Uncategorized Archives - Page 39 of 75

November 5, 2007

The Best Policy

"Be open with customers. Be honest always, and let them
into your business. The huge upside to your customers “getting
involved” is that they will come with terrific ideas that will grow
your business and customer loyalty." – Kim Proctor

November 1, 2007

Making a Mess

"We are about to witness the loud noise and mess that happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object." – Bernard Lunn on VRM (go ahead and click that link)

October 31, 2007

Cerado Haystack To Support OpenSocial API

Cerado Haystack, our white-label social networking platform for businesses and associations, will be supporting Google’s Open Social efforts in a number of ways over the coming months (more on OpenSocial here). In particular, Cerado will be:

1) Enabling Haystack to be a container for Open Social apps
2) Creating applications that leverage the Open Social API that can be embedded into other applications and environments

What is Open Social? Well, remember all that buzz a couple of months ago when Facebook announced their proprietary API that allowed developers to create applications for the Facebook platform? Now, that same notion can take place for any site on the web. (By the way, Marc over at Ning sums it up well, and his analysis of the implications for FB are spot-on.)

We already have an Open API, and have been long-time supporters of efforts such as OpenID. As such, we see the release of Open Social is a very good thing for the industry and, in particular, enabling better connection with information about individuals and their activity streams and creating a standard way to integrate that information with business applications (especially customer-facing ones) is a huge step forward.

Well done, Google.

October 30, 2007

Bob Garfield: “Comcast Must Die.”

As a new blog, ComcastMustDie, has been set up by veteran NPR On The Media host and AdvertisingAge writer Bob Garfield.

Garfield writes:

"Actually, I have no deathwish for Comcast or any other gigantic,
blundering, greedy, arrogant corporate monstrosity, What I do have is
the earnest desire for such companies to change their ways. This site
offers an opportunity — for you to vent your grievances (civilly,
please) and for Comcast to pay close attention.

Congratulations. You are no longer just an angry,
mistreated customer. Nor, I hope, are you just part of an e-mob. But
you are a revolutionary, wresting control from the oligarchs, and
claiming it for the consumer. Your power is enormous. Use it wisely." (emphasis added)

In a separate post, he hits it out of the park, and echoes the reasons for the existence of The Social Customer Manifesto itself. Garfield:

"Partly because you [Comcast] have behaved so arrogantly till now, and partly
because the world has changed around you, you now must answer to a
Greater Power.

Us.

And we have demands:

1) You
will recruit a standing panel of customers to consult, brainstorm,
complain and advise you every step of the way — from your
customer-service practices, to your billing, to your programming
content. This process, within the confines of protecting proprietary
information, will be transparent.

2) You will host a website soliciting customer feedback of every kind.
In other words, there will be the customer-delegate panel, and a
mega-panel online. Don’t sweat the flaming you will take. You will also
get a) countless great ideas, b) a mechanism for locating and attending
to hardcore customer-service issues, c) a vast increase in customer
loyalty and goodwill, and d) a vast advantage in impressing potential
customers. If you’re smart, you will also cultivate a social network of
TV watchers of all stripes who credit you for your hospitality.

3)
Most importantly of all, you must recognize that none of this is PR
move you have to make through gritted teeth in extremis. It is a golden
opportunity to exploit the unprecedented potential of a connected
world. How ironic. You’ve been stringing co-ax for decades, yet you
don’t even realize what you’ve wrought. Yes, that’s right, you have
created the very conditions for all of us to band together against you.
At the moment it must seem like Frankenstein’s monster, but take our
word for it:

It’s Comcastic!" (emphasis, again, added)

Juicy, crunchy, wonderful stuff. Go check it out.

Hat tip: Andy Sernovitz

October 26, 2007

Hot Dish

JM over at Good Morning Silicon Valley tells us:

Danelle Azola described the exchange [with Dish Network] in a TV interview:
“I called there to let them know that our house was destroyed, to
cancel all the stuff, and the first thing they asked me was if I had a
chance to grab their receiver for the satellite dish. And I told them
no, that was the last thing that was on my mind. So then they told me I
would have to pay the $300 for the receiver. … I asked to have the bill
postponed until we got reimbursed from our insurance and she said
sorry, you have to pay it as soon as you get your bill in the mail like
any other normal bill.”

It appears there are endemic issues for the industry, though. Cite: Paul Greenberg’s DirecTV (er, "DreckTV") saga

Update: AT&T/Dish Network have reversed their position. Karl at Broadband Reports tells us "We spoke to AT&T spokesman Brad Mays, who investigated the
incident. Mays says that after the couple called AT&T, they were
transferred to Dish Network, and a Dish Network representative did not
follow the disaster policy Dish has in place. Mays ensures us that
they’ve contacted the couple, and they will not be charged for service
cancellation or equipment fees."

October 25, 2007

Desert Island Blogs

My desert island in the sun.
Originally uploaded by elvis_payne.

The folks over at my alma mater have created a nifty algorithm that answers the question: Which blogs should one read to be most up to date, i.e., to quickly know about important stories
that propagate over the blogosphere? The method they used was intended to answer the following: "If we can read only 100 blogs, which should I read to be most up to date if we want to be the first to know about something with many people blogging about the story after us?"

Here’s a link to the paper and supporting information.

And here are the 100 desert island blogs:

October 24, 2007

In It For The Long Haul

Logo2
A nice writeup on myCRMcareer from the folks over at Chief Marketer. (Cerado Haystack is the social networking engine behind myCRMcareer.) Read the whole bit here.

October 24, 2007

Rex Hammock:Viewing Presentations On Your iPhone

When I ran into Jerry last week at the Consortium summit, he showed me a cool little bit where Google Docs / Presentation functionality was specifically tuned for the iPhone. Just did a quick search, and Rex Hammock has put up a quick (90sec) video on how to do it. Check it out.

October 24, 2007

Offtopic: CommonCraft, The Zombie Edition

Lee and Sachi give some brilliant instruction on how to survive a zombie invasion. Braaaains!

(RSS subscribers, click here for the video.)

October 23, 2007

Monkey, Sí

bounce monkey, chillin’
Originally uploaded by dogwelder.

David Cushman has started a new Facebook group called "No More Call Center Monkeys!"

He also distilled down a number of his key points thusly:

I want to talk to someone who is listening to me – not reading a script from a computer screen.
I want to talk to someone with the power to do something about my problem.
I want to talk to someone who knows how to get round the moment when ‘the computer says no’
I want to talk to smeone for whom reason is allowed to mean something.
I don’t want to input my account number on my phone – then have to tell three more people what it is during the same call.
I want a full response to my complaints.

We urge these companies to stop insulting the intelligence of both their customers AND their employees. Giving the poor saps on the end of the phone a script they must stick to effectively turns them into a computer. We don’t want to talk to a computer.

We think it is grossly unfair on call centre staff – the very people charged with dealing direct with your customers – to leave them with no power to think or act for themselves.