Social Selling/Servicing: Use your customer web/call center/text/in person interactions to learn something about the customer

Frankly do you really want to be listed as the worst customer service company by Consumerist? -- "Results of ‘Worst Company in America’ Vote By Jennifer Saranow Schultz"

Read this too: Bill Snyder writing in Business Week "Tech Vendors Admit Service Stinks"

Hello all! There is a solution -- consider training your front-line person to learn how to listen and understand what the prospect or the customer is saying? Is it time for all of us to resort to social selling/servicing mode of operations?

What is social selling/servicing?

To me, social selling/servicing is a web-enabled way to deliver whatever that you are doing -- whether it be selling (from "As Seen on TV"(TM) to airplane carriers) or servicing -- deliver it in an affordable fashion but remember here the customer defines how they want to be sold or to be serviced. Affordable is your benefit. But sorry! you no longer get to define what you sell or service.

In this new world, the prospect or the customer defines the critical-to-quality (CTQ) characteristic of the entire interaction that they will have with you. Specifically, they first define the route of the interaction either calls or chats or texts or emails or simply reaches out to us in person. To them, you and your company is one entity.

Recently, I saw this SlideShare Presentation: Social Business Design: web 2.0 NYC. I found the article a bit long but it evoked the image about an eco-system that cannot be managed with putting out a scripted, monotonic act on the web or phone. Scripts and complying with laws are essential "must-haves" Kano characteristics. But to sustain and delight your prospect and customer -- evolution from "must-have" status must occur.

Your salespersons, call center agents, chat agents, (Aruns/Susans/Michaels/Lisas/Davids/Priyas -- whoever signs on):

-- Are they ready to manage any interaction whatever route the prospect or the customer reaches out to you? Or have you created silos within your organization by routing using the source as the reason for routing?
-- Have they learned about the prospect or the customer before they start their interaction?
-- Have they been trained to process and manage all the digital and non-digital bits of information about the prospect or the customer?
-- Do they have a perspective about the prospect or the customer after they learned something about the person they are about to interact with?
-- Are they working towards defined goals of customer learning? Have you defined measures of success for the customer listening and learning strategy?
-- What are their customer listening and learning strategy and tools and process?

So! As you can see -- you -- my friend (and I) have to start by learning about our prospects and our customers before you (and I) start these interactions.

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Median v. Average WWE

My goal in life is to explain standard deviation and the value of it over and over again until I cease to exist. Let us start with median v. average.
Brad Feld is a man of my intellectual liking. This is an old blog posting but .. still funny and interesting.
You Don’t Mean Average, You Mean Median.

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Chief Listening Officer and all that at Sales 2.0 conference

I recently attended the Sales 2.0 conference. My own observations are very aptly described by a recent post by Anneke Seley, Founder and CEO of Phone Works here: Wanted! Help! Chief listening Officer

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Hilariosity (Strangely) of Peloponnesian proportions

This is the funniest thing I have ever read in the context of modern international history of economic crisis.

German politicians are asking the Greeks to sell their islands and/or artifacts in order to mitigate the current Euro and Greece crisis.
First, who would buy them?
Second, can you imagine Parthenon brought to you by Sanyo Electronics or Bharti Airtel?
Second, again, is it true what we want is a Greek island owned by Virgin Airlines?

Here was the Greek Prime Minister's response: “There are more imaginative and effective ways of dealing with the deficit than selling off Greek islands,” Mr. Papandreou said, according to The Financial Times. “We cherish these islands, and selling them would be out of the question. It would not help. It would be a one-off solution, and a viable economy means investing in that economy.”

Read more http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/greece-wont-sell-islands-to-cover-debts/

We need to care about the Greeks and help them with aid to get them out of the Hellenic proportion crisis. If we can solve Iceland's problems, we certainly can exercise similar restraint and implement good EU regulations to help Greece short-term and long-term.

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Apple to compete in the gaming console space?

I've often wondered why Apple doesn't have a standalone gaming system like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft each do. A recent article on Videogamesrepublic.com suggests that Apple may be moving in to the gaming console arena after seeing so much success with web-based applications. Will they be an immediate threat to the "Big 3"? Not likely. Apple's core competency is internal software development, not independent game development.

The full article from Videogamesrepublic.com can be viewed here!

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Serious Gaming with Nobel Laureates

From Nobelprize.org - Serious games and simulations based on the work of Nobel Laureates! You don't have to be a genius to understand the achievements of the Nobel prize winners.

Check out these games and simulations here !

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Bon Voyage Mr. Salinger

Last week, the ultimate icon and influence of twentieth century J.D. Salinger passed away. For most of us from the Gen X minus 1,2,3,10, 20 years, for all practical purposes and given his recluse and agarophobic predicament, Mr. Salinger was in the Dead/Not Dead betting category for quite a few decades now.

However, his writings and the characters in the Glass family with Franny and Zooey and of course Catcher in the Rye influenced us all. The characters live within us. Reading Salinger, as most like me will identify with, is/was a rite of passage that transcended race, gender, geographies, elite or bourgeoisie, class and languages.

As you know, Mr. Salinger dedicated “Franny and Zooey” to William Shawn, where he wrote on the preface,“I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.” [See reference below.]

We all were William Shawn for that day when we read it.

Reference: Read New York Times Obituary "J. D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91" - http://nyti.ms/cYpe4c

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