Remember Voltron? When I was a kid I used to love that cartoon. You’d think that with those bad-ass robot lions the universe would be safe. But you’d be wrong. Because every episode some bad guy came along that couldn’t be defeated by the lions alone, not matter what they did. The same thing happened on every. single. episode. They had to combine to form freakin’ Voltron, and only then could they defeat everything in their path.
But why wouldn’t they just form Voltron at the beginning? I think that would have saved a ton of time, but then again, it wouldn’t have been much of a show (update: rented Voltron on Netflix and is isn’t much of a show through the eyes of a 20-something…in fact it sucked pretty bad).
Where am I going with this? I think a of people are seeing the value of social media and realizing that these tools can really affect your business. But we need to remind ourselves that it’s not a social vs. traditional world we’re living in. To have maximum impact, you need find out which channels, online and offline provide the best mix of message, experience, and sharability. In short, step back and look at where you’re putting your marketing dollars and determine if your message is effective and consistent both as letter and number and bits and bytes. Figure out how social can reinforce traditional and vice versa. Then Voltron your marketing from the beginning. You’ll see how much faster you’ll conquer the universe.
I saw this great TED talk by Clay Shirky recently about how we’re starting to have a cognitive surplus in the world and shifting from a society based on consumption to one that is starting to be about creation, production and sharing. According to Shirky, the earth has about 1 trillion hours of downtime per year and the question is what newly empowered masses of people will do with the opportunities presented by digital technology. Will we make LOLcats or more versions of Ushahidi?
Internet companies can be tricky things and don’t exactly have the best track record for customer service (ever tried to get a Facebook problem solved by contacting someone AT Facebook?). We get it. You’re digital. You’re web based. But it’s not an excuse to wall yourself off from your customers.
Case in point. Over the weekend I was dealing with some pretty decent email outages with certain accounts that definitely were not caused by something on my end. Filing a support ticket with Netfirms seemed to have gone into a black hole and I never got a response. What I (and I think a lot of people) didn’t count on or look for right out of the gate was essentially a non-promoted ‘back door’ support medium via their Twitter account. (Full disclosure - I currently host most of my stuff through Dreamhost - but do still use Netfirms)
After a couple of hours not hearing back on my support request, I sent out a tweet describing the problem and within a couple of minutes had a friendly support person on the case. A few @replies (public) and DMs (direct messages - not public) later the problem was solved. I was impressed. By the way, this wasn’t the first time I’ve had a good experience with Twitter support at Netfirms, but it did get me thinking about the medium as a scalable customer service tool.
Using a medium such as Twitter where search is real-time and robust has other benefits as well. When I tweeted about the problem and got a response, another Twitter user chimed in as they were having the same problem. Support can scale if you can fix the issue in public. Posting what was causing the problem and what users need to do for the solution can spread just as fast as the problem did and would save us all a lot of on-hold time.
Companies used to be able to get away with making it difficult for customers to get support (or at least, as a customer there wasn’t much you could do about crap service). Now, those with bad experiences tell google - and for internet companies this can be a big deal.
It kind of boils down to a basic premise of “If something isn’t working - stop doing it. If something is working - do it again.” Simple, right? If your company sucks at phone support, don’t offer phone support - but DO offer kick-ass online support…support so kick-ass that you’d be a fool to complain about not having phone support. It’s not about having phone support vs Twitter support - it’s about having support. Period.
Ideally it’s about having both - meeting your customers on their terms and using the tools they want to use can and will go a long way to building a long term customer. Just ask Zappos. But if you’re going to make users jump through hoops or use a narrow set of channels to get service and support, it better be a great experience for them.
So, what has been your best experience with customer service on the web and with what company? Who has been the worst? Fire away in the comments, please.
Today I’m continuing my chat with Erika Napoletano of Redhead Writing. Now we’re really talking business… Part III covers owning your brand as well as the agency / client relationship. She has some great advice for how to work with agencies and how build a great long-term relationship with clients.
Many thanks to the head Redhead for taking the time to speak with me. Get some context and show some love by checking out Erika’s blog, follower her on Twitter, or connect via Facebook.
I recently had the pleasure of getting to speak with Erika Napoletano - better known online as Redhead Writing. I first started reading her work about a year ago through the re-tweets of some people I followed on Twitter and found her writing style as well as her sense of humor to be both smart and hilarious. It’s also not for those who are afraid of colorful language…. For the uninitiated, Erika is best know for her blunt, unapologetic writing style. Whether she’s blogging about business (the bitch-slap), her obsession with cycling, or why she’s not going to follow you on Twitter, Erika is someone who has done an amazing job of building her own personal brand as well as her own business. She was nice enough to sit down with me to share her story so far and offer up some great tips to the rest of us who aspire to write, run a business, or just do good things for your clients.
I’ve condensed our 45 minute chat and distilled it down to into 3 parts (about 10 minutes each). In part I we’ll talk about Erika’s journey to becoming a full time blogger and writer. Part II will cover the fine art of the Guest Post - how you can use it to build your audience as well as how to make connections with other bloggers to expand your reach.
Part III will be posted tomorrow - we’ll get into owning your brand as well as the agency / client relationship.
Many thanks to the head Redhead for taking the time to speak with me. Get some context and show some love by checking out Erika’s blog, follower her on Twitter, or connect via Facebook.
Did you dig it so far? Would love your thoughts, so fire away in the comments. Part III will be posted tomorrow.
I had a great time meeting new folks and re-connecting with friends at the first Utica Tweet Up held over the weekend at the Hotel Utica. I wish I could have stayed longer (had to play an acoustic gig that night at The Devereux) but am looking forward to the next one. Here are some of the folks I met as well as a quick chat I had with @AShort315 who organized the event.
Remember Voltron? When I was a kid I used to love that cartoon. You’d think that with those bad-ass robot lions the universe would be safe. But you’d be wrong. Because every episode some bad guy came along that couldn’t be defeated by the lions alone, not matter what they did. The same thing happened on every. single. episode. They had to combine to form freakin’ Voltron, and only then could they defeat everything in their path.
