. Our conversation on the... [Click on the title to read this article in its entirety at Conversation Agent] -
The Truth About B2B Social Media Adoption
24 Jan 2012 | 5:00 amWhile we've been sharing examples of creative content strategy executions for a couple of years here, it's easy to forget that the rest of the business world may still be wrestling with different issues. The truth about social media adoption, according to the results of a survey conducted by Penton... [Click on the title to read this article in its entirety at Conversation Agent] -
How Much is a Lifetime Customer Worth to your Business?
23 Jan 2012 | 5:00 amFor Zane's Cycles, it’s $12,500, says CEO Chris Zane in Reinventing the Wheel. That means if we start by providing a child his first bike at 4-years-old and continue through the retirement bike, we will collect $12,500 in fulfilling all of the cyclist’s lifetime needs. But to actually sell an... [Click on the title to read this article in its entirety at Conversation Agent]
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CRM Daily
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Company Reimbursed Customers for Product Reviews
27 Jan 2012 | 2:14 pmOnline reviews of products and businesses should be taken with at least a few grains of salt, since it's usually not clear if real customers have actually posted their honest assessments. Now, a new report shows how one company compensated customers for good reviews. As described in a story published Thursday in The New York Times, a company named VIP Deals received rave reviews online about its Vipertek black leather case for the Kindle Fire tablet on Amazon. Out of 335 reviews, 310 gave the case five stars. 'Totally Off-Base' Following reports that VIP Deals was offering the case for free… -
O2 Accidentally Exposes Customers' Phone Numbers
27 Jan 2012 | 8:34 amAn untold number of U.K. residents may have unwittingly broadcast their numbers to sites across the Web while browsing the Internet with their cellphones during the past two weeks. Mobile service provider O2 said Wednesday that a glitch had exposed the numbers of smartphone-toting customers who connected to the Internet over the company's network. The company, a major subsidiary of Spain's Telefonica, S.A., has some 22 million customers in Britain. It was unclear how many of those may have been affected and a call seeking further comment from O2 was not immediately returned. The glitch was… -
Hotel Giants Embracing Guest Reviews -- Good or Bad
27 Jan 2012 | 8:31 amIn a sign of how powerful online reviews are to travelers, some of the world's biggest hotel companies are adding customer reviews of their hotels to their own Web sites. Starwood launched its own customer reviews in October. Marriott and Four Seasons followed. Now, others are jumping in: Hilton Worldwide will add customer reviews by the end of this year, says Chuck Sullivan, senior vice president of global online services. Holiday Inn's parent, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), will test "verified customer reviews on all of our consumer-facing Web sites early this year," says Michael… -
Wal-Mart Says Goodbye to Night-Shift Greeters
27 Jan 2012 | 8:27 amWal-Mart Stores, the world's largest retailer, has removed greeters from the overnight shift at its U.S. supercenters, chipping away at a 30-year tradition of making sure all shoppers are welcomed to the store. The move will save money and ensure Wal-Mart has the right staffing levels during peak and non-peak hours, David Tovar, a spokesman, said in a telephone interview. For the past six months, Wal-Mart has been reassigning greeters at the company's approximately 3,000 U.S. supercenters from the third shift, which runs from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., to other jobs, he said. Founder Sam Walton added… -
SAP Ready To Tackle Oracle in the Cloud and Database Market
26 Jan 2012 | 3:15 pmComing off a great 2011, with a 25 percent jump in software revenue, SAP is ready to set the bar even higher for the year ahead. The German-based enterprise-software maker plans to focus aggressively in the database and cloud computing market for business users, competing head on with Oracle. On Wednesday, the company held a news conference in Frankfurt to outline a plan building on its success and targeting new opportunities. ERP for HANA SAP said it will support an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) module for its HANA in-memory database platform by the end of this year. The new module will…
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Customer Experience Crossroads
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When intellectual property is the product as well as the raw material, and we are all creators
17 Jan 2012 | 4:57 pmWikipedia is going black for a day on January 18, 2012. They state their reasons here. The words that prompted this post follow: But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not. As Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh wrote on one of our mailing lists recently, We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the… -
The wall of distraction: Three rules of communication that will help you get over
20 Dec 2011 | 4:12 pmThis morning my workout buddy told me she was so distracted thinking about all the things she has to get done, that instead of gargling, she swallowed her mouthwash. Her explanation: "I have about 3,000 things on my mind right now. Do you ever have that problem?" Oh yeah. One recent morning, distracted with a dozen things and dabbing at the remains of the mascara from the day before, I noticed that the eye-makeup remover smelled odd. Odd, but familiar. Fortunately I noticed that it was actually nail polish remover before I actually got acetone in my eye. (Yikes!) It's easy to find distracted…
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Gartner Blog Network
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Highlights from Today’s #GartnerChat on Big Data
27 Jan 2012 | 7:45 pmToday the Gartner Information Management and Analytics Community held its weekly Twitter Chat, (Tweetchat, Tweetjam, TweetUp, whichever you prefer) to discuss concepts around big data, the role of the data scientist, and data quality. Over a half dozen Gartner analysts shared their ideas and research. (Where else can you get access to that many Gartner analysts in one place at the same time?) And dozens more individuals from other organizations also shared their perspectives and questions. Big Data—Hey What’s the Big Idea? First we discussed whether “Big Data” is an animal, vegetable… -
Pulling the Trigger
27 Jan 2012 | 3:01 pmAs Seth Godin points out in a recent blog posting, there is often a long preamble to the trigger that launches an innovation on its path up to the Peak of Inflated Expectation. In Mastering the Hype Cycle, we track the advent of usage-based car insurance offerings (such as Snapshot from Progressive Insurance) back to vehicle tracking discussions in the 1970s. In this case, as in many others, it took decades for technology performance and costs to reach a point where realistic user trials, and eventually products and services, were technologically feasible and economically viable. There are… -
The intersection of Application Performance Monitoring(APM) and Application Lifecycle Management(ALM)
27 Jan 2012 | 12:38 pmLast week I published a note with my colleague Tomas Murphy who covers the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) technologies, the note was about the intersection of Application Performance Monitoring(APM) and ALM. Although most of the APM buyers and end users I speak with come from an IT Operations or even an application support type role, I do speak to development organizations and quality assurance departments looking at these tools. When it comes to these organizational areas and even somewhat with application support the fit between the application lifecycle and proper measurement of… -
Frictionless Sharing and the Enterprise Social Network
27 Jan 2012 | 10:33 amFacebook’s new “frictionless sharing” enables someone to automatically post what they are doing online in a stream of status updates. To some, this is a little too much sharing. However, “enterprise frictionless sharing” should be the norm for internal social network sites. As a result of Facebook’s frictionless sharing I am constantly seeing what songs some of my friends are listening to through Spotify or what news articles they are reading on Yahoo. If granted permission, Facebook applications (e.g., Spotify or the Yahoo news reader) are able to write to your wall without… -
GPS tracking and the 4th Amendment (Part 2…)
27 Jan 2012 | 8:58 amMy colleague Avivah Litan has given her insightful and thought-provoking read on the recent US Supreme Court decision here. Avivah correctly identifies the “opt-in”/”opt-out” dichotomy as a critical element of the discussion. Tracking for law enforcement purposes needs, of course, to be set aside from the debate over user consent… but outside law enforcement – whether in the commercial domain or for public sector service delivery – I strongly believe that there should always be an opt-out available. In fact, my personal opinion is that “opted…
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Shep Hyken
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Being Off Duty Doesn’t Mean You Aren’t Responsible for Customer Service (and More)
25 Jan 2012 | 7:52 amThis may start out to sound like a rant, but it isn’t. It’s simply the set up for the customer service lesson to be learned. I’m at an airport, working my way through the security line for about fifteen minutes. During this time , a number of flight attendants and airline personnel went ahead of me and everyone else, cutting in front of paying passengers to get through the metal detectors and x-ray machines. What I noticed is that most of these airline employees didn’t smile or talk to the passengers as they cut in front of them. Some of the passengers were… -
Five Ways to Create a Customer Service Culture
18 Jan 2012 | 9:21 amThe reason an organization can deliver good or bad customer service comes down to one thing; what is happening on the inside of that organization. To sum it up in one word: culture. The culture inside of the organization is impacting your customer service. It’s more than just hiring the right people, and it’s more than customer service training. At the same time, it’s simple. It’s just setting an example of customer service behavior at the top, and pushing its way, through all employees, toward the customer. Starting at the top means that leadership and… -
Customer Service Recovery Can Show How Good You Are
11 Jan 2012 | 8:09 amRecently I had the pleasure of having lunch with Julia Carcamo (VP of Brand Marketing) and Jim White (VP of Guest Satisfaction) of Isle of Capri Casino’s. We had a great discussion about customer service. They shared a true story about a problem that happened at one of their casinos, and there’s a lesson to be learned about how the team managed the guest experience. The Lady Luck Casino, operated by Isle of Capri Casinos, is located in Caruthersville, MO. They hired Vicki Lawrence to present her concert, and it was a sold out event. The Lady Luck had just switched over to… -
Top Ten Customer Service Strategies for the New Year
4 Jan 2012 | 7:06 am1. Be better than average. Amazing companies don’t always deliver “Wow!” type experiences. No, they are just a little better than average – all of the time. All of the time is the secret. Anyone can be good or great once in a while. It’s the consistency that makes them amazing. 2. Pay attention to details. Sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest impact. Figure out the details that your customers enjoy and make them a routine part of doing business with you. 3. You may not be the owner, but you should care like you’re the owner. Not all… -
Customer Service Systems Start with People
28 Dec 2011 | 10:10 amCompanies care very much about the system that supports their customer service. This is typically an automated process or software program that helps companies deliver their customer service experience. For example, CRM software (customer relationship management) can help a company personalize their customer’s experience. A well designed website creates a customer friendly experience. My friend, Vala Afshar of Enterasys Networks has amazing technology that allows electronic components to communicate with other electronic components (using social media), all for the benefit of…
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Customers ROCK!
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Measuring the Impact of Social Media
24 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pmThis post is part of the Social ROI Blog Carnival at Think Customers: the 1to1 Media blog. Visit the blog carnival post at the link above to check out the full list of posts from numerous well-known social media thought leaders. There are many ways to measure the success of social media at an organization. Some of these metrics are often focused only on tactical results (ex: number of followers or fans). Other metrics tie directly back to the bottom line (ex: value of sales coming directly from Twitter). On occasion, we see true ROI calculated from social media initiatives. Most companies,… -
Using Social Media to Build Relationships
10 Jan 2012 | 9:53 pmA lot of businesses love social media because they feel it helps them spread the word about their organization and what they do. And it does. However, I strongly feel one of the most effective uses of social media is to build and deepen relationships with customers – be they consumers, clients, donors, or constituents. I predict this will be a big focus for social media in 2012. How can this be effectively done? Let’s take a cue from local government. No, really. Tweet the Mayor One of the most interesting stories about local government and social media is that of Newark, NJ mayor… -
The Bathroom Experience
28 Oct 2011 | 3:28 pmOnce again I am participating in the Bathroom Blogfest. As I have mentioned before, if you have a physical presence, whether you are B2C or B2B, your bathroom is an important part of the customer experience. What does it say about your brand? I have been on the road A LOT these past few months since my book launched, so I have had the opportunity to stay in many different hotels across the country (and at a variety of hotel brands). I thought it would be fun to post photos of some of the bathrooms I encountered during my travels (mostly in my hotel room). Which bathrooms do you think belong… -
Influencers vs Advocates
24 Oct 2011 | 10:00 amWhat is the difference between an influencer and an advocate for a brand? A lot of people recommend that a brand practice “influencer outreach”; others suggest a brand advocacy program is paramount for an organization. In his recent book, Smart Business, Social Business, Michael Brito discusses these two important points. Michael and I shared the stage recently at the Lithium Technologies “Likes to Loves” event in Orange County, CA, and I had the opportunity to interview him briefly on this very topic. What do you do at your organization? Do you reach out to… -
Customer Service Through Social Media: The game has changed
18 Oct 2011 | 8:53 pmToday’s post is written by a guest blogger, Harry Rollason. Harry is with Useful Social Media, and I will be presenting at their New York Conference on Social Media and Customer Service next week. Plus, Harry interviewed me about my book, The Hidden Power of Your Customers: Four Keys to Growing Your Business Through Existing Customers. Here is some food for thought from Harry. The rise of social media has changed customer service beyond recognition. In today’s competitive landscape, customer service is more important than ever. A company’s reputation for satisfying their customers…
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Social Studies Blog
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Community Manager Appreciation Day 2012 #cmad
22 Jan 2012 | 9:06 pmOn the fourth Monday of the new year, we take some time to celebrate and recognize the thousands of community managers on the front lines of customer service and social business. Our ‘Inside the Mind of a Community Manager’ infographic (on the right, click to view) is still one of our most popular infographic ever.Monday’s big event: GetSat co-founder and Chief Community Officer Amy Muller, will be joining a cadre of community management experts on a Google Hangout sponsored by Dell. Click here for full details on Facebook or on Dell’s Google+ page.Track… -
Get Lucky: How to Prepare for the Unpreparable
18 Jan 2012 | 11:30 amLast month, we told you about the upcoming book from our co-founders Thor Muller and Lane Becker, Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business. We snagged an exclusive first-look at what is sure to be the hot business bestseller this spring: (available for pre-order now)The audience greeted the young entrepreneur with a hero’s welcome. He walked out onto the stage of the conference hall and looked out into the audience. The applause was deafening.It was the fall of 2005, the last day of the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Sergey Brin, the 32-year-old… -
Infographic: How Brands Listen in the Digital Age
12 Jan 2012 | 12:41 pmIn the age of Facebook and cloud computing, listening to customers is more important than ever. It sounds simple enough, but there are tweets, online comments, and various other channels of digital communication to pay attention to. A 2011 Dell-commissioned Forrester Consulting survey of 200 US-based companies explores how organizations have implemented listening and digital engagement to reap the benefits of web 2.0. (Click for big version:) -
The Problem With ‘No Problem’
27 Dec 2011 | 4:43 pmI don’t know who started using this response for customer service. I would like to find the person who said it first and ask what they were thinking? How did “no problem” enter the conversation?Let’s say you go into a department store and ask, “could you ring up my purchases?” The response is often, “no problem”. Well of course, it’s not a problem, you are being paid to be here and the customer is spending money that they labored for in order to achieve the goal of purchasing your merchandise. Why would customer service ever be a problem? -
2012 Predictions
20 Dec 2011 | 12:48 pmIt’s the time of year when predictions are thrown out left and right, so in keeping with the spirit I have put together a list of things I would like to see happen in the year ahead.The Business of Social Networks: We have seen a coalescing of business models form around social networks and not surprisingly the vast majority of them are evolutions of advertising models. This will work but as companies demand more (see next prediction) the ad driven model will evolve in ways not previously seen. What that will be I do not have a clue but sponsored tweets and ad campaigns simply cannot be…
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Steve Curtin
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Opportunity is knocking
20 Jan 2012 | 12:54 pmIt is widely acknowledged that the number one reason customers quit doing business with a company is due to perceived indifference towards them as customers. When I ask audiences to describe what it feels like to be treated indifferently, I receive responses such as, “I feel unimportant” and “I feel as if I don’t matter.” Customers are important andcustomers do matter. If indifferent treatment is the number one problem, then it reasons that it’s also the number one opportunity. Years ago, I read The Pursuit of Wow!, an influential book by Tom Peters. In it, he makes the… -
Marriott is in good hands
9 Jan 2012 | 5:28 pmWhen I received my first management position with Marriott in 1992, I worked for a general manager named Mark Conklin. Although Mark (as he preferred to be called) oversaw more than two hundred employees, each employee received a hand-written card from him in the mail to honor the anniversary of their birth. And he didn’t merely scrawl his signature beneath a pre-printed generic “Happy Birthday!” message. He took the time to write a full paragraph that highlighted a recent contribution the employee had made to the hotel, thanked them for their commitment to excellence, and wished them a… -
The Energy Bus
30 Dec 2011 | 12:00 pmI recently received a review copy of The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon. It was a quick read consisting of 34 short chapters—some of which were only two pages long. The book relates a fictional story about George, a mid-level manager whose work and family life was in disarray before meeting a wise bus driver named Joy who, with the help of a busload of loyal passengers on Bus #11, shares 10 Rules For The Ride of Your Life. There are many business books out there that read like textbooks—filled with jargon, research, references, charts and graphs. These are the books that are often started but… -
Be kind
23 Dec 2011 | 1:06 amThe Greek philosopher, Plato, said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” It’s true. No one is excluded from life’s challenges—whether these setbacks involve health, relationships, money, or some other dimension of our lives. There’s a tendency to see our own situation as unique—as if no one else is dealing with the same stuff we’re dealing with. And that’s partly true. Each of our situations is singular in terms of the particular struggles we face day-to-day. So, while our situations may differ in that your battle looks different than my battle, the… -
Provide the unexpected
16 Dec 2011 | 4:44 pmThis post is the tenth in a series that has identified 10 different obstacles that have emerged from my analysis of customer satisfaction data. Perhaps you have encountered one or more of these obstacles in your own business? The tenth obstacle is missed opportunities. Two years ago, I wrote a blog post titled Missed opportunities. I considered repurposing the content for this post but decided against it. While thinking about the topic, it occurred to me that missed opportunities include failure to provide both expected service (such as those examples found in the above post) as well as…
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Service Quality Central
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10 Ways Being a Theatre Major Prepared me for Success
17 Jan 2012 | 2:00 amYesterday I posted Ten Ways Being a Theatre Major Prepared Me for Success on my personal blog. Thought I’d link to it in the event that any SQC subscribers would be interested! -
The Check-Out Line and Hold Button Have Glaring Similarities
8 Dec 2011 | 10:05 amImage by Getty Images via @daylife The Wall Street Journal had a great article this morning about the science of finding the best check-out line. Within the article, it talked about what happens when you are in queue for a period of time: Envirosell, a retail consultancy, has timed shoppers in line with a stopwatch to determine how real wait times compared with how long shoppers felt they had waited. Up to about two to three minutes, the perception of the wait “was very accurate,” says Paco Underhill, Envirosell’s founding president and author of the retail-behavior bible… -
Year-End QA Considerations
31 Oct 2011 | 4:06 pmImage by studiocurve via Flickr For many companies, the months of November, December and January signal the end of a fiscal year. With the end of the year comes annual performance management reviews which often include a service quality component. It is quite typical for this service quality component to be a score from the call monitoring and coaching QA program (e.g. “your call may be monitored to ensure quality service”). After almost two decades of doing QA as a third party provider as well as helping companies set up and improve their QA programs, I can tell you that year end… -
Podcast: Discipline Issues That Effect Your QA Program
16 Sep 2011 | 12:00 amImage via Wikipedia The data and reports coming out of many QA teams is both inaccurate and invalid because of discipline problems underlying the process. In this short audio Service Quality Central podcast, Tom Vander Well explores three common discipline problems and provides simply solutions for spot checking your own program. -
Getting Started with QA: Getting Your Feet Wet
14 Sep 2011 | 11:44 amOn the workbench in my garage is a router and router table. I bought it several years ago. It’s a nice one. I even bought a bunch of jigs for creating different kinds of edges. In all the time I’ve had it, I’ve turned it on less than five times. The problem is, I am not very proficient with the whole carpentry thing and I don’t have a lot of time on my hands to dedicate to learning the craft. I have the desire and I have the tool, but I don’t have the time, energy or expertise. Am I alone? I imagine you have a tool, gizmo, or gadget you purchased that is…
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Return Customer
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Reward the Customer Behavior You Want
25 Jan 2012 | 9:01 amCustomers respond to different types of incentives. Businesses around the world try to move customers in a certain direction through both positive, rewarding incentives and the negative threat of hefty fines or penalties. Both have their time and place. Take the example of a grocery store. They are a business and want to be profitable. Our local grocery store doesn’t want to pay for plastic bags. Sure, this is couched in an Earth-friendly message. However, in addition to saving the planet, the grocery store saves money when you bring your own bags. So how can they get customers to bring… -
Managing Negative Feedback in Social Media
23 Jan 2012 | 10:00 amSocial media marketing has introduced a wonderful way to connect with millions of consumers through one easy platform. Just as radio and television were revolutionary to the world of advertisement and marketing, so are Twitter and Facebook. What sets these social media platforms apart from other marketing methods is that they provide a space for a two way conversation between customer and product. Print and broadcast are completely one directional, permitting the conversation to only be from the product to the consumer. With social media, consumers can reach out to the product marketers and… -
How to Take Advantage of Your Competition’s Poor Performance
18 Jan 2012 | 9:01 amI attended a few conferences recently that stood out from their peers. Not because of the content of the presentations but because of the attention to details. One conference had the most comfortable chairs I’ve ever sat in. Typically, conference rooms have hard and uncomfortable chairs. Even though attendees must sit for hours on end, few facilities make that a pleasant experience. Another conference I attended made special arrangements to have good wireless Internet. By the organizer’s own admission, they didn’t want the wifi to be horrible like most other conferences. -
Always Remind Customers About the Repeat Purchase
11 Jan 2012 | 9:01 amIf you want your customers to buy from you again, you need to remind them that they should do exactly that. Don’t just remind them about the purchase, but tell them how. In the past, I’ve noticed that all the outward paintings on airplanes are so that people outside the plane can tell who is flying. Southwest Airlines has colorful planes painted like the flags of their destinations or even a large Shamu killer whale plane. Frontier Airlines has wildlife pictures on their planes’ tail fins. Each of these decorations serve as visual reminders to those that see the planes. -
Using Mobile Payments to Keep Customers Tuned In
9 Jan 2012 | 10:01 amMobile payments have increased in popularity by 178% over this time last year, according to the National Retail Federation. Many businesses are using them to broaden their customer base and increase customer loyalty. Businesses that conduct most of their transactions in the field are the ones most likely to benefit from mobile payments. Companies such as landscapers and plumbers can use mobile processing to take customer payments when service is rendered as opposed to waiting for their customers to respond to mailed invoices. Customer’s Perception Another advantage to accepting payments…
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Service Untitled
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Interview with Rob Siefker of Zappos – Part 2 of 4
27 Jan 2012 | 8:08 amThis is the second of a four part interview with Rob Siefker, the Director of the Customer Loyatly Team at Zappos. In this part of the interview, Rob discusses how Zappos motivates members of their customer loyalty team, what programs they have in place to recognize good service, and what service metrics the company tracks and how. You can read part one of the interview here. To read this part, click “read more.” Service Untitled: So how do you motivate Customer Loyalty team members? And then how do you keep that motivation up over time? A lot of companies institute programs and… -
The silent exit of poor customer service
25 Jan 2012 | 12:07 pmMost customers who feel they have been the recipients of poor customer service will never vocalize their feelings to a particular organization. According to First Financial Training Services and the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, only four percent of dissatisfied customers ever complain making the other 96 percent essentially ripe for the picking when another company offering similar services or products appear in the horizon. Typically an unhappy customer who perceives that attitude of indifference will tell eight to ten of their friends, coworkers or family members about their bad… -
Interview with Rob Siefker of Zappos – Part 1 of 4
23 Jan 2012 | 8:36 amAfter interviewing Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and seeing the company’s HQ outside of Las Vegas, I knew I wanted to learn more about the nuts and bolts and day-to-day operations of Zappos. To get this information, I spoke to Rob Siefker, Director of the Zappos Customer Loyalty Team. In part one of this four part interview, Rob talks about what he does at Zappos, how the company handles operating 24/7, what the training process is like for Zappos employees, and how the company makes the most out of cross-training its employees. Click “Continue Reading” to see the questions and… -
Best Buy customer service still at odds
18 Jan 2012 | 8:41 amBest Buy just can’t get it right, and customers continue to complain. Even the company’s promotion on used videos this weekend piled up consumer complaints as customers couldn’t find what they wanted in either the stores or online. To make matters even worse, Best Buy still has unresolved Christmas orders lingering about somewhere in “back order” or “canceled” land. Spokesperson for the company, Lisa Hawks blamed the glitches on their software supplier, Oracle which presumably can forecast demand and plan the coordinating inventory, but stated the… -
Customers not feeling “a little love back from Starbucks”
13 Jan 2012 | 2:09 pmStabucks UK has a lot of unhappy customers today after the company decided to change the terms of their loyalty program. The previous rewards card offered a free drink for every 15 transactions and a discount on filter coffee. Now it seems that Facebook is buzzing with caffeinated complaints because of the changes as consumers post everything from their disappointments to threats of shredding their loyalty cards. One of the most significant changes only gives customers one reward point per transaction as opposed to one point per item purchased. Starbucks claims it just holds up the checkout…
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The Chief Happiness Officer
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#h5yr and #h5is – find out how these two cryptic twitter tags promote happiness at work.
23 Jan 2012 | 6:31 amTake a moment to check out these two websites with some slightly cryptic links: h5yr.com h5is.com They were created by Douglas Robar, a member of the Umbraco Community, that develops and uses the open source Umbraco CMS. They wanted a good way to share both success and mistakes and since there are hundreds of people working with Umbraco spread out all over the world they do this through twitter. If you want to praise a fellow member of the community for doing good work you can mention them on twitter and add the twitter tag #h5yr for High Five, You Rock (based on one of the exercises from our… -
Friday Spoing
20 Jan 2012 | 7:46 amThis is the very definition of Spoing: Have a very happy weekend :o) -
Happiness at work in Bangkok
17 Jan 2012 | 2:09 amI always say that happiness at work can be found anywhere, in almost any job. Here’s more evidence to support that hypothesis from a man who makes ice tea on the streets of Bangkok: Do you enjoy your job this much – or do it with half as much flair? If not… why not? -
Give it your best shot
9 Jan 2012 | 4:13 amArbejdsglæde How do you think this word above is pronounced? Make a recording of your best guess (video or audio) and post it here… We need this for a little surprise project we’re working on. And yes, Danish is a weeeeeeird language. UPDATE: Here’s an attempt from the US: And another great one from Poland: Nice tries both… but not quite there. What’s your best shot? -
Hmmm… is this me?
6 Jan 2012 | 3:10 amLast night I was reading the excellent thriller novel Killer Move by Michael Marshall when I came to this passage where one of the main characters arrives at his office and runs into his assistant: “How’s…” I struggled and failed to come up with the name of her spawn. “Feeling better?” This was not something I cared about in the least, but that morning a Danish positivity blogger had suggested going out of one’s way to attempt to get inside other people’s lives and minds, however small and unappealing they might appear, as a thought experiment…
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The Engaging Brand
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What is your resistance?
27 Jan 2012 | 2:21 pmSo often I work with businesses that almost fearful of taking the next step, who are frightened of failure or even fearful of success. I am always reminded of a story which Dad used to tell me Coach: What stops you noticing all the opportunities around you? Electrician: Fear of failure Coach: What would you like instead? Electrician: Confidence Coach: What stops you feeling confident? Electrician: Fear of failure Coach: What would you like instead? Electrician: Confidence Coach: Notice the loop? Now can I ask you - do you really want to change? Electrician: Yes I want to. I want… -
Why Social Media is a Load of Pollacks!
26 Jan 2012 | 11:46 am"I let the painting live" The words of Jackson Pollock and when you think about it, so relevant to the way we see social media today. Just like Pollock, when we are producing, curating, commenting on social media we are the vehicle for our personality....our values... In fact one could say "I let the ideas live" Why does social media frighten some people or even not work for some companies? If you are going to let your ideas live then you have to Create ideas time, create thinking time....haven't the time people say, I say ideas are the revenue generators! Have a strong sense of who you are… -
Human beings are weird
25 Jan 2012 | 12:12 pmI have now gained true insight after over 20 years in business. Human beings are weird! Social media is a wonderful example. We get the chance to converse with our consumers and then decide we don't have time, we get the chance to show our personality and yet produce generic messages, we get the chance to listen, yet we still prefer to tell! Questions we need to ask ourselves are:- What are we ignoring as an opportunity? What are we railling against...not for innovation but because we are humans? How can we turn this human reaction into a positive? I came across the following about Time… -
B2B - 4 Important SEO Tips
24 Jan 2012 | 11:40 amIf your business provides services to other businesses--perhaps you offer rapid prototyping or human resources services--then the way you market your company will be different from business to consumer (B2C) companies. These differences even extend to your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, taking basic SEO strategies and refining them to better suit your needs. To get to that point, though, you have to have a firm grasp of the basics. Following that, you must clearly define your goals. If you don't know where you're trying to go, you'll never get there. Most SEO campaigns are aimed… -
Show 369 - What is your business genome?
23 Jan 2012 | 12:20 pmShow 369 of The Engaging Brand business and marketing podcast is heretalking about social media, leadership and marketing and sponsored today by MozyPro Online Backup: Simple, Automatic & Secure Backup - for special offer try today! Andrea Kates joins Anna Farmery to discuss how to discover and exploit your business genome. Andrea is the founder of the Business Genome® project and author of the bestselling business innovation book, Find Your Next. (You can take a diagnostic test here) Why you should be finding your next...rather than looking at the past, in business What is the…
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The Social Customer Manifesto
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Social Engagement Journey Video
15 Jan 2012 | 1:39 pmCheck out this fun little video on the Social Engagement Journey that our team in Seattle just put together. -
Social Business 2012 Presentation
29 Nov 2011 | 4:08 pmI’ll be speaking about social business strategy at the ASAE Technology Conference and Expo CIO Summit next week in Washington, DC. There are three key components to the conversation. 1) The Social Engagement Journey The Journey is the recognizable progression of social engagement capabilities that a large enterprise goes through on its way to becoming a social businesses. 2) The Relationship Progression While the “purchase funnel” has been well understood for years, there is a comparative dearth of conversation around how business relationships progress over time. A… -
This Week’s Social Business Jam
11 Nov 2011 | 12:48 pmA number of luminaries participated on this week’s W3C Social Business Jam, including Doc Searls (pictured), Alex “Sandy” Pentland and the inventor of the web itself, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. A jam is “an online conversation among leaders in business, government and technology about the current state of social business, the future role that social technologies can play in improving the bottom line, and how social technology should evolve in order to support business objectives.” There were a number of deep conversations, which generated over 1,100 posts on the… -
Google+ Launches Brand Pages
7 Nov 2011 | 5:58 amThe big news today is that Google+ has finally announced their long-awaited brand pages with a blog post here. The top line, from Google: For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you'll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello. A number of pages are already available (see below), but any organization… -
Steve Jobs Tribute in Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine
8 Oct 2011 | 4:53 pmNormally, Businessweek comes on Friday. For some reason this week, the magazine showed up today instead. I didn’t think much of it when I walked out to the driveway, actually. There it was, folded up in its weatherproof bag, just like usual. I brought it inside and opened it up, and saw that they featured a tribute to Steve Jobs on the cover. It was spare and gorgeously typeset, with nothing but the title of the magazine, the iconic photo of the salt-and-pepper Jobs, and “Steve Jobs 1955-2011.” (link) I opened up the magazine and started to flip through it, and was…
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Think customers: The 1to1 Blog
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How Social a Social Customer Are You?
27 Jan 2012 | 8:26 amWhen it comes to considered purchases it seems that everyone--B2B and B2C buyers alike--wants a second opinion. In fact, 100 percent of the nearly 100 respondents to 1to1's recent survey "How Social a Social Customer Are You?" seek recommendations on occasion before purchasing an item important enough to research before buying. While only about a third of the survey respondents seek recommendations prior to every considered purchase, only 4 percent rarely ask for recommendations. There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog -
Three Deadly Social Engagement Traits to Break
26 Jan 2012 | 11:00 amInstead, many companies use social to promote a product, to sell, or to monitor brand mentions. To be truly effective at leveraging social to engage customers and foster loyalty, organizations must transition from using social as a one-dimensional broadcast device to a two-way communications channel that enables meaningful and personalized dialogue. There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog -
Dell's Three-Pronged Approach to Social Media
26 Jan 2012 | 7:13 amCustomers are communicating with their favorite brands in an ever-increasing number of ways; along with phone calls and emails, today's customers are increasingly using social media channels not only to follow and interact with companies they're interested in, but also to share their experiences with these organizations. There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog -
Hiring the Right Call Center Agents Essential for Customer Satisfaction
25 Jan 2012 | 3:34 pmUnless you have fresh ingredients, following a great recipe will not lead to a delicious meal. It doesn't matter which Michelin-starred chef penned the recipe or how well you follow it, the stars of the show are the ingredients, and they can make or break your dinner. Similarly, the stars in any company are employees, making hiring the right people and giving them the needed training, as well as constant retraining, an essential factor in creating a fantastic customer experience. This was a recurring theme during the second day of the IQPC's Call Center Week Summit, with experts underlining… -
Social Personalization Improves Targeting and Engagement
25 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pmOften, while browsing the Internet, I notice advertisements that pertain directly to items or topics I've just searched. When shopping at the mall, I'll suddenly receive an email that connects me with an offer for the very store I just left. The eerie wave of awareness stops me dead in my tracks and I wonder, where is Big Brother and how does he know my every move? There’s more… To read the rest of this blog posting click here or visit www.1to1Media.com/weblog
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A blog about time tracking, task management project management, and other useful tales and tips, from the minds at Intervals
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Tracking the Untracked with Online Time Tracking Software
24 Jan 2012 | 3:41 pmMost of us using online time tracking software are already tracking the important stuff, like client work and internal projects. But there are plenty of other miscellaneous tasks we perform day-to-day that we don’t think to track, because they aren’t billable or directly related to any current projects. When we take the time to track [...] -
We’ve Improved the Intervals Search for Time, Tasks, Projects and More…
19 Jan 2012 | 3:09 pmWe are quite happy about the fact that Intervals has been increasing in size and popularity since we first launched it six years ago. One of the “growing pains” we encountered was the challenge of providing a fast and relevant search for our customers as the amount of data in their accounts increased. Intervals’ customers [...] -
How Web Designers and Developers can Contribute to Open Source Projects
18 Jan 2012 | 3:02 pmMost Web designers and developers I’ve met use Open Source projects in some way. We design using free icons and develop on a LAMP stack. Popular MVC frameworks are widely used and supported. It’s rather difficult for a Web designer or developer to get very far without Open Source software. Most of the Open Source [...] -
Three Time Tracking Myths Debunked
15 Dec 2011 | 2:18 pmWhen it comes to time tracking, small businesses and freelancers alike either love it or hate it. On the love side are those who’ve embraced time tracking in a way that benefits their business, clients, and empowers individual team members. On the hate side, some track their time because they are required to, while others [...] -
UPDATE: The 2011 Secret Santa Name Picker Script
22 Nov 2011 | 7:05 pmLast year, we published the source code we used to draw names out of our virtual hat to decide who would be giving a gift to whom as part of our annual t-shirt exchange tradition. However, a quick glance at that old code reveals its problems: 1. It’s inefficient. It uses brute force to match a [...]
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Leadership Consultant - Bill Hogg » Blog
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Is Your Leadership Limiting Your Organizations Ability to Grow?
12 Jan 2012 | 10:43 amThis is the first in our series of articles that looks at leadership capacity and its impact on organizational growth and transformation. The full series will be available for download as a white paper once it is completed. Leadership capacity is more than simply skill development; it’s about performance, growth, transformation and change. For the purpose of our discussion in this series of articles, let’s define it as; “Leadership Capacity is the skilful use of leadership attributes for the growth and development of ourselves, our colleagues and our organization”. -
Are You Really Incubating Fresh Ideas and Thinking?
3 Jan 2012 | 1:46 pmAre you finding that you are not hearing the fresh ideas and new thinking in your organization that you would like. Are you often faced with sitting through presentations that sound like the same ideas rehashed again and again. Well maybe you are burying good ideas under a bad process. Before you hear their ideas — are your teams spending time getting them “right”? Are they vetted, reviewed, revised and debated around in circles until all the edginess and excitement has been “fine-tuned” right out of existence. Imagine if ideas for the iPhone had been fine-tuned… -
Seasons Greetings
24 Dec 2011 | 7:47 amDuring the Holiday Season more than ever our thoughts turn gratefully to those who have made this last year successful. As a way of expressing our thanks to you and in keeping with the spirit of the season, we have made donations to Princess Margaret Hospital and our local Food Bank. These gifts will help ensure those less fortunate than ourselves share in the goodwill of the season and receive some of the every day necessities that we often take for granted. Sharing our good fortune with others has become one of our holiday traditions and with your continued support we hope to uphold the… -
Start, Stop, Do Different
1 Dec 2011 | 8:41 amMany people are familiar with the expression, Start, Stop, Do Different from personal evaluation processes — those regularly scheduled reviews by our supervisor. They will often use this outline to give us feedback of our performance. But I also think it should be used more regularly, both personally and with colleagues. No leader improves without feedback and personal introspection. So rather than waiting for a formal review by a supervisors, consider asking your colleagues these questions. What should I start doing? What activities or behaviours should I add into my daily activities… -
Best Practices Are Not Always Best Practice
17 Nov 2011 | 11:31 amBest Practices. Another great business term we all know and love. We love to throw out in meetings because it sounds good and rarely will anyone disagree. It’s safe. But is it wise. Who said that adopting best practices is right for your business? Maybe it’s the wrong thing to do in your case. Sacrilege? Maybe, but here are few thoughts to consider before deciding whether to adopt best practices or develop your own best practices. Are They Transferable? If the best practices are to work effectively in your business, then the businesses have to have similarities. Do you share…
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AmazingServiceGuy.com
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Three Ways to Keep Your Customers Coming Back
10 Jan 2012 | 6:52 amLast week I was interviewed by Daniel Bortz, a writer for Entrepreneur.com. He asked my opinion on some things small businesses can do to keep their customers coming back. The ideas in his article focused on tactics that most small businesses can do and can be made easier using technology tools. The suggestions centered on [...] -
Customer Service articles, books, blogs and more.
28 Nov 2011 | 8:49 amWelcome to the world of Amazing Service! I am Kevin Stirtz and this blog is my creation. It’s here to help you improve customer service for yourself, your team and your entire organization. I have written over 600 customer service blog posts, articles, ebooks and other resources and published them here, for you to use. [...] -
Cyber Monday Customer Service – Did it meet your expectations?
28 Nov 2011 | 8:48 amCyber Monday and Black Friday. By now we have all heard stories about how crazy these shopping days can get. And this year is no exception. From $199 flat screen 42 inch TVs to pepper-sprayed customers, to employees protesting the early start times, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become an annual shopping experience unlike [...] -
How was YOUR Black Friday shopping experience?
27 Nov 2011 | 5:56 pmWhew! Black Friday 2011 is now behind us. We can all relax and catch our breaths. And then get on with the rest of our holiday season. Personally, I think the whole idea Black Friday is way over done. But that’s just my personal opinion. What’s important (much more important than my personal opinion) is [...] -
Customer service conference: The Customer & Loyalty World Show
26 Nov 2011 | 3:50 pmSCG:QI, an integrated business research company with expertise in analyzing customer perceptions in social and traditional media along with their global partners EmPower Research USA, will host a conference topic of “Enhancing Customer Service and Experience through Social Media Analysis ” at The Customer & Loyalty World Show in Dubai on 29th November 2011. The [...]
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Can I have that with!
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a little perspective on the day to day problems
24 Jan 2012 | 9:33 amJust in case you have forgotten, you are a puff air living on a living mass orbiting a ball of fire.The largest solar storm in seven years is about to pummel the earth. A Coronal Mass Ejection to be precise. John Matson reportsLast night the sun unleashed a flash of radiation called a solar flare, along with a generous belch of ionized matter that is now racing toward Earth at thousands of kilometers a second. The solar storm front from the ionized blast, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), should arrive tomorrow morning, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric… -
the secret is not the sauce
20 Jan 2012 | 9:41 amJennifer Overstreet explains Danny Meyer's restaurant wisdom.“You can’t teach hospitality,” Danny said. “It means they’re someone who’s at their happiest when they’re making someone else feel good.”Retailers today are all about the customer experience, but all the technologies and tools on the EXPO floor won’t help you win if you don’t have the right people and culture.“For those who are looking for the most powerful differentiator in terms of creating an experience…you have to stock your store not just with the best stuff, but the people who live for making other… -
It is the experience.
18 Jan 2012 | 10:37 amPete Seebach has a great idea for a restaurant.There was some research a while back which found a possibly-surprising result. As most people probably suspect, the difference in perceived quality between wines does not really follow price very closely. But! It does follow stated price; if you serve the same wine to a lot of people, and tell some of them it’s $12 for a box and others it’s $400 for a bottle, the latter like it better. Better yet, they’re right — they really do enjoy it more. Thank you, MRI scans and the like.Well.This leads to a concept: A restaurant called Placebo. What… -
Variable menu pricing coming to a restaurant near you
5 Jan 2012 | 9:44 amThe only thing that prevented variable pricing in the past was that the menu was hard copied. Airline ticket prices are not written down anywhere, they change moment to moment at the whim of some computer generated algorithm. Well iPad menus in restaurants is the delivery channel that will foster variable pricing in restaurants. The ability to change prices at 5:59pm and 9:01pm will enable restaurants some flexibility in driving traffic to specific times and will also allow for preferred customers to receive special discounts.Great for the establishment, the million dollar question is how… -
Closeness of the sun
5 Jan 2012 | 8:41 amIf the Sun appears a little bigger in the winter sky it is because we are as close as we ever hope to get to it. We now start to move farther away until July as we continue our journey around the Sun.. There are many times when our physical distance does not reflect our current position or level of understanding. Relative position is important however it is not the only variable in the any discussion. Accorrding to space.com If the sun appears a bit more intense than normal to you this week, you're not seeing things. The Earth has just made its closest approach to our nearest star for the…
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Customer Service Voodoo
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Chinese New Year’s Resolutions
23 Jan 2012 | 12:40 pmAs we move into the last full week of January, an overwhelming amount of New Year’s Resolutions have been buried under good intentions and the ease of pushing them off for ‘just one more day’. Luckily, the Chinese (or Lunar) New Year offers us all a chance to start over and renew our efforts to lose weight, quit a vice, start a new pursuit, etc. As I share in the video, there is no time like the present to make a resolution to everyday excellence in Customer Service. Thanks for reading, Brandon
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spark new thinking!
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How To Give Everybody What They Need
25 Jan 2012 | 6:39 amEver see a sound board in a recording studio or at a concert? You know, the kind with hundreds of knobs, buttons, and sliders, and banks of blinking lights that rival the bridge of the Starship Enterprise? We've got one of those at our church that allows us to control the sound of the microphones, instruments, etc. that we use during our worship services. There's a section on the board (which I captured part of in the picture above) that controls which sounds get sent to the the individual monitors throughout the auditorium. There are several different monitors besides the main speakers… -
Lose Your But
17 Jan 2012 | 8:45 am"But, but, but..." My least favorite response in the whole wide world. I don't care what comes after the buts. Doesn't matter. Whatever it is, it's an excuse, or an escape hatch devised to get you out of something you'd rather not live up to. But, but, but... I'm too busy That's not my job. That's HER job (same as previous response, by the way) I don't have enough money. That's not fair. It's too hard. I don't have the resources. I don't know how. I have kids. It's too cold. It's too hot. I'm too old. I'm too young. I'm a man. I'm a woman. They'll never let me. Is any of this sounding… -
FREE COFFEE FRIDAY THIS WEEK!
10 Jan 2012 | 9:53 pmEvery so often, we find ourselves with a completely empty day at sparkspace. We're thankful it doesn't happen very often, but in a weird way we kinda like it, too. That's because we can open our doors for... FREE COFFEE FRIDAY!Friday, 1/13/128am-5pmsparkspace will be open (and free) all day this Friday to anybody who wants to escape the office for an hour or the whole day. We've got great wifi, free Crimson Cup coffee (or soft drinks if you prefer), and loads of comfy furniture.You can even bring other people with you! Keep in mind, though, that the entire space will be open to the public, so… -
Wake Up Your Work This Year
8 Jan 2012 | 2:26 pmHere's one way to wake things up this year: take a breakfast break. I recently heard about a group of co-workers who decided to start their day once in awhile with a "breakfast break". They all show up at their office, then head to a diner around the corner from their building and begin their day by building relationships over breakfast burritos. Then they work through lunch instead of taking a lunch break. They don't do it every day, but every few weeks it gives them a creative boost to rearrange their day this way. I know you're saying to yourself the same thing I said when I heard about… -
Give Your Brain Away
7 Jan 2012 | 11:01 amIf I had to put my finger on the most influential thought I've experienced in the past year, my finger would not hesitate to put itself on this one: Give your brain away. Ok, that's my phrasing of the idea. The original idea came from Leo Babauta, author of the wildly successful Zen Habits blog (one of my personal favorites). Leo doesn't copyright anything, he just puts it out there. He even reminds you once in awhile that it's not copyrighted and you're free to do whatever you wish with his thoughts and writings. At first I thought he was nuts. After all, I've always learned to…
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Justin Flitter
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LetsLunch in New Zealand
25 Jan 2012 | 6:38 pmTweetYesterday I caught up with Matty Blomfield who’s one of the guys establishing LetsLunch.com in New ZealandThey are looking to launch in the next month or so. Pre launch registration is now open so check out the site and add your email address to receive news and details as they get closer to d-dayRegister NowBasically LetsLunch lets you add your availability to a calender, takes note of your preferred locations and the various industries you’re keen to meet people in. It then matches you up and suggests a time and place.The guys are looking to build the database of pre… -
Do you ask for referrals?
25 Jan 2012 | 12:57 amTweetI was thinking about this late last year but perhaps you could say it’s a bit of a new years resolution.It’s a simple tactic that many people forget about or are to shy to do.But I think it’s a hugely valuable habit, and one I’ll be practising this year.At the end of every meeting with current or potential clients just ask them;Is there anyone you know who would like a call or a coffee to chat about [insert whatever you do here]. Would you mind making a quick intro?Get one or two names and when you’re back in the office search for them on Twitter, LinkedIn… -
2012 Social Media Guide for Businesses
5 Jan 2012 | 2:44 pmTweetIt’s the first week of a huge new year. We’re certainly very optimistic about 2012 and we hope you are too.For the last couple of months we’ve been working hard on a Beginners Social Media Guide aimed at businesses.We’ve added a few questions at the end of it to gather a little information from people reading it. And we’ve made the Guide with SlideRocket so it’s easy for us to make changes on the fly. So remember to check back often and look out for mentions on twitter when we make updates.As always with these things you can keep adding more and more… -
A 57 second video of Gary Vaynerchuk that will make you think…
15 Dec 2011 | 11:16 pmTweetTweetLink to this post! -
1000 Social Media Statistics
12 Dec 2011 | 12:29 pmTweetSocial media around the world 2011 View more presentations from steven van belleghemTweetLink to this post!
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Your Source for Providing a Better Customer Service and Customer Support Experience
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In Businesses We Trust? 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer Says…
27 Jan 2012 | 7:41 am[slideshare id=11205162&doc=2012trustbarometerglobaldeckfinal-120122131955-phpapp01] Listening to customers is the most important action a business can take to gain their trust, according to the recently released 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer. The Barometer, which surveyed more than 30,000 respondents across 25 countries, shows that while 67% believe that listening to customers is important for building trust, only 36% believe that businesses are doing that. The actions that round out the top five trust builders for consumers are: Listening to customers (67% believe it’s important, 36%… -
Agile Channeling – Seamless Service for Channel Surfers
24 Jan 2012 | 3:27 pmForrester Research Senior Analyst, Kate Leggett, recently revealed Forrester’s Top 15 Trends for Customer Service in 2012. Trend topics focused on agent empowerment, how customer-centricity will drive continued service improvements, and the increased adoption of enabling solutions to effectively respond to growing customer expectations. In Trend #8, Leggett highlights a burgeoning buzzword in customer service: agile channeling. Via agile channeling, a customer’s service experience and customer service information transfer seamlessly across multiple channels, both on the CSR and… -
The Need for Customer Service Speed… Vote in our Facebook Poll
24 Jan 2012 | 9:56 amStop by Parature’s Facebook page this week and vote on which customer service channel you have used recently to get quick answers to questions – or which customer service channel you think would provide the fastest response. Is it live chat, social media, a self-serve knowledgebase with FAQs or another customer service channel? We look forward to seeing what everyone thinks! Click here to visit our Facebook page. -
What Volkswagen’s 2012 Superbowl Ad Can Teach Us about Wowing Customers
20 Jan 2012 | 12:52 pmhttpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ntDYjS0Y3w What can Superbowl ads teach us about wowing our customers? Here are three time-honored takeaways – with a sneak-peek of Volkswagen’s 2012 Superbowl commercial, “The Bark Side.” It’s all about the presentation. You may have the best product in the world, but if you don’t present it in a way that interests or appeals to your customers, you’re missing out. Engagement enhances everything. Notice how the Volkswagen brand name is only mentioned in the last few seconds of the ad. Volkswagen engages consumers prior to the sell or any… -
Tweets of the Week: January 15 – 22, 2012
20 Jan 2012 | 10:58 amIt’s our goal to share compelling quotes and interesting tweets that we feel can help our followers, customers and potential customers learn best practices and discover new information and trends to improve customer service delivery and ensure a great customer experience. To keep up to date with weekly customer service tips, articles and information, follow us @Parature. @hyken Customer service is not just on the front line. It starts inside an organization, and it starts at the top. @KateNasser Customer service is a brand’s 24 hour global billboard. @Econsultancy Profiling the…
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The Think Zone
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Do. Improve. Repeat.
15 Jan 2012 | 11:27 amIf you've been following me on Twitter for any length of time, you've read these three words before: Do. Improve. Repeat. I call it my "mantra." I've used it in just about every aspect of my life. Of course, it's my personalized version of "Practice makes perfect" or "La práctica hace al maestro" or "Kaizen," but with emphasis on a central step: Reflection and the conscious intention to make the next golf swing, guitar riff, kata routine, blog post or paragraph better than the last.Every day presents a new opportunity to get better at something, whether it's being a better follower, leader,… -
Customer Empowerment: Lessons Learned
2 Jan 2012 | 9:39 pmSome very large companies learned lessons this year about the power of customers. There was the Bank of America fee story and the Verizon fee story. Now, those fees hit customers in the pocketbook, and it's easy to see why people rebelled against them. But things get very interesting when we look at what happened to GoDaddy, which lost upwards of 72,000 domains when customers decided there were better alternatives.GoDaddy didn't increase its fees, or do anything directly draconian to its customers; the company did, however, indicate that it was supporting SOPA, the very controversial… -
Was It Customer Service?
27 Nov 2011 | 8:17 pmA couple of years ago, my (then) employer moved me into a windowless office. I decided to buy a full spectrum desk lamp. There were two home improvement "big box" stores on my way home from work, practically across the street from each other. I'll call them Orange and Blue. The Blue one was fairly new and I'd never been there, so that's where I went.After a couple of minutes of looking at the choices, I picked out a nice, inexpensive lamp that I felt would look good on my desk and get the job done. As is usual, there was a display unit and a shelf full of corresponding boxes. The only… -
I Learned Customer Service from a CEO
17 Oct 2011 | 7:24 amThere are some people around the web who seem determined to shoot down the customer service community that has taken root here, and one of the things they say is that the people who take part in the discussions and chats don't understand business. Well, I don't understand the kind of business that thinks it's ok to refer to "dumb customers" but that's another story.I began my customer service education when I was in high school, working part time at a business a few miles from where I grew up. After about a year, I was promoted into the customer service desk, which was seen as a desirable… -
Losing Steve Jobs
6 Oct 2011 | 8:14 amSteve Jobs wanted to change the world. I believe that he did.There was a huge round of blog posts when Steve stepped down from the CEO position, a move that few mistook as anything but a sign that his health was very, very bad. I was, to tell the truth, a little angry about all the accolades begin showered on Mr. Jobs. It wasn't that I didn't feel that the praise was very well deserved; I just wondered where all this sentiment was for all his years at Apple, and during his time away. The fire was there all the time, but many felt the need to belittle it or write it off as some kind of fringe…
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Scott McKain Viewpoint
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An ultimate experience from a reliable source
27 Jan 2012 | 7:44 amI’m flying from Baltimore to Vegas on an airline I don’t normally take…usually I would go Delta for the SkyMiles, but this airline has a non-stop, arriving two hours earlier, and I need the sleep. In the middle of the 5½ hour trip, a flight attendant makes an announcement, naming two passengers, and asking them to walk to the front of the plane. Confused, and not knowing one another, an older man and younger woman from separate parts of the aircraft approach the forward galley. Flight attendant now announces these two have something in common. It’s their birthday! She leads us in… -
Distinction may involve what is absent from your business
24 Jan 2012 | 7:30 pmAt a recent meeting I was addressing near Boston, I learned the fascinating story of the Berry family, and their restaurant on Cape Cod, Moby Dick’s. It’s a true story of distinction. You can read on their website how the restaurant came to be — and how the oldest son, Todd, discovered how much he enjoyed the business. When I met Todd, he gave me a very important insight on how and why their restaurant is so distinctive — to the extent it has received rave reviews everywhere from TripAdvisor.com to the New York Times’ Style Magazine. “We don’t have a… -
The difference between profit and growth
11 Jan 2012 | 10:43 pmThere is profitability…and then, there is growth. Many businesses – and their leaders – do not understand the difference. If I want to be more profitable, I can do either one — or a combination — of three steps: 1) Cut expenses 2) Get my current customers to spend more money with me 3) Get new customers (Thanks to my friend, Ford Saeks, for discussing this with me last week at a meeting in Las Vegas!) However, it is very difficult – perhaps impossible – to cut my way to growth. (It just sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?) Gary Hamel wrote, “You can only grow by… -
Quality of connections trumps quantity of connections…
5 Jan 2012 | 5:29 pm“How many followers do YOU have on Twitter?” “Have you maxed out your ‘friends’ on Facebook?” “What’s the traffic on your blog?” Questions anyone on social media are being asked these days — and it exemplifies part of what has been wrong with our thinking in business: More must be better. And, it’s NOT: More is just more. Better is better. In other words, having fewer followers and friends — and providing something so compelling, these people become raving fans — is superior to simply amassing numbers. At a Speakers… -
A great way to end the year…
31 Dec 2011 | 11:02 amIf you read this blog regularly — and I really hope you do! — you know most of what is posted here is about improving your business; particularly as it regards the experience your customers receive. However, on a personal note, I just received something to end the year that has really moved me, and I wanted to share it with you. This month’s “Portfolio Magazine” has a major article by Kelly Merritt about being invited by a friend to attend a large conference in Oregon. Kelly is a very talented writer — and what I’ve particularly enjoyed when reading…
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thinkJar
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Lithium Closes Round D of Funding – First Take
6 Jan 2012 | 12:45 amOn January 5th, 2012 Lithium Technologies announced it had closed Round D funding to the tune of $53.4 million, adding to the $39 million it had raised in previous rounds. The proceedings will go towards “completing the suite” and international expansion according to the company. Among the new funding partners, Lithium signed up NEA as leading partner as well as SAP Ventures. Existing funding partners all continued their support as investors. Earlier today I distributed a note to my clients with detailed analysis of this event, here are the main points: The main result of this… -
Social Renaissance in Sight
3 Jan 2012 | 8:03 amPlease don’t run for the door – you won’t hear Gregorian chants, ye olde english, or be forced to eat boar legs with your hands. Not that kind of Renaissance. Promise. Remember when we learned about the Renaissance period in school? Me neither — thank heavens for Wikipedia! The actual Renaissance was the moment the Middles Ages were over and we fully began to embrace the Modern Era. This was the time when Art ruled the way (we did not have iPads back then, nor were there discussions of cloud-anything other than when talking weather events, and Steve Jobs was called… -
How Big is Big Data?
2 Jan 2012 | 7:55 amI have been doing a lot of behind the scenes work lately (talking on the phone or in person with lots and lots of people – and also being sick and unable to write or talk, but thinking). There are many good things that will come out of this past month of misery and agony (OK, not that bad — but gotta keep up the drama queen attitude so my daughters continue to have a role model). In the middle of all this work, I was able to corral some interesting thoughts, especially as I dive deeper into Analytics and Big Data — I am sure you heard about the agent of doom (if the Mayans… -
The Best is Yet to Come in Social
30 Dec 2011 | 2:35 amTrust me, it sounds better if you sing it with Tony Bennett’s voice and to the melody of “The Best Is Yet To Come” (here is a video of him and Diana Krall singing it — Merry Christmas and Happy New Year present from me to you). The truth is that I have been thinking about this for a while. I started to put my ideas together about 2-3 months ago, trying to find a way to help organizations decide what to do in the next few years with Social X and today it call came together. As they say, “things” always come in threes and this episode of serendipity was… -
Customer Service in 2012 and Beyond
6 Dec 2011 | 1:40 pmI wrote a great (by my standards) post on where Customer Service is going in 2012 and beyond including investment areas, percentage growth by budget, and more — all based on what I am hearing from clients and trusted sources. Check it out at Moxie’s Blog. (feel free to leave comments below or there, will answer both).
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thinkJar
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Lithium Closes Round D of Funding – First Take
6 Jan 2012 | 12:45 amOn January 5th, 2012 Lithium Technologies announced it had closed Round D funding to the tune of $53.4 million, adding to the $39 million it had raised in previous rounds. The proceedings will go towards “completing the suite” and international expansion according to the company. Among the new funding partners, Lithium signed up NEA as leading partner as well as SAP Ventures. Existing funding partners all continued their support as investors. Earlier today I distributed a note to my clients with detailed analysis of this event, here are the main points: The main result of this… -
Social Renaissance in Sight
3 Jan 2012 | 8:03 amPlease don’t run for the door – you won’t hear Gregorian chants, ye olde english, or be forced to eat boar legs with your hands. Not that kind of Renaissance. Promise. Remember when we learned about the Renaissance period in school? Me neither — thank heavens for Wikipedia! The actual Renaissance was the moment the Middles Ages were over and we fully began to embrace the Modern Era. This was the time when Art ruled the way (we did not have iPads back then, nor were there discussions of cloud-anything other than when talking weather events, and Steve Jobs was called… -
How Big is Big Data?
2 Jan 2012 | 7:55 amI have been doing a lot of behind the scenes work lately (talking on the phone or in person with lots and lots of people – and also being sick and unable to write or talk, but thinking). There are many good things that will come out of this past month of misery and agony (OK, not that bad — but gotta keep up the drama queen attitude so my daughters continue to have a role model). In the middle of all this work, I was able to corral some interesting thoughts, especially as I dive deeper into Analytics and Big Data — I am sure you heard about the agent of doom (if the Mayans… -
The Best is Yet to Come in Social
30 Dec 2011 | 2:35 amTrust me, it sounds better if you sing it with Tony Bennett’s voice and to the melody of “The Best Is Yet To Come” (here is a video of him and Diana Krall singing it — Merry Christmas and Happy New Year present from me to you). The truth is that I have been thinking about this for a while. I started to put my ideas together about 2-3 months ago, trying to find a way to help organizations decide what to do in the next few years with Social X and today it call came together. As they say, “things” always come in threes and this episode of serendipity was… -
Customer Service in 2012 and Beyond
6 Dec 2011 | 1:40 pmI wrote a great (by my standards) post on where Customer Service is going in 2012 and beyond including investment areas, percentage growth by budget, and more — all based on what I am hearing from clients and trusted sources. Check it out at Moxie’s Blog. (feel free to leave comments below or there, will answer both).
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Write The Company
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Power to the Squirrels
26 Jan 2012 | 7:30 am“Power to the Squirrels” is not a movement led by a pack of raucous rebel rodents. Although when it comes to power, squirrels may be walking a fine line. What are the risks for our bushy-tailed friends on power lines in Florida? I asked Florida Power & Light… Dear Power Suppliers: In addition to providing [...] -
Jealous Fruits Breaks the Cherry Mold
24 Jan 2012 | 7:30 amAfter cherry picking at my local market, I had some questions for Jealous Fruits about the Canadian cherries I picked… Dear Cherry Fruit Folks: It’s been about 6 weeks and you still haven’t answered my email. I’m not sure when the height of cherry season is, but if it’s not right now, I can’t see [...] -
Van’s Waffles Frozen in Time
19 Jan 2012 | 7:30 amThere was a time when cooking frozen waffles was as simple as heating them up. But times change, even waffle times, which is why I wrote Van’s for a whittle help… Dear Waffle Makers: I’m confused about how to cook Van’s frozen Lite Waffles. Maybe it’s because I’m not Belgian. Then again, I’m not even [...] -
Milk Hormones Raging
17 Jan 2012 | 7:30 amAre Artificial Growth Hormones used to increase milk production safe for cows and humans? Depending on whom you ask, some say yes, some say no and some just say moo. I asked Garelick Farms, a Dean Foods brand, what they say… Dear Milk Mavens: Since Garelick Farms has been bringing farm-fresh milk to families since [...] -
Does Rosetta Stone Talk My Language?
12 Jan 2012 | 7:30 amRosetta Stone is the leading language-learning software in the world. To see how good the linguists behind it really are, I emailed them in a foreign language that was even foreign to me. That’s because I made it up… <Subject Line>: Learninguez de la Sprechen Ola Ms. Rosetta Stone: Buena sa dez, allo gusta, allo [...]
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The UP! Your Service Blog | Uplifting Service Cultures for Sustainable Competitive Advantage
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Why is Leadership Support so Elusive?
23 Jan 2012 | 9:41 pmI have been in the field of training, leadership, and organizational development for over 20 years. Through all these years, I have heard one message (and complaint) from practitioners, consultants, authors and gurus: for cultural change to succeed, top leadership must support it. It’s amazing. This message is so consistent. And there is so much evidence to prove it! Yet the issue persists as a key barrier to successful culture change. As a previous blog post stated, leaders who want to create a cultural revolution—and make it stick—must get everyone involved. They must engage and… -
In Service Revolutions, Size Does Matter. Go Big and Go Fast.
17 Jan 2012 | 9:37 am2011 was an extraordinary year. There were more revolutions around the world, violent and otherwise, than we’ve seen in many years. These dominated local and global news channels, political and business conversations, and the attention of people everywhere. Even Time magazine acknowledged the Protester as the Person of the Year. Some of these revolutions were due to growing frustration at their countries’ dysfunctional systems, some were more forward looking. Most began as independent affairs, not creations of specific political parties. Many were enabled by easy access to—and the… -
Seven Steps for Actionable Service Resolutions
9 Jan 2012 | 7:51 pmEach year we move forward into a wonderful space of creation for the upcoming year. We also have an opportunity to look back at the past year, and then to look forward, to make adjustments to improve the quality of service for our customers, vendors, employees, and community. Each of us can become a change agent to make a difference. Not only can one person create dramatic change, but one action can. Think about just one thing that would surprise and delight your customers (internal or external customer). Just one thing. Something as small as writing “thank you for coming” with your… -
Three Questions to Manage Performance in a Service Culture
3 Jan 2012 | 8:00 pmBuilding a service culture in any organization requires that systems and processes reflect and support service as a key business driver. One system is performance management. Performance management, performance appraisal, employee review – whatever name you have for it – is a common, often dreaded, and largely under-utilized process for managing an organization. Yet it can be one of the most effective tools for leading change – ensuring a service culture, or any cultural focus, can be created and sustained over time. Performance management practices range from a sophisticated,… -
Who Decides What is Uplifting Service?
20 Dec 2011 | 9:40 pmI was relaxing on a flight last month in my usual window seat, happily reading a book with the soft, natural sunlight beaming through the window. A member of the cabin crew passed by and, seeing me reading, stretched out her hand and switched on the light above me. She smiled, and then she walked away. I was distracted from my reading, and a little puzzled. The extra lighting from above was too bright for my comfort. I like soft, even dim lighting when I read, but friendly cabin crew did not know that. She thought she was serving me well. After she left, I reached up and turned off the light.
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Zengage - a Zendesk Blog
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Tip of the Week: Creating Branded Support Agents for Specific People or Organizations
27 Jan 2012 | 3:15 pmIn this tip, we will create a custom response to certain customers who will have a tailored reply indicate that a specific agent assigned to them. For example, say your business has five products and one support person dedicated to each. Burt is the support person for Product 1, and when a customer submits a question, Burt automatically receives the ticket. In order to let customers know that Burt’s working their tickets, you need to create a custom trigger that notifies them. (Note: Instead of using products to define organizations, this could also be an organization within your company,… -
APAC Training Tour – Spring 2012
26 Jan 2012 | 5:45 pmAre you wondering how to optimize your Zendesk? Well if you live in the APAC region, you’re in luck: we’re embarking on an eight-city tour offering free one-day training sessions to Zendesk customers in Japan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand! We go to great lengths to help you get up to speed through in-depth documentation, webinars and tips, but sometimes there’s no replacement for an in-person lesson. These trainings will show you how to properly use the basic and intermediate functionality in Zendesk, and answer any questions you may have. After one session, you’ll be… -
15,000 Customers Just Can’t Be Wrong #Zenthanks
25 Jan 2012 | 10:00 amToday, Zendesk is happy to announce that it now has 15,000 customers. This is fantastic news after having such an amazing year. First, and foremost, let’s talk about our customers. #15,000 = Roku We are very happy to welcome Roku, the leading streaming platform for entertainment channels, as our 15,000th customer. Today, 15,000 customers use Zendesk to deliver superior customer service to more than 65 million people in 137 countries, making it the largest customer service network in the world. Most people are familiar with our long-time customers, such as Adobe, Sony, OpenTable, and… -
S*** Support Agents Say
20 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pmWe know, we know: the S**** People Say meme is on its last leg. Who can even really remember the original video that launched the loquacious viral sensation only a month ago? But we’re hoping we still have just a little bit more time to squeeze in one last entry; this one dedicated to our dear brethren who man the phones and computer terminals of help desks the world over. As well as for anyone who has ever called a support line. Of course, we don’t sound like this. Happy Friday. Enjoy. -
Take Zendesk on the Go with Windows Phone
18 Jan 2012 | 3:00 pmYou carry your phone everywhere, treat it like your pet and use it for nearly everything. As one of the first customer support platforms with a mobile app, we have apps for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android to support your addiction. Now we’re adding Windows Phone to the mix, meaning that everyone in your organization can have access to the same high-quality, dedicated mobile experience no matter what platform they’re on. Phone fans rejoice! Besides being beautiful to look at, the Windows Phone interface is easy to use and is growing amongst mobile users. Zendesk for Windows Phone is a…
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Expect Wow
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Workaround for intermittent Facebook Comment Issues
25 Jan 2012 | 7:39 pmLast night we implemented a temporary patch to manage a Facebook API issue. The issue has caused intermittent problems retrieving Facebook conversations. As a temporary solution, we’ve implemented a fix to continuously monitor posts during the last seven days and to import any comments associated with these posts. We are continuing to work with our partner, Facebook, to address the underlying issue. As always, if you have any questions about your account, please contact us and we will be happy to help. -
Lou Imbriano, Sports Marketing Expert, on the Importance of “No”
23 Jan 2012 | 11:06 amEditor’s Note: When the Kraft family bought The New England Patriots football team in the mid-90s, they had 6 employees and $16M in revenue. Then Lou Imbriano joined the team as Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. Over the next ten years or so, working for two of the smartest owners in sports, Imbriano built powerful relationships that allowed the organization to increase revenue more than 600%. A new stadium? Lou was up to the task. Increased sponsorships and revenue? Revenues grew to over $90M. Today The Patriots are riding high, getting ready for the Super Bowl. Lou is now… -
The Art of Excellent Customer Service 101: How to Hire the Right People
18 Jan 2012 | 11:19 amEditor’s Note: Bill Thompson is the Guru of Customer Happiness at Olark.com. He has been involved in Online Community and Internet Customer Care and Service since Web 1.0 for companies like Winamp, SHOUTcast, and Grouper.com. Okay, you’ve made the right first decision; Live chat for your Customer service and/or sales teams. Good move. You’ve got the Olark chat box installed, you’ve connected your IM client and added operators. So what next to get the most out of the Live chat process? If I’ve said this once, I’ve said it a thousand times: All the cool/slick… -
The Newest C-Suite Role: Chief Customer Officer
16 Jan 2012 | 6:40 amA Public Declaration that the Customer Belongs in the Boardroom The role of Chief Customer Officer is relatively new, an outgrowth of the increasing power and influence of customers. Interest is growing in this position because it puts a public face to the importance of customer service, and signals a public declaration that the customer—because of the rise of social networks and the dissemination of opinion and ideas on the Internet—should be represented in the boardroom. What is the CCO’s Mission? A chief customer officer (CCO) is in charge of influencing corporate activities to… -
New Email Notification Log, and Updates to Standard Email Reply Templates
13 Jan 2012 | 1:05 amUpdate – January 15, 11:07PM : This update was successfully re-applied. Thanks for your patience. Update – January 13, 12:07AM : We identified an Issue with the January 12th update and have had to revert the changes. We will reschedule the update shortly. Tonight’s Assistly release brings two changes – one change that may send you a new email notifying you of system errors, and another change that releases new reply, notification, forward, and acknowledgement templates. System Error Email now Sent To Site Contact When your site has errors in Assistly,…
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very best service
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Customer service innovation
16 Jan 2012 | 11:28 amCustomer service innovation has become increasingly valuable as a way to differentiate from the competition and avoid an all-out price war. The challenge for companies is to determine to what extent the service innovations should be radical and if they are not a re-hatched copy of what someone has done before, are they achievable? To succeed management needs to be daring yet make sure that every element has been perfectly assessed and calculated so that the newly built process stays in place for many years to come. Are you brave enough to have a go? -
Customer service: take the helicopter view
3 Jan 2012 | 11:55 amYour understanding of the environment where your company offers its business services will be crucial in determining the success of your operation. What are the constraints? Where do the customers come from and what will be their state of mind when they finally reach you? Taking an helicopter view can often be useful to understand these factors and help you define the broad parameters before focusing on the details of your service deliveryPicture courtesy of Claire Boyles with our thanks - http://www.success-matters.com/ -
Bread and butter customer service
8 Dec 2011 | 10:19 amIs it the end of bread and butter service? The increasing sophistication of marketing tools and techniques mean that many businesses have upped their game to improve the shopping experience they offer to their customers. These activities can lead to the creation of extra layers of costs and inefficiencies which are not always fully valued by the customers. As a result they develop a bargain hunting instinct whereby they wait for heavy promotional periods and sales during which they are prepared to buy at what they believe is a fair price. In turn, such behaviour leads retailers to invest in… -
Preparation for customer service
28 Nov 2011 | 4:59 amPreparation for customer service: for many companies, the next client is only a number, a customer record who happened to place an order for product xyz at a given time during the day. But it is not at all the same thing when you look at it from the clients' point of view. In many instances, the purchasing decision is an important act in the eyes of the customer who has spend hours if not days and weeks to compare products, to chose the colour, to check if he or she could afford the spend. After such a build up, when the big moment arrives, the client wants everything to be perfect and… -
Vultures are circling
19 Nov 2011 | 6:09 amAchieving the best customer service levels and maintaining them is not a simple task. There are numerous metrics available, one of them being to measure customer satisfaction. However, sometimes one finds that only customers who are very satisfied or customers who are very unhappy are prepared to give any form of feedback. But what is happening to the bulk of your customer base? A tell-tale sign might be when your competition starts talking about your company's poor performance. Indeed if your customer service delivery starts to deteriorate they might pick it up early by listening to…
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ILS Customer Service Blog
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7 Tips for Coaching Difficult Employees
27 Jan 2012 | 10:30 amWhether you’re a manager, supervisor, or trainer, one of the inevitable aspects of your job is the need to deal firmly and fairly with problem employees. Just as there are any number of reasons why an employee can become a problem—bad attitude, inability to do what’s required, unresponsiveness to feedback on performance, and so on—there are various ways to handle the issues and the employees who create them. Following are seven tips to keep in mind. Deal with the issue right away. If you delay your response or ignore the issue altogether, you may look weak and ineffective. You’ll… -
Creative Employee Incentives
24 Jan 2012 | 10:30 amProviding incentives for employees is a great way to boost morale, productivity, and promote a harmonious work environment. Even more importantly, offering incentives to your employees in a non-traditional and creative way allows you to keep track of improvement and reward staff for a job well done. Another great characteristic of incentives is their flexibility. Incentives don’t have to be used solely to honor an employee. Traditionally, employee incentives come in the form of a pay increase or bonus money. While this monetary compensation can undoubtedly motivate your employees in the… -
The Employee Experience: Motivate, Empower, Invest
17 Jan 2012 | 2:00 pmThere’s a concern brewing in employers everywhere. If the economy keeps moving in a positive direction, employees may take their talent elsewhere. A trend for 2012 is improving the employee experience. Douglas Matthews, president and chief operating officer for Right Management, reported in Chief Learning Officer that 80 percent of workers may now be actively seeking new jobs. In another article, Metlife reported “…only 47 percent of employees surveyed feel very strong loyalty to their employers. Just three years ago the same survey showed 59 percent of workers felt very strong… -
Tracking Customer-Focused Metrics
17 Jan 2012 | 12:11 pmFor years, contact center managers have been measuring operational metrics like average handle time, average hold time, turnover, sales per representative, average time to respond, and so on. But are these the most important metrics to measure? What’s important to measure depends on who you are Customer service and support managers want to measure the operational metrics listed above along with others like transfer rates and queue length to help them run an efficient organization. Executives, on the other hand, want to measure customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, market share, and… -
Upselling and Cross-selling by Customer Service and Support Teams
16 Jan 2012 | 11:01 amAs the economy recovers, many companies are looking for opportunities to claw their way back to pre-recession sales levels. And companies that fared well want to be sure to keep their customers as competition in the playing field grows. Who’s upselling and cross-selling now? While sales teams have long had goals for upselling and cross-selling, more companies than ever are asking their customer service reps to do the same. And they’re asking their support engineers to recommend product upgrades and contact customers to renew warranty agreements. This growing trend is particularly true…
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Riverstar.com
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Importance of Integrating Systems to Make Interactions More Efficient
24 Jan 2012 | 2:44 pmWhether they know it or not, customers generally have four key attributes that they associate with outstanding service: Recognition: Recognize me and know my services and preferences Resolution: Address my issue during our first interaction Efficiency: Make the interaction as efficient and effective as possible, i.e., don’t waste my time and don’t make me provide information you should already have available Personalization: Gently offer suggestions that are consistent with my known preferences The issue of systems and process integration becomes critical in addressing each of the four… -
How the Three Elements of Process Save You Time and Money
29 Nov 2011 | 2:25 pmAs discussed in this previous entry, at RiverStar, we believe that every customer interaction is fundamentally a process, having a beginning, middle and end that all aim to meet a specific objective. Incorporating three key elements into your processes will save your customers and agents time and, ultimately, your company money. The three key elements of a process are: Efficiency – Making the most of time and resources during the process Effectiveness – Ensuring the result of the process matches the objective Scalability – Developing a process that can handle anticipated volume… -
Studio 11 Update: Panels in Depth
8 Nov 2011 | 12:07 pmUsers of RiverStar Studio will be familiar with its workflows and process flows as a series of pages. As mentioned in our previous entry about the Studio 11 update, we’ve enhanced the functionality of pages with a new object: panels. What Is a Panel? A panel is a sub-page – a building block – that can be used over and over again. You can add text, fields and actions, and it can be shown or hidden. It can be displayed as a pop-up dialog for data input, and it can include HTML containers, such as tabs and accordions. Why Do I Need Panels? Panels… -
Making Customer Interactions Efficient, Consistent Through Process
25 Oct 2011 | 2:14 pmAt RiverStar, we believe that every customer interaction is fundamentally a process with a very specific objective. Objectives may stem from customer requests — such as billing inquiries or troubleshooting — or company outreach — such as customer satisfaction surveys or upselling. By creating processes around these tasks, you are ensuring consistency and efficiency in your customer service operations, thereby increasing customer satisfaction. A process is nothing more than a sequence of logical steps that help you achieve an objective. It can be very simple or very complex, but… -
Studio 11: Enabling You to Quickly, Easily Provide Richer Content
24 Aug 2011 | 2:01 pmThe only constant is change, and that is especially true with technology. While RiverStar Studio makes it easy for you to create customer service scripts, self-service web pages, workflow applications and complex business applications, there are always new features and functions that come along to improve efficiency and ease of use. Over the past few months, we’ve been developing Release 11 of RiverStar Studio to offer more functionality and save you time. Currently in beta, the production release is slated for August 15. Browsers have come a long way recently, and we knew Studio…
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conversational.ly
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Happy New Year everyone! See you in 2012 :-)
31 Dec 2011 | 8:35 amPermalink | Leave a comment » -
Reluctant Leaders
14 Oct 2011 | 12:05 pmI've had the pleasure of working with some great people over the years, and there's none better than David Tomkinson, a Director with the andpartnership. David has over 25 years experience in the retail sector, working with blue-chip organisations including British Home Stores and Boots the Chemist. He has held senior roles in store management, training, development, HR and organisation development. Using his approach based on minimising resistance, he's introduced culture change programmes into large organisations, involving initiatives such as coaching, self-managed teams and… -
The recession-performance vicious cycle
13 Oct 2011 | 1:21 pmI've been thinking about this recession. Some organisations are stuck in a vicious cycle. Businesses in all sectors are struggling and many are being forced to restructure/downsize/whatever you want to call it. As a result, the employees left are concerned about their future. They aren't even certain they'll have a job in 6 months time. As Maslow eluded to, if you're not getting your most basic needs of job security met, the chances of achieving any higher level needs are slim. And what does that mean for how people behave? Well, it means people are understandably cautious; they… -
Leadership: don't promote people who are good at their job
12 Oct 2011 | 1:11 pmIn your organisation, do you promote people who are good at their job? What happens when they are promoted? I'd wager that in a few cases, they thrive - the extra responsibility is something they grasp and they deliver great results, the right way, through their people. In most cases however, I'd bet they don't. Here's a recent example. Dave (not his real name) worked in a local shop. He was fantastic with his customers. They loved him. He constantly went out of his way for them; he remembered their morning paper, their usual groceries, even their lottery numbers. Head office recieved… -
The Tale of the Buddhist King and the Happiness Business Model #E4S
5 Oct 2011 | 1:01 pmIn another serendipitous moment, I found this video of hotelier Chip Conley (@ChipConley) talking at TED about how he went in search of a business model based on happiness. Find out how an old employee and a buddhist king helped him learn that success comes from what you count, and the implications on ourselves, our work and our society. Enjoy. Permalink | Leave a comment »
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THE PROPERIST
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Creating behavioural change
25 Jan 2012 | 10:21 amvia onpurposeuk.blogspot.com Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Creativity needed to create start-ups.
24 Jan 2012 | 3:15 amFrom the quote below, it is very clear that we urgently much create new jobs. “Despite strenuous government efforts, the jobs crisis continues unabated, with one in three workers worldwide – or an estimated 1.1 billion people – either unemployed or living in poverty”, said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. “What is needed is that job creation in the real economy must become our number one priority”. And it is also highly unlikely that large companies will create these new jobs. Census Bureau data show that most of the net employment gains in the United States between 1980 and… -
Global Employment Trends (ctd)
24 Jan 2012 | 2:47 amvia ilo.org Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Global Employment Trends
24 Jan 2012 | 2:47 amvia ilo.org Permalink | Leave a comment » -
How To Follow Your Passion (When You're Just Trying To Pay The Bills)
20 Jan 2012 | 1:30 pmGABRIELLE BERNSTEIN: How To Follow Your Passion (When You're Just Trying To Pay The Bills) During tough economic times, many people think they need to sacrifice passion and focus solely on earning money. From a spiritual perspective, this is the exact opposite approach to generating real abundance. Permalink | Leave a comment »
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Mojo Helpdesk
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In Written Communication, Tone Is Everything
26 Jan 2012 | 1:04 pmOne of the greatest skills in life, as well as in customer service, is the ability to communicate effectively. For most businesses, the majority of correspondence is now in the form of written communication. The many conveniences of written communication are at times offset by the loss of clarity in tone and intention. Sometimes an e-mail meant to be helpful can be critically misconstrued by the recipient. This makes it imperative that customer service representatives weigh the language and tone used in each correspondence carefully to avoid unnecessary discord with customers.There are… -
Tip of the Week: The Mojo Number
24 Jan 2012 | 1:23 pmMojo Helpdesk makes it easy to keep track of customer satisfaction by collecting satisfaction ratings based on a 5-star system called the Mojo Number. When a user closes a ticket, they have the opportunity to provide feedback on the service they received. The feedback options range from "unsatisfied" to "great job." Mojo assigns a rating of 1 to 5 stars based upon the feedback. Each star counts for 20 points, meaning feedback of "great job" would result in 100 points, whereas feedback of "unsatisfied" would equal 20 points. The Mojo Number takes an average of your last 30… -
Turning Customer Satisfaction into Customer Loyalty
18 Jan 2012 | 2:18 pmAchieving customer satisfaction is a good goal for any business to work towards. Taking it a step further, an ideal goal is customer loyalty. Most people can quickly think of a business they feel loyal to, one they gush about to others and return to again and again for repeat business. How does a company work to gain this sort of loyalty from its customers? Obviously, offering quality and useful products or services is the first step, but while this can result in customer satisfaction, to achieve customer loyalty a business should offer memorably remarkable customer service.One of the first… -
Tip of the Week: Auto-Assigning Tickets
13 Jan 2012 | 11:48 amThis week we want to show you how to create an automation that will automatically route new tickets to specific agents. This is perfect if you have specific customer service representatives that handle tickets submitted by particular companies. It takes a step out of manually assigning tickets to the correct person, resulting in a faster response from the right person, something everyone appreciates.You can find the Automations link in the drop-down manage menu at the top of the helpdesk.Click the ‘new’ button next to the Automations header to begin creating your custom… -
The Top 5 Customer Service Trends of 2012
9 Jan 2012 | 3:37 pmThe way we do business is changing faster every year as new products and technological breakthroughs influence the expectations and practices of companies of all types. Awareness of the current and coming customer service trends enables a company to meet customer expectations and leverage the resources available to improve operations from year to year.With that in mind, we’ve compiled 5 of the top customer service trends of 2012.1. Proactive Social Media UsePeople were using social media to vent concerns and complaints about their consumer experiences before businesses really had the…
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The Squawk Point: Service Improvement
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Customer Complaints: Does Your Bank Act Like a 3 Year Old?
23 Jan 2012 | 11:24 pmPart 1: How children behave There was a little girl Who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead When she was good she was very very good And when she was bad she was horrid I didn’t really understand that nursery rhyme until I had daughters. Now I have a couple of them and it is frighteningly clear. The youngest is three years old, she has a mass of curly blonde hair and a cute smile. She is beautiful, most of the time. But when she is bad, she is horrid. She refuses to say “Sorry”, even when she has just tried to maim her sister with a Barbie doll. The… -
Problem Solving: 4 Simple Steps to Success
21 Jan 2012 | 2:37 amI was once told that success in life is as simple as getting your arms around a problem and knocking it off. If you agree with the principle, (and there is not really a lot to disagree with), then by definition, problem solving leads to success. Solving problems isn’t that difficult, it is just four simple steps: Step One: Face the Problem Accept you have a problem, be honest with yourself and those around you. Self-delusion is not a wonderful thing. Facing into a problem isn’t guaranteed to fix it, but if you never face the problem, you won’t ever fix it. (Sad but… -
Surge Planning: I Hate the Snow
17 Jan 2012 | 3:09 pmIt was cold this morning Freezing It is going to snow, maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon Snow is a mixed blessing, great for sledging but for some of us, it’s a work disaster Pipes freeze People fall Cars won’t start Boilers fail If you happen to be in the game of mending pipes or cars or boilers or bones it gets very, very, busy. Very, very, quickly. Queues of customers, all of them wanting your attention, now They don’t really care about anybody else They certainly don’t care about you They just want their problem fixed And as I said, they want it now You have been… -
That’s Not my Name
14 Jan 2012 | 3:22 amMy name is James Lawther. I have been called James by my mother from the day I was born. The name on my birth certificate is Kenneth James Lawther. This makes me a bit odd, I use my middle name as my first name (so to speak). Most databases are structured: First Name Middle Initial Last Name As far as the databases are concerned I am Kenneth J Lawther As far as I am concerned I am K James Lawther, or as I like to put it James Lawther. But then it is only my name, what would I know? Whenever I go to my gym they insist on calling me Ken. (Who the hell is he?) If I phone the IT “help… -
Presentation Tips: Why are You Talking to Me?
10 Jan 2012 | 2:19 amMonday is not going to be a good day. On Monday morning I have to sit through a four hour presentation. There are things in life I enjoy doing, I enjoy riding my bike, I enjoy taking my children to the beach, I enjoy reading thrillers. But I do not enjoy sitting through four hour presentations. I am not alone, I have no doubt that my colleagues are busy working out how to get out of sitting through the session as well. Busy concocting lies and excuses of one sort or another, so they don’t have to attend. The thing is, I strongly suspect that the poor fool giving the presentation…
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Customer Service Buzz
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New Year’s Resolution: Develop a Good Coaching Strategy
27 Jan 2012 | 2:44 pmThis is the fourth in a four-part series that the CCC team is writing on New Year’s Resolutions for 2012…as it relates to the customer experience, of course. Read parts one, two and three here. The New Year is well on its way (almost February already??) and chances are you have some new goals you want to achieve in your organization. As nice as it would be to simply make a checklist, hold a meeting, and then enjoy the results, experience and data show that to really see changes, you need to engage your staff in coaching. Like the personal trainer you may have hired to achieve some other… -
The Future of Video Calling for Customer Service
25 Jan 2012 | 2:00 pmIf you own a smartphone, tablet, or laptop computer (okay, that should cover just about everybody), then you’re likely familiar with the slick video-recording capabilities that now come standard on these gadgets. And if you’re like me, you’ve been wowed at the ability of face-to-face video conferencing to bridge physical limitations, seemingly bringing people much closer together, even if only in a ‘virtual’ sense. With technology enabling the world to better capture, store, and share video content, we’ve certainly seen a rise in the number of organizations wondering how they can… -
How Two Companies Reduced Customer Effort and Drove Loyalty
24 Jan 2012 | 12:40 pmJust about a year and a half ago, we shared the Customer Effort concept through the publication of our article entitled, “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” in the Harvard Business Review. Since then, we’ve had the pleasure of seeing the concept manifest itself in companies around the world and have worked with several service organizations to implement their low-effort initiatives. We, and the companies we have worked with, have learned a great deal and (luckily!) had some solid successes. So, when we were approached by HBR to do a follow-up article about the effort concept –… -
Creating a Strong Web Chat Strategy
24 Jan 2012 | 12:23 pmHave you ever been browsing the Internet for self-service answers or awaiting an e-mail response from customer support, when instead you decide to turn to your social media chat platform of choice (e.g., Facebook, Google Chat, AOL Instant Messenger) to find a real-time answer from (who else)—your online friends! With the technology’s popularity expected to grow to 1.7 billion users by 2013, companies too are exploring (and, in many cases, already trying out) web chat as a customer support channel to save on phone and e-mail costs while capitalizing on the customers’ growing comfort with… -
Customer Service in the News | Week of January 23rd
24 Jan 2012 | 12:17 pmWill 2012 be the year when Marketing and Customer Service come together to deliver consistent customer experience on social media [Social Customer] How channel switching is part of Thomas Cook’s multi-channel strategy [Travolution] Food delivery company Seamless finds Twitter success through a dedicated team and quick responses to customer queries [Business Insider] Successful customer interactions hinge on both the message and the medium, indicates Convergys 2011 U.S. Customer Scorecard Research [CSM] Optus launches dedicated online customer support forum to address customer issues and…
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Wim Rampen's Blog
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How To (Not) Get Smart About Big Data
2 Jan 2012 | 3:01 pmIf you are to believe the talk of twitter-town and its suburbs, due to the connectivity of numerous devices worldwide, we (will) also have available so much data, it is just waiting to be mined and will change how we do, well.., just about everything. All this is being referred to as Big Data. The [...] -
A new year a new..
31 Dec 2011 | 2:54 amAs of January 1st 2012 I am who I was in 2011, but with a new job: Manager Customer Intelligence and Brand Management (OHRA). And, what makes the story even better: I get to continue to work together with Coníche. I will also be sitting on the Coníche Board of Inspiration! -
Lists, lists, lists and Thank You!
16 Dec 2011 | 9:14 amA year of blogging in lists, tweets, comments & a big Thank You! -
Customer Service in 2012 and Beyond Technology..
9 Dec 2011 | 3:04 pmManagers in Customer Services don't need more or new technology, but what is it they do need (to do)? Here's my take for 2012 and beyond! -
Sorry, Marketing’s 4P framework is not dead..
6 Nov 2011 | 2:35 pmWhy Do B-Schools Still Teach The Famed 4P's Of Marketing, When Three Are Dead? Here's my perspective on the relevance of the 4 P's.
