Mar

17

6 ways to provide customer support and handle feedback online

Filed Under Engagement, Social Media, Web | Comments

Gone are the days when the simple contact form or a lengthy FAQs section enough to provide the level of customer support savvy consumers now expect. And traditional feedback methods like focus groups and phone surveys don’t really make sense for primarily web-based companies.

Thankfully, there are now several online services available that help companies of any size go above and beyond to connect with their customers through social media, create self-help communities, and consult their early adopters for valuable feedback. What’s great about using the web for customer support and feedback is most of the methods mentioned below empower your own customers to help each other. In a recent post from Seth Godin, he states “Self-service customer support outperforms the traditional model because people don’t have to wait in line.” Effective online support will help get rid of those lines, therefore helping decrease operating costs and also increasing the amount of success stories that people will tell their friends about.

Here are just 6 online approaches I have seen companies taking recently, with examples of each in parentheses:

1. UserVoice (Sling Media & Twhirl)

Described as “Customer Feedback 2.0″, UserVoice is essentially an open forum that empowers users to prioritize and vote on product or service improvements they would like to see implemented first. It’s a great way to organize those requests into one location (instead of emails). UserVoice creates a new level of transparency when it comes to developments since any company using the service is now forced to constantly update their users and loyal customers on their progress. The option of embedding a tab onto any site creates a quick way for suggestions to be added to a company’s UserVoice page.

2. Get Satisfaction (Timbuk2 & Zappos)

Similar to UserVoice, Get Satisfaction offers a service that allows for embedding a widget that site visitors can quickly use to submit ideas and feedback. A major benefit of using Get Satisfaction is it creates one central location for questions, suggestions, problems, and testimonials without having to clutter a company’s own site. Employees join in to answer any concerns as soon as possible. Happy customers also love to leave praise on Get Satisfaction so it’s not always bad news when there is new activity.

3. Online Chat (Vimeo)

Online chat is instance and effective when done right but that all depends on the size of the company. Any customer would appreciate not having to deal with any case numbers or a waiting queue. If instant chat is an option, just click on the screen name link, make sure they are online (probably only during normal business hours), then start chatting to get help. Vimeo goes one step further by even putting faces behind the AIM screen names. Ironically, I found that neither Skype or AIM offer instant online help using their own chat clients.

4. Twitter (JetBlue & Comcast)

There is already a ton of discussion on how Twitter is being used by companies such as JetBlue and Comcast for customer service so I won’t get into that. Assuming someone from the company is constantly monitoring Twitter, it can be one of the quickest ways to address concerns online. The most important thing to note here is that negative feedback about a company can spread very quickly, so it’s up to the company to monitor Twitter to turn negative situations into positives.

5. Forums (Apple & Dell)

Forums have been around forever and are still a great, inexpensive way to support a community. The best benefit of an active forum is that your knowledgeable customers will most likely end up resolving other customer issues before your employees even have time to respond. That does not mean you shouldn’t have employees moderating the forums to make sure things are running smoothly.

6. Facebook Fan Page (Virgin America)

There are many ways a facebook page can be used - two of them include addressing customer concerns and soliciting feedback. As a fan page grows, companies should pay closer attention to new discussion board posts and comments left by fans and respond through a private or public messages to any concerns. There are also add-ons like the Reviews app which allows fans to leave reviews of the company on your fan page.

Final Thoughts

Of course many companies use several variations of the above to keep customers happy. There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to evaluating which of these different approaches any one company should take. Do a Google search for ‘online customer service’ and you will find a ton of services promising you to be the best and cheapest solutions. Most of these offerings are complete crap which likely don’t get any love now that there are options like the 6 above.

Am I missing any other methods which you have noticed companies using recently? Why is one way better than another? Connect with me on Twitter @jsmakr.

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Feb

16

Some thoughts on iPhone apps

Filed Under Apple, Mobile, Web | Comments

How are they changing the Web? The obvious is iPhone apps are increasingly allowing people to access online content during times when they didn’t have access to it before, therefore continuing to speed up the rate of information sharing. Where apps are having trouble is keeping the users interested after a few uses or a short trial period. Social networking apps like the ones for Twitter and Facebook don’t have this problem because they are allowing people who are connected on the web to continue their relationships away from their computers. The rising popularity of iPhone apps with location-based capabilities (and soon to come the iPhone version of Google Latitude) are creating useful ways for people to access relevant data about events, businesses, and even people that are nearby.

How are they being used by brands? The smart brands are the ones that have already thought of ways to connect with a large base of current iPhone users (Kraft, Obama, Audi, to name a few). Most other major brands are most likely in the process of or just starting to think about developing an iPhone app because of the successes they are continuing to hear about. But only a select few out of the rapidly growing database of 20,000+ apps with be successful because they will either be really useful, linked to a well-liked brand, or very creative. Of course the longer it takes for the app to be released, the smaller the chance of it being successful. It’s worthwhile to note that companies like Remember the Milk, Salesforce, Mint.com are creating iPhone apps to supplement their web services as an added benefit to offer to their customers. Some of the most impressive apps aren’t just displaying content in a mobile-friendly manner, but also paying very close attention to creating a sleek user interface and coming up with unique ways to engage people using the iPhone’s features.

What about publishers? They need to recognize that besides an electronic reading device like the Kindle, people are already browsing their content frequently on the iPhone (and most likely not having the best experience if nothing has been developed for them). Even though it will take time, the iPhone will be a big advertising platform for publishers in the future. Besides newspapers, I think most major magazines will have iPhone apps soon. What they will need to figure out is a revenue model that makes sense because as of now the app store does not allow publishers the freedom of charging readers a recurring monthly fee to subscribe to the latest content downloads. The first successful magazine app will owe a lot of it’s success from free PR and it looks like Lucky Magazine and People Magazine are very close to launching. Update: Apple has announced that the 3.0 software update will allow subscription based purchases to be made within the app. Great news for publishers.

How are they affecting the gaming industry? The cost of the app plays a huge factor, but not as much as you might think. We are starting to see more findings that indicate increases in spending for apps on mobile devices. People are willing to spend $5-$10 on good game because it’s an inexpensive alternative when compared to most video games that cost over $40. It’s only a matter of time before more games that offer online play gain in popularity just as we saw happen for all the major gaming consoles over the past couple of years and the classis example of the iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge. While no one is sure yet if increasing sales of iPhone games are damaging the sales of the major players, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that the iPhone’s popularity is already hurting the sales of other handheld gaming devices.

Some further reading: 8 reasons for building an iPhone Web application, Mobile ROI: You get what you pay for, and Apple iPhone controls over 66% of all mobile web use.

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Apr

2

Keep your private company connected on IncBizNet

Filed Under Web | Comments

Just because your company is privately held doesn’t mean it can’t stay connected. IncBizNet, an online community exclusively for private companies, aims to bring them together to network and help develop and manage their online presence. For a quick tour of IncBizNet, just visit this page.

IncBizNet was developed using Drupal by Mansueto Digital, which also owns Inc.com and publishes a yearly feature called the Inc. 5000; Inc. Magazine’s annual list of the fastest growing private companies in America. IncBizNet and the Inc. 5000 are now directly linked to each other because all new applications completed will automatically create a profile for the company on IncBizNet with the information submitted. As a result of this, the site already has a large member base of private companies with detailed profiles. These companies, along with all the other companies that have joined the site since it launched, vary greatly in many ways such as length of time in business, size, and industry.

I think younger run companies will be first to see the potential of the site because they will find the most value in what IncBizNet has to offer. But at the same time, the site will dramatically help non-tech savvy executives and employees become more familiar with the online world of networking and information sharing. Among many of the features currently available, the site allows companies to post press releases and blog about anything they desire. Private company executives and employees may find this very beneficial mainly because press releases are provided for free at this time (saving them money) and they will no longer need to go through the hassle of creating and hosting a company blog on their own (saving them time).

A major trend I have noticed recently (especially with web companies), is that many of them launch their own company blogs along with their new web services. They are using these blogs to keep their customers updated with their latest developments and news. We have already started to see other companies (private and public) follow this trend as a additional form of communication to their customers. I think that trend of will continue either through a site like IncBizNet or through their own website because it is effective.

It will be interesting to see how IncBizNet evolves as more companies sign up. My prediction is that one of the site’s main attractions will be hosting active discussions focusing primarily on many of the obstacles businesses face on an everyday basis to survive and grow with the rapidly changing U.S. economy.

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Oct

22

Standout Jobs to help employers produce recruiting videos

Filed Under Marketing, Videos, Web | Comments

Standout Jobs is one of the first companies that will help employers produce short videos for open job positions or general recruiting. The main idea behind these videos is to illustrate to potential employees what it’s like to work for the company, which will hopefully gain their interest. Before, the only way to know about a great company was by hearing from friends and family or from someone on the inside through word-of-mouth. It is quite obvious that video recruiting will not take off fast because it is a very new type of recruiting, but it should be a steady, gradual growth.

I think being an early entry into this type of job recruiting will be a major advantage for Standout Jobs when they fully launch their service (Fall 2007) and become better established. I will go even further and say that I think they will be successful with creating the tipping point for video recruiting. But, I do not think video recruiting will completely replace online job listings.

I came across the first Standout Jobs video job ad at the FreshBooks website a while back and was reminded of this video when I read an article in Entrepreneur titled Recruiting 2.0. Freshbooks found out about Standout Jobs through their first job ad video uploaded to YouTube. The FreshBooks blog summarized this service and introduces us to how Standout Jobs was started by founders Fred Ngo and Benjamin Yoskovitz. The blog post encourages employers to:

Get away from the 1950s. Use the power of new services like YouTube to tell the human story. Show the quirks and personalities that characterize the company. Expose the culture and the emotional drive and the funny bone to the world. Demonstrate that your company is not your average a 100-person team, but a place where the inspired come to inspire.

What makes some of these videos very attractive to potential employees is the comedy and creative approaches taken in some of them so far to get attention. I am unsure if Standout Jobs is behind all creative development or if it’s a joint collaboration between them and their client. The main idea behind this creative approach is: Who wouldn’t want to work for a fun, creative company? The only problem I can foresee is that some companies might try to portray a “fun” environment just for the video, therefore misleading people about their company. Hopefully it will be easy to see past this by getting the sense that they tried too hard.

What surprised me so far about Standout Job’s strategy, is that it does not look like they will be hosting the videos, but instead they will be hosted elsewhere. Then the hiring company will decide how they want to showcase them, most likely by placing them in their blog or just hoping they spread by themselves on popular sites like YouTube. I think as Standout Jobs grows and builds a name for itself, more people will go to their site directly just to view the new video job ads.

These recruiting videos could be a huge success with similar young entrepreneurial tech companies like Xobni, which has also already consulted with Standout Jobs to help them produce a video. For example, I could also see a company like skinnyCorp (parent company of Threadless) using this type of recruiting. They are a young, successful company with a very cool environment. Connected Ventures (parent company of College Humor) made this video for fun and 4 million views later, their inbox was overflowed with resumes and they are still getting them to this day. Another thing that certainly surprised me was when I saw that Standout Jobs was not even making video ads for their own job opportunities. What’s up with that?

I certainly can’t see large companies like IBM or GE consulting with Standout Jobs anytime soon. If these ads prove to be successful, they might get the attention of other large companies like Apple, Netflix, and Amazon who like to promote their unique work environments. Some more examples of similar types of video recruiting are Yahoo’s video here and Google’s video here.

Check out the Standout Jobs website for their latest work and to get an idea of what video recruiting is if you are unsure. If the video is done right and it spreads successfully, the best candidates will come to you. This is currently an unconventional method of recruiting, but it can be a very effective way to attract great employees in the future. Well, that is if your hiring. If your not hiring, then I would advise against making a video with your employees for fun and posting it online.

Update: I received an email from one of the co-founders of Standout Jobs which points out that their focus will not only be on videos, but to also help market and build their client’s brand through other tools. Something else to look out for in the future.

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Oct

22

Guy Kawasaki missed one important Truemors domain name

Filed Under Misc, Web | Comments

If you mistakenly type treumors in Google (simply swapping the u and the e like I did), the results will look like this. Guess what? It doesn’t look like the number one result, treumors.com, is one of the 55 domains Guy Kawasaki registered for Truemors.

I registered 55 domains (for example, truemors.net, .de, .biz, truemours, etc, etc). I had no idea that one had to buy so many domains to truly “surround” the one you use. Yes, I could have registered fewer and spent less, but who cares about saving a few hundred bucks compared to the cost of legal action to get a domain away from a squatter if Truemors is successful?

I wonder if Guy is already aware of this already and if he plans to try and obtain this domain from the squatter trying to profit from unsuspecting users. (unless you like to get paid to complete offers!) My guess is that Guy simply wrote down all the possible domain name variations he could think of without trying an actual typing test to uncover some of common mistakes people might make when quickly typing Truemors. I could be wrong though and maybe this domain was simply overlooked or he thought it would not be an issue at all.

I want to add that I am a regular reader of Guy’s blog and enjoy it. Besides the development costs of $12,107.09 that most of us have already read about, I can imagine he put a lot of his valuable time into Truemors so far and I hope it pays off for him eventually.

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