Powazek (@fraying) is my new favourite blogger. I am now determined to collect my own hamburgers.
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Andy
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Andy
Social Media = Good Customer Service
Social Media = interacting with many people at once and creating different levels of relationships. It’s good customer service using different channels of communication.
If you ever worked in retail as an everyday sales associate, you know what I mean when I say “creating different levels of relationships”.
Some customers are one-offs (see them once and never again). Other customers, though, are regulars. Some are so regular that they can (and often do) become personal friends. How you interact with your customers has great influence over what kind of customer they become.
Take that sort of relationship-building and place the involved parties on opposite ends of the planet.
Previously there was no real way to mimic the face-to-face connection between individuals. Introduce the technology of social networking/social media, though, and bam – you’re now much closer to creating that person-to-person connection.
Simple, no?
The big hurdle shouldn’t be what social media is. It’s just good customer service, and I’m confident that everything I’ve said above is just common sense.
The hurdle, instead, should be more specific; more tactical than strategic.
What social media channels do you use? How do you use them? What goals are you setting for yourself with these channels?
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Andy
Social Media is taught in Elementary School.
A post was recently published on Mashable entitled “4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career”.
The Four Essential Traits:
- Develop real relationships.
- Keep tabs on what’s popular, catch trends early.
- Try new things.
- Give back to the community, support others, promote the work of groups aside from yours.
The blog comments are filled with praise, as if these four traits are something new and innovative, and I can’t figure out why.
This is the same stuff we learned when we were in elementary school (or grammar school or grade school, depending on where you are):
- Become friends with lots of people.
- Stay in tune with fads (eg., Transformers, Pogs, Crazy Bones, Beanie Babies, Pokémon).
- You can make new friends by getting involved in new activities and meeting new people.
- Volunteering your time to extra-curricular groups and school organizations created new opportunities for making friends.
Sound familiar?
When we are young, we’re always trying to make new friends. In business, we’re still trying to make friends, but for different reasons.
Social Media is just a means to an end. It’s just a way to make new friends.
The technology and tools may have changed, but the “essential traits” have remained the same.
There’s nothing new to it. We’ve been doing it since we were kids.
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Andy
Danny Sullivan does a complete breakdown of how Mahalo sucks the big one: http://selnd.com/axmYwx (via @sengineland)
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Andy
7 Elements of a Successful Freelancer’s Website: http://bit.ly/cA7lzk (via @FreelanceSw)
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Andy
Seth’s Blog: Hunters and Farmers (Thoughts) http://post.ly/LzeN
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Andy
Seth’s Blog: Hunters and Farmers (Thoughts)
10,000 years ago, civilization forked. Farming was invented and the way many people spent their time was changed forever.
Clearly, farming is a very different activity from hunting. Farmers spend time sweating the details, worrying about the weather, making smart choices about seeds and breeding and working hard to avoid a bad crop. Hunters, on the other hand, have long periods of distracted noticing interrupted by brief moments of frenzied panic.
It’s not crazy to imagine that some people are better at one activity than another. There might even be a gulf between people who are good at each of the two skills. Thom Hartmann has written extensively on this. He points out that medicating kids who might be better at hunting so that they can sit quietly in a school designed to teach farming doesn’t make a lot of sense.
A kid who has innate hunting skills is easily distracted, because noticing small movements in the brush is exactly what you’d need to do if you were hunting. Scan and scan and pounce. That same kid is able to drop everything and focus like a laser–for a while–if it’s urgent. The farming kid, on the other hand, is particularly good at tilling the fields of endless homework problems, each a bit like the other. Just don’t ask him to change gears instantly.
I’m not sure where I stand. Am I a farmer? A hunter?
My day-to-day consists of a lot of information consumption. I read, I share, I think, I write. It’s fairly passive, and does include a lot of “distraction”. But when projects arise, I drop everything and plow through what needs to get done. Does that make me a hunter?
I still feel like I need guidance, though. A mentor. Someone to help me distinguish between the right and wrong in various situations; stability and advice and consistency. It’s as if I’m still seeking the routine and task-oriented details of a classroom setting. So does that make me a farmer?
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Andy
Whatever happened to customer service?
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Andy
A Thought on Conversion
The word conversion means “to change something into a different state or form”.
There are many kinds of conversions in the online world, and not all of them relate to a payment.
Just like in the physical world, not every customer who enters a shop will walk away with a purchase.
With online channels, you can convert a visitor to a member; a critic to a supporter. “Winning the Hearts and Minds” of individuals who have never heard of you is no less valid in online conversions than it is in military strategy.
The key, of course, is defining a broader scope of goals.
Aside from a sale, what else can qualify as a conversion?
In a traditional brick-and-mortar store, a good rule of thumb is to provide the customer with exactly what they need.
It may be advice or a personal opinion, or it may be more information.
In the ideal situation, they have money in hand and are looking to buy.
Sometimes, though, the customer isn’t interested in interacting with you, and instead they simply want to be left alone.
In all of these situations, though, there is one goal in mind: you want the customer to come back. You want that visit to transform into many visits. You want that customer to become a regular customer.
Online, you do not know exactly what your visitors are looking for. So you need to provide all the options.
Even if you don’t convert a visit to a sale, you can still convert a visit to a return visit, or a return visit to a membership.
Broaden your goals, diversify your conversions.
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Andy
Harvey Kirkpatrick 12:20 pm on February 3, 2010 Permalink |
A lot of people hate their jobs and subsequently they loathe serving and dealing with customers. In addition, many employees have been taught to squeeze every penny out of their customers. Drawing on my experience as a customer at restaurants/bars, when we receive outstanding service, the tip is representative of that. Otherwise, if we get some slug who simply showed up to work and couldn’t care less, they get considerably less than what is thought to be acceptable. Tipping is automatic in my book. It is something that must be earned, and if we settle for crappy service, how can we demand or expect exceptional service?