I was fuming – disgusted how a big ISP (Internet Service Provider) company could consistently provide some of the worst customer service and worst solution service I’ve experienced in all my years of providing web design service. And that is a lot of years my friends – a lot.

It was a few Sundays ago when we began noticing some difficulties with a client’s site and by Monday the site was down while another client’s site using the same provider was now in distress – we spent hours trying to diagnose the issue – the sites were loading so slowly that molasses on a cold day runs faster.

Request for tech support emails went out first thing when we noticed on Sunday, separately for each account being affected. There were issues with their MySQL servers and since both of these sites were running off of WordPress themes reliant on MySQL databases, both sites were experiencing the same problems. No database means no website.

By Monday end of day things seemed to have been set right. In the meantime there were no notices posted on the provider’s website or emailed service notices and no email correspondence other than the automated ‘we got your request for support and here is your case number’ email. The phone lines were backed up and you couldn’t reach a human. Had we known they were having an issue, were aware of it and working on it, it would have saved us countless hours and expense trying to ‘fix’ what we didn’t break.

Tuesday – still nothing. No emails, no notices or responses to our trouble tickets.

Wednesday morning I finally got some emails from different tech support reps for each issue submitted. One was a short, curt with a tone that you could tell meant  ‘you are an idiot’ with no acknowledgement that they had experienced problems – not even an apology for taking 3 business days to respond. The second email was a slightly longer email with an explanation and admission that they had experienced difficulties and the email ended with a discount for 11% if I buy something from them.

A discount to buy more? For crappy service and crappy customer support? My first response was that there is no way I would ever recommend or buy anything from these guys. Then the other side of my brain kicked in and I thought – maybe we could save some money for something we really need? Nahhh.

Then, reading through my inbox I come upon a blog post on this very topic promoting gamification for poor customer service. Jay Baer’s blog had a guest post from Lisa Loeffler that is worth the read.

Okay a long hold on a call might make sense for at least a company recognizing that my time is also valuable. Haven’t you ever wanted to invoice your doctors for keeping you in their waiting rooms forever?  So having my time acknowledged with something of value might make sense, however if it is a service or product failure – will couponing be enough? How about a coupon to something that the offending company isn’t making or doing like a Starbucks gift card or something else?

How do you react when you get a fail in service or a product and if you are in sales, marketing or a business owner – how are you handling service or product failures?

As a fan and promoter of email marketing and even direct mail marketing, I salute those of you who endeavor to grow your business with these tools.

The key to any successful marketing campaign or program is knowing your audience. You can keep track of important points of reference about your clients and prospects using a CRM system. CRM – known as Customer Relationship Management software or system, a best practice for any company.

I’ve mentioned CRMs before, so why now? Why again?

I just received a letter in the mail congratulating me for membership in an organization. I thought that was really nice and it even included a certificate with my name in big letters. A certificate that is made to be framed and proudly displayed, but there is a problem – it says Mr. Mardy Sitzer.

So how well could they really know me? After all, to my family and friends I am known as a woman – 100% certified female.

Two things could have happened here. An intern or someone not familiar with the members generated the certificate and didn’t bother to verify details. The other possibility is that it was just assumed that I was a man and their database doesn’t track any details about its members other than when they paid.

I’m not sure why that assumption was made that I was a Mr. but nonetheless I now have a certificate doomed for the shredder and membership in an organization that knows nothing about me. Not knowing me – even something as basic as my gender would lead me to believe that they probably don’t know my needs or interests either. Will this make me question the value of membership?

Your database of clients and prospects should be kept up to date and with critical demographic and psychographic information. This data allows you to personalize messages, segment for diverse interests, and create an experience with your company worth talking about.

Tip: if you don’t have someone’s gender noted don’t guess. Their name should be enough information, formalizing a mistake or possible mistake just isn’t worth the ink to add Mr. or Ms.

What do you think?

I get calls with the request to ‘do social media’ and I pause. I get this call often enough, so I respond ‘okay’ and ask ‘why’. The most common response is ‘I need more sales’.

I’d like to begin by saying that to ‘do social media’ is not the most productive way to perceive this form of marketing. Hiring a company to tweet and post for you might be more detrimental than helpful if you haven’t worked through a strategy and tactical plan that supports specific goals beyond just obtaining leads. Equally as important is to evaluate if your company is ready for social media and if you are ready to commit company resources and time – and possibly even your own time.

Successful social media marketing comes from a shift in how you think about your company, yourself, and your customers and prospects. Your beliefs dictate your behavior.

I would like to share an analogy that comes from military combat training. Military combat tactical training uses language to depersonalize the enemy in hopes that soldiers will not have a conflict of morals when it comes time to pull the trigger or push a button. They create words and terms to objectify the enemy. While this might be necessary in warfare, I believe it is dangerous in social media marketing.

We use lingo in sales and marketing that objectifies and dehumanizes our targets. We even use imagery to support this such as dartboards, faceless icons, graphs, and charts. I admit my guilt here in that I use these terms when I speak, coach and consult. So I contribute to this dehumanizing process. I need to work on that.

With any kind of marketing work we begin by identifying the ideal target audiences. We build personas to clarify the psychographic and demographics of the ideal targets, prospects, and leads we want to attract. This is an important step in developing a marketing strategy. While they may be targets and prospects, they are also people who could benefit from our services and products.

Execution in social media is where things often go wrong. Some of the behaviors that don’t work are:

• Targeting rather than engaging
• Leading rather than enticing
• Preaching rather than sharing
• Asking before giving
• Prospecting rather than attracting
• Boring rather than entertaining

The mind is a funny thing. It will dictate your behavior and actions based on your mindset. To be successful in social media requires that you change your mindset first then ‘do’ social media as a person-to-person activity. Social media is about finding and engaging with people – not targets and prospects.

When you attract, relate, support, engage, and entice, the odds of building a community of fans, supporters, customers and even active supporters begins to grow. It is at that point that things begin to change and the investment of time and resources deliver returns.

So please don’t shoot me – but I do hope you will comment, engage, relate and move our relationship forward.

Friends + Fans + Followers + Fatigue

Have you and your audiences reached saturation or social media fatigue? If not, prepare yourself as I believe it is a natural course of events.

Something like a dance party where everyone shows up ready to move and shake, show their stuff, dance all-night, party ‘till dawn, meet new people, and hang with friends.

While dance parties are loads of fun, at some point in the evening a few too many cocktails and too many turns on the floor may begin to wear you down. At this point in the evening, the music may feel too loud, the room too stuffy, and all you can think about is putting your feet into a cool tub of water or squish them into some cool grass outside as you soak up the evening air. Well, I think that is where social media is heading.

Wait, don’t leave, the party isn’t over.  Social media is here to stay, but friends, fans, and followers are actively setting their social streams on mute and culling their herds. Heck, I’ve been hearing about some folks who are abandoning their profiles all together.

The tools and trend to use third party apps and features from within the various social sites has been continuing to improve and become more widely adopted, allowing member’s the ability to organize their friends, fans and followers into more manageable lists.

I wrote about these lists and their importance back in March 2011 No I Didn’t See Your Tweet and the refinement and practice in using these tools will only continue to grow.

Much like life, within Social Media you just can’t be all things to all people, can’t make everyone happy, and you just can’t read everything and know it all.

The take away here has two parts.

First, for those managing social media profiles, amp up your tools and get your communities organized in a way that meets your goals. Be clear about what keywords for news and information that you want to stay tuned into. Be selective to be efficient.

Second, if you are responsible for disseminating your brand message you will need to ramp up getting organized and focused on the people you want to talk to. Having had some conversations first before tweeting your own horn. If you haven’t connected with people around common interests, some back and forth chat, and made an effort to share and promote their profiles and messages, then chances are that your message won’t be seen or heard at all. Be selective to be effective.

What are you doing to beat the fatigue?