I attended my first ReadyTalk web seminar a few weeks ago (“attended” being a euphemism for “sat in my scivvies in front of my iMac”). In fact, it was my first web seminar ever. I’m not a Luddite – I’ve just never had a reason to attend one before. But this seminar was on podcasting, and as a parent, I consider it good policy to learn about new technology before my kids do.

I didn’t want to go into the seminar totally clueless, so I downloaded and read a couple of ReadyTalk’s whitepapers on podcasting. I learned that podcasts are digital recordings of audio or video content that you can download to your computer, iPod, or cell phone and listen to whenever you want. ReadyTalk provides services to record and host podcasts.

Armed with this knowledge, I signed up for the podcasting seminar on the ReadyTalk website. It was really easy to do and more importantly, didn’t cost me any money. They didn’t even ask me any personal information, like would I be attending in my scivvies. I get very skittish whenever I feel my privacy is being invaded, so that was refreshing.

The problem was, I waited until 10 minutes before the seminar began to sign up for it. By then, it was apparently too late to attend because I never got an email confirmation with the instructions for getting into the seminar. My bad.

So I called up ReadyTalk for help. I expected to be put into phone menu purgatory, but instead, a really nice, young-sounding woman answered. I explained my problem and she apologized profusely as if it were her fault that I was such a ninny for signing up so late. Then she immediately put me into the seminar. I can’t remember the last time I had such a pleasant customer support experience. In fact, it was so good, I’m hoping to screw up again next time.

The web seminar itself was excellent. Shawn Cardinal, ReadyTalk’s Training Director delivered it. He was engaging, professional, and knowledgeable. That’s really important in a web seminar because unlike an actual seminar, there’s usually no one sitting next to you to keep you awake. Particularly if you’re in your scivvies.

Bottom line, attending this ReadyTalk web seminar was such a positive experience, I plan to sign up for more. The Web Seminar Series covers topics such as web conferencing for franchises, preventing conflict escalation, and taking the guesswork out of hiring, among many other diverse topics. And they’re all free.

I might even dress appropriately for the next one.

Technorati Tags: podcasting, web seminars, customer service

The other day, I talked about how to calculate your net promoter score. This score allows you to see how many of your customers are promoters and how many are detractors. Once you are armed with this information; what can you do? How can you increase the amount of customers that are promoters?

One way is too avoid bad profits as I talked about in a previous post. However, this will only prevent detractors and will not necessarily create promoters.

At ReadyTalk, our focus is upon building advocates by allowing our customers to be heard and by providing exemplary customer support. We conduct usability testing with our customers before new product releases, we give them several avenues of real time feedback about their conference experience and we have dedicated account managers to each one of our accounts.

Our support is done in-house and is available 24/7. We even have an advocacy officer who is in charge of making sure programs and processes are in place to create promoters. Our CRM solution has a advocacy level indicator on each account and it is the responsibility of the account manager to move the needle.

While all of the above is great, the most important thing you can do is hire properly. Our hiring process is focused on employees that have customer service as a core value no matter their job function. If customer service is a core value you hold, you will be driven to help your customer’s succeed and will take it personally when you fail. Regardless of the programs you have in place, without customer service as a core value of your employees, an advocacy program may never succeed.

Are your customers advocates? Are they detractors? Are your customers so fanatical that they will tattoo the name of your company on their body? Consider this: An advocate has more repeat purchases, is easier to up sell, gives referrals and can offer constructive feedback on your products and services.

Given the above facts, it would seem that a company would ignore its current customers at its’ own peril. It costs six times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing customer. At the same time, a 5% increase in customer loyalty increases the lifetime profits of a customer by 95%. Investing in building loyal customers is an investment in profitable growth. The best companies do not leave loyalty to chance – they design it into their processes, culture and brand.

How does one go about building advocates? Similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you must fulfill customers most basic needs before you can promote them to advocates. The chart belows illustrates an example of a customer’s needs in a fictional service industry.

As you can see, you cannot build advocates if you do not fill the most basic needs of customers: quality control, billing, customer service. Once you have perfected the basics, you can begin to build loyalty. In this diagram, which is geared towards a service model, exceptional service delivered well or ordinary service delivered exceptionally will build loyalty.

What does your company do to build loyalty? Is it an important part of your business plan?

Technorati Tags: advocacy, customer service, loyalty

1to1 Media wrote an excellent article on how Scottrade used customer service to propel themselves to success. Unlike most other brokerage firms, Scottrade does not outsource their customer support. All of its 1,700 employees are customer service representatives. Every call to the 800 number gets routed to the local branch nearest to the caller and the branch employees handle the calls themselves.

At ReadyTalk, we do the same thing. We have a dedicated support staff but everyone in the company is responsible for handling over flow calls – even the CEO has to answer support calls. We have a call manager that routs the call to the next available employee and it is their responsibility to handle the call and resolve any issues the customer may have.

We pride ourselves on our support and it is something upon which we place a great deal of importance. As the article points out, training is an important part of customer support. However, I would also suggest, that hiring properly is of equal importance. At ReadyTalk, we hire people that have a true desire to help people and see them succeed.

Technorati Tags: customer service, 1to1 Media

My first post here and I am looking forward to meeting new online members and forming a community. My current capacity is Social Media Director. We are a small company delving into the world of blogging and are hoping to make an imprint on our customers and the industries we touch.

But, I digress, my original position here was customer support and thus it is fitting that my first post be about customer service. Being a small company, customer support is our mantra. We are passionate individuals that enjoy our work and helping people and it shows in our customer service.

Now to the point, I called my internet service provider (name withheld to protect the innocent) to fix my dead DSL line. The first thing the automated operator told me was that I owed money. I was then presented with two options – pay my bill by credit card over the phone or pay by check over the phone. That was it. No other options for help. OK, so I payed my bill and lo and behold, I now had other options to choose. I listened to the options and finally got to the end of the list. “Press 9 (yes 9) if you are calling about something else”. Finally, I am getting somewhere – I pressed 9 and was immediately taken back to the beginning of the recording that listed all my options. To make a short story even shorter, I fixed my internet myself and was forced to pay my bill. What a wonderful experience.

So what is my point? When you are a small company like us in a commodity industry, customer support is an excellent way to distinguish yourself and remove yourself from the commodity paradigm. If you have something of value to offer above and beyond what your competitors can offer, you are no longer a commodity.