From all the posts, comments and tweets, we all know that customer service needs to shift. Is social media the way the shift will happen? That remains to be seen, although there are already hundreds of companies going in this direction.

Would love to hear your thoughts and comments!

If you are still wondering if there is an ROI, check out this presentation on slideshare.net:

ROI of Social Media

Learn. Share. Grow!
Thanks for tuning in!

Dr. Natalie

Follow me on twitter:  www.twitter.com/drnatalie

Here’s is a candid interview with Sean O’Driscoll of Ant’s Eye View:

Learn. Share. Grow!

Thanks for tuning in! Dr. Natalie

www.twitter.com/drnatalie

You can learn more about Sean at http://www.antseyeview.com/blog/

and follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/seanodmvpt

At Dreamforce Marc Benioff announced  Chatter. As both a collaboration application and a platform for building social cloud-computing apps, Chatter is designed to help you connect and share information securely  in real time.

I talked to Mike Krigsman and Dion Hinchcliffe about their thoughts around the user adoption issues with Enterprise 2.0 collaboration software and platforms, change management and Knowledge Management challenges organizations face when trying to use all the social interaction data within their company as well as externally. This is part 1 of the interview:

Learn. Share. Grow!

You can follow Mike and Dion at:

http://twitter.com/mkrigsman and read his blog at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/

http://twitter.com/dhinchcliffe and http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe and http://hinchcliffeandcompany.com/

and ZDNet is at: http://twitter.com/zdnetblogs

Fractal photo source:  flowtv.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/fractal.jpg

Jeanne Bliss tweeted me to thank me for writing about her book. And as we got to talking, she provided me with a link to the first chapter of her book, just for you:

http://www.customerbliss.com/pdf/Chapter%201%20I%20Love%20You%20More%20Than%20My%20Dog.pdf

(may have to copy and paste the URL)

Chapter 1: Your Decisions Reveal:  Who You Are and What You Value!

It’s very generous of Jeanne to provide me a link. I hope that you take advantage of it!

The chapter starts with a quote from Walt Disney:“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.”

Walt Disney, The Master of the Customer Experience

Companies that are loved by their customers make decisions differently than other companies.

The common denominator, according to Jeanne, is that these companies bring consciousness and humanity to the decisions they make.  When you make decisions that respect and honor your customers, your customers will grow your business by word of mouth. They will tell their friends, who will they their friends, who will tell their friends…

Remember that Breck Shampoo commercial back in the ’60s that used this as their tagline?

The most important thing a company can do is to form an army of cheerleaders and publicists urging their friends, neighbors, colleagues and strangers to get behind your company.

Have we ever seen this in action? Sure we have… Land’s End for instance. That’s where Jeanne started her customer experience career. The founder of Land’s End, Gary Comer, described Jeanne’s job as:  nurturing the “conscience” of the company through the decisions they made as they grew. And they experienced 20-30% grow per year. Their stand? Long-term growth was dependent on retaining their strong emotional connection with customers.

At that time, the stories customers told about Land’s End, revealed their values. They drove not only customers to the company, but also an engaged and loyal employee base. Land’ End need over 200 employee volunteers to answer all the, “I love you, Land’s End!” mail they received each month.

And have we seen this lately? Yes, at Zappos.com When Tony and Alfred started Aappos.com they didn’t have money for large advertising or marketing programs. They made the conscious decision that the way they would build and grow their business was to provide such great service, interactions and experiences, that they tell their friends, who will they their friends, who will tell their friends…

And 2009, Amazon.com bought Zappos.com for over $922 Million.  That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it.

And its not that these types of companies are perfect. It’s not that every single interaction is perfect. What is so is that they have a huge reserve of gratitude from their customers, that if and when a mistake is made, that customers are willing to be more forgiving. Especially when that tender, loving care is how they deal with the mistake or issue.

As Jeanne would say, “The decision is yours.”

]]> http://drnatnews.com/2010/01/free-chapter-1-i-love-you-more-than-my-dog-by-jeanne-bliss/feed/ 0 http://drnatnews.com/2010/01/five-decisions-that-will-change-your-companys-customer-experience/ http://drnatnews.com/2010/01/five-decisions-that-will-change-your-companys-customer-experience/#comments Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:20:39 +0000 admin http://drnatnews.com/?p=381 This is the second post about Jeanne Bliss’s book, “I Love You More Than My Dog.” As I read it over the holidays, I became intrigued with the idea that its in the decisions that companies make that determine what their customer’s experiences will be. As Jeanne puts it, ” Your company’s key decisions expose their true purpose, who you are and what you value.”

What’s important about that? Well customers today want to feel that you care about them. That you value their participation in your business. Customer’s evaluate whether you “care” about them from each and every action and interaction they have with you. They evaluate your company based on the interactions with customer service agents, with your website, with the IVR, with your email responses. They evaluate your company based on the experiences they have with those touchpoints.

And unfortunately most companies, when they deployed these technologies their values were focused on the company’s efficiencies. They were not thinking or even in most cases, considering how the technology deployment would affect their customer’s experiences. To them, that either wasn’t part of the decision process or it sounded too much like “motherhood and touchy-feely stuff” to even consider.

What’s happened is that those decisions, 20 years ago, to deploy technology to make the company more efficient has created a backlash from customers. After 20 years of very poor customer experiences, customer are mad as hell, and they are not going to take it anymore. What we see today is a reaction to the decisions made years ago.

Flash forward and what do we see? The backlash comes at a time when the evolution of the Internet is in its second phase, Web 2.0. Where customers don’t just tell 10 or 20 people when they are upset, they tell millions via a giant megaphone called social media.

Customers are mad and they are vocal!!!

Examples? Dell Hell, United Broke My Guitar and Comcast’s Sleeping Technician videos on youtube.com

If you haven’t seen the videos, here’s some links:

United Breaks Guitars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Comcast’s Sleeping Technician: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viw2TVBygBg

So what does this mean to you and your company?

Here’s the five decisions in: I Love You More Than My Dog:

1. Decide to believe

2. Decide with clarity of purpose

3. Decide to be real

4. Decide to be there

5. Decide to say sorry.

The decision is yours.

You might think I am talking about a romantic relationship. I am. But not the kind that you might think. It’s a kind of love that is rare. That is cherished.

There is an energy that comes from being believed, from being trusted; its like coming home. We all crave it. We all desire it. We want to emulate it. When our intelligence, our creativity, our emotions and humor blend, and is acknowledged by another, we realize our full potential.

Amazing Authors: These are the words of an amazing author, Jeanne Bliss. And the title of this post is the title of her newest book. When I met Jeanne, at the Earth Cafe on Melrose, I met someone who created an indelible mark of kindness and passion that makes people want to be with her. She emulates what she writes about. She is someone you love more than your dog. (Or in my case, my cats!)

What is Jeanne’s book about? She writes about the kind of corporate America we all dream of. Of a place that we ourselves can believe in. Of a place we are seen, heard and respected. Of a place where customers are seen, heard and respected.

Book Reviews: One of the things I wanted to do in this blog is to share the amazing insights from the various authors of books that are creating the shift. So this is one of the first of many posts about amazing authors, their amazing stories and their ability to take words and fashion a story that moves from where we were to where we dream is possible.

Author Jeanne Bliss and her dogs!!

If you haven’t picked up a copy, you need to. And when you read it, don’t just read it, absorb it. Use it as a way of evaluating how you and your company does business. Ask yourself, “Do my customer’s love us more than they love their pets?” And if not, why?

Follow Jeanne on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JeanneBliss

Happy New YEAR! 2010! Dr. Natalie (follow me on twitter.com/drnatalie)

Learn. Share. Grow.

Partial List of Companies In Jeanne’s Book:

1. Rackspace

2. Griffin Hospital

3. The Container Store

4. W. L. Gore

5. Zane’s Cycles

6.Trader Joe’s

7. Cutomer Ink

8. Wegman’s Food Markets

9. Chik-fil-A

10. Harley-Davidson

Is your company on this list? Or mentioned in Jeanne’s book? If not, why not? And what can you do to begin the shift towards being beloved?

Tony Nemelka, Social CRM Expert

Tony started his career at IBM in mainframe sales, then went to watch the PC, client server revolution.

And today he is seeing a new kind of revolution:

• First is the transformation of business to a more social business where customers and employees are thought of as “partners.”  This change in strategy and its accompanying technologies results in changes in business processes introduced by the internet.
• And second is revolution is around the “cloud” or others might refer to it as SaaS.

He sees companies looking to deploy things that are going to offer them competitive advantages. And the questions they will be asking themselves are:

• “Where is the innovation going to come from?”
• “Where is it going to be built? On premise or in the “cloud?” and
• “What tools/ applications will can we use?”

He talked about his experience with the VC (venture capital) world. He does not seem them focusing on funding on-premise technologies or applications. Which sounds like the innovations will be centered around the “cloud.”

Click here to hear how Tony sees the future shaping up:

You can follow Tony on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/tnemelka

p.s. Tony’s lanyard was via http://www.zebra.com/

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To participate in more conversations on Social CRM, follow me on twitter: drnatalie and use the Twitter hash tags: #SCRM #CustomerService #VSCRM #SocialMedia

Learn. Grow. Share.

Brent Leary CRM and Social CRM Expert

While I as attending Oracle OpenWorld, I had a chance to talk with Brent Leary.

In this interview, Brent shares his thoughts on social CRM, where companies are and where they need to go:

• How social CRM is lending itself to  mobile devices
• How smart phones have transformed into a business phones/ nearly mini computers
• How the rise of smart phones is forwarding social CRM
• The devices he uses, including a Flip Video camera, iPhone, Blackberry, Olympus OS10, a netbook…
• The hashtag communities on twitter and how they forward in-person meetings: establishing and connecting with people you might never have gotten to know…

Click below to listen to Brent’s insights: (the video is 6 minutes long, so it may take a minute to load):

How Smart Phones Are Driving Social Media Adoption

You can follow Brent on twitter- he is at: www.twitter.com/brentleary

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To participate in more conversations on Social CRM, follow me on twitter: drnatalie and use the Twitter hash tags: #SCRM #CustomerService #VSCRM #SocialMedia

Learn. Grow. Share.

Anil Dewan, Director of New Media, KCRW

While at the 140tc  Conference in Los Angeles, I had the honor to interview KCRW’s Anil Dewan, Director of New Media and learn how they are using social media to attract fans,  interact with them and serve them better!

You can follow him on Twitter at @AnilDewan and you can follow KCRW on Twitter @KCRW.

Here’s the interview with Anil…

Here’s a snapshot of KCRW’s website page on “how to interact with us using social media sites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.”

KRCW's social networking website page

This gives those that are not familiar with social media clear information on how to become a social interaction fan of KCRW.

How to Connect With KCRW on Facebook

KCRW's instructions on how to connect with them on MySpace

KCRW's Twitter Page