Month: March 2011

Be the Change Your Customers Want You to Be!

In today’s fast-paced, ever changing environment, most brands rank poorly when it comes to customer service. We might argue that it’s to be expected, since change is now more constant than ever… but the hard truth is that if we don’t excel in customer service, our brands will become just another nameless part of the noise out there.

Customers are no longer willing to wait around for us to get our act together, and even if they were willing, we can no longer afford extended timelines for change. Let’s put it into perspective – what if I told you not to expect to even be doing the same thing in 2 years that you are doing today?

Suddenly you can see that it is to our advantage to operate within the customers super-turbo-fast timeline now.  But how to do that and still provide excellent customer service??  Those two goals are not as diametrically opposed as they might first seem.

Customer service is not just making sure returns are processed correctly, or customer frustrations are smoothed over.  In this new social media era, customer service now carries the expectation of continually proving to your customers that you VALUE them in all stages of the sales cycle… from product conception to developing and honing brand personality and promises, to sale, to after-sale satisfaction, to the resulting repeat sales.  All to start over again in the change cycle with a re-evaluation of the product and possible reconcepting.

The key is to involve your customers in meaningful ways through all aspects of the sales cycle. Online communities are one of the best ways to do this.  Those communities set up an environment of trust among the brand, marketers, and community members, and provide the technical features required to allow the conversations to stay in the foreground and the technology in the background.

Ask your customers what they want from your brand, your products and services.  Ask your customers how you’re doing, and what they want to see changed.  Ask your customers to rate their satisfaction AND to tell you stories about their experience with your brand, products and services.

Then go do something about it.  Make the changes.  Step into the future as soon as your customers tell you what it looks like!

Seek out and embrace change – look to the future through your customers’ eyes and you just might get there before everyone else!

Ted Rubin

Ted Rubin Ted has a deep online background beginning in 1997 with Seth Godin, as CMO of e.l.f. Cosmetics, & recently as Chief Social Marketing Officer, Open Sky. Originally posted at SheSpeaks

Social Media and the Need for New Business Models

Who owns social media? Is it marketing, customer service, public relations?

Looking at a recent study conducted by the Pivot Conference, the top four departments where social media is currently run are as follows:

1. Marketing
2. Public Relations
3. Sales
4. Customer Service

Perhaps, it’s the wrong question to ask however. It’s not unlike asking who owns email. But, here’s another question and as we think about it, let’s broaden our perspective as the answer may not appear immediately.

Who owns the customer relationship?

The short answer is everyone.

If that is the case, then examining how social media is run today is not at all how businesses should think about it tomorrow. A not so long answer to the original question is “any person or department affected by outside activity where public interaction impacts decisions.”

Businesses tend to have a single or narrow view of the customer and as we’re learning, they’re connecting with one another and sharing experiences that transform their roles from prospect to advocate to adversary to influencer and everything in between.

Social media is not about conversations on Twitter and Facebook nor check-ins on Foursquare or Places, or flipped videos on YouTube. It’s about using this opportunity to build bridges to a new genre of customers and the people who influence their decisions. Our mission now is to pave paths to future relevance. The reality is that we are as much competing for the future as we are for the moment. And as a result, we are perpetually competing for relevance.

Read more

Jumping the line vs. opening the door

Every morning, the line of cars waiting to get onto the Hutchinson River Parkway exceeds 40. Of course, you don’t have to patiently wait, you can drive down the center lane, passing all the civilized suckers and then, at the last moment, cut over.

Drivers hate this, and for good reason. The road is narrow, and your aggressive act didn’t help anyone but you. You slowed down the cars in the lane behind you, and your selfish behavior merely made 40 other people wait.

This is a different act than the contribution someone makes when she sees that everyone is patiently waiting to enter a building through a single door. She walks past everyone and opens a second door. Now, with two doors open, things start moving again and she’s certainly earned her place at the front of that second entrance.

Too often, we’re persuaded that initiative and innovation and bypassing the status quo is some sort of line jumping, a selfish gaming of the zero sum game. Most of the time it’s not. In fact, what you do when you solve an interesting problem is that you open a new door. Not only is that okay, I think it’s actually a moral act.

Don’t wait your turn if waiting your turn is leaving doors unopened.

Seth Godin

Get Your Hands Dirty and Change Something.

There are countless books, articles, academic papers, blog posts, and the like around things like “change management”. (One book I particularly love is Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. Thought provoking, accessible, and insightful.) But here’s an important thing to note about change:

It’s not simply going to happen because you wish it would.

In business culture, we frequently commiserate with colleagues and lament the things we wish were different. We question decisions or processes. Complain that the management or executive teams aren’t listening, or aren’t accessible. We frustrate ourselves around the environment we don’t like, the challenges we face, the personality clashes we experience, the lack of communication or information.

The trick, however, is that we also often throw those frustrations out over lunch or drinks with colleagues….and then simply go back to putting our heads down and doing business as usual without changing our own behavior one bit.

Before change can be managed, it has to be sparked. By someone. By actions. By getting your own hands dirty.

Yet we wait. For change to happen to us. For someone else to take the initiative to sit down and think not just about the problem, but to design a solution rather than simply a compromise. For someone else to initiate and prepare for the conversation with the big boss, or pull the department heads together, or to take the team to lunch and put some tangible ideas to paper. For someone else to take ownership of the issue and simply shower us with the miraculous results for the sake of making our lives easier.

But why can’t it be you? Or me?

In our personal lives we talk a great deal about accountability for changing behaviors or habits. Wanting it badly enough to simply take steps toward making something happen.

But organizationally, we’re daunted by things like hierarchy and process. We excuse ourselves as being too busy individually to take the time to collectively contribute to something different (collaboration does indeed take time). We cite the limitations of our job description instead of embracing the potential and the audacity of fluid boundaries, of doing what’s needed instead of just what’s prescribed. We presume the executives know the issues at hand, despite ESP not really being a skill most CEOs possess. And for whatever reason, we tend to think it’s other people’s job to communicate with us instead of seeking out and in turn distributing the information we need.

Whether it’s designing a more social business or simply improving communication between departments, change has to be a verb before it can be a noun. It has to start somewhere before it can take root and actually impact the business for the better.

(As for what to change, I’m exploring the different types for an upcoming post. Share your ideas in the comments.)

So how about it? Can you do one thing today that puts the change you seek into your own hands, even a little bit? Are you willing to get your hands dirty to make it happen?

Amber Naslund

image credit: Ciaran McGuiggan

Location-Based Marketing Takes a Step Forward

Location based marketing is finally going more mainstream.

With the AT&T and Placecast announced deal to provide special offers called ShopAlerts to consumers through their mobile phones when they’re near a participating store or brand, mobile marketing takes another step forward.

With initial presenting sponsors include HP, Kmart, JetBlue, SC Johnson, Kibbles ‘n Bits and Nature’s Recipe, the AT&T-Placecast venture will provide a large-scale, location-based marketing program.

This is a great step forward for the mobile industry overall, as more on-the-go consumers will be able to see first-hand some of the relevant value that can be provided based on location.

Read more