If only these walls could talk, the saying goes. In the case of the N building near Tachikawa station in Japan they do. In fact the whole building facade has been transformed into a real time dialogue between smart phones and what’s going on inside the store.
All you do is hold your phone up to the walls and the constantly changing QR codes tell you what’s going on inside. You can also browse shop information, make reservations and download coupons.
The simple thing is that people listen to what their peers, colleagues and clients have to say about brands and companies. It’s either going to be good, bad or an ongoing form of gossip about ever move your company makes, all depending on where you are in the market and if your company fits into a social segment.
There’s no formula to create word of mouth marketing, but there are methods that can create the platform: Continue reading “Building a Word of Mouth Platform” »
Being quite active on Twitter, I often notice how the brands and people I follow interact with one another. Twitter has become quite a powerful customer service tool for companies, as it is quite easy to monitor what people are saying about a brand, the industry or what they are looking for.
Brands can easily engage directly with Twitter users in a personal manner, but for large brands there should be an active person dedicated to monitoring Twitter. The way to make use of this form of social media for customer service is to be fast, proactive and provide actual solutions.
Here are a few examples of how some local brands are making use of Twitter for customer service and interaction:
Continue reading “How to use Twitter for Customer Service” »
This video highlights some impressive figures and visually explains the state of the internet today. It really gives you an idea of just how big and powerful the internet really is and the limitless potential it has.
The burning question for the next wave of social networking is “Where are you?”–and services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, and Loopt want you to use your smartphone to answer it.
The technology at the heart of this trend is called geolocation; and with a GPS-enabled smartphone such as the Apple iPhone, Google Nexus One, or RIM BlackBerry, you can use it to let your friends know where you are, or to find places recommended by people you know, or to check in remotely at clubs, bars, and restaurants.
Geolocation Revolution
Source: Mashable
One of the most useful ways that startups are employing social media is for customer service. “On the customer service side, beamME gets tremendous value out of social media. These days, people expect to be able to post issues with companies directly to Twitter and obtain a real-time response. This instantaneous access to our customers is invaluable,” said Gabe Zichermann, CEO of beamME, a maker of mobile networking tools.
Twitter for Customer Service
According to Zichermann, one of the most useful tools they’ve used to manage their customer-focused social media efforts is Hootsuite (), which has cut the amount of time necessary to look after their Twitter () and Facebook () accounts tremendously by allowing them to be used at the same time. “HootSuite is particularly effective and cuts down our time/cost requirements,” said Zichermann, who still advises getting someone, at least part-time, to help manage the flow of social media use and plan things out as far into the future as possible. “[That] will reduce the repetitive workload and make campaigns run faster.”
Phonebooth.com, which sells PBX services to small businesses, has had a similar experience using Twitter for customer relations. Said Todd Barr, Vice President of Marketing at Phonebooth:
“Twitter has become the launching point for many of our internal processes. We have multiple examples of responding to an issue on Twitter within a couple of minutes and being on the phone with them within ten minutes. A tweet actually starts an internal process where we pull in the appropriate parties, get our information together, and reach out to the customer.
All of our other social media usages are extremely important, but Twitter is actually helping to create a culture change. We’re able to quickly assemble the correct folks to improve life for the customer. Internally, this begins to shed light on the power of social media and the team of folks who want to be involved is gradually expanding.”
Barr told us that Phonebooth has solved over 20 customer support issues using Twitter and has also created a “vibrant product feedback loop, with good user participation.”
Continue reading about how start-ups are using social media
This week’s market research roundup covers topics on social media, customer service and a case study on the outcomes of mystery shopping.
If you’ve already searched for some Fan Page inspiration and undertaken the task of building a custom landing page for your business’s Facebook presence, you may now be in the market for some features that will further engage your fans. Read more
Enhancing customer services, innovative store designs and new outlets in different Emirates proved to be successful 2009 platforms for Jacky’s Electronics, the UAE’s number one multi-brand consumer electronics retailer, which cemented its win as the Retail Company of the Year by ITP’s Channel Middle East Awards 2010. Read more
MILTON KEYNES, UNITED KINGDOM – March 29, 2010: Mercedes-Benz UK has announced the appointment of Simon Oldfield to the position of Managing Director Customer Services Group, with effect from 1 April 2010. Oldfield has been promoted to this role after 12 years with the company, most recently as Sales Director Mercedes-Benz Cars and before that as Marketing Director. Read more
During December 2009, tenants trained by the Society, posing as mystery shoppers, took part in an exercise to help improve the services we provide.
The shoppers contact staff in a variety of ways (by letter, telephone, in person at our offices any by email), and asked various questions relating to typical questions asked by tenants, such as repair reporting, paying rent, advice about anti-social behaviour, how to get a home and so on.
Each response was scored to check that our staff met the standards that we have set out. This is what the mystery shopping exercise revealed. Read more
Forget AdWords. You may get the most bang for your advertising buck on Facebook, not Google, according to a recent study.
Earlier this month the social networking site topped Google to win the title of most visited site in the U.S. Yes, that was just one week in March (for the record, the second week). But now the social networking site has added another medal to its haul: Its news readers are more loyal than those of Google News, says research firm Hitwise.
As many as 78 percent of users returned to Facebook to access more news stories, compared with 67 percent of Google News users, according to Hitwise. Plus, 77 percent of Facebook users clicked back to the site to broadcast online news portals there, compared with 64 percent of Google News users returning for the same. The results are based on the click stream data for the week ending March 6 for the five top news media sites. (Something else to consider: Facebook is trending way up, traffic-wise. It’s up a whopping 185 percent over this time last year. Google is up 9 percent – suggesting it may take second place more often in the future.)
Image via: romanculture.org
We offer affordable and custom solutions for mystery shopping and market research services
