Just a short post to let you know about a few great things that are going on around here at Customers Rock!  More posts on customer experience, social media, and a few videos coming soon.

First things first: I have been a busy lately with my new job. I just accepted and started in my role as Director of Social Media at Brickfish.  Brickfish is a social media advertising network, and they focus on helping brands reach their customers via the social web and viral marketing.  This is a great position for me as it marries my two key areas of interest: social media and customer loyalty (you couldn’t have guessed that, could you?). I will definitely report back more on this company and role as I get my feet firmly planted there!  I will still be writing my Customers Rock! blog and will also continue my gig at UCSD Extension teaching the Marketing via New Media class.  Consulting projects are being put on the back burner at the moment, but do let me know if I can help you via my great network!

In other news…

• I just returned from the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer, and I had a great time speaking, learning a lot, and connecting with bloggers I had met online but not yet in person.  Write-ups, video, and photos to come soon!

• Bathroom Blogfest ‘08 is happening now!  I participated in this last year with my blog posts on the customer experience and the restroom, highlighting bathrooms at Disney theme parks. I will post my bathroom customer experiences later this week, towards the end of the blogfest, but I wanted to highlight the other bloggers who are taking part in this annual event.  Here they are:

Susan Abbott at Customer Experience Crossroads
Katia Adams at Transcultural Marketing
Shannon Bilby at Floor Talk!
Laurence Borel at Blog Till You Drop
Jo Brown and the blogging team at Kohler Talk
Lisbeth Calandrino at Lisbeth Calandrino
Sara Cantor at The Curious Shopper
Becky Carroll at Customers Rock!
Katie Clark at Practical Katie
Iris Shreve Garrott at Circulating
Ann Handley at Annarchy
Marianna Hayes at Results Revolution
Elizabeth Hise and C.B. Whittemore at The Carpetology Blog
Maria Palma at Customers Are Always
Sandra Renshaw at Purple Wren
Kate Rutter at Adaptive Path
Claudia Schiepers at Life and its little pleasures
Carolyn Townes at Becoming a Woman of Purpose
Stephanie Weaver at Experienceology
C.B. Whittemore at Flooring The Consumer

• Last year, I participated in a great project to write a book with over 100 other bloggers, the Age of Conversation.  This year, we are doing it again with the Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t They Get It? It launches shortly (tomorrow); stay tuned for details!

(Photo credit: Tinka)

 I read an interesting article on “Scientific Selling”, which started with the following tagline:

“The way in which a customer is handled has much to do with results obtained.”

How true that is!  It goes on to discuss how a customer cannot be “up-sold” unless that customer is thoroughly understood.

“The worst evil in selling is the action of the man who merely gives the customer what he asks for.  The man who does this is not a salesman, he is just a clerk.”

This article, by the way, is from the New York Times and was printed June 18, 1922!  It still rings true today. 

We need to understand not just who our customers are and what they say they want, but we also need to understand how they are currently using our products and services.  Yesterday, I spoke with Nancy Arter and Suzanne Obermire at RRW Consulting (their blog here) about the marketing basic of “right selling” customers.  We agreed that the most-satisfied customers tend to be those who are using the products and services which are a best fit for their needs.

For example, when I was at HP, I worked in the division where we marketed service subscriptions for HP’s mainframe computers to businesses.  Part of the service subscription included software updates and the ability to contact the call center (this was before eSupport was prevalent!).  At the end of the year, a customer could decide whether to renew their subscription.  If they never called in with a problem, they might have felt that they didn’t get value from their investment.  The most successful subscription services salespeople (say that three times fast!) were those that helped a business find the right level of service for the next year, rather than trying to renew them on the same (under-utilized) level of service.

Some of you may be thinking, hey, they left money on the table!  You should just try and get the most from the customer.  This, readers, is short-term thinking - trying to maximize the amount of revenues this quarter or year.  This type of thinking backfires when a customer realizes they have been over-paying for services they don’t use, and they then get upset that they weren’t told they could have switched to a subscription which was a better fit. (Does this sound familiar - cell phone plans come to mind…)

The long-term viewpoint says we want our customers to have the right level of service.  That may mean that they reduce the level of service they have with us.  However, if it is the right level of service, the customer will ultimately be more satisfied.  Customer satisfaction equates to long-term loyalty, which equates to increased positive word of mouth.

And that is what right-selling is all about!

(Flickr photo credit: TimParkinson)