With everything good in this world, there is a bandit out to disturb what should be enjoyed openly. The Hamburglar challenged Ronald McDonald in his quest to share unhealthy yet delicious foods. Darth Vader and Two Face turned evil after receiving unfortunate face injuries. And almost any character who owned a mask meddled in episodes of Scooby Doo. But the modern day villain, one who is nearly impossible to catch, are Internet bots, stealers of information and hackers of computers. ( Read more )
Tagged: customer service
Dec 30
Klout Has It All Wrong: When It Comes to Link Response on Social Media, Timeliness, Not Follower Count, Is What Matters
By Kelsey Jones
Klout has it all wrong. How many followers a person or business has on Twitter or how many thousands of users have liked a company on Facebook doesn’t matter as much as timeliness does. In order to get responses from businesses and individuals on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media avenues, no one is going to see a post when it is posted when they aren’t online.
According to Bit.ly, most links posted on social networks last about three hours, with YouTube having the longest longevity of links. The Bit.ly blog states, “In general, the half life of a bitly link is about 3 hours, unless you publish your links on youtube, where you can expect about 7 hours worth of attention. Many links last a lot less than 2 hours; other more sticky links last longer than 11 hours over all the referrers.”
Graph is from the Bit.ly blog post:
Therefore, the actual time a user or business posts on their social network profiles will directly influence the chance that they will share or click on a link. For important content or messages, Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land recommends posting a “Second Chance Tweet”:
“On our @sengineland Twitter account, we tweet a story as soon as it’s posted. However, many of our Twitter followers might easily miss this, if they’re not online, busy and so on. That’s why we schedule a “second chance” tweet for most major stories to go out a few hours after they originally get tweeted.
Typically, we receive about 50% more traffic from Twitter from our second chance tweets as from the original ones. In other words, by simply tweeting a story again, some hours after the “half-life” of the original tweet has expired, we pick up 50% of the traffic that the original tweet generated.”
The content a profile posts, combined with the time they post it and how many times the content is shared, will be the key influencers on how many times a link is clicked on and shared. Do accounts with larger numbers of followers or likes have a greater chance of someone seeing their content based on the likelihood of higher impressions? Yes, but in order to make these numbers effective, businesses and individuals must pay attention to when and what they are posting.
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Dec 16
Use Twitter as a Customer Service Tool
By Kelsey Jones
Last week, my husband mistakenly spelled my middle name wrong on our airfare reservation for our delayed honeymoon to Jamaica. After berating him for not knowing the correct spelling of my middle name, I got to work trying to correct the problem. After dealing with Orbitz, where the only solution included a fee of some kind, I thought about Twitter, which has solved my problems in the past.
I tweeted to @DeltaAssist asking for help. They responded within the hour through a Direct Message asking for my flight number. After passing on the information and explaining my situation, here is what happened:
@DeltaAssist to save the day (and our trip)! This is a prime example of great customer service over Twitter. How refreshing is it that companies are listening and can fix problems in the matter of 5 minutes. No more waiting on hold, no more being transferred to supervisors, just solutions.
And Solutions Equal Happy Customers.
I will go out of my way to fly Delta after this experience. I had assumed they would tell me if wasn’t possible since we booked through Orbitz, but IO at @DeltaAssist made it easy.
Here are some other examples of businesses I have asked for help through Twitter, with positive results:
and I’ve also used @ComcastCares to get an incorrect charge taken off my bill.
Bottom Line:
Customers: When in doubt, take to Twitter.
Businesses: Realize the power of using Twitter as a customer service tool.
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Jul 21
How Opinions Can Help You Profit: Using Review Sites to Increase Visibility
In the digital world, it’s now more crucial than ever to pay attention to what people are saying about your business or website, mostly because “word-of-mouth” advertising has extended onto the web, utilizing social media and various websites for customers and users to share their opinion with people they don’t know, from locations around the world.
There are a lot of review websites out there, but Site Jabber and Yelp! have gone above and beyond in order to build effective and fun social communities right alongside the review process (full disclosure: I was a freelance Yelp! scout for 3 months in 2008).
Site Jabber, which I found out about from Mashable is a really creative idea- users can create a profile or login using their facebook account information and write reviews of websites. The review process is very simple and any website can be reviewed. They are then categorized. Webmasters and site fans can also ask members of the Site Jabber community to review a website, allowing them to receive feedback about what users expect out of a website. Users can say whether or not an individual review was helpful, along with having the option to share it on other social media sites.
Yelp! begin as a local review site in San Francisco and has since expanded to include all of the United States and is now in the United Kingdom. Yelp! users can review any business, from their dentist to the new jazz club that opened up downtown. They can also post pictures of that business and give compliments to other users. Reviews can be rated as “funny”, “useful”, and/or “cool”. The Yelp! profile is very fun to fill out and offers fields such as “My Most Recent Discovery”.
Yelp accepts advertising from businesses and sometimes makes them ‘featured’ pages or puts that business first in the search results. At this time, because SiteJabber is still relatively new, it has no advertisements.
The following are some tips for making the most of these review websites, in order to not only increase customers’ opinions of your level of customer service, but to also learn from feedback in order to make your website and business the most successful it can be. But remember, always be upfront and honest about who you are — never pose as a user and give your website or business a positive review. This is not reflective of the positive image you are trying to build.
Respond to Both Positive and Negative Reviews
When I first started “yelping” about businesses in the Kansas City area, I gave a great review to this new bar and restaurant in the Power and Light District that I really enjoyed. The establishment’s owner contacted me personally and said he appreciated my review and that he hoped I’d come down for their specials that Friday. That really impressed me, and lead me to recommend it even more than I already did to friends and family.
As far as negative reviews go, respond in the same manner. Recognize the person’s gripes and say what you will do to rectify the situation. Emphasize that their opinion is important to you and you hope they’ll come back again. But remember, NEVER bribe customers to change their review or post a positive review of your website or business. That is not good business practice and may get you in trouble with Yelp! or SiteJabber.
Add Photos and Update Contact Info
Yelp! allows any users to add photos to a business listing, as well as recommend changes to the businesses’ address or operating hours if they are incorrect. Yelp! has to approve the change, but the turnaround time is usually quick. Both sites allow you to submit a new business entry that can be reviewed right away.
Ask your customers to post reviews
Ask your regular and new customers to post a review of your website or business. Place a link on your website to your listing and make it easy for people to share their opinions. It’s crucial to be objective and never bribe for good reviews or threaten customers if they post negative reviews. It’s important to remember that all feedback is good feedback.
Use feedback to make changes
This is the most important part of utilizing review websites. Take all negative feedback as constructive criticism and emphasize the things that are being done well. Use direct messages, Twitter, Facebook, Email Newsletters, and other mediums to get the word out that you have not only heard what your customers and users have to say, you are implementing it. This will increase your image, bring in new members and customers, and cause more people to leave reviews!
Have any of you used review websites to improve your website or business? Let us know!
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Note: TownMe is a new review site that is generating a lot of positive buzz as well. It is developed by former employees of Google. Urban Spoon is also a respected restaurant review site.
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Blogging, Social Media, and Content Writing by Kelsey Jones and Bethaney Wallace
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