Service Channels posts, articles, and infographics

How to Use Social Media for Service & Support

January 13, 2012 by SarahHedayati
with 59 views

Image: Courtesy of author blog

When getting started in using social media for service and support, the first step is to develop a plan of action. Your plan of action needs to contain a map for how to handle certain situations that may arise. [read more]

Earning Valuable Attention for Your Business

December 8, 2011 by Michael Cohn
with 11 views

There is a whole lot of online garbage that comes to you via the Internet. When you get garbage, your first inclination is to press the “delete” button ASAP. On the other side, you want your content to be valued. You want your content to be read, cherished, and shared with others by others and by others. The issue is that... [read more]

Who is the Beneficiary of Sales and Marketing Automation?

November 13, 2011 by Dave Brock
with 64 views

I had the privilege of participating in a fantastic roundtable at Focus.com this week. It was “A Sales View Of Marketing Automation,” with three of the smartest sales and marketing people I know: Alex Shootman, Chief Revenue Officer of Eloqua, Thor Johnson of Team Thor Marketing, and Carlos Hidalgo of The Annuitas Group... [read more]

Social Strategy and Crisis: A Video Interview with JetBlue

November 8, 2011 by Paul Simon
with 157 views

To learn more about JetBlue’s social media strategy and the thinking behind it, I interviewed Morgan Johnston, JetBlue’s manager of corporate communications and its social media strategist. [read more]

Writing Content and Tweets That Market

November 8, 2011 by Michael Cohn
with 34 views

The content that you share online is informative, educational, and valuable. However, it can also come from a marketing angle. Although your interactions with other people through social media are all about building relationships, ultimately, people will buy from you. [read more]

Making Sure That Your Web Presence is Social Media Friendly

October 24, 2011 by Michael Cohn
with 55 views

Your web presence is of vital importance to your business. It is a well-established fact that content is at the heart of your web presence. You need to write content and you need to share content with others easily. You will only be successful when it comes to your web presence if you are able to successfully and easily share... [read more]

The Social Customer Experience: Are You Adding Value?

October 19, 2011 by Anna Drennan
with 245 views

With the socialisation of the commercial world, the customer experience is taking up a central position in business. But what is a great customer experience? What do consumers really expect from brands in social media? Social media managers have a thing or two to learn from the call centre on how to nail customer satisfaction. [read more]

Sales and Marketing Automation Is Dead? Says Who?

October 11, 2011 by Adam Metz
with 59 views

The last few weeks have been pretty funky in the sales and marketing space. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff got basically booted from Oracle’s OpenWorld conference. Small-business software company Hubspot in a karaoke RV, proclaiming responsibility for a continent-wide unicorn shortage, and touting videos of profanity-spewing cartoon... [read more]

Social Media’s Impending Flood of Customer Unlikes and Unfollows

October 4, 2011 by Brian Solis
with 157 views

Image: Courtesy of author blog

There’s an old saying that carries renewed meaning these days: Give the people what they want. Brands are furiously creating profiles in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter in the hopes of building engaging communities with customers and giving people what the brands think they want. [read more]

How a Social Care Strategy Can Increase Overall Brand Sentiment

September 30, 2011 by Jennifer Bach
with 304 views

As business continues to adopt social media into overall their communications, providing customer service through these networks is an emerging trend. “Social care” involves providing assistance to customers via platforms such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. I’ve just finished pulling together a new benchmarking study of seven Fortune... [read more]

Virtual Shopping Stores vs. Physical Stores

September 28, 2011 by john williams
with 137 views

Photo: [F]oxymoron/Flickr (Creative Commons)

At e-stores, one can catch almost every shopping item. From clothing to footwear, household products to electronic gadgets, all is available online. And for this, the credit goes to the concept of e-commerce and related software and applications. [read more]

Customers & Conversation: To Be Social in the Moment -- or To Automate?

September 2, 2011 by Maggie Fox
with 63 views

To be successful in social media and to create quality content takes effort and work. Don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s a matter of rattling off a 140 characters of verbiage into cyber space and instantly creating a following. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or a blog it all takes careful planning and a solid thought strategy to... [read more]

Inside Sales: The Customer is Mad as Hell

September 1, 2011 by Josiane Feigon
with 75 views

Photo: Lara604/Flickr (Creative Commons)

This independent, busy, distracted, and opinionated buyer has something to say and it’s time for salespeople to listen, understand, and know how and why they make decisions. [read more]

New Technologies Turn Plastic Cards into Merchant Loyalty Devices

August 30, 2011 by Mark Johnson
with 147 views

Photo: Andres Rueda/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Merchants looking for new ways to increase loyalty among their customer base should consider card-connected offers. Card-connected offers are those that customers can redeem simply by swiping their credit, debit or prepaid card from a participating bank at the merchant point of sale. [read more]

The Naked Truth about Delusional Word-of-Mouth Marketers

August 29, 2011 by Debra Ellis
with 42 views

Word of mouth marketers also cultivate people into true believers who passionately and aggressively defend their leaders against anyone questioning their theories or positions. The similarities end there. Snake oil salesmen are smarter than word of mouth marketers because they never made claims that could be validated. [read more]

Why There is No Social Media Scorecard

August 11, 2011 by Ari Herzog
with 70 views

Photo: hmm360 via MorgueFile.com

The quicker you understand that tools are used differently is when you reach social media nirvana — and you can begin experimenting with each tool to use them the way that makes perfect sense to only you. [read more]

Is Your Community Manager a Customer Service Agent? Why (and How) They Should Be

July 18, 2011 by Cindy Meltzer
with 188 views

Customers are going to ask questions via your social media channels, no matter what you say they are for. It’s best to have a Community Manager (or two or three) who is ready to put on the Customer Service Hat whenever necessary. [read more]

How to Effectively Complain Using Social Media

July 17, 2011 by Douglas Hanna
with 421 views

photo credit: angermann

It used to be the only way to make a profound impact with a consumer complaint when no one would listen, was to send a registered letter to the company headquarters. Before the days of Google however, it wasn’t easy to figure out the name of the right level of executive. Now the average customer can get immediate gratification; no phone... [read more]

Resolving Customer Complaints Across Social Media and Traditional Channels

June 27, 2011 by Michael Hill
with 267 views

Photo: Brian Forbes/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Social media has given business a new channel to evaluate and assess the strategies that will actually be required to deliver effective customer service - even if that assessment decides that the strategy should be simply to not make customer service available on that channel. [read more]

With the Rise of Social Media, Will the Call Center Disappear Like the Mustache?

May 20, 2011 by John Burton
with 584 views

Perhaps this is not the type of thing one should say in public but… sometimes I find myself reminiscing about the 1970s. It was a wonderful, glorious bygone era when men (well, at least real men) sported large, unashamed, unwieldy mustaches. Tom Selleck, Burt Reynolds, Charles Bronson, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Frank Zappa. Heck,... [read more]