I know – a lot of people are out of work, and a lot of people hate their work.

I have work, and love my work.  So if a “I love my job” post is going to irritate you, you should probably leave now

25 years ago I though I was a Neonatal Respiratory Therapist – and that I would be for life.

20 years ago I thought I was a Sales guy – and that I would be for life.

10 years ago I thought I was a Developer – and would be for life.

5 years ago I thought I was an independent consultant (and that I would be for life).

Then a vendor of mine hired me.  And I thought I was a “Development Manager”.  Not for life – but I figured for a few years – that lasted less than 6 months.  It just wasn’t me.  Not in a company that loved customers as much as I love customers.  I was better at loving customers than managing developers.  It was more natural to me, and a better value proposition for my employer.

I went to work as the Director of Software Development for Rackspace Cloud (then Mosso) in June of 2008.  I loved the people and the company, but the company and I made a mistake.  I was the right guy in the wrong place – and we both knew that.  It took some time for us to both admit it at the same time.  And then find what really worked for us both.

About a year ago, during SXSW, we announced that Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica had joined Rackspace.  We did this from a hotel room at the Hilton in Austin – on Gillmor Gang (then hosted on Leo Laporte’s channel, and now hosted on building43.com).

Who would have known back then that Robert and Rocky would end up working for me – and that we would build http://building43.com, where Gillmor Gang – the very show that announced them joining our company, would now be hosted and sponsored by us.  Not me.

I DID recommend to Rackspace that we hire Robert and Rocky.  But I never imagined they would work for me.

So it has been just about a year since I went almost overnight from being a “dev guy” to working more in corporate communications, PR, and Marketing.  I’ve sponsored over two dozen events, and we have shot and published 99 HD videos as of today.

It’s been an amazing amount of work.  And very rewarding.  And confusing, and educational.  And challenging.

So I get to run building43, meet some amazing people, enjoy being with Robert and Rocky  – and I still spend most of my time talking to customers.  Which is what I love most of all.

I get paid to talk to people.  Which I love to do.

I work more hours in a week than most people are awake in a week.  Because I truly love what I do – and what I am allowed to do.

And I love the company I work for because they are bright enough to see the value in someone that thinks differently – and is passionate enough that it sometimes gets him into trouble

Figure out what you love, then figure out how to get paid for it.

Life is really grand once you do!

Rob

First, I am not presumptuous enough to tell anyone how to apologize, or think I am in any way an expert at it.  I am just pretty good at it, so I thought I would share what I have learned.

So this is how I apologize – your mileage may vary.

1.  Listen. And by that I do not mean, “let the customer vent”.  I mean listen.  Listening is not passive. Listening is active, and you should be contributing back to the conversation even as you listen.  You should be seeking clarifications at this point.  Do not get defensive.

2. Repeat what you think you heard and make sure you and the customer agree with the basic issues.  This is actually a great opportunity to dig deeper and find out what that one really big pain point is (and in my experience, it is almost always one major issue, even if they have a laundry list of issues to start with).  Listen and engage – don’t just listen – they will think you are blowing them off – or that you just get paid to listen. Interact.

2a – Do correct any factual mistakes or assumptions your customer has made at this point.  But do it in a methodical and no-nonsense, non-threatening way.  Make that quick and then focus on the main issue.

3. Know what you are talking about. Know your product better than your customer does.  Make sure you know the pain points.  It makes all the difference.

4. Empathy – people often mistake this as “feeling sorry for”. It is NOT.  Empathy is more like, “been there, done that”.  People who raised children alone are empathetic to each other. Those who haven’t often “sympathize”.  Being sympathetic is nowhere near as effective as establishing that connection with the customer.  Empathizing is a shared pain point – one the customer knows you have also experienced – because you really have, and you can share thier pain because you have honestly felt it.

5. Follow up.  No painful customer conversation should ever end with one conversation.  Call them again in a week. Ask if they are doing any better – or if you are doing any better.

6. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, but deliver what you promise.

7. Take their side when you should.  Don’t be afraid to agree with your customer if they say, “this feature sucks”.  If it sucks, it sucks.  And if it truly sucks and you try to pretend it does not – you have lost.

8. Invite the customer in.  Tell them how to send suggestions for improvement – offer to call them every couple weeks to get feedback.  Add them to your advisory board.  Customers that are so passionate about your product that they get angry when you fail them are the best customers to have advising you.  They care enough to let you know they care.  And tell you what they think, and what they need.

9. Be human.  This is vastly underestimated in most of the reading I have done on this topic.  If you have a script for dealing with upset customers then you fail.

10. Don’t offer to credit or “pay” your customer anything until you get through most of these steps.  Customers that are passionate about your product but just pissed about a current issue, or even a longtime flaw will just get offended.  Do offer reparations after the fact if that makes sense.  But if a refund is your opening move you are destined to fail quickly.

So those are ten quick points – and they don’t apply to everyone, I know.  I wasn’t trying to write a rule book – just trying to explain how I apologize.

I listen actively, with engagement.  Make sure I really understand the important issues.  I know the product so well that I probably know their pain point as well as they do.  So I can empathize – without seeming phony.  I don’t let it stop at one conversation and I share all my personal contact info, including my home phone number.  But I DO make it clear that I am not support – I am more of a lifeline.  I do not want to be the first person they call.  So I set boundaries.

I treat people well.  Even if they are angry at me/my employer.  Everyone is allowed some emotional and sometimes even irrational moments.  I have my share of those.

I don’t try to pay to make the problem go away.  I try to make the problem go away and then use credits/refunds as more of a parting hug.

I also make myself available – I am easy for customers to find.  And I want to be found.  I want to try and make someone happy.  That’s my job – why would I hide from it.

I’m no Social Media pundit – there are thousands of them that describe themselves as such.  Just yesterday I was followed on Twitter by someone who had a bio of “Twitter Marketer Extraordinaire”. I have no clue what that means, but I won’t pay for it.  Won’t follow it either.  It seems like rubbish to me.

I have no such illusions or delusions about my ability to use, and find useful, this new tool-set we’ve been given.  Twitter is but a knife in a culinary set though.  It is not a full set of utensils.  We have an ever-growing set of tools and utensils.  And I don’t think the tools matter much – at least not as much as how we decide to use them.  A knife can be used to cut.  Or it can be used to butter a shared loaf of bread.

Yes, the tools change – but the way they are wielded has been unchanged for decades.

So let us ignore individual tools for now, since they are so varied, and they have a different level of usefulness depending on your company and industry.

The bigger question is, “Can Social Media Be Measured?”.  I ask a smaller question – “Should it be measured”?

I’ve effectively used social media in a number of ways.  But that doesn’t make it a replacement for meeting people face to face, or using more traditional methods to target a specific audience.

Social Media is a shotgun approach to meeting and conversing with those that you are interested in; or might be interested in you.  It is, if done well, an invitation – and that should be enough.  For me, and my company, it is enough.

But behind that invitation to a conversation you need real people – people that know your business, and your product – and that are empowered to affect  change.  Otherwise you are talking to a wall.

Social Media has been useful to me, and to the company I work for, because we don’t just listen and respond with useless banter.  We have a team of engineers behind us that actually CAN make change happen.  In fact – our entire Social Media Team IS engineers.  We have also been customers.  WE know what the pain points are – and this was done by design.

When you have that level of understanding of your customers – and what they really need – well, measurement takes on a new meaning.  A less significant one.  We use “social” to be helpful – with people empowered to help.

I am not overly concerned about “measuring” Social Media – as long as we keep it relevant.  If it is relevant to your business – as long as it causes conversations and resolves customer issues – well, I don’t think it needs to be measure more than that – today.  Over time measurement will become more important.

But if you work for a company now that is MOST concerned with measurement – and NOT as concerned with your impact – be afraid.

Focus on just making a difference.  The tools will catch up to us.  If you try to catch up to the tools you will take your eye off the prize – customer engagement.

So I have ONE measurement this year – only one.  How do my social media outreaches affect customers.  How involved are they where I post, with what I care about, and in a context that makes sense to me and my business?

Do they care about what I care about?  DO I care about what they care about?

If they respond in any way, I can measure social media.

If they do not respond, I can also measure social media

But I am not keeping score beyond, “Are we doing more good than bad”.

I think many are over-thinking this right now.

Are you talking to your customer or not? If you are – you can measure that – just by the number of conversations.  If you are not – don’t waste your time in measuring in.

But don’t focus on the numbers.  Focus on the conversations.  The REAL conversations you have with customers.

Rob

Go do a Google search for hostingforhaiti (go ahead – it will open in a new tab/window).

There are, as I write this, over 330 results.  This morning there were ten – and all related to “did you mean ‘hosting for haiti’?”

No, I meant hostingforhaiti, or the twitter hash-tag “#hostingforhaiti” – over 325 results.

Ten hours CAN make a difference.  In ten hours we got 15 hosting companies (my industry – and full disclosure, I work for Rackspace) together for a great cause.

Each company is donating in their own way – and at a level they can tolerate – but is also blogging about this, Tweeting about it – posting on Facebook and other sites, and getting both customers and employees involved.  How big will it get?  I don’t know.  Bigger than it is now, I hope – yet I am still happy with what it is now.  That is a LOT of money in Haiti and the Red Cross will spend it well.

And that is just pretty damn cool.

We’ve raised thousands and thousands of dollars and we have barely started.

And now that we all know each other – who knows what we can do next?

I like to imagine a lot.  I like the good in people.

Check the site out.  Give a little, gain a lot.

“Social Media” is amazing in how it lets you meet your customers – on their terms.  It has changed the way business is done.  There is no hiding from your flaws.    Everything is “open”.  Social media is very much the open sourcing of traditional PR and Marketing.

And as powerful as it is – you need to realize what it means.  If you want to “control your brand” then social media will scare the crap out of you.  If you want to understand your brand, it is invaluable.

When my employer suffers even a small failure in even a fraction of a percent of one of our data centers we see Tweets that say, “Rackspace is down”.  While this is often 99% untrue we realize that for that 1% it is 100% true.  So we treat it as if we are down.  1% isn’t acceptable and we don’t disagree with those that paint any outage as a significant outage.  Our goal is perfection.  We know we cannot achieve it, but we also realize we can most closely approach it by simply expecting it of ourselves.  And letting our customers demand it of us – even encouraging them to do so.

Does that get painful at times?  Certainly.  Do we sometimes feel as if we should be more defensive – absolutely.  It would be nice to minimize the concern to shareholders, employees, and customers when only a fraction of customers are affected by an issue.  But that also requires that we minimize the pain that affected customers feel – and we aren’t willing to make that trade.  There aren’t many successful companies that minimize or marginalize their customers.

Most of us at my office run our own websites – and we know how painful downtime is.  In fact, many of us were Rackspace customers before we came to work here – and we chose to work here because we know that the good far outweighs the bad.  Especially compared to the industry as a whole.  We are expected to be perfect in an imperfect technology.  Failure is in our future.  We know we can’t be perfect.  So we plan for when we aren’t.  But we are here because we love to help.  We feel most successful when we give others the ability to succeed.  And we can’t do that unless we know how and when we are failing them.  So we really appreciate that social media allows us to have those conversations early, and often.

But a failure is a failure – and they all hurt.  And social media may make that failure more apparent to more people – and frame things in context that sound ominous.  But we would rather hear about our failures than hide from them.

And social media makes damned sure that every failure is heard.  But it also makes sure that every success is shared.  So it is a double-edged sword.  Once you realize that you don’t wield the sword you start to think more pragmatically about things.

Then social media becomes what relationship management has always been about.  Add more value than noise.  Be genuinely concerned.  Do better.  Learn.  Get better.  Invest where your customers tell you to invest.

Be honest, and don’t be afraid.  Embrace the chaos.

I’ve had great success with Twitter – both with finding new people and places and times to talk to them – customers, potential customers – and more importantly talking to customers when they are feeling pain.

I’ve also met great friends – and had great fun along the way.  Twitter is a Petri dish – you can feed in an idea and in seconds you can see if it is growing, or ignored.  If it is growing, nurture it – otherwise butcher it.

That was Twitter just six months ago.  Recently Twitter spam-bots are killing the effectiveness of customer communication on Twitter – they generate too much noise.  They also distort the conversation by gaming the “trending topics”.

I want Twitter to solve these problems, and I am willing to pay them to do so.  As someone that helps manage a “brand” I need Twitter to take my money, and help me.

Simple business model for Twitter. Hard for them to do, I think – it doesn’t seem to be their focus.  But if Twitter could help companies manage their brands – fairly – by killing the spam-bots and enabling real conversation – well, companies will pay for that.

But guess what, Twitter – if you want corporate dollars, you have to add tools to help us manage the message.  Quickly.

Even if that is as simple as killing the trending topics bots – which I think you MUST do anyway to survive.  I can’t believe anyone enjoys that crap filling their feeds.  We just don’t have time for it.  And if you can’t contain it – we won’t have time for Twitter.

Twitter needs to build me something I feel good buying.  And if that is a business level product that quickly kills spam-bots, highlights conversations about the brand I care about and gives me back the ability to join a relevant conversation – then I’ll pay for it.

The “or” title of this post came from my visit to a local grocery chain where one day a fake haired, fake boobs, fake human BITCH pushed a nice little old lady because she was trying to find the olives her husband liked – and she was taking a bit of time to do so.

This fake human was in a hurry, on her cell phone, and evidently far too important to be kept waiting – and she SHOVED an elderly woman!

When I helped the woman regain her balance (and yelled at the fake human) the nice old lady looked at me and smiled, and said, “That’s ok, son.  Sometimes people are just no damn good”.  While it startled me to hear it come from her – I also realized it was a truism.  We see it in athletes, TV personalities, and many others.

Even in bloggers – ESPECIALLY in bloggers.

A recent case is when a mother lost a two year old child to drowning and reached out to her friends – her network.  Her support structure.  Those friends happened to be on Twitter, and this grieving mother was chastised and second-guessed by people that are “just no damned good”.  At a time this woman needed friends and support more than ever a small army of (mostly, from what I can tell), “I am a better mommy blogger than you are” fake humans attacked her and accused her of horrendous things.  Like causing her child’s death because she was on Twitter and not watching the child.

I’m sorry.  You can stick your “better than me” attitude right up your (choose an orifice).

A mother lost a child.  And “better” mothers were mean, and cruel and uncaring.

Sometimes people are just no damned good.

And shame on them for it.

I’ve tried to keep my job off my blog – for the most part.

But trying to separate who I am from who I work for is silly.

This blog is NOT an official Rackspace property – want to make that clear.  Also want to make it clear that I do NOT want this blog to be a support channel for Rackspace.

And it doesn’t need to be.  For over a year I have shared my cell phone and personal phone numbers on Twitter.  If you are a Rackspace customer with issues, or a potential customer with questions – I want to talk to you.

You don’t need to be Techcrunch, or Chris Brogan to reach me – honest.  I am a phone call or an email away – and I will help you.  It is the favorite part of my job.  I LOVE helping customers.

But it ticks me off when people don’t know I am here – or think I am only here for “a-listers”.  I am here for ANYONE that is using Rackspace and has issues.  Or wants to use us but wants to learn more.  Or HAS used us, and wants to share why they left us.

I’m here – damn near 24/7.  I am here to help – and to make stuff happen.

If you need Rackspace, talk to me.  My job is talking to people just like you – be it support or sales issues.  I don’t have all the answers – but I have access to the people that do.

So here is my offer – if you need Rackspace – for any reason – ping me.  Ask me for help.  I LOVE to help.  Being helpful is why I show up every day.  It energizes me.  It makes me happy to be at Rackspace when I can be helpful.

There are many ways to contact me.  They are listed below.  But never be shy – include me.  I promise that I will help you as much as a person can.

Skype: rlagesse

AIM: mossorob

MSN IM: rlagesse@msn.com

Email: rob.lagesse@rackspace.com or rob@lagesse.org

Phone: cell – 210-845-4440 or my home number at 210-370-3861

GTALK – rlagesse@gmail.com

You don’t need to be an “a-lister” to get my attention – you just need to let me know you NEED attention.  And you need to be willing to let me help.

Rob

I run Adium on my Mac.  Between AOL, and Yahoo, internal Jabber at work, Microcoft Live Messenger, and multiple GChat accounts, I have over 5,000 contacts.

And each day, at least once, sometimes many times, I get a spam IM.  How they get through security procedures on the platforms, I don’t know.  But sometimes they do.

I “always” just click “block” and close the window.

But several times over the last few weeks -  a “girl” – always with the same name followed by random and changing numbers – would send me messages.  They looked like spam.  So I blocked each of them in turn.

Until things turned.  The messages started to actually talk about things I did, or said.  Usually something I posted on Twitter, but sometimes a link to a comment I made on a random blog.

Then I got, “You need to mow your grass – but I do understand that is has been raining a lot, and your mower would trench the yard”.

Whoah!  This was odd.  While the person could have assumed that I needed to mow, how would “she” know that I have a large commercial mower?  Unless “she” knew me?

Still, I blocked the message as spam – just as I had the many others.

Until late last week.  I responded to one of the messages, “Who are you, do you know me?”

I received no response.  About 20 minutes later I clicked “block” on her message and went to make something to eat.  I almost immediately heard the “ding” sound informing me of a new message.

The message was simple, “To find me again, you have to block my IM – for I am.  You follow me on Twitter, but I don’t follow you”.

Aha!  I could narrow it down!  But there are about 2200 people that follow me.  And I follow under half of them.  So I couldn’t narrow it down too much.  But still – assuming she was a she, and that she lived near me, I could whittle the list down to about 60.  Based on those of the 60 I knew, or knew of – I got to 52.  I could have made a mistake here, but was pretty careful to only “remove” those I knew for certain weren’t the mysterious IM’er.

52 might as well be 500.  And then I thought, what if it is a friend just messing with me, or perhaps it is actually a guy?  The 52 seemed like a useless number.

Anyway, I blocked the latest account and didn’t hear? anything for a couple days.

Then I got a new IM that said, “Be honest and be rewarded – how large is your suspect list?  <50?  >50? >100? <500?.  Win a clue.”

I replied >50, then blocked the account.  It was now an amusing game.

Fifteen minutes passed before I got a new IM, from yet another account – it said, “Not good.  Not bad, but not good.  I’m two blocks away, at a place you like, but I’m leaving now”

OK.  There are four places within two blocks of me that I have talked about publicly (or checked into from FourSquares).  Three are VERY public places.  One is a quiet store where I am usually the only customer.

I replied back, “Did you enjoy your drink?”  – thinking this would narrow things down to two places.  I should have worded it better so it could have been narrowed to one – but I wasn’t that clever.

Same routine – blocked the account.  Woke up the next morning to this: “Drink was great. I’ve been reading your blog – five posts from APR 2007.  Are you IP-Savvy?”

OK – at this point I am pretty much having a good time with this entire game.  So my curiosity was really peeked.  Whomever this was had a sense of humor, and some tech savvy.

I replied back, “I see your IP. You humor me.”

Blocked.

Next day I went to both of the local bars I have been know to hang out in and connected to the open WiFi – and checked the IP address assigned.  < Bingo!  Had her/him!  Blanco Tavern.

Later that day I received a new IM that said, “Bet you figured it out.  But I am never there when you are, but am often in other places you are.”

Damn!  This was getting pretty interesting

So I wrote a private blog post.  I sent her a link, “Here’s what I’ve found, let me know if it is sound”.

Then I blocked her.

And watched for an IP address to hit that post (and yes, with Woopra, I can see in near real-time).  Just 8 minutes later someone was reading my private post – from the Lion and Rose Pub, just two blocks away (it was one of those IP addresses I had checked earlier).

I didn’t respond then – I didn’t want her/him to know that I was on to them.  I grabbed my laptop and keys and hit the door.

5 minutes later I was sitting on the patio – the lone patron outside that day.  And I opened my laptop.  I sent a simple IM back to “her”, “I am on your sub-net.  And I am on the patio. – Step out”.

Then I blocked her/him.

And waited, but just a moment.  The door opened, and the waitress came out.  She handed me a napkin with “DSL” written on it.  Said a woman (yes!) had asked her to give it to me, and that I would know what it meant.

I did – that is the “name” of my primary WiFi network at my house!  I paid for my drink and quickly headed back home.  As I pulled in front of the house, there was nobody in the driveway – just one car – up the street.  Tapping it’s break pedal.  I took it as a signal, and followed.

It was 1.5 blocks and a stop-sign ahead of me, but I rushed to catch up.  I didn’t – but I saw where the car went – Blanco Tavern.

I finally crossed the busy Blanco Road and walked into the bar – which is very dark, and it was very bright outside.  So I could barely see.

But I heard, “Hello, Rob.  That took you a while”

As I approached the table at the nearly empty bar I could finally make out the face of someone I had met before, but wasn’t sure where.

“Interesting game”, I said. “You play well.”

She laughed and professed that she didn’t mean to get “caught” just yet.  Yes, she was attractive, and yes, she was younger than me.

“I don’t recall where I met you – I’m sorry”, I offered.

“You haven’t”, said she.  Just call me (and she gave another variation of the numbers based yet always changing name she used on IM). “We’ve been in the same places, but never met”.

We chatted about how she pulled this off – “easy”, she said.  What a Geek – and a Linux hack at that.  We were getting along wonderfully, and chatted for 35 minutes.  But not about who she was, or how she knew me.  I figured that would all come out eventually.  The conversation did not seem as if it were about to stop anytime soon.

Until the door opened and a man yelled, ‘Sam, I know you are in here”.  To wit “Sam” told me – “you better go” – which I did – by taking advantage of him being blinded coming in from the sun.  As I took the long way out of the bar I heard him yelling at her about “no wife of mine”…

Two days later I got another IM from her.  I replied, “No wife of mine…” and have blocked the last several chats without responding.

Perhaps I should – but I don’t want to get in the middle of any drama – and certainly not in the middle of a marriage.

But if Geeky Sam figures all that out, and wants to spar again without the baggage – you know my IP’s

And yeah – I know this wasn’t a really happy ending, but it was fun playing the game.

I dismissed Twitter lists as a toy at first – something interesting that would be made useful later by Client Software.

I was wrong.  Twitter lists matter NOW– regardless of client support.  They are both searchable and subscribe-able.  That makes them important.

Why?  Because companies own and cultivate “brands” – a personae.  And Twitter Lists may just disrupt that in interesting ways.

Example – it is fairly easy for me to find “lists” of companies I use (or compete against, or admire – whatever).  The point is – there is no longer such a thing as a “Corporate Twitter Persona”.  It is now the total of the personas of all of your employees.  For good or bad.

Now I am not following the corporate entity alone – I am watching everyone associated with the entity.

Your corporate brand is now affected by every person subscribed to, or added to a LIST about your brand.

This is a bit of a game changer.

It’ll take a different mindset.  Not sure it can be “managed”, but pretty sure it needs to be acknowledged.

I don’t hide the fact that I work for the world’s largest hosting company.  And there is very little doubt that you have surfed on a server that was serviced by our company.

When you have more servers than almost anyone in the world, you can host a lot of sites.  Hosting them is one thing – servicing them is another issue completely.

We are a hosting company with a service problem.  See – we just love serving customers.  Sure, we serve billions (or more) web pages a year – but we do that by focusing on serving customers. People serving people.  Sounds simple.

There are a lot of companies in our line of work.  There are very few of them that are entirely focused on our line of work though (some also sell books, or operating systems, or girls with hardly no clothing hawking domain names,  or search results, etc).  And fewer still that have been committed to a quality customer experience for as long as we have.  Or at all.

Our chairman likes to play a little “trick” when he does public speaking events.  He asks for a volunteer from the audience that has a cell phone.  Then he gives them the general dial in number to our offices.  And he asks, “What do you hear”?  It is always a human – and almost always within three rings. I put “trick” in quotes because it really isn’t a trick – we answer the phone.  With humans.  Humans in one of our offices – customer experience and trust is something we care far too much about to entrust to a third party call center – or the endless loop of auto-attendant hell, “Your business is important to us.  Please stand by.  Your business is important to us,  Please stand by”.

Human interaction is what we do.  It is our core business.

So how do you grow a “service company” in these times?  It’s manpower intensive!  Everyone seems to be cutting back, yet we keep investing in people.  Sure, we’re buying a heck of a lot of servers as well – but our investment is in people – as it always has. People grow our business.  People are the foundation of our business.  People are the future of our business.

The economy is tough, yet we have continued to grow.  Why?  Because we are cheaper?  We aren’t.  In fact – you do pay a premium when you entrust us with your website, your business application, or your remote file storage.  Why?  Because you aren’t just buying a service or a server – you are buying good old fashioned service.  The kind gas stations used to give, and bed and breakfasts still offer.  The human touch.

So we cost more – how are we growing?   It’s really simple.  People are willing to pay to not have to worry about things.  Daycare, dog-walking, pick-up and drop off dry cleaning – they all work off this same premise.  It isn’t rocket science – but it is rather tricky to pull off.  It certainly doesn’t just happen.  It takes a commitment at every level of the company – from the newest hire to the most senior Exec.

And scaling it is even more interesting.  Growing from 1000 to 3000 employees in a matter of a couple years isn’t easy – ask anyone that’s done it.  Unless it is an assembly line (and even then I argue it is difficult) it tends to dilute your culture – and your level of service.

How do you avoid that? (it sounds really ugly!).

Well it is ugly – and it can poison a company if it’s not managed.  By people (again, that people thing?).

Culture isn’t something you can just claim.  It isn’t something you can just train.  It isn’t something you can just “invest in”.  It is something you live – by the experienced teaching the inexperienced.  By customers reminding us when we stray.  By looking back at those 6 year old videos and realizing that what we want to be tomorrow is what we were yesterday – a service company full of great people building a great company that is fun, and entertaining, and educational.  For employees AND customers.

And always, always truly helping customers.

It’s been about 8 months that my primary role has been something “social media” related.  I make the role work for me, and that includes a lot of business development, social networking, and “social marketing”.  You need to find your own path.  As long as it is focused on customers, I imagine you can make it work.

But you have to start with loving to be “helpful”.  That is a powerful word that your customers will respect.

Anyway, here are some of my pointers:

• You are hyper-connected, and loving it that way.  You are “always” online, even when it isn’t really appropriate.
• You know your customers.  Better yet, you used to BE one of your companies customers!
• You know the customer community.
• You love fixing things.
• You don’t mind “being the bad guy/girl” if that’s what it takes to satisfy a customer.
• You are technical in the field you are supporting.  If it’s a writing site/company, you should be a writer.  Know your audience and you will have a respectable voice.
• Develop an online persona for yourself/company .  It can be your own, if that is appropriate.  It can be a merging of yours and your companies core values.  But it must be genuine, and it must be constant.
• Make friends with your customers.  Work for them more than you work for anyone else.
• Remember that you are also changing the way your company thinks/feels about customer outreach.  Don’t forget to reach within early and often.  Get advocates on your side.  Find those others that are already doing your role in an ad-hoc way, and embrace them.  Educate them.  Encourage them.  USE them

If you aren’t having fun – you are definitely not in the right position – get out of it quickly!

But I might have.  Probably even did. (linking to an external interview I did).  Anyway, here is a link to an interview I gave with B2B – a business website.  I was happy with it.  I love customers, and I love working for a company that loves customers.

What is building43—and should you want one?

Yeah – those of you that know me well, or have known me for a long time would be shocked by this. I am NOT a very public/sociable guy – which is weird, because I get paid to be one!

I love customers. Hate cameras. I’ve always focused on making sure the focus is on someone else.

So how in the heck did I get nominated for several panels at SXSW Interactive? Blame it on the PR machine I do.  And they spelled my name wrong – it is “La Gesse”

But whatever – it is what it is – and I love these panels. I could talk about most of this in my sleep so I think my stage fright will be overcome quickly (besides, when Scoble works for you, you damn well better not be afraid of cameras!)

So what are the panels?

Glad you asked – here they are:

OMG My Customer Has a Megaphone

Companies used to get away with treating customers like livestock with no repercussions, but now customers have a megaphone: the social web, and they’re not afraid to use it. Hear from Rackspace and other customer-centric companies as they share real case studies and tips about how to embrace Customer Service 2.0

Building and Creating New Business Models in the Cloud

New models for product development and marketing using social media tools and techniques which truly engage users, partners and developers are emerging. Join Lew Moorman and Robert Scoble from Rackspace who will discuss Building43, a new online community breaking down barriers to new ideas for business, and changing the world.

Managing a Crisis in a Hyper-Communicative World

Today, crisis can spread like a disease, mutating and growing as it goes, and wreaking havoc on your reputation, customer base and sales pipeline. How can you take back control, not only for the benefit of your organization, but to best guide your customers and investors through the situation?

I am most interested in the second one, but most excited to talk about the third one.  And I love the first one

I am a customer guy – so I love all of these.  I would relish doing ANY of them.  I would probably be overwhelmed if I had to do all of them!

Voting supposedly closed today, but rumor has it that you have until Monday.  Doesn’t matter.  I planned this post for AFTER voting was closed because I’m just not that “whore myself out” kinda guy (except on Twitter, where I have damned near begged for votes!). OK, perhaps I am.  Whatever

If you are interested in SXSW – or me, or Rackspace, or customers – go see if you can still vote!  Click a link above.

Rob

For some time, I followed most (obvious) non-spammers that followed me on Twitter.  I expected Twitter to give me better tools, and better filters over time.  They haven’t.

Today I started unfollowing people that weren’t adding any value to my social graph.  I am sure I made some mistakes, and unfollowed a few people I should not have – if that is true in your case – if we know each other, please email me and I will follow you back.

I am doing this manually, one account at a time – so I am trying to be careful.  I meet so many people in so many different contexts though – I am sure I will unfollow someone I didn’t mean to.

Don’t take it personally.  E-Mail me and I will add you back.

So – why?  Noise.  I used to enjoy Twitter, when I could have a conversation on Twitter.  Then I followed too many, and it ALL became noise.  The people I wanted to hear were lost in the clutter.

So I started relying only on Twitter Search – which only showed me what *I* was interested in, and not what each of you were interested in.  Again – much less fun – but at least manageable.  But I lost the value of your inputs.  The conversation disappeared.

So now I am going back to a “thin-stream” – a stream of input from people I know, admire, like, and/or trust.

I thinned several hundred accounts out today, and will continue to do so – one account at a time, through personal inspection.  Until I have a feed stream I think I can manage (perhaps 500-1000 people).

Sorry if I stepped on any toes.

Twitter was just becoming useless to me as a tool to keep track of what my friends were talking about.  I miss that.

Rob

I’ve been involved in a lot of launches over the last few decades. From children, to businesses, to websites and partnerships.

Every launch is fun. Every launch is a ton of work. It doesn’t seem to matter how large or small the launch is. The level of fun, and the level of work, seems to be consistent.

And at the end of he day, you never know what you’ve launched until it grows up. This is as true for websites as it is for children. Each will evolve, over time – based on their audience, friends, experience, and the feedback they receive.

This is why I am not completely wrapped up in “what are we launching today?” I am more interested in, “What could it be in two years?”.

But I love experiments. I love trying something that sounds like it should work, even if I have no idea how it will possibly work.  I had no clue how to be a father.  That evolved.  Everything evolves.

Finding out if you were right or wrong can take a very long time.  But you can affect the outcome every day.  You can influence your child, your community – and your audience.  But in the end, websites and children become what they will become.  All of your influence is best spent early in the process for both – because as each matures, your influence wanes dramatically.

Today I launched a new website/partnership – and I launched my daughter off to the college dorm.

It’ll be a few some time before I know what either of them will become.  I have great hopes for both.

Wow – that title seems to be a mess, doesn’t it?

It actually is a mess.  Amazon, a company that doesn’t talk to their customers bought a company that is renowned for talking to their customers.

What?

Why would they?  Perhaps they know they have something to learn about being a “people business”.

Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon made that pretty clear to me with this blog post from several days ago.  Link is at the end of this post, excerpt is as follows:

Once a year however we take a moment to make sure that everyone who wants to give their input into the direction of the Amazon Web Services has the opportunity to do so.

Once a year?  Really?  That is not a “people business”.  That isn’t really even trying.  That is a poor effort at outreach – even by Amazon standards.

How often does my employer measure engagement and or satisfaction?  After every chat, or call.  Or ticket.  By being active on Twitter – because our customers are there.  By providing real people to talk to 24/7 – people that can actually help.  People.

By answering the phone when our customers call.  By caring for each of them as if they were our largest customer.

We also bring a lot of customers to the Rackspace HQ every year to help us learn how to get better.  And our CEO puts his number out on Twitter.  People.

You can build a business on technology – I’ve learned that.  But you build a following through people.

Tony Hsieh knows that.  Perhaps Amazon is looking to learn something here.  Let’s hope!

Good luck, Zappos – you got a lot of educating to do!

“Feedback for Amazon Web Services“

So yesterday (as of a few minutes ago) was my son Derek’s 21st birthday.

So what did we do?  I invited Derek, and his younger sister Lauren (18), to a Tweetup here in San Antonio.  The establishment says they think we had 75 people there. I’ve been doing local Tweetups for a couple years.  This is the first I invited my kids to. It was a special day for me.  My son is now 21.  And nothing pierced, or tattooed; no records tarnished, no fingerprints taken.  My work here is done

He can now decide his own future, and either learn from my mistakes (which I have openly shared with him).  Or he can do it the hard way – and do it from scratch.  Every parent hopes they teach their kids enough that they each start in a better place than we did.

So why did I invite my “kids” to a Tweetup?  They use social media, but they aren’t overly geeky (OK, my son IS – but in a diferent way than me).  I invited them so:

a) they could meet my friends and “other family” – my community.  To include some coworkers, my new boss, and a couple of employees.  I want my kids to understand what I do, even if it seems impossible that someone would pay me for making friends and treating people well (they actually do!).

b) I could buy my son his first legal beer (and did).

c) And honestly – I just wanted to show them off.  As the custodial parent for about a decade, I wanted people to see that I didn’t screw them up!

I did NOT expect one of my employees to buy my son his first legal shot as well – DAMN you, Rocky!.  Luckily my daughter drove (and at 18 she was drinking soda).  My kids understand the perils of excess – whether that be alcohol, infatuation or anything else.  Too much of a good thing is too much.

In any case – thanks to all my friends.  I had a boss there, customers there, ex co-workers there, partners there, employees there, coworkers there, and job seekers there.  And my kids there.

All friends.

That’s what makes my job and life so cool.

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.  What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.  The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.  When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.  You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

~~~~ Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931

I sometimes think of myself as a VERY lucky guy. Other times I think, “I have worked my ass off to get here”.

Where is here?

It is the ability to have conversations that change my opinions. thought processes, perspectives – and my social graph.

Because @Scobleizer and @rocmanusa work for me (in reality, I think I work for them – but an org chart is an org chart!) – I have been able to meet some amazing people, and get invited to some amazing events.  Backstage at a live Diggnation event?  Done that.  Talking live to tens of thousands of people – been there.  Dinner with the Techstars team? Done that as well now.

This is precisely why Rackspace hired Robert and Rocky.  I may have suggested it – and enabled it – but it is the company that saw the value and pursued it.  It’s why I work for Rackspace in the first place.  They are a great “what if” company – and not many companies get to this size and still have that imagination (my experience anyway).

So what is this post about?

It is about Techstars – an amazing “experience” that takes place in Boulder, Colorado.  It is not an “event” – it is much more than that. It’s an amazing group of people that come together to help others become amazing.

It is a blend of my favorite word – helpful, and my favorite past-time – helping people learn.

It is a collaboration I fell in love with three years ago – when I didn’t know anyone involved in the project personally.  Now I do.

I had the most amazing time in Boulder.  From Techstars, to the weather.  From the people I met to the community they are building – there is magic in this city.  It is now one of my most favored cities on this planet (and I have been to many of the countries/cities on this planet!)

So – what makes Boulder/Techstars interesting? People, of course.  And the people I met were amazing.  And more than that – they were all helpful.  Ask a question, “Who should I talk to in Boulder” and you are likely to get someone extolling the virtues of a competitor.  They are all friends after all.  It is a VERY close-knit community.

They don’t seem to compete as much as they seem to collaborate – and through that, they all win.

David Cohen was an amazing host.  We exchanged a few emails and then just showed up.  And he made sure we had access to what was important – yet he never sold us anything.  Never tried to sell us anything.  Never ASKED for anything. #respect

I arrived in Boulder with no clue what to expect, and left with VERY high expectations for Boulder as a tech-centric hub in the years to come. They have everything going for them – a vibrant community, a thriving tech scene, local entrepreneurs who want to help others, a wonderful climate, they are a college town and have scenery to die for.  And that is just scratching the surface on the positives.

They are also just really nice – and helpful.

Boulder – you have my attention!

I’ll be back.