Marketing + Branding + Design

Chris Moody

Follow me on TwitterRSS Feeds

  • Home
  • About this site
Are you saving customers with social media like The Hoff?

How to use social media to save customers: a few examples

Jul 21st

Posted by Chris Moody in Featured

View Comments

Tweet
Are you saving customers with social media like The Hoff?

Does The Hoff save customers by using social media?

If you spend any time around social media, you’ll quickly realize that it is one of the easiest platforms to voice a complaint. Some companies ignore the negative sentiment that may pop up online, but others are finding masterful ways to spin a negative into a positive.

There are a few simple steps we can all take to try to handle issues and save customers online:

1. Accountability – step up and own the issue

As a customer and consumer, I don’t expect perfection. At the same time, there are certain situations where a problem can cripple a business. The absolute, worst thing that you can do is nothing. People have some level of forgiveness by nature, but ignoring, covering up, or lying about an issue only makes things worse. Check out this Google Search for “apple antenna lie” to see how not addressing the issue quickly can have a disastrous effect. Admit the fault, apologize for the inconvenience you caused (not “may have caused” because clearly there is an inconvenience) and follow through towards a resolution to try to make things right.

2. Escalate – get the right person talking

Not every issue requires the CEO having a press conference. However, sometimes the Assistant to the Assistant Manager may not be the person you want on the front-lines. Pull in a superior, explain the issue, and setup a conference call with folks that aren’t satisfied with the explanation offered.  In the examples that I’ll discuss later, in most cases… I was happy by the escalation alone and the end result was a bit irrelevant.

3. The Five Ps – Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

If you’re hiking the Appalachian Trail with a friend, to what extent do you plan your trek? Do you just say “we’ll figure it out” or do you know where you’re sleeping every night? It never ceases to amaze me at the cases I hear of folks not prepared to handle a crisis. Pull in the appropriate parties, discuss previous examples – pros and cons, establish how to handle a worst case scenario, and have your infrastructure established.

I’ve had first-hand experiences with several companies that have knocked this out of the park and saved my business (I’ll also grade them for those of you that don’t read all the text).

GoDaddy – A

A crisis with your hosting company is never a fun experience. It is a great mixture of anger, frustration and disappointment – for you and maybe even for your readers. I ran into an issue with GoDaddy and they handled it smoothly. I even bought more domains by how they resolved the situation (thanks to The Office of the President). I’ve written about this before and you can check out the detailed blog post on how GoDaddy saved my business with social media.

Zagg – B+

My favorite pair of ear buds come from Zagg – they make incredible products. We had just launched Phonebooth Free at SXSW and rocked it. I boarded the flight to head home and my favorite buds shorted out.  I was one month out of warranty and reached out to their team on Twitter. After several emails and DMs, I ended up with a new pair of my favorite listening devices. Unfortunately, their customer support staff wasn’t really on the same page with the outstanding Twitter outreach. Altogether, great work and absolutely awesome products that I stand behind. The Twitter team followed up with me post-transaction to make sure I was still happy. :)

DirecTV – A+

I was a few hours away from completely cancelling my DirecTV service. I had a technician show up six hours late for a scheduled appointment, an incomplete upgrade installation that left me with no TV (oh noes!), mud tracked in the house, and the next available appointment was a month away. I was pretty furious and my switching cost was immediately down to zero. I had an unsatisfactory call with customer support and voiced my displeasure on Twitter. DirecTV’s team on Twitter reached out to me, escalated the issue, worked with the cancellation department I had called, and had The Office of the President call me.

I had told the cancellation department that if the issue wasn’t resolved the next day, that I would cancel (not being a jerk, but there were better alternatives than spending more time on the issue). On my way home from work, I received a call from The Office of the President telling me that someone should be at my house before I made it there.  When I arrived, an extremely helpful technician was already there working outside with his supervisor. They changed a ton of things that had been botched by the previous tech and convinced me that I had a single, isolated, bad experience.

I’m back in the extremely happy category with DirecTV and even a reference for other customers… if it wasn’t for their monitoring on Twitter and their outreach… I would be on U-Verse or just watching TV online. The fact that they followed through with other departments and had a qualified person reach out to me over the phone was awesome.

Beggars can’t be choosers

Too often, we only try to elevate the positive sentiment in social media… especially internally.  While this is definitely a good thing and helps with job security, neglecting negative sentiment and failing to try to understand it will doom you.  It can lead to product improvements, happier customers, and even save business… like in my case.

Other similar posts you might dig:

  • You had me at hello – @GoDaddy reaches out
  • Are You Really Listening to Your Community?
  • How to improve your blog community by being yourself
  • Watch in real time: @southwestair and @thatkevinsmith
  • Avatar, Trust, Community, and Social Media
chris moody, companies saving customers with social media, crisis, directv, godaddy, how to, LinkedIn, listening, negative sentiment, Social Media, support, using social media to save customers
oldspice-20100714-152137

How the incredible Old Spice videos are being made and a few of my favorites

Jul 15th

Posted by Chris Moody in Featured

View Comments

Tweet

How the Old Spice videos are being madeIf you’ve lived under a rock the last two days… you may have missed that Isaiah Mustafa (the man on a horse) is responding to individual tweets, Facebook and Youtube comments. The videos are hilarious and personal.

ReadWriteWeb just posted some insight into how the videos are being made. Check it out.

The fact that these videos are being made very close to real time is something astonishingly new.  Old Spice is rapidly building a loyal community of followers by using an innovative campaign.

It will be interesting to see how long this continues and what they’ll do to follow it up.

Which video is your favorite?

A few of my favorites are below, including replies to two friends named Jason (Peck and Keath).

Response to @jasonpeck

Response to @jakrose

Response to Alyssa Milano

Response to 12755JDH

Other similar posts you might dig:

  • 10 signs that your company shouldn’t use social media
  • You Can’t Fake the Funk: A Social Media Gut Check
  • Revenge is not a marketing strategy
  • Social media and its impact on basketball recruiting
  • How to ACE Social Media: Alignment, Control, and Engagement
Branding, isaiah mustafa, LinkedIn, Marketing, old spice, real time video, Social Media, social media case study
Chris Moody marries Nellary Branch on June 19, 2010 in New Bern, NC.

I’ve been gone a long time…

Jul 7th

Posted by Chris Moody in Various

View Comments

Tweet

Apologies for the delay in adding new content!

June was a busy month… I got married, I went to Jamaica and then we were at the beach to celebrate the 4th of July.  Those three events crippled my posting schedule.

I’m back in the states now and settling in.  You can expect things to return to how they were now. :)

Other similar posts you might dig:

  • Ask us questions now: Managing social media with limited resources Social Fresh Panel
  • How to use social media to save customers: a few examples
  • How to improve your blog community by being yourself
  • Everyone Needs A Dumb Guy: The Video
  • SXSWi 2010 & Community Part 3: Rockstars, Ninjas and Gurus are People Too
chris moody, return
chris-moody-three-things

How to improve your blog community by being yourself

Jun 8th

Posted by Chris Moody in Branding

View Comments

Tweet

As we all focus on search engine optimization, blogging, and social media… we tend to forget a very important element – Personality.

People want the real you (if they want you at all).

I’m not implying that we shouldn’t be professional and show subject matter expertise when we write, but is that it? There are millions of people talking about the same topics I talk about and probably yours too. Now that we know we aren’t the only ones talking about social media, how can we improve our blog communities by being ourselves?

1. Write down three important personal interests and put them in your bio.

Cheesy? Yes. Painful? Maybe. Useful? Definitely. If you’ve had a blog for more than six months and the three things you write down can’t be found in a post or in your About page, we’ve got a problem. If people take the time out of their days to read our ramblings, unless we’re THE thought leader in the industry crushing it with every single post… we’ve got to let them get to know us.

chris moody three things How to improve your blog community by being yourself

Three “personal” things about me influence a lot of what I write or talk about and have all served as conversation starters online and in person.

2. Write as if you are talking to your friends or colleagues.

I too get the Dictionary.com Word of the Day, but that doesn’t mean I need to use it in each post. The goal is to get people to take the time to read and hopefully follow a call to action (comment, subscribe, buy, download, etc.). Today the word is jnana. Do you know what that means? Do I look smart or intelligent for using that? Be conversational and serve your audience – if your audience knows jnana, you get brownie points.

3. Be passionate about things you believe in or are an advocate for.

Please understand that the tips and tricks to making a blog successful are important, but balance that with the fact that in less than 20 minutes… I can start a new blog talking about whatever I want. There is more noise than ever and to build a community, you must either serve a niche or build relationships – ideally both.

If you are motivated to write a post that evokes emotion, do it before you change your mind. To this date, my post with the most engagement (shares, comments, emails, direct messages, discussions, etc) is my most personal post. One that I debated writing. One that I reread four times before posting. One that I wrote at 3am. Passion and expertise differentiate.

4. Reply to comments and share, share, share.

If you receive a comment, take the time to respond – whether publicly or private. Reading and commenting takes time and to the best of my knowledge, we don’t yet have an infinite supply of that. Showing your community that you’re listening, processing, and thinking about what they say is extremely important.

Also, check out the blogs and tweets from your readers. Chris Brogan suggests that we should share 12 times as much as we self-promote on Twitter. Think about that before posting five tweets with different variations promoting that recent blog post. Reciprocity helps strengthen relationships.

5. Extend your reach and get away from the computer.

Since the beginning of time, human interaction has been extremely important. As we create more and more tools to facilitate this online, we forget that in-person interactions are still extremely beneficial. While I say that somewhat tongue-in-check, it is important to make those face-to-face connections when you can. It could be a customer a few miles away or a commenter attending the next industry conference you’re going to. Take the time to cultivate those relationships and you won’t have to tell them when you publish new blog posts… they’ll know. Be yourself and get out there and network.

The benefit of being yourself…

I’ll be the first to admit that most of these tips are not revolutionary or ground-breaking. Often times, the simple things are the ones we neglect. Personal branding is extremely important, but if your personal brand is simply a professional façade with none of the things that set you apart… you’ll just continue to be an information hub. Think of your favorite blog and I’m confident you’ll know at least three things about the person writing it.

chris moody traffic How to improve your blog community by being yourself

While this post isn’t about metrics, in my opinion, repeat visitors are more critical than first time visitors. Far too often, we choose to monitor “Visitors” because it is the largest number, but there are far more variables there. Keep a constant eye on your Repeat visitors and try to narrow the gap between your first time and repeat folks. The smaller that gap is, the stronger your community is and the more engagement you’ll see. Being yourself is the fastest way to get there.

Other similar posts you might dig:

  • SXSWi 2010 & Community Part 3: Rockstars, Ninjas and Gurus are People Too
  • SXSWi 2010 & Community Part 2: TWSS, Chevy, Gowalla and Cowgirls
  • You Can’t Fake the Funk: A Social Media Gut Check
  • Avatar, Trust, Community, and Social Media
  • Revenge is not a marketing strategy
Branding, chris moody, community, how to, LinkedIn, Marketing, tips and tricks
sxsw-emsum

Follow Friday: Don’t sleep on these folks

Jun 4th

Posted by Chris Moody in Featured

View Comments

Tweet
Seagulls Flying

Credit to bertvthul

I’m a big fan of Follow Friday (#ff on Twitter) as it helps to connect you with folks that are hand-picked by others in your network. The only thing I hate about it, is that it can be easy to lose.

With that, I’m starting a series of blog posts that have a bit more permanence to make sure that you don’t miss some of the folks I think are awesome. Most will probably only have a one sentence description, but we are used to 140 characters or less anyway.

This episode is going to cover a few friends that may be flying under your radar, but are definitely leading thinkers and all-around great people.

cord

@cord – Cord is a super nice guy with great thoughts on marketing and social media topics.

emilyhaughey

@emilyhaughey – Emily is an extremely smart and funny young professional working hard to infuse social media into the construction industry.

gwynnemurphy

@gwynnemurphy – Gwynne is a bright marketer with incredible writing skills… this amongst other things led her to be a coworker and a valuable part of the marketing team @bandwidth & @phonebooth.

jaydolan

@jaydolan – Jay is the creative genius behind @TheAntiMedia, a site which mocks plenty of social media users and trends while providing tons of insight that I usually laugh at (and agree with).

qthrul

@qthrul – Jay Cuthrell manages to stay under the radar in many circles… and I’m not sure how. He’s a really cool dude with great thoughts on social media, technology and telecom. Useful Tip: Jay’s last name is pronounced like his Twitter username… Q… Thrul.

summerjoy

@summerjoy – Summer is more passionate about social media than anyone I know… she’s also smart and funny.

Other similar posts you might dig:

  • No Related Posts
cord, emily haughey, follow friday, friends, gwynne murphy, jay cuthrell, jay dolan, summer joy
«12345»10...Last »
  • Like email better?

    All content, no spam (email address here):

    Delivered by FeedBurner

  • Connect with me

    Subscribe to emails Join the RSS Feed Connect with me on Facebook Connect with me on Twitter
  • My latest tweets

    Loading tweets...
    Follow me on Twitter!
  • Swag

    Alltop, all the cool kids (and me)

    Pragmatic Marketing Certified

  • Follow this blog
previous next
    • Google Reader

      • 44 Gorgeous Premium Wordpress Themes That Are Actually Free (WPscoop - Submitted news)
      • TV chef charged in murder-for-hire plot (CNN.com)
      • Wow (Duke Basketball Report)
      • HTC Evo 4G Release Date is June 4, costs $199 (add a WiFi iPad = Awesome) (The Next Web)
      • Save time & plan a conference call with 2 new iPhone apps from @Phonebooth Labs by Bandwidth.com (Wayne Sutton - location-based services, gadgets, marketing, social media, iPhone & iPad)
      Shared Items
    • Recent Posts

      • Why should you come see Scott Stratten in Raleigh?
      • Want to be a better marketer? Start helping out with Customer Support.
      • What I learned at Social Fresh Charlotte – an exhibitor, speaker and attendee perspective
      • Ask us questions now: Managing social media with limited resources Social Fresh Panel
      • 10 signs that your company shouldn’t use social media
    • Recent Comments

      • The 3 Truths of Good Community Managers on 10 signs that your company shouldn’t use social media
      • Chris Moody on Want to be a better marketer? Start helping out with Customer Support.
      • Peter Kay on Want to be a better marketer? Start helping out with Customer Support.
      • Want to be a better marketer? Join Customer Support for a month. | Marketing + Branding + Design on Twitter for Product Management
      • To be a Product Isn't so Bad | Gwynne Murphy on Follow Friday: Don’t sleep on these folks
    • User Login






      • Register
      • Lost your password?
    • Flickr Gallery

RSS Feeds XHTML 1.1 Scroll to top