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The economy is hurting. We get it.
As business owners and marketers, we’re looking for ways to create a solid cash flow.
Everybody likes a good deal so it’s worth taking a closer look at something like Groupon, right?
But if all you can come up with is a sorry-ass excuse for a daily deal, then the economy isn’t ruining your business.
You are ruining your business.
Don Corleone wouldn’t approve if that happened, so let’s look at how you can make an offer that nobody can refuse.
Social media has humanized interaction and has enabled people to easily obtain and exchange experiences.
Technology has humanized the user experience by making it easier for people to communicate and share information.
Meanwhile, many businesses have used technology to go in the opposite direction, to dehumanize.
Look at customer service, which has sadly become a (near) robotic experience at many companies. Look at email marketing where companies send emails from an email address like “please-do-not-reply@we-hate-getting-email-from-you-com”.
Put aside all the usual stuff about social media offering great opportunities to promote your products, overturn negative experiences and build long-term relationships.
First and foremost, social media is a call for humanization in how you communicate. Social media has humanized interaction, technology has humanized the experience, but only you can humanize your business.
Customer service plays a significant role in the overall customer experience. This survey from over a year ago is an extensive survey on the effects of bad customer service. The outcomes aren’t surprising as 67% indicated that they ended a business relationship after a poor experience with customer service. Of those people, 61% took their business to a competitor. What this boiled down to was an average of $243 in lost business per customer, per year.
On Thursday, May 26, Accenture and Tele’Train will host the Customer Service Seminar. It’s a one-day event on online customer interaction and behavior with a focus on social business.
The line-up is filled with people from various businesses eager to share their thoughts and experiences. Learn how social business is applied at companies like KLM and Microsoft. Xaviera Ringeling, Fred Zimny and Arjen Hof will give useful pointers on social media and customer service. Oh, and I’ve been asked to perform some tricks too.
The best part: we’re doing it for free. So head over to this page now and reserve your seat!
If there’s one thing that Facebook has many people mesmerized about, it’s their user count. Between December 2004 and January 2011, Facebook grew from one million users to 600 million users. If you’d like to continue to be mesmerized as if you’re staring at a unicorn, today’s count is over 656 million.
I don’t question the count, I question the messaging. It’s always been made to sound as if those 600-whatever million people are unique users. They’re absolutely not all unique and I’ll explain why.