Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

The Art of Great Service and When We Stopped Listening

Years ago, I led a customer service team for a well-known telecommunications company in the UK.

Despite its size, one thing that was always drummed into us was that no matter what the problem, have empathy with the customer and acknowledge that any verbal attacks are aimed at the company, not us.

It did the trick.

We knew that our company wasn?t perfect ? which one is? We also knew that some of our company?s practices wouldn?t go over well with our customers, and that would lead to unhappy customers calling in to complain.

Though they sometimes got vociferous in their argument, we would always listen, offer empathy and look for a way that we could both work together to resolve the issue.

Again, it worked.

At the end of the call, the customer would apologize and say they were really sorry that they came over as argumentative ? they were just frustrated and felt as if they had no-one to talk to about it. All they wanted was for someone to listen and show that their problems were being heard.

Even if nothing could be done about them, just knowing someone cared made a huge difference.

So when did we stop listening?

I come across businesses every day that seem to have forgotten what customer service is. Public transport that?s always late with no apology or explanation; banks raising charges on credit cards with little warning and no alternatives; restaurants changing menus without any kind of customer survey (and often losing the best food in the process).

Even social media isn?t immune to this malaise ? look at the thousands of unhappy Facebook users when the company changes its front-end without asking users what they thought first? Even worse, when users complain, Facebook pretty much sticks its head in the sand and says,??Take it or leave it.?

What amazes me more about this apathy toward customers is that businesses can?t afford to have this attitude. All around us, businesses are folding, communities are suffering and families struggling to keep their heads above water.

New business will be almost impossible to come across with any great success, which is why it?s more important than ever to look after your existing customers.

Business is tough enough as it is. We all want to attract new clients and build our brand, but we can?t afford to do so at the expense of our existing customers. Along with employees, they?re the soul of any company and the ones that can offer you the best kind of new client attraction ? word-of-mouth advertising.

Something for businesses to keep in mind the next time they review their customer service policy.

image: gumption

Don’t Ever Give Up

This is a Shared Inspiration from Maranda Gibson.

Senior year of college brought a lot of changes for me.

Not only was I about to be done with school, but my economic status had changed and the dorm was the only home I had. I was getting a lesson in the ?hard things? adults deal with as I was responsible for bill paying and managing my family accounts.

I was lonely and sad, trying hard to do what would make my parents proud, and then I started to get sick.

Almost once a week for the year, I would get awful stomach cramps in the middle of the night and it felt like I was being pumped full of air. It would pass and I would be weak the next day, but I would be okay. It steadily got worse and the attacks would last longer, until I was weak and unable to function.

One night in the summer, my cousin?s husband rushed me to the hospital after an eight hour attack that had my parents (who were on the road on his big rig) beside themselves in worry.

It was my gallbladder and it was removed via routine surgery. I rested for about a week and then went back to school to finish out my summer class and be done with college forever. After it was completed, I packed up and moved to Texas.

Once I got to Texas, I started to feel sick again. Pain was in my lower back, I was running a fever, and it felt like I was being sawed in half at my belly button.? I thought I?d pulled something moving or slept wrong the night before.

As it continued over the course of the next few days, the pain got worse, until finally, it was time to go to the ER.

Life Changes

I was admitted almost immediately into the ER. ?When they were finally able to give me some painkillers, I felt relief for the first time in days but something felt off. They were giving me a CT scan and talking to my mom outside of the room. My mom disappeared for a few minutes and when she came back, she looked like she had been crying.

The ER staff hooked me up to a heart monitor and told me that an ambulance was going to come and get me and transport me over to an ICU at a different hospital.

A surgical team would be on standby to potentially remove parts of my pancreas, liver, small intestines, and stomach. The main supply of blood flow to my internal organs was basically a solid from clots and everything below my belly button was on its last breath, and so was I.

At the ICU, things happened fast.

I remember the nurse who held my hand and sang to me so I wouldn?t cry as they put in a CVC.

I remember signing a do not resuscitate order and asking my doctor if I was going to die.

I remember the look on his face when he said ?I?m going to do everything I can to not let that happen?.

I remember telling myself I had to be strong because my mom looked so scared.

It was almost a guarantee I would need surgery to repair the damage to my organs. My survival rate was anywhere between 8 ? 20%. That meant that the likelihood I would die was between 92 -100%.

Understanding

You know, death isn’t a concept that a twenty-two year old can really understand and even now I don?t.

I may not have understood death, but I understood life, and mine had just begun.? I remember the moment when I decided that I didn?t want to die and that I wasn?t going to allow it.

I?m supposed to get married and have a family. I?m supposed to finish a novel and see my words in print. I don?t give up and I?m not going to start now. ?

I fought thrombosis with everything I could. I prayed. I held my mom?s hand. I cracked jokes to my father and I started to remind myself what life felt like. As long as I could remember life, I would fight off death.

When I was moved to regular patient care three days later, my doctor was amazed and called me his little miracle. My mom said I was twice her joy, since I had been a miracle baby in the first place.

Somehow, I beat all of the odds. I managed to hit an 8% chance right on the nose. If you ever meet me, you could never tell how serious of a situation it was because it?s like it never happened.

At twenty-two, I learned things that I will never let go of and I want to share them.

Smile as much as you can. Laugh like it’s the last time you’ll ever hear something funny. I will never take for granted the way cold air feels burning into your lungs on a winter morning or how refreshing it is to jump into a pool when it?s 110 degrees outside.

I may be young ? but let me tell you something that I?ve learned.? Live every single day and smile while you do it. Try something new and hate it. Try something different and love it.

You have the ability to control if you accept something or not. You have the ability to decide if today you will fight, or if tomorrow you will give up.

Don?t ever give up. ?Life is nothing when it isn’t lived to its fullest.

About Maranda: Maranda is the head writer at AccuConference, a telecommunications company in Fort Worth, Texas.? She has a soft spot for kittens, puppies, and baseball. She?s about halfway through finishing that novel.

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Social Influence and the Shift of the Carnegie Principle

When Dale Carnegie wrote the book on influence more than 75 years ago, he probably didn’t realize the impact he was about to make on society. Just ask the 15 million people that have bought the book since 1936.

But, more than just sharing some evergreen ideas on how people and ideas can really connect with each other, Carnegie also pioneered how we – as individuals – are perceived by others.

Swap that to social influence today, and brands are now looking to highlight those they perceive as influential, to market their services and products for them.

Whereas Carnegie looked to show you ways on how you could make friends quickly, get you out of a rut, and make you more effective all round, today’s influence is finding uptake with brands looking to (often) bypass the legwork that Carnegie advocated, and utilizing shortcuts instead.

These shortcuts mean quicker access to the many; identification of who can spread a message; and more cost-effective approaches to outreach programs and brand advocate partnerships.

This has led to the popularity of companies like Klout, Kred and PeerIndex, as well as niche offshoots like Reppify, Connect.me and Tawkify, to name but three. Each have their benefits, and proponents of these platforms highlight the importance of their place in today’s social media-led marketplace.

However, critics of the services point to today’s influence measurement being nothing more than activity based – the more you are online, the more you’ll be measured as influential, whether you encourage people to act on your activity or not (the dictionary standard of influence).

Perhaps the middle ground offers an insight into where Carnegie’s vision and that of social scoring metrics need to be.

Context

One of the most-discussed areas of influence in the current iteration of social scoring is that of context. As mentioned earlier, proponents of social scoring platforms point to activity being a valid metric – if you’re online a lot, you understand the nuances of the space and how it can be influenced.

Critics point to automated social feeds with little to zero engagement that – while enjoying a high influence score – would be rendered useless when it came to being an influencer to partner with in a social media campaign.

This is where the context argument plays its hand. By definition, context is:

… the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs.

By that definition, it’s the very thing that influence looks to do. By connecting the right people with the right brand, and sharing the right message to the right audience, the results should be favourable every time.

If the context of the message is right, and the relationship between the person and the product the message is promoting fits, then there is an immediate “belief” in the message being more than just a sales promotion.

Find the context, and the pieces of the influence bubble begin to come together.

Relevance and Readiness

If context is important, relevance is equally so (if not more so). You may trust the person/influencer sharing a brand’s message with you; you may even be the perfect audience (based on demographics and research) for that message and that product at that given time.

Until you hit the relevance angle.

Are you really in the market for this new product right now?
Are you financially available to be the customer?
Has your situation or taste changed since you last bought a product from this brand?
Are there external issues at play here?

The relevance to how ripe you are as customer is something that no influencer can bypass, no matter how much you trust them, or trust the message.

It’s why the social influence market is only just beginning to grow and mature. Activity may be an early barometer of someone’s potential to a brand and its audience – but there are far more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to add.

Context, relevance and readiness are three – but even they’re just the start.

To truly mature the social influence – and, by association, the influencer – market, we need to remember how many aspects there were to Dale Carnegie’s seminal book and how they all had to be aligned to work their magic.

Then we can really start to move the social influence needle.

The Changing Face of Multicultural Marketing

If you’re in the business of marketing to different cultures – and, in a way, aren’t we all? – when was the last time you took a look at how your marketing is focused?

For instance, with the continued rise in use of social networks, are you using this medium or are you still in the “scared of social media” camp?

If it’s the latter, where else are you spending your time and energy? Perhaps it’s time to revisit your plan and see how it shapes up next to the latests figures released about multicultural marketing.

The Medium is Still the Message

Perhaps one of the more interesting results is that SEO – search engine optimization – is the #1 platform for targeting multiple cultures. Then again, maybe not – since the “SEO is dead” mantra usually comes from digital or social media specialists with an agenda to sell their services.

But, as you can see from the image below, it’s still the leading choice for multicultural marketing, and it’s still a growing choice as well – up 6% from two short years ago.

ANA Growing Platforms for Reaching Multiculturals — (click image to expand)

As expected, social media comes in at a string second, as the “fad platform” becomes further entrenched in more business tactics and strategies. Mobile is also a strong player which, given that the Latin American phone market, for example, is the third largest in the world.

However, take a look at the biggest growth areas since 2010 – Twitter, webinars, blogs, wikis and location based apps (think Foursquare and Gowalla).

Twitter, perhaps, makes a lot of sense, since its mobile usage makes it more attractive as a target for multicultural marketing campaigns. And you’ll get no argument from me on the strength of blogs as a marketing tool, no matter what market or niche you’re going after.

But the others – especially the wiki approach and webinars – shows that there’s a very different marketplace in front of us than there were in 2010. So what does this mean for your business, if your audience is multicultural?

Choose Your Markets Wisely

If you’re marketing currently doesn’t include most of the options above, you’re already behind. As social and mobile continues to play a huge part of the overall marketing mix, your business needs to be on the platforms your audience prefers.

This is nothing new, of course – even back in the day, you’d choose your markets wisely, from the type of newspaper your advertised in to the radio show you’d buy ad space on.

The difference now is that your audience is more fractured; wants information sooner; and wants it on their terms.

If you’re planning any kind of mobile campaign, make sure your target destination is mobile-optimized or, at the very least, mobile-friendly. Otherwise you’re wasting your money and your customers’ time.
Webinars are inexpensive, can share a lot of information at once, and offer the perfect opportunity to gather emails for list building and future campaigns. Use them, and benefit from them.
Consider creating a wiki on your own website, with the most common questions; solutions to common issues; shared resources, and more. The more information a customer has on your product, the more they’re likely to try.
Be smart with location based marketing. Don’t just reward Mayors for checking in – create loyalty programs and time-sensitive offers. Also, cross-sell with other locations if you have multiple stores in the same city. Buy jeans at location A and get a matching top for 50% off if you also check in at location B.

As the ANA report shows, customer mindsets have changed drastically in just two short years. Now the question is, has your business mindset?