The Blog of Hans Eisenman

How Your Competitors May Use Social Media to Leave You In The Dust

Social Media really IS turning the business-to-customer on its head and this process is only beginning.  The businesses which embrace this are going to stay ahead of this chaos as it happens.  But if, as a business,  you're afraid of change or too set in your ways, you're liable to regret it later when your competitors take a giant leap ahead by setting themselves apart.

Let's say you're a dentist (this is fresh on my mind because I just visited a great one here in town and am still convalescing a little from their excellent work).  The usual dental business model is like a lot of others: attract patients (customers), do the work, they leave, you follow-up at some point or schedule a follow-up right there.  That's the way it's been being done for years and years, with some slight variations.

What's missing from this equation?  It's the same thing missing from a lot of businesses out there: getting an honest answer from that customer on how they really felt about the service or product.  The customers truth about that service or product, if you will.

But can businesses "handle it"?
Does this idea make you feel a little uncomfortable?  It might and I'd be surprised if it didn't because businesses have not been all that good about bellying up to that particular bar.   When was the last time someone at a company really asked you for your honest opinion about a service they delivered to you, in a way that you were happy to tell them because you could see they handle the truth?  Ever?  (Note: I'm not talking about the constrained surveys that only let you numerically assign values to service or your likeliness to buy or recommend.  I'm talking about real, braindump, unedited type responses, because that's what people are able to dishout now, via their own media channels (blogs, Twitter, Facebooke, etc.), if they so choose.

Social media, if it's doing anything else in the market place is starting to tear down the walls between businesses and the minds of their customers.  Not only does the emperor not have any clothes on, but his subjects are willing to tell him and can with relative impunity.

As more and more people realize they have venues like UserVoice, Get Satisfaction and others like them (see article below), honest answers about your services and products will begin to flow out into the world, whether you like it or not.

The best thing businesses could do is embrace this fully and early as possible and build "get honest answers" mechanisms into their existing customer/patient management processes.  The sooner they do this the sooner they will also ensure that they are protecting their herd or tribe from poaching businesses.  (After all, the ease with which customers can now get information means they have so many more choices than ever before.)

Embrace this change before your competitors do and you'll give your cusotmers/patients one more reason to stick with you, in addition to your already excellent services and products.  Any business can do it.  It doesn't matter what you sell.

One more thing: there is a huge added advantage here, in addition to letting a customer know you hear what s/he has to say: the feedback will give you ideas for how to improve and, if you use them, will ensure that you stay on top of your game.  Nothing wows a customer like seeing one of his/her suggestions in place when s/he returns for the next visit.

Companies who don't embrace this are going to find themselves being talked about whether they like it or not (because anyone can publish these days).  Sooner or later that will happen and it's always harder to handle that sort of thing reactively.  Get proactive.  Start this process now.

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How Social Media is Upending the Enterprise | Fast Company.

The power of social media has empowered the consumer to reach literally hundreds or thousands of people in seconds. And because we know a consumer’s closest friends are three to five times more likely to share the same preferences for products and brands, this newfound power is not to be underestimated.  ...

The challenge for companies is figuring out how to manage this. A conversation could start with a tweet, be directed to a help forum, be responded to in email, updated in a blog post, and then broadcast on Facebook. How will this be tracked, measured and monitored? This market is ripe with opportunity for both brands and software platforms built to nurture the distributed web-wide conversation.

The Social Media Revolution

Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions

Customer satisfaction survey questions are important.  You have to know what your customers want if you want your product or service lines to hit home.  Here's a great tool to convert those surveys to ACTIONable items within your organization.

Idea Management - Innovation Management - Crowdsourcing - Suggestion Box - Customer Feedback.

Enable Customer Engagement

Go beyond customer satisfaction to the next level: customer engagement. Interact with your customer community through an IdeaScale portal that puts your customer on a level playing field instead of second class citizens.

3 Mins About Social Media

A short video on what "social media" is or what it is doing, if you will.  Part of an ongoing series articles and possibly more short videos related to this area of technology and business.

This will probably be an over-simplification to those of you who already have a firm grip on what "social media" is all about or are heavy users of sites like Twitter or Facebook, LinkedIN, etc.

Also, here's a link to Perry Belcher's video, the one I refer to in my video.

Social Media Defined

It seems like daily I am running into people I know or meet who have questions about Social Media (and yes, that is often one of the questions: "Huh? Social whudda?").  Seeing as how I'm in the business of all that, I thought just maybe I should some post thoughts about it.

So here's blog posting #1 in what will probably become a series of postings on this topic.

First Things First: What Is It?
This is one of my favorite questions.  Words have meaning and therefore power so let's take a moment to see what exactly these two words, social and media, mean because they offer some valuable clues to this whole social media movement. 

Yes, we do want to know how we can get more clients and do more business, and I'll come to that in this or future postings.   Chances are good, though, that you won't get much in the way of new business if you first don't understand what this world is about.  So let's begin at the beginning:

GOP warned to embrace technology or face 'suicide' - CNN.com

 The machinations of politics and public office are often the last to belly up to the technology bar and yet here they are again, embracing Twitter this time to initiate their campaigns.

This is less about politics, though, and more about what we all need more of: relationships with people who are and remain interested in us and/or what we do.

Twitter will become, I think, THE way to start relationships with people, whether that be for political, business or personal purposes.   And Twitter is a great entrance point to those relationships.  As Perry Belcher (www.twitter.com/perrybelcher) put it in one of his excellent videos, Twitter is like showing up at a party.  The conversations get started in short bursts of back and forth messages as each person at the party tries to get to know a few people during the time they are there.  (Twitter only allows 140 characters in a message between people so here once again we have technology mimicking real life.) 

As the real-life party progresses, relationships get their start.  If they evolve, folks might become friends and start inviting each other to dinner at each other's houses (methaphor for getting someone to visit your website or blog). 

What's great about the political use of something like Twitter, is it breaks down all the barriers that normally keep a political candidate or incumbent sheltered from those whom s/he should be representing.  And how long have we been waiting for that to happen?!

But don't read this article and think this has nothing to do with you since you're not a politician.  You and your business are as profitable as you can attract and keep attention and nurture that attention into relationships with people out there.

Are Twitter and social media (Facebook, etc.) really the way to do that?  Well, ask yourself whether you would prefer to connect with someone who you at least know is a friend of a friend and/or is a member of a "party" you're already attending (sticking with the Facebook's of the world being like parties)--OR would you rather have someone cold call or carpet bomb you with printed media?  Are you more likely to do business with someone in an existing network to which you belong, or some unknown face who interrupts you as you walk down the street.  A referral from a friend or someone you've never met?

How do you prefer people start relationships with you?

GOP warned to embrace technology or face 'suicide' - CNN.com. (CNN) -- When Michigan GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis decided to throw his hat in the ring to head the Republican Party, he announced his intentions on an unlikely forum: Twitter.
...

The Republican Party is playing catch-up, hoping to compete with Democrats in the next two pivotal election cycles.

"It would be suicide for the Republican Party and conservatives to not aggressively embrace technology," said Matt Lewis, a writer for the conservative Web site Townhall.com. "The world is dramatically changing in the way people get their information and the way they communicate -- the party needs to change with it."

Hans Eisenman is Director of Sales for Richter 10.2 Media Group, LLC, which specializes in using social media to improve a company's online reputation, gain massive exposure and generate more profitable relationships.  You can "follow" him on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/heisenman 

Internet, Cellphones May Strengthen Family Unit, Study Finds - washingtonpost.com

Link: Internet, Cellphones May Strengthen Family Unit, Study Finds - washingtonpost.com.

Parents and children might rush through their days in different directions, but the American family is as tight-knit as in the last generation -- or more so -- because of the widespread use of cellphones and the Internet, according to a new poll.

Going Paperless

Want to go paperless?  Been there and I'm doing it.  Here's a braindump on more or less how I have including even a little video to share a few of the tools I have used to get there.

Recently a buddy of mine, who has a very successful real estate business, was sharing with me  just how badly he wants to go paperless with his business.  Real estate people feel this pain like almost no other.  Everything has a form. The only thing more paper intensive might be the medical field, or probably any governmental concern.

Since I am paperless (I don't even take notes on paper anymore, if I have my Macbook open and running, which is almost always), this discussion with my buddy got me listing out all my favorite applications, both online (websites) and the kind you'd load on your personal computer.  He took some notes and I have yet to check back with him to see if he has made any progress in this arena. 

Meanwhile, today I saw an ad for a company here in town that promotes giving you the ability to "be paperless" so I took a peek at their site.  They are basically an online document storage company, which is all fine and good, but the ability to store documents is just a sliver of what's needed to truly avoid the use of paper at all times while one is working.  We usually all have some form of collaboration, project management and intercommunication going with others, and that makes for a pretty dynamic existence.  "Storage" is very static (little to no change).  To become truly paperless requires more than just one e-tool as a result.  I use many.

In other words, if paper is something you truly want to curb in your life, there's much more to consider than just storing it.  You can do it, though, with less effort than you might think. 

Here are some more thoughts I have had on this area.

Feeeel The Love

My wife and I have sent out over 630 real, greeting cards to people since she joined forces with SendOutCards.com almost one year ago.  We're on our way to 1000 random acts of kindness!

The kicker is: we never even left our desk.  Every physical card was sent from our PC, printed in Utah and mailed for us.  No trips to card stores.  The wonders of on-demand printing at our fingertips, thanks to the web.

Seriously, though, how neat is that?  I absolutely LOVE this service and I regularly recommend it to clients, friends and just about anyone within a 20 foot radius at any given moment.  When was the last time you sent a real card (not talking e-cards here)  to someone? 
Probably the reason you haven't done it lately is it is a pain to do.  First you have to remember to pick one up.  Hopefully that happens when you're wandering the aisles at the grocery store or you happen to be near a Hallmark store or something, which usually when you do think of the person.

If that is when you think of them, though, you then have to fumble through cards which have already been pawed over, hoping to find just the right card.  This can take a while!

If that were how SendOutCards worked, there's no way we would have sent out this many cards.  It takes about 3 minutes (I timed it) to send out a card our way.  This allows me to invest more time toward what I want to say to the card recipient.

I haven't even touched on the responses we have been getting from friends.  These days people are just getting bills in the mail, so when they get a card and maybe a gift (we have included a lot of cookies with our cards for birthdays and so on), it really gets noticed.  This is particularly true if we send a spontaneous, just-because card. 

The optimist in me says this world could stand more of this kind of thing.  People are so consumed by their fast-pasted e-lives these days.   A little admiration goes a long way!

Telephones: Best Buy Sells 'Em, But Doesn't Use 'Em

Sitting on the phone here calling both of the two Baton Rouge, LA locations of Best Buy to help a client find a digital camera before a trip to India.  I should have been counting, I guess, but it seem as if the phone at both locations has rung over 30 times when I attempted to call a "sales associate." 

I gave up on the Bluebonnet Blvd location.  The one on Millerville was finally picked up by a GeekSquad gal.  She's very nice and all, but the fact that the phone rang that much before I got her (and not a sales person) didn't seem to interest her.  To her credit, though, she got right to servicing me and when she checked the stock of the item I was seeking, she told me more than I asked for, but exactly what I wanted to know: do they have them, how many are in stock, and how much they are.