Christopher Carfi

I really am not a big fan of the "fill out this form and then we'll let you see this next page" types of hurdles that a lot of websites put up, with dozens of mandatory fields to fill out.  So, I try to meet them half way by filling in things like "please don't call" for name, phone #, etc.  Don't want them to waste their time reaching out to me when it's not a worthwhile investment of their resources.

Of course, the reason that organizations choose to require all that information is so that they can try to roboticize as much of the "relationship" process as possible, which is a fool's errand.  Relationships can't be automated.

That said, many continue to try.  Hence the email I just received that addressed me as Mr. Please-Don't-Call.  That cracked me up.

Related:  The $300mil Web Form

As of 10pm PST Sunday, the folks over at Skittles have launched a very interesting experiment (I HAVE to imagine it's an experiment) in giving over nearly their entire web presence to a collection of social media websites.  Here's what we're seeing right now:

1)  The home page itself is solely a tracking of the trending buzz around the search term "skittles" on Twitter.  The small overlay navigation pane is the only Skittles-branded bit; everything else is Twitter.  Not surprisingly, some of the search results are not necessarily family-friendly.

2)  Clicking on the "friends" link in the navigation pops to the Skittles Facebook page

3)  Clicking on Media|Photos brings up the Skittles Flickr Page

4)  Clicking on Media|Videos brings up the Skittles YouTube Page

What this means:  This is a very interesting hybrid approach from Skittles with respect to engaging with their customers.  Some of the links (e.g. photos, videos, friends) still afford the expected level of "corporate control" over what is seen and viewed, as those links are going out to accounts that are managed by the Skittles brand.  However (and this is a big however), the connections out to the Twitter page — and the decision to make that the landing page for the initial customer experience — is a decision that is much more Wild West.  There's no telling what's going to show up on that home page.

In a perhaps counter-intuitive position, I think that giving over the entire homepage to the Twitter search for the brand has the possibility of actually decreasing customer engagement.  Why?  With the lack of any sort of way to address the signal/noise ratio on that page, actual customers who are looking for actual information about actual Skittles products are likely to be turned off (or at least frustrated) by the need to dig through pages of spam to find the relevant bits of information they were looking for.  That said, I think linking to the Twitter page is great and, once it's no longer the focus of the site, the lure of putting up novelty or spam items will wear off.

With a few tweaks (for example, not making the landing page the Twitter search results, but instead perhaps a slightly more predictable set of information), I think this is an approach we may see more of in the future.

With Tactical Transparency, Shel Holtz and John C. Havens have written the best book on how social media is affecting business since 2008's Groundswell.  It's pragmatic, it covers the "do's" and "don'ts" of communication realities today, and is full of relevant case studies.

There were a number of things about the book that really stood out.  The style was down-to-earth — having had many conversations with both Shel and John over the past few years (both online and in-person), I can say they both managed to convey both the warmth and competence they have in the "real world" onto the page almost seamlessly.  A number of the chapters concluded with a  "What To Do Next" section that put forth tangible, tactical steps that an organization can take to begin to move from a "traditional" business culture to one that is far more transparent.  And the entirety of Chapter 17 is dedicated to helping organizations create a road map for change.

While most of the thinking that has been done on this blog has been how transparency and related concepts affect the customer-vendor interaction, one "a-ha!" moment came for me in the chapter on internal transparency ("Exposing the Company to the Employees Who Make It Work").  Example:

"Now, imagine that instead of writing a memo, the project leader – and even the members of her team – maintain a project blog.  Posts to the blog can include the following information:

I like.

This resonated well with a briefing that I received last week from Mark Woolen over at Oracle, which just released a raft of new updates to their Customer Relationship Management offerings.  (Paul Greenberg talks in some more depth about those here.)

I still think Oracle needs to be extending "Social CRM" to actually, you know, include the customer more concretely, and not just the sales rep.  That said, their new tools, especially things like Sales Library and, even more soundly, Deal Management, are tools that can be used that sync up with the vision that Shel and John put forth in their book in the internal transparency realm.  Deal Management, in particular is a really interesting step on the transparency path, showing individuals who are in the field how their peers are structuring similar opportunities to present to customers.  Historically, this is the type of information that was firmly locked away in the CFO's office, and now it's getting pushed to the front lines. 

So, anyway.  Pick up the book.  It's a good read and a great reference guide.

(hat tip: beatenetworks)

Jared Spool explains why free customers are more valuable than captive ones, to the tune of $300 million dollars.

(hat tip: joe)

More thoughts in these eight minutes than you can shake a stick at.  From yesterday at VizThink09.

A new report from Forrester’s Bruce Temkin shows the connection between customer experience and loyalty. The key bit, from here:

“Don’t let the recession take your focus away from customers. The strengthened correlation between customer experience and loyalty during the past year highlights the importance of customer experience, especially during this recession. Since new customers are harder to come by in an economic downturn, firms need to pay even more attention to building loyalty with their most important customers.

Firms will need to adopt three principles: 1) obsess about customer needs, not product features; 2) reinforce brands with every interaction, not just communications; and 3) treat customer experience as a competence, not a function.” (emphasis added)

The first ‘graf above is EXACTLY right. Right now, there are a host of companies looking to hunker down and hide their heads until the recession is over. Using business tools such as an invoice template could help improve your customer experience and gain consumer loyalty. Many are doing that by cutting 10% (or more) of their workforce. (And there are many, too, that are ceasing operations completely.)

While everyone else is hiding in their bunkers, doesn’t it just make logical sense to try to provide the best customer experience you can, and pull away from the herd? Take a look at the examples found on https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/customer-service-examples/. Great customer experience leads to brand loyalty which is hard to come buy in difficult times like this. For instance, if you run a retail business and want to keep up to date with all aspects, you need to look at the software that will help the customers feel better about using your service, for example, updating your POS software system, will help navigate customers within your business in a professional and efficient manner. Do your research and see this page on how that can be done.

"Details of how police in the Irish Republic finally caught up with
the country's most reckless driver have emerged, the Irish Times
reports."
Story here.

"Hashtags" are a simple way to make things you are writing (or photographing, or video-ing) more findable on the web.  There's no science to hashtags, they are simply keywords that one adds to a blog post or Twitter tweet (or photo, etc.) to make it more findable later.

Here is a quick primer on hashtags from Amy Gahran.  (And the patron of all all this organic tagging stuff, which is often called a "folksonomy," is Thomas Vander Wal, who you should be following if you're not.)

(click on the image to enlarge)

What was so interesting is that nine of the top ten searches currently trending on http://search.twitter.com are for hashtags, instead of "natural" words.  In fact, the only "natural" search right now is for "iPhone."

So What?

No big rocket science here, but an interesting bit for sure.  Individuals are starting to organically "tag" the things they are creating on the web so that others can find it.  And, apparently, people are starting to search on these tags in greater numbers, at least according to the trend that we're seeing right now.

If you are representing an organization…are you tagging things so that your customers can find them?

If you are running a conference…do you have an "agreed upon" hashtag that all who are chronicling it are using, so that those in the room (and on the web) can find all of the great things that are being created there?

If you are an individual…are you tagging your support issues with vendors that you are publicly documenting (you are doing that, right?) with tags so that vendors can find YOU, instead of you going to them?

Guitar Store
Originally uploaded by hey mr glen.

Absolutely brilliant. From the Flickr page where this was found:

“So, this picture has made it to the front page of Digg and Reddit so I thought I would add a little bit of extra information. The store is called The Guitar Store and it is on Commercial Road opposite Southampton Central railway station, Southampton, England.”

The take-away from this: being interesting — and therefore buzz-worthy — doesn’t need to be expensive.

Take a chance.

Act on the impulse.