"Network Solutions - Small business conversations and working together for small business success" - 2 new articles
Solutions Out Loud Podcast Episode #7 - “The Networking, Networking, Networking” EpisodeAvailable now for your listening pleasure is Episode #7 of Solutions Out Loud, the Network Solutions podcast that covers news, business trends, tips for small businesses and anything else that is relevant to you our faithful listeners. You can subscribe to the feed on iTunes or RSS. In this episode we talk about the power of networking in person and online. We cover some great events we all attended and provide some great business tips on power networking. Liner notes are below: Week in Review Segment: DC Tech Scene: A quick recap of TwinTech III, with commentary on the mixing of the white-shoe tech types with the scruffy startups. Also a look at some upcoming DC area events, including Blog Potomac, and a mention of Goverment 2.0 Camp in March Jill Foster: Last week on Women Grow Business: www.womengrowbusiness.com Steve Fisher: Business Tips Segment: Online social networks (OSNs) like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc can be fantastic ways to fertilize or ‘warm up’ new relationships i.e. idea partners, new talent for your company, or certainly new customers. But sometimes participation can be big time occupier. Colleagues and I have found it can be daunting on deciding which OSN to contribute to and for how long. But allowing yourself just to start is key and worth the benefit. A suggestion: choose one or two networks depending on your ultimate goal and conversational style. Then participate daily for just 15 minutes. Joe Loong: Week Ahead: On Twitter, Customer Service, and ScalabilityTalking about social media and customer service is probably more Shashi’s realm than mine (he’s a real customer service mustang, having come up through the frontline ranks), but I’ll poach on his turf, anyway. When it comes to ways companies can use Twitter, the premier example right now is how Comcast uses its @comcastcares account as a customer service channel. It’s gotten tons of play in the social media o’sphere, and is even credited for helping turn around Comcast’s spotty reputation on service issues. What they do is conceptually pretty simple: They monitor Twitter posts for “Comcast” (as well as some less-flattering nicknames), and when someone posts with a problem or complaint, they’ll respond to the complainer and try to fix it. And since Twitter updates and replies are public, everyone else is able to see how helpful and responsive the company is being. The idea was pioneered by Frank Eliason, Director of Digital Care for Comcast — BusinessWeek has a behind-the-scenes looks at how it works. Now, the question that everyone asks is, “That’s great, but how does it scale?” Frank addresses some of the issues in a blog post (”The big question for @comcastcares is: How will they scale?“), though I think there are plenty of things left to talk about. Clearly, you can’t just open up a Twitter account and expect your customer service problems to magically disappear. You have to look at Twitter as part of a company’s overall customer service/customer communication chain, which will probably also include phone, e-mail, and text chat, and you’ll need to look at how to integrate it and look at things like load distribution, ticketing, and issue tracking. Though those are largely technical issues, with technical and tool solutions. The pure scaling issue, likewise, doesn’t seem insurmountable. Twitter service requests might still be small compared to those coming from phone and e-mail, but at least in Comcast’s example, Frank suggests that even if all of their e-mail and phone traffic turned into Twitter traffic, their staffing levels would be comparable, and that, in fact, Twitter would be preferable to phone support. (That part I can believe with no hesitation — companies hate hate hate phone support, since it’s expensive, you’re basically limited to one call per person at a time, and a lot of that time is simply wasted, like when you’re waiting for your router or computer to reboot.) However, the harder issue is training, motivation, and resourcing. At this point, it still seems like the Comcast team responding to Twitter issues is the customer service version of a SWAT team, where everyone is educated and empowered to solve problems. Ask anyone who’s ever had to get past a company’s first- or second-tier customer support before their problem got solved, and you’ll see this isn’t always the case. There’s a reason that “executive escalation” teams exist, and there’s also a reason why companies invariably have to change the direct line phone number when it gets out (as happens consumer community forums from time to time). Good customer service is (or should be) independent of platform, though maybe Twitter does have advantages over other channels for customer service… not least of which is that your conversation on Twitter is public by default (thus, keeping you honest). Anyway, I’m glad to see that companies like Comcast (and Network Solutions, of course) are looking at ways to use Twitter and other forms of social media to improve customer service. If you’ve got your own thoughts about social media, scalability, and the customer experience, I’d love to hear them in the comments below. More Recent Articles
|
 |
Click here to safely unsubscribe now from "Network Solutions - Small business conversations and working together for small business success" or change subscription settings
Unsubscribe from all current and future newsletters powered by FeedBlitz
| Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 |
Interesting and informative information. Good to know.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to share some piece of information which I came across while I was looking to expand and scale up my business. There is this business profitability and scalability calculator which is there on this site Seo Traffic Spider and its really cool. When you enter the data in it in terms of the amount and time you are spending on promoting your website, it calculates the total resources in terms of cost you are accruing for your website promotion.
The best I like about it is that after calculating the result, it gives you a customized less expensive solution based on your data and its really interesting. You can try out this tool and see the results for yourself.
Thanks for stopping by!
ReplyDelete