What do you do at your organization? Do you reach out to influencers in an effort to get them to share about your brand? Do you work with your brand advocates to help energize their natural passion for your brand? What is working for you?

However, I believe that participation applies to much more than just social media!  If we get our customers to participate with us on an ongoing basis, we learn so much more about them than we could in any other arena.  This will lead to (on the customer’s part) trust, better engagement, preference, word of mouth, and ultimately brand loyalty. 

I also had the opportunity to talk about this subject to Chris Brogan at the MarketingProfs event. We discussed why those who want to build a relationship with their customers should consider using social media. And not using it just to talk; using it to finally, truly listen to customers. Chris recently wrote about the difference between having an audience and having a community on his blog. I think an audience is something that you talk at; a community is something that you talk with and participate in.  Chris was nice enough to put his thoughts on video for me as I asked him to talk about social media and customer loyalty. (Note: the conference was in Arizona, hence the cacti – and the slight wind noise)

Here at Customers Rock!, I endeavor to have a place where we talk together about taking care of customers. I realize I have not been carrying on my side of the conversation a lot lately as I have been heads-down working on my new book. I will hold up my side of the bargain and be here to talk with you more frequently – now it is your turn to join in! Thank you all so much for being part of this, and many thanks to you, Chris, for your valuable time. 

(Image credit: Paha_L)

Saul has honored me back by interviewing me on what it means to market in a recession.  Take a listen, then go listen to Saul’s complementary video on his blog. Thank you, Saul, for the opportunity!

Becky Carroll (CustomersRock.net) shares thoughts on Customer Service! from saulcolt on Vimeo.

Customer Engagement at FreshBooks

A while back, I wrote about how FreshBooks was engaging customers by taking a roadtrip to a conference in an RV. Along the way, they stopped and had breakfast, lunch, and dinner with their customers.  Very cool.  I was thrilled to be invited to one of their customer dinners when they made a recent stop here in San Diego, CA.  Saul sent me an email and asked if I could join them (I am a FreshBooks customer, too!).  We had a wonderful meal at Buca di Beppo, which serves Italian food family-style on big platters for sharing.  A perfect venue for customers to come together, break bread, and get to know each other.  We swapped stories about our business, about the San Diego economy, and about our new friends at FreshBooks.

The dinner attendees were kind enough to let me take a very short video with my cool new tiny camera (it is smaller than my Blackberry!) around the table, just so you, my readers, could get a feel for this group.  One customer, a friend of mine, was a little shy with the first pass, but he was willing to show his face moments later (see photo above). 

It was a very fun dinner, and I left with both an appreciation for what FreshBooks is doing to engage customers as well as some new friends.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think about the video!  The Flip Minois really easy to use, and I think the resolution is pretty good (I promise, my videography skills will improve…).

News: Cool Customer Engagement Event

If you live on the East Coast, or want to head out there in November, you should check out the upcoming Customer Engagement and Loyalty Summit in Miami.  It is taking place November 17-19 and is focused on taking you beyond creating customer loyalty programs to helping you build customer strategies.  Sessions include looking at customer experience in a low-cost environment (Alaska Airlines), learning how Word of Mouth and WOW service go together (Zappos.com), and a panel on quantifying the benefits of customer loyalty to your CFO (lead by Best Buy).  It looks to be a great event.  Readers of my blog can get a 2 for 1 discount if they mention this code: IUS_CR_001.  If you go, let me know what you think of the event.  It sounds great!

Question: Blogging and Customer Service

My good friend Mack Collier asked a great question on Twitter the other day, and I told him I would re-post it here (as so many of you are focused on customer service). Mack is looking for examples of companies that are using their blog for customer service.  I can think of companies that try to share best practices about using their product in their blog, such as ConstantContact, and also companies that answer frequently asked questions via their blog, such as Sony Playstation’s blog.  If your company is doing this, or if you have seen a good example, please send me email to becky at petraconsultinggroup dot com or leave a comment here at Customers Rock!  I will share all the responses I get and link to you, too!  Thanks for your help!

(Photo credits: B. Carroll, piksel)

According to a new survey by Online Testing eXchange, in conjunction with the eCrush social networking website, most teens do their actual purchasing in stores. However, 65 percent of teens say they learn about cool new products on the Internet, compared to 62 percent from friends, 54 percent from TV ads and 48 percent from magazines. (Thank you to bizreport for the survey info.)

About that online research.  I had an interesting conversation with my teen yesterday.  He is in the market for a new iPod (he already has an older-version Nano).  Interested in the iPod Touch (which he is buying with his own money, BTW), he is ready to move towards purchase but wanted to learn more about it. 

Here are the steps of his experience.

• “I wanted to see what the iPod Touch was like, so I went to Apple‘s website.”  He went to the iPod section from the toolbar at the top.   From there, he saw what looked very promising: “iPod Touch – A Guided Tour”, so he clicked to watch the video.

This is where the Apple website fell down.  Instead of making the video easily viewable, my son was required to download Apple’s QuickTime in order to see it.  He tried this, but he couldn’t get it to work properly.  At that point, he gave up on the Apple site.

• Next stop: YouTube.  Why?  “I knew that a lot of people make videos of the things they buy and how they work.”  My son quickly found a video tour of the iPod Touch (it looked like it could have been put out by Apple) and spent the next 14 minutes glued to the PC screen.  “Wow, this is so cool!  I really want one now, and I already know how to use it just by watching the video.”
• His comment about how he intends to proceed next time: “From now on, I am just going to go to YouTube first!”

To recap: A potential teen buyer wanted to spend big bucks on new electronics, but he wasn’t sure yet.  He went to the company website but ran into problems trying to get the information he needed to make the decision.  He went to his trusted source for information, YouTube, and found exactly what he needed to make his decision.

Where are your customers doing their research?  Does your company’s website make the grade?  Should you put together a cool YouTube video about your product to reach out to your customers?  The answer lies in knowing your customers, their preferences, and their trusted sources.

One more thought.  As my son is already an Apple customer, Apple could have reached out to him, through his email or through iTunes, to let him know about their new products.  This would have made him feel special and “in the know”, and it could have moved him to purchase sooner – that is, if he had saved up enough money!

(Photo credit: ronen)

Please let me know how you like having videos like this here at Customers Rock!, and leave me a comment to tell me what you think.  Thanks!

(Photo credit: mikdam)