Jeff Bullas jeffbullas.com
The bursting of social media upon the internet scene is providing people with all new ways to share, collaborate and communicate. This is making it easier to connect one-on-one with anyone, anywhere in the world, and businesses are no exception.
The same tools that are used daily by hundreds of millions of people around the world in the form of Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are available to companies looking to better connect with their customer base, quickly changing what used to be a difficult task into a simple, intuitive matter for public relations professionals and potential customers alike.
Social media customer service is a problem
A study was conducted to see what the top 25 top retailer’s reaction on Twitter was in the real world to customer service inquiries. It found “six of the 25 retailers didn’t reply to any of the analysts’ customer service inquiries” over a 24 hour period.
According to F.C. Tucker Company, Inc., about fifteen per cent of young customers (16-24 year old) prefer social media over any other channel for customer service while (based on 2012 STELLA Service Study), most customers trying to reach biggest retailers using Twitter fail to hear back. That’s your huge competitive advantage!
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Ashley Furness v3im.com
Want to maximize your social media ROI? That’s easy–focus on social customer service.
For a long time, companies have viewed social media as a brand marketing channel. Community managers post links to the deal of the day or other promotional materials, along with recent news articles tossed in for good measure. As a whole, however, much of the content shared is very brand centric. By including a customer centric focus in your strategy, taking care of customers, solving their problems and keeping them happy—that delivers a different kind of value. And it also helps you work toward the alignment of sales, customer service and marketing in a way that makes perfect sense.
Smart brands are using social media channels for customer service interactions. In fact, a recent VentureBeat report found that while 62 percent of consumers use Twitter, Facebook and other channels to broadcast service complaints, a vast majority of those messages never receive a response. Part of the problem is a lack of process, planning and technology to efficiently handle the job.
To meet this need, software vendors have developed a new class of social media products that enable customer service teams to instantly identify, prioritize and address customer feedback sent through social media. Here’s how it works.
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Anum Hussain HubSpot Blog
The prospect-to-lead-to-customer process is a fairly simple concept to understand. In a very basic summary, Marketing’s role is in attracting and converting prospects into leads. Then they nurture those leads into a state of sales readiness, at which point they’re distributed to sales representatives who focus on converting those leads into customers.
Your salespeople likely give these brand new customers a warm, fuzzy feeling that they’re investing their money wisely. But even top-notch products and services can get confusing, and sometimes your customers encounter unforeseen issues.
So what do they do? They call Customer Service or Support. Ah yes … Support.
As much as we hate to admit it, many companies’ customer service/support reps are often an afterthought, even though these are the people who resolve customer issues and make everything okay again. Even though these are the people who often bear the brunt of those extremely vexed customers. And even though these are the people who are often times the last voice or interaction a customer has with your brand.
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Simone Baribeau Fast Company
Zappos.com launched in 1999 with a plan like that of many dot-coms birthed in the tech bubble: to be an online shoe company without ever touching a shoe. Customers would order footwear on its website, it would transmit the orders to vendors, and vendors would ship them from their own warehouses.
“On paper, it was a great idea,” CEO Tony Hsieh says. But in practice, it wasn’t. Four years after its launch, Zappos.com wasn’t profitable, it couldn’t raise funding, and retail shoe sales nationwide were only just recovering from the 2001 recession. To survive, Hsieh realized, the company needed to stop selling sneakers and start selling something more valuable: a customer service experience. It couldn’t do that unless it was in control of shoppers’ orders, which meant it needed to mail the shoes itself.
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Harley Manning Forbes
Customer experience is fundamental to the success of every business. For most companies, in fact, customer experience is the single greatest predictor of whether customers will return — or defect to a competitor.
Customer experience goes to the heart of everything you do: how you conduct your business, how your people behave when they interact with customers and each other, and the value you provide. You literally can’t afford to ignore it, because your customers take it personally each and every time they touch your products, your services, and your support.
Why is customer experience so important? “Customer experience” is literally how your customers perceive their interactions with your company. Those interactions occur at each step along a customer journey. That journey begins when people realize that you offer a product or service they might want, then compare your offer to other options. If things go your way, they’ll buy from you. Then they’ll use what they bought. If they encounter a problem, they’ll call for support.
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Robert Clay marketingwizdom.com
If you think that marketing is just about spreading your message, you need to think again, writes Robert Clay of Marketing Wizdom. Marketing should actually be at the epicentre of your business, whether you realise it or not.
For nearly 10 years, once or sometimes twice a month I ran 3-day, 30-hour workshops opening people’s eyes to an array of low-risk/high-return marketing strategies. I discovered that the definition of marketing varied enormously between people. So the workshop always started with some definitions of marketing, which I am pleased to share with you now.
To a lot of people, marketing is about running an ad tomorrow so you can have sales the next day. If it were that simple you’d be a multi-millionaire and there would be nothing more to learn. But there’s so much more to it than that.
A good general definition of marketing, quite simply, is “The process of educating people to the advantages and benefits you offer them and compelling them to choose your products or services over those of your competitors.”
Author shares some top sales, marketing and management authority’s definition of marketing.
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Drew McLellan business2community.com
One of the 20 most watched TED talks of 2010 was given by Simon Sinek and speaks directly to anyone who is trying to market or sell something. Sinek’s premise is simple.
Always start with why.
Sinek began his adult life as a student of anthropology. His fascination with people led him to a career in advertising and he found himself combining his chosen work with his earlier studies to try and understand what motivated people.
All of that pondering led to his book Start With Why, his focus on how leaders motivate companies and customers and his famous TED talk.
His findings are very applicable to us as we market our products and services.
In the vast majority of marketing today, the lion’s share of the language and imagery we use is self-focused. We talk about ourselves, our products, our services and our organizations. When we don’t think that is enough, we dissect even deeper, breaking down the facts into bullet pointed lists of features that detail and justify the claims we make.
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Kyle Lacy kylelacy.com
The introduction of social media has brought major changes to the world of customer communication. Facebook and Twitter are leading the “customer revolution” where individuals are now in control of the conversation. Two-way communication is vitally important in this space. There will always be individuals who disagree with comments or suggestions from a brand. You cannot please all people and all times. It is a fact of life. However, how you deal with people online is much different than how you may have dealt with constructive criticism in the past. Facebook is probably the bigger culprit when it comes to negative feedback. So… how do you deal with negative Facebook comments?
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Jonathan Farrington AllBusiness.com
The focus of all modern management thinking, and strategic business practice, has to be the customer. Keep your customers happy and your sales will continue to soar. Neglect them, or take them for granted, and your bottom line will suffer accordingly. Satisfying the unhappy customer - a person who has a complaint, you need to keep these six rules firmly in mind: 1. Listen with understanding and sympathy: This defuses anger and demonstrates your concern. Tell the customer something like “I am sorry you have been inconvenienced. Tell me what happened so I can help you.” It is vital to show a sincere interest and willingness to help. The customer’s first impression of you is all important in gaining cooperation.
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Rick Reynolds Harvard Business Review
Strengthening your relationship with a focus on existing customers is one of the best ways to increase sales. Your company’s account management and operating teams play critical roles in making this happen. If they’re not performing at their peak, the door opens for competitors to step in. Seeking new sales without strong account management and operating teams is like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it. Identifying and fixing the holes — the gaps in customer satisfaction — can help your company retain existing accounts and increase new sales.
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Flavio Martins Business 2 Community
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day actions and forget to step back and see the big picture of customer experience. We often hear that we need to stop and evaluate, but if you’re like me, you don’t feel like you have time to stop. But reviewing customer experience is critical to maintaining focus on exceptional focus. Your customer have needs, your bosses have needs, your team members have needs. Luckily, you CAN take time to step back, review, and make plans for improving customer service and recharging the customer experience. All it takes is 60 seconds, and you’re ready to take action. I recently caught the AllBusiness guide to evaluations and I want to share how to apply it to customer experience evaluation.
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