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Empower Your Employees to Help Your Customers

customerdantaylorYesterday Jason Falls over at Social Media Explorer wrote a post about whether brands were playing favorites on social media.  The problem is that many customers have problems, but often it seems that people who are influencers – who have a popular blog or twitter feed – will get responses from companies that normal people can’t seem to get through normal customer support channels.  I commented that right now many of the people monitoring social media at companies are higher up and actually have the power to fix problems.

Why is this exactly? Why do people have to complain on Twitter or their blog or to their influencer friends to get their problems solved?  Most of us have had an experience with a customer support system where the employee had to follow a script and wasn’t allowed to make any kind of decision. You usually have to try to get up to a manager or another department and even then there’s no guarantee that you’ll get any kind of decision.

What would happen if you allowed your customer support employees to make decisions?  You’d have to provide them with some guidelines, obviously, but what if they could actually help your customers? Many years ago I used to work a few hours a week at Bed, Bath & Beyond (ok, mostly for the discount).  They allowed their employees to give up to a 5% discount to any customer for any reason (usually having to do with a flaw in the merchandise).  Do you know how happy it makes a customer when they come up to you to show you a flaw in a product, ready for a fight, and you just give them a 5% discount without arguing?  How many of those customers were repeat customers?  I’d imagine quite a few.  I’m sure BBB made up the 5% discount with increased sales from happy customers.

All the employees at your company will influence your brand and reputation.  If you give them the power to make decisions that help customers, it will only help your company in the long run.

(photo by dan taylor @ FlickrCC)

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Is Your Marketing Evil?

eviltonivsSeth Godin’s post yesterday, Is marketing evil? refreshed a subject that’s come up in my mind from time to time.  Seth’s post was about avoiding marketing things that are harmful to people.  He also briefly touched upon evil marketing techniques, which I think are important for all business people to consider.

Sometimes the product or service we’re selling doesn’t have any particularly harmful effects, but the way that we’re selling it isn’t as open or truthful as it should be.  Tricking customers into buying your product for a quick buck may win in the short run, but it certainly won’t help your brand or reputation. Eventually you’ll run out of rocks to hide behind.

There are also products which are fine when used responsibly by the right people – alcohol is one example that comes to mind.  However, some products in this category that may not be as obvious.  For example, many online games can become addicting to people so much so that they avoid most interaction with the real world (disclaimer – I play computer games – both online and off. I am keenly aware of addictive qualities of some games).  How do you market and sell a product that could be harmfully addicting to some people, especially when that addiction can feed your bottom line through monthly fees?  Should you let people know about the possibilities ahead of time?  Should you provide help for people who become addicted?

I think the important point is for marketers, business people, salespeople, and anyone else involved in selling a product or service to really consider the impact of both the product and the marketing.  Using the golden rule to do onto others as you want done to yourself is a good measuring stick.  Or follow Google’s lead and “do no evil”.

(photo by TonivS @ Flickr CC)

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Using RSS to Monitor your Name and Brand

monitordocklandsboyThere is a lot of information being published on the web every minute.  Some of it may be about you, your company or your products.  It is important to keep track of what’s being said about your business so that you can both respond effectively and learn from what your customers are saying.

Hopefully you know what RSS is.  You may not be aware that you’re using it – if you subscribe to a website or blog and then read their posts in iGoogle, Google Reader or Bloglines, etc., you are using RSS.  RSS can be a very easy way to monitor what is being said about your company.  By using various search services that provide RSS feeds for their results, you can monitor what is said about your company, products, etc. right from your RSS reader.

Here’s a few places to start :

  1. Google Blogsearch: Type in your company name.  On the bottom of the left column click on the RSS link to subscribe to this feed.  Now you’ll be able to monitor whenever a blog mentions your company name.  Add separate searches for brand and product names.  Having one for your name isn’t a bad idea either.
  2. Twitter Search:  Enter your company name.  On the upper right click on “Feed for this query”.  Repeat for product names, etc.
  3. Technorati: Again search for your company name, etc.  In the upper right of the search results there is a small Subscribe link with a RSS icon.

There are many different places to monitor what is said on the Internet.  If you have other favorites, please share them in the comments below.

(photo by Docklandsboy @ Flickr CC)

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