Archive for the 'Customer Care' Category

Your values and customer communities

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on August 10, 2011
in Customer Care, Online strategy and Social Media
. 0 Comments


Last time we talked about focusing on developing customer communities as a way to find relevance through your online strategy, including website and social media. Now let’s strengthen this relevance by focusing on values.

Increasingly, prospects will turn into customers, and customers will become loyal, because they’re attracted to what your company stands for. They are looking for evidence of your values in your online elements. For example:

  1. Are your brand elements – brand promise and image – all about you and your stuff, or do they sound like something that would benefit your customer community?

  2. When delivering information to the community, is it all about you, or does it contribute to helping customers?

  3. What is the tone of your marketing message? “Tone” is how brand messages are incorporated as you serve the community, from crassly commercial to almost subliminal. You should strike a tone balance between making a sale and serving the community.


In a world where everything you sell is a commodity, value – product, price, service – is the threshold of a customer community, but values are the foundation. Anyone can find value, but when customers like your values, they tell their friends. Indeed, the most dynamic and potentially viral element of any online community is the feeling members have about your values. But remember, that “feeling” can go either way – positive or negative.


Here are a few guidelines for establishing compelling values online that match your values offline:

  1. Acquire and use the technology that makes online community building possible.

  2. Create an environment where an online community can flourish around the value you deliver and the values you demonstrate.

  3. Serve and protect your customer community, while accepting that you cannot control it. As customer members come and go, and say what’s on their minds, maximize the positive and repair the negative.


Once community members find your value and like your values, prospects will turn into customers and customers will turn into your best salespeople.

Write this on a rock…


Build and serve customer communities by delivering value and demonstrating values.

For more great Small Business Advocate content, click HERE

Social Media Builds Customer Communities

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on July 22, 2011
in Customer Care and Social Media
. 0 Comments

Two things are sure with regard to social media and businesses: 1) as a way to connect with customers, social media is here to stay; 2) social media will evolve into an essential, customer community-building tool every successful business - large or small - will use.

“Social media” is the technology that makes online community building possible, not the community itself. It allows for the creation of, and service to, online communities, where dialogue and interaction among community founders and members are possible. While the term “social media” is handy, it would serve businesses well to think of it as “building online customer communities.”

There are two primary examples of these communities:

1.      A company’s profile and “fan page” on sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Your company can build communities with these public platforms, which are free, but have limits.

2.      Communities founded and hosted by your company and oriented around relationships with customers and prospects. This type of community is established when customers subscribe to one or more of your channel offerings in order to receive information. There is now new technology emerging that helps you create a Facebook-like social media platform that you host, which I predict will become the next killer app.

A channel is a syndication tool or method of content delivery and service to a community. For example, real simple syndication (RSS), a blog, email marketing, including an email newsletter (ezine), a text (SMS), and Twitter are channel tools, through which businesses serve their customer communities.

A website is a very important part of your online presence, but it is not a very effective community-building tool. However, a website can become a platform from which you launch and serve customer communities. Think of your website as the living room where you entertain new friends and social media communities as the den you share with close friends.

There is one critically important thing for a founding company to understand about both of the online customer community types: The company cannot control community behavior.  Members - customers and prospects - control the conversation in the community. The founding company can only create and influence the community by establishing and demonstrating community values.

If value is the threshold of a community relationship, values are the foundation. Get started building online customer communities.

On The Small Business Advocate Show I’ve talked quite a bit about building customer communities and social media on my radio program. Click here to see and listen…

Let customers read about your authentic side

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on March 2, 2011
in Customer Care and Networking
. 0 Comments

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics and author of The Wealth of Nations (1776), identified writing as one of the three most important inventions of mankind – the other two being money and economic tables.

More than two centuries later, the Internet has powered the written word to levels unimagined only a generation ago, let alone during Smith’s era. Indeed, it is the driving force behind a handy new-media maxim, “Content is King.”

Today we’re consumers of many kinds of online content, including streaming audio and video. But even in the face of such multi-media majesty as iTunes and YouTube, most of the kingly content is still in the graphic form so highly regarded by Smith.

So what does all of this mean for small business owners? It’s simple: In an era when content is king, if you want to connect with customers competitively and stay connected, you have to produce more written words than ever before. But not just any words – authentic words.

Since 1999 – long before blogs and social media – two of the things I’ve encouraged small business owners to do is: 1) develop better writing skills and 2) publish more of their own words online that communicate to and connect with customers.

In the 2nd decade of the 21st century, prospects and customers want to read about the stuff you sell before they meet you. But they want more than marketing messaging; they want authentic, straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth information that delivers three things that are increasingly a big deal to customers: the voice, vision and values of the human beings behind the stuff, as unartful and unscripted as they may be.

So don’t worry if you’re not a professional wordsmith. When you need fancy words for strategic marketing messaging, online or otherwise, hire a pro. But you must become comfortable with conveying your vision and values online, in your own words – the voice – about a variety of issues from explaining how to use a product you sell to a local cause you care about to your philosophy on serving customers. And it’s just fine if some of these authentic words come from employees.

In the Age of the Customer™, now armed with as much information as the businesses they patronize, customers expect to be treated more like insiders. The good news is that no one makes this connection as effectively and authentically as a small business.

Recently on The Small Business Advocate Show, I talked more about using language to reach and connect with your customers. Take a few minutes to listen and leave some ideas on how you connect with your customers.  Authenticity through the written word

Do you know how customers are finding you?

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on February 23, 2011
in Customer Care
. 0 Comments

In the old days, when someone would call or come in the door of your business for the first time, you would ask them how they found you. And since it’s not your customer’s job to catalog such things for future retrieval, you probably had to help them a little by reciting examples of where you might have spent your marketing budget: an ad on the radio, TV, newspaper, Yellow Pages, a Little League uniform, etc.

Here in the second decade of the 21st century, asking how customers find you is still important, but with one new element: For the past 10-15 years, you should also include, “or did you find us online?”

Not too long ago, saying “our website” instead of “online” would have been appropriate. Today, online is best because customers can find you in other places on the Internet, including the social media and customer review platforms, even if, Heaven forbid, you don’t have a website.

The question is not whether your company is “out there” online today, but rather to what degree and – this is so important it will be on the test – what is being said about your business.

We wanted to know how much small businesses are attributing sales performance to the Internet, so recently we asked our radio and online audience this question: “How much of your 2011 sales do you think will result from some kind of Internet activity, even as simple as people just finding your business mentioned online?” The results made me very happy. About 90% of our respondents said they would be able to attribute some sales in 2011 from the Internet.

Breaking the numbers down, over 50% said less than half of 2011 sales would be attributed to online activity. The next number is really exciting: About one-fourth said they would see more than half of their sales from the Internet. And finally, the bookends: Those who said all of their sales would come from the Internet were almost the same – around 10% – as those who recorded a goose egg because (read this with a nasal whine), “We don’t have a website.”

As the Age of the Customer™ becomes the marketplace norm, your customers are increasingly demanding more connection and support from you with online resources. Any company that is not making at least some effort to meet the growing online support demand will experience the painful death of irrelevancy.

You don’t have to win the online race to be successful, but you do have to show up and compete.

Today on The Small Business Advocate Show, I talked more about the Age of the Customer and why you should have an online presence. Click on the link below to listen and, as always, leave your comments.

Do you know how customers are finding you?

To participate in this week’s Small Business Advocate poll, go to SmallBusinessAdvocate.com.

“No problem” is a big problem for small business

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on September 22, 2010
in Customer Care and Inspirational and Motivational
. 0 Comments

It has happened to all of us: You are being waited on at a restaurant, buying a product or returning something to a merchant, and as an employee is delivering some kind of service you say, “Thank you.”

Good for you; your mother would be so proud. But she wouldn’t be impressed by what has become an unfortunate response to “thank you.”

After you say “thank you” for having your water refilled or your order completed, there is an excellent chance the employee will say, incredibly, “No problem.”

So, from this response, are you now to think that simply allowing service to be delivered is some sort of a problem you’ve created, from which you should pray forgiveness will be granted? Should you feel relief that you’ve been redeemed by this person with “no problem” absolution?

Clearly, American English has deviated to a level that makes many feel nostalgic for casual. And it’s difficult to pinpoint where things ran off of the rails, but somehow the sublime “it’s my pleasure” has devolved into the sub par “no problem.”

Well, my friends, let’s get one thing straight: No problem is a problem. When small business employees say “no problem” to a customer instead of “you’re welcome,” it’s a serious problem that, over time, could be the equivalent of a business death wish.

Think I’m overreacting? How much money do you spend getting a customer to do business with you? How much energy and resources do you invest into making sure your products, pricing, display, etc., are just right? How many sleepless nights do you spend worrying about how to compete with the Big Boxes?

Now that we’ve established the enormity of these answers, have you checked to make sure that no employee of yours ever causes one of your customers to think - even subliminally - that the mere fact that they are doing business with you could be some kind of a problem?

The only thing that is unique about the contact your business has with a customer is the experience they have with you - how they FEEL about doing business with you. Everything else is a commodity. Everything! So in what universe does “no problem” help your business maximize the positive emotions of a wonderful customer experience? Stop saying it, and train your employees to stop saying it.

There must be 39 different ways in English to express your delight in serving a customer without saying “no problem.” Use one of them.

Recently, I discussed the issue of “No Problem” being a big problem on my radio program, The Small Business Advocate Show. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen, and be sure to leave your thoughts. Listen Live! Download, Too!

Small business brands in the 21st century

Published
by
Jim Blasingame
on September 17, 2010
in Branding, Customer Care and Marketing - Branding - Advertising
. 0 Comments

There was a time when most people thought having a brand was just for big companies - you know, like the Nike swoosh. For years, I’ve been telling small businesses that they have a brand, too, maybe even more than one.

But for small businesses, our brands are less tangible. The thing that makes customers remember us is more about the experience they have with us, including the relationship they have with our employees, the way we customize our products and services to their individual requirements and, just maybe, the fact that we remember them every time they connect with us.  Yes, my friends, these are the critical, often intangible, elements of a small business brand.

Recently, on my radio program, The Small Business Advocate Show, I talked about the intangible, emotional, impressionable brand concept with long-time Brain Trust member and world-class brand expert,  Tom Asacker.  Tom reveals how your attitude about your business and behavior around customers is also part of your brand and what compels customers to do business with you - or not. You can find Tom, his many books on branding and his work at acleareye.com.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen to this important conversation about what small business branding looks like in the 2nd decade of the 21st century. And, as always, be sure to leave your own thoughts.

Listen Live! Download, Too!