A weblog by Christopher Carfi, since 2004.
Focused Podcast Search: It’s Here (The Vision Thing)
(ed. holy crap this is cool. try “chopper” or, i dunno, “social customer” in podscope. it utterly works.)
How marketers can monitor what 10 million bloggers are up to (Blogspotting)
Dunbar, Altruistic Punishment, and Meta-Moderation (Life With Alacrity)
I’m going (BlogHer)
Collaboration Requires Contribution (Blogging Planet)
After not being able to make it down for SXSW this year, am heading down to Austin, TX for a few days; first trip to a city I’ve heard a lot of fantastic things about. Got some great suggestions for things to do there from Peter Merholz. A few things from the list:
…and a mess of other rec’s. Any other suggestions, including music venues and the like? Thanks!
Good stuff here, on how having a conversation with a customer can get to the heart of the matter, quickly. (And, as a bonus, take a competitor out of the game.) Nice.
Feedback in the Market
Talking to a customer over the week, someone who had decided to go with SAP for a big project, starting internationally.
“We looked at Peoplesoft for some of this stuff…”
“Hmm, I would say that they are probably SAP’s most competent competitor in ERP.” I replied. (Never be dismissive of the competition, it just makes you look small-minded.)
“Not since Oracle. We think it is suicide. We’re actually a bit annoyed, because we would have taken them for some elements of the roll-out otherwise.”
Now, this is someone telling me that they will no longer do business with a respected competitor because of an acquisition, and it was not me leading them into saying it. Interesting reaction.
From here.
Random geek stuff…just found a sweet little device. It sits between the phone (regular or even cordless) and the computer. It hooks up to your regular phone via the normal phone jack (RJ-11), and hooks up to the computer with a USB port.
So what?
So now I can use the same cordless phone I’ve been using for 3 years to make and recieve Skype calls. Free to other Skype folks, and a couple of pennies a minute to call out to landlines and mobiles.
Just trying it out, but it seems to work great, at least on the outbound side. Sweet.
(click on pic to enlarge)
Breakeven period on the cost? About a week.
Heh. Here’s the whole thing.
A few excerpts:
Question: What is the mission of the combined company?
Answer: “Adobe’s mission remains the same — to help people and businesses communicate better. With the acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe strengthens its mission through the combination of leading-edge development, authoring and collaboration tools — and the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash.”Translated Answer: “Where by ‘complementary’ we mean ‘the two leading technologies that irritate people when they’re used in lieu of regular web pages.’ Note that we’re using PDF to serve this very FAQ — in our synergistic future, perhaps we’ll serve our FAQs in a hybrid PDF/Flash format. One can dream.”
Question: How many employees does Macromedia have?
Answer: “Macromedia has approximately 1,450 employees worldwide.”Translated answer: “Please note use of present tense.”
Question: How many employees does Adobe have?
Answer: “Adobe has approximately 4,000 employees worldwide.”Translated answer: “Ditto regarding use of present tense. Please also note that PDF is an excellent format for sending out résumés.”
Read the whole thing. (hat tip: john)
Wow. Here’s a local map.
Paris Hilton to begin podcast.
The shark, she’s been jumped.
I love finding posts like this show up in my aggregator. Ten weeks into the year, and some folks are already out of original thoughts. (Names have been changed to protect the uninspired.)
“The Best Posts of 2005 (so far… 10 weeks, 10 posts)
By (author’s name)
For the infrequent visitor, here’s a quick look at what’s been happening at (author’s name)’s blog since the beginning of the year. I picked them for variety, for the frequency of referrals and because they made me think.
Link: self-referential link #1
Link: self-referential link #2
Link: self-referential link #3
Link: self-referential link #4
Link: self-referential link #5
Link: self-referential link #6
Link: self-referential link #7
Link: self-referential link #8
Link: self-referential link #9
Link: self-referential link #10And two bonuses for you!
My new blog: self-referential link to new new, self-referential blog
and last year’s list: self-referential link to last year’s list of self-references.”
The original post, by the numbers.
Number of times author used own name in post: 15
Number of links to own blog: 12
Number of connections outside own blog: 0
Ability to engage with readers (read “customers”): none…comments are disabled
Didn’t The Divinyls write a song about this?
(or, put another way, how can one learn if one doesn’t listen?)
John Winsor’s blog, Beyond the Brand, is becoming a hive of activity where customers and vendors are partying together. Three bits:
One: Your Approximte Wait In Customer Service Limbo Will Be 121 hours
John tracked his interactions with Audible.com regarding a support/billing issue, and challenged Audible to get their act together. How? By putting up the “Audible Response Time Counter.”
“To keep track of how long it takes for Audible to respond to my email and share that response time with you I’ve started the “Audible Response Time Counter” located in the upper right-hand corner of my blog.”
(n.b. the issue finally was resolved, but it took a while)
Two: Best Customer Response Contest
He’s now running a contest. Here’s how it works (n.b. this is taking place over at BtB, not here…if you’re interested check it out at the source)
1. You select the brand you think gives the best customer service. I will post your name and the brand you selected in the right column.
2. Send an honest and creative comment/complaint email to them. Send me the comment. The comments will be judged by other readers on a scale of one to ten.
3. Post the brand’s responses and the response times here. Other readers can then rank each response, including response time and creativity on a scale of one to ten.
4. The person and brand combination with the best overall score in both categories wins…
Three: Getting Social
Let’s see what happens. I have just jumped into the fray, with an open letter to JetBlue (check the comments).
Is it that “traditional” sales and marketing are dead, but haven’t fallen down yet? Shel Holtz covers the topic eloquently:
“If we’ve learned anything over the last several years, it’s that all new media and communication channels are additive. I would defy you to name one—ONE—new medium that has outright replaced an older one. These predictions have always accompanied the introduction of a new channel. Radio was supposed to replace print. Television was supposed to replace radio. Now blogs are supposed to replace Web sites.”
You’ll find no bigger advocate for the social customer (ed. — heh.), the business/audience conversation, and the value of new communication channels than me. To achieve genuine and meaningful business results, however, it’s important to temper enthusiasm with practicality. Blogs, RSS, podcasts, and wikis are exciting and important and transformational, but they are a part of a larger communication landscape. Communications that integrate them will be far more successful than those that rely solely on them.”
Net: Depending on the customer’s need, and mindset, and way of doing business, he or she may want to use any (or all) of those channels to connect. A customer who knows exactly what she wants (having done a ton or research, or perhaps being an industry expert already) will have very different needs then someone who is new to a topic area who requires and desires education and interaction.
As service providers, we need to be flexible, and leave the options open. There will be different customers with different needs at different stages of the uptake curve. The organizations that can put the right mechanisms in place to connect cost-effectively with the most constituencies over time, meet those constituencies’ expectations, and develop ongoing relationships with the individuals in them will be the ones who do very well indeed.