Last week, I spoke at Social Business Atlanta. My talk was on the three P’s of avoiding social CRM failure (the article that started that train of thought rolling can be found here), so I served as the voice of caution and/or the source of comic relief for the event. The other speakers were among … Continue reading »
Filed under Customer Conversations …
Applebee’s: if you’re in a social media hole, put down your shovel
Will Rogers once said, “when you’re in a hole stop digging.” He certainly did not have social media in mind, which is a pity when you think about it: he would have killed on Twitter, and he could have checked Yelp! for customer reviews of Wiley Post’s flying abilities. However, it is a saying that … Continue reading »
Listening to your customer via social is good for service, but listening to competitors’ customers is great for sales
Here’s a scenario for you: a company gets a social analytics tool and starts messing around with it. Initially, as is the case with most businesses, early applications are akin to “ego surfing,” where the company looks for mentions of itself (a handy exercise if you want to find issues to direct to your support … Continue reading »
Exceptions vs. Understanding: How Customers are Getting Smarter About Comments
By Chris Bucholtz Last night, I was seated at the bar of the 1400 in Alameda (housed in the historic pre-1900 Croll’s building), battling a crab dinner to the death. It’s hard to be dainty when eating a whole crab, what with the cracking and slurping and clinking of tiny forks and whatnot. Luckily, the guy … Continue reading »
Customer-centricity starts with honesty, and honesty starts with leadership
By Chris Bucholtz Dr. Natalie Petouhoff is fond of saying, “The fish rots from the head.” She often uses it in describing failures of customer service that stem from shortcomings of leadership. Without executive buy-in, all the insight a service organization may uncover will never be translated into improvements to service processes. But that’s the … Continue reading »
First impressions: getting it right the first time with customers
By Chris Bucholtz I love the saying, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression,” and not just because I enjoy figures of speech that are expressions of the blindingly obvious. I also like the fact that this old saw is usually trotted out after someone’s made a horrible first impression, when … Continue reading »
The CRM Language Barrier
I will happily admit that I am not one of these technology guys who hangs out exclusively with other technology guys. I’m more likely to hang out with people in other industries – my best friends’ jobs include graphic designer, race car body fabricator, Range Rover mechanic, senior assisted living facility manager and, yes, a … Continue reading »
Are you a bit player in your customers’ conversations about you?
A while back, I wrote a very long piece on the idea of using social media for service. One of my star sources with Brent Leary. Brent is a star when it comes to helping small business with CRM; it’s too bad that we can’t clone Brent and put a copy of him in every city … Continue reading »
Scaling up with Technology, and then Scaling Back Down for Relationships
On Wednesday and Thursday this week, I attended DemandCon, the first of what will hopefully be an annual show dwelling on demand creation, funnel management, marketing automation, and the many other technologies and disciplines that revolve around sales and marketing. It was great to hear these marketers and sales thinkers mulling over the issues that are … Continue reading »
People. Process. Results.
Good day to all! This post was supposed to be done yesterday, however, I was a bit waterlogged! For those not located on the east coast of the US, Boston picked up between 5 and 7 inches of rain, and if that was not enough, I traveled to New Jersey to enjoy the rain….again. I … Continue reading »
