Who Doesn’t Like Servicing Their Customer?

As some of you know, I have been working part time in retail for over a year now.  If there is one thing that I would have to say has overshadowed everything and taught me about business, it is the importance of customer service. Over the summer, I interned for my company as an Assistant Manger and had to pick a project and test it, and I ended up choosing customer service.  I can go in to more detail with you on that, but that isn’t what this post is about.

One of the main philosophies of every company is customer service.  It is so important to what we do, and having good customer service along with a great product of service will keep your customers coming back.  It’s all about their experience with you right? 

There are times when I absolutely dread dealing with customers (a little ranting follows).  I could be 5 minutes into an important project that I need to get done, and it almost never fails that I will get continuously interrupted.  I’ll be honest, I want to help you, but sometimes things are out of my control.  I don’t mind going above what is the minimum, even if that means taking a little extra time to do it.  I know you’re important.  I want to give you the time you need and deserve, but if I’m already helping someone else give me a few minutes to get to you.  I’m sure you would rather talk to someone that knows the department and the product over another employee that might have to step aside and ask that person anyways.

This is why the philosophy of customer service has made a big impact on me since working retail.  I now am able to understand what it means and why it is so important.  It affects everything else in your business, especially if your customer doesn’t need to come into physical contact with you.  If that’s the case, their customer service experience may be the only thing they base their opinion of your business on.

Back to the meat of the post now.  Customer service can be affected by numerous factors.  I’ve outlined some of the common ones below.

   1.  Acknowledge your customers.

   2.  Thank your customers.

   3.  Have a simple and easy to use website where your customers won’t get frustrated and decide to leave.

   4.  If a customer doesn’t have a good experience with you, have ways available to them so that they can let you know.  You can’t solve your problems without knowing them.  Social media has made the process easier, but also more difficult to manage.  Customer will talk regardless if you’re there or not, but if you respond to them, it goes a long way.

   5.  When a customer does reach out to you, be there to listen and respond quickly.

   6.  Make your employees happy.  If they look forward to working every day, it affects everything else they do.  They might not mind going a little above and beyond if they know they are appreciated.

   7.  Empower your employees to solve the situation as best as they can.  Trust me, the majority of them know what can be done to help out a customer with a problem, and don’t mind doing it.  Sure you might lose a little money in the short run, but chances are that customer will come back, and may tell someone else how you helped them.  This also helps with point #6.

  8.  Give your employees the tools needed to get the job done.  If your employees don’t have what is necessary, they won’t be able to do what you ask of them.

  9.  Sweat the small stuff.  Many companies only look at the big picture and measurements of what they are doing and how to make them better.  If you give some attention to detail to the small things, they will have an effect on the big picture.

I know that I’ve probably left some things out on what you can do to make your customer service better, but I really think it can be boiled down to two main points: acknowledgement and communication.  Acknowledging (greeting and thanking) your customer and knowing who they are makes a hell of an impact, but you have to have the right skills to communicate with them.  Know when it is the time for listening and talking.  When it’s your turn, be there to respond quickly with a solution.  They will appreciate it that much more.

Feel free to offer up your own thoughts or if you have any questions let me know.  I triple dog dare you to leave a comment, share this with your friends, or hit me up @chrisjschmidt.

How Do You Use Social Networks?

When it comes to social media, most people feel like it is an all or nothing initiative, and they become overwhelmed and hesitant to enter.  I firmly believe that each social network pertains to a specific goal.  Sure there is overlap, you may be friends with someone on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, and connect with them on LinkedIn but each serves its on purpose.  An individual or company needs to know what they want to gain from social media and tailor their use accordingly.

As time has increased since college graduation (Mizzou), these divides seem to be growing. I try to use a little bit of everything. I’ve dabbled in YouTube, Digg, and Reddit but don’t use them on an everyday basis or even a weekly basis.  I do however try to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and GetGlue daily or at least a few times a week.

Below is a detail of how I use each.

Facebook – Mainly used to keep in touch with people from grade school, high school, and college that I don’t see/talk to very often or developed a close friendship with. I share videos and pictures with the friends I talk to most that I think they will enjoy but 95% of the time it is posted directly to their “wall”.  I “like” a few companies as well.

Twitter – Used to share thoughts, ideas, and opinions with others both locally and in other parts of the U.S.  I’ve developed connections with people that I would have never met otherwise, and find that people are generally easier to approach and start a conversation with.  I’ve also discovered new sites to visit and have enjoyed reading what other people have had to say.  I believe it is infinitely times easier to communicate with a brand or product I enjoy through Twitter and to gain a sense of a company’s culture.

LinkedIn – Most of my connections are people that I know through school or Twitter.  I feel this social site is used a lot by spammers looking to crowd my email with their newest product trying to sell me their business (especially the Groups section).  I use LinkedIn to build my professional network and to stay current on businesses that have made my short list of dream places of employment.

Digg/Redditt – I don’t share stories and articles I’ve come across, but like to find interesting things to read that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

GetGlue – I enjoy this network immensely and honestly don’t know why more people don’t use it.  I’m able to share the media I consume, see who else has similar likes and dislikes of movies, tv shows, books, music, and video games, and get recommendations from them that I probably wouldn’t have found surfing the web.  You also earn awesome stickers.

Foursquare – I was a little iffy about joining, but have enjoyed my experience thus far.  I would have used Foursquare before, but I wasn’t able to with just my iTouch.  I’ve come across new places to visit and try thanks to check-ins and tips from friends mostly from Twitter.  I get to see how often I frequent stores and locations.  After seeing how often I go to the movies, I feel like it would be better to just open up my own theater.

YouTube – I watch videos. Plain and simple. I’ve posted to the site before but unfortunately don’t have the itch to create video to share.

How do you use your networks?  Feel free to drop me a line below or @chrisjschmidt.

Thanks for reading.

Informational Interviews: Take 1

After graduating, I was toying with the idea of attending grad school to get my MBA.  I understood the benefits of going right then, but also had concerns on whether I should wait until I gained some real world marketing experience away from campus.  I asked friends, family, and teachers what their opinions were but decided to try something different.  I eventually settled on conducting a few informational interviews with people I had conversed with on Twitter and LinkedIn, people were selected randomly just because I didn’t really have any connections.  For those of you I converse regularly with now, I didn’t know you then and that is why you didn’t make the cut.  I plan on writing a few posts from the transcripts I wrote during the interviews as well as profiles for the interviewees.

One of my first interviews was with Megan Amberson after posting an interview request on LinkedIn in a mutual group.  Megan is currently a gaming strategist (read marketing) for Trailer Park, a company based in Hollywood focused on entertainment marketing (movies, video games, tv shows, and huge live events).  Megan also worked at David and Goliath and DDB Los Angeles before Trailer Park.

Most of our conversation centered on how she got into the industry, what types of things she was doing on an everyday basis, some of her past projects, and advice for a recent grad.  You will have to excuse the improper grammar and the switching from 1st to 3rd person.  I was typing as we talked.

“The video games department is a separate entity of the company.  Her job is a video game strategist.  She started in design – research – consumer research – strategist.  I am doing the right thing by using LinkedIn informational interviews.  She researched  all the companies that she was interested in then contacted them.  She said to continue networking and to consider freelance work.

She wanted to help clients in the video game industry and wanted to understand customers better.  Worked at Nike and Wells Fargo before this.  She said that a lot of consumers in this industry go by word-of-mouth and interactive ideas.  A person will buy a game by hearing about it from a friend or another player (close group).

She has worked on Call of Duty: World at War, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, Dark Knight 2, and PlayStation projects.  Had the Activision account for their 2009 releases (Modern Warfare 2) and was dropped right before.  There seems to be a change in strategy for video games.  Companies are doing more marketing after the launch of a game.  Post-strategy is important and downloadable content (DLC) is becoming very popular.  To get the job for a game, you have to pitch the strategy to the company.”

Trailer Park

www.trailerpark.com

The link for Megan’s LinkedIn page is http://www.linkedin.com/pub/megan-amberson/7/1b/160. She is really friendly.  Just mention how you came across her or if you would like an introduction let me know.  Megan has been great.  I am still able to contact her frequently, and she asks my opinions on games/and keeps me updated on available positions through her network.

Stay tuned.  Next week will be the conversation I had with Brian Schwartz from @creativereason.

If you have any questions or need to get something off of your chest, please feel free to give me a shout.

@chrisjschmidt

Should Apple Do an iTunes Buyback Program?

I don’t know about most of you, but if you looked at my iTunes library you would see about half of my songs are ones that I will listen to over and over while the others are mostly Top 40 that I’ll listen to for a few months and may not even remember they are on my iPod until I randomly come across them in shuffle.

I’m not sure what Apple will do next with iTunes, but I’m sure they have a plan with updates to the service’s software and look and to the business model behind it.  A growing trend, maybe just for my generation, is the ability to sell items we have purchased back/recycle them whether it be to the place we originally bought them or to a 3^rd party.  I do this frequently buying books and movies and selling them back to Amazon for credit in their store.  Even though I feel like their prices may be lower than I really want to accept, I know that I will spend that money and more over time.

Basically, I think Apple should allow this for songs and eventually movies (I know they have video rental option that is similar). They could offer you to basically delete the song from your account giving you back a portion of what you spent depending on the length of time that you had the song.  I did the math below for the 3 price points in the iTunes store, numbers were rounded accordingly.  They could do the buy back for the first 12 months after you have downloaded a song to your library.  I know for a fact I would end up buying more songs and spending more money that I probably would not have before.

 

Price ($)	Month of Return and Amount Back
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
$1.29	1.18	1.08	.97	.86	.75	.65	.54	.43	.32	.22	.11	0
$.99	.91	.83	.74	.66	.57	.50	.41	.33	.25	.17	.08	0
$.69	.63	.58	.52	.46	.40	.35	.29	.23	.17	.12	.06	0

 

As always, feel free to comment or share your thoughts below or on Twitter.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

@chrisjschmidt

 

What Brands are You in Love With?

Over the past year, I think I’ve applied to practically every marketing agency in the St. Louis area, but this past week I came across Happy Medium (@doingfor and www.facebook.com/thinkhappymedium). They have an interesting philosophy in creating brand love for their clients by inspiring consumers to truly connect with the products they use.

As I’ve grown up, I didn’t think I would ever use the same products over and over again, but once again I was proven wrong. I guess everyone makes mistakes. I have found myself developing brand love for some companies that I use every day and honestly don’t think I’ll stop at least for quite some time. These companies are:

Dove – @dove
Samsung – @samsungtweets
Clif Bar – @clifbar
Columbia – unfortunately they don’t have a twitter account
Method – @methodtweet

I used to use Old Spice as my deodorant and soap, but the Dove for Men line has won me over. I started off using their soap bars and quickly adapted their deodorant after its launch. When you walk into my room, all of my electronics are made my Samsung. I just believe they have a superior product, and I have never had any problems with them since I bought my first phone 5 years ago. I have my phone, sound system, tv, and blu-ray player all made by them. I eat some sort of Clif Bar every day, whether it is the regular Clif or one of their newest products the Clif Crunch. Method has me hooked on their hand soap and laundry detergent. Basically, these two companies give me a sense of pride when I use them. One of their main goals of being in business is to be environmentally sustainable and endorsing their products fulfills this belief for them and me. Finally, I came across Columbia when my mother decided to buy me a rain-resistant jacket that turned out to be a sponge. I conducted my own research bought a jacket and have not looked back on that decision once. I know own two jackets, some shirts, socks, wallet, and sweatpants, and I am in the process of getting a backpack and some winter gear.

I have truly developed brand love (thanks Happy Medium for the term) for various reasons. I tend to contact these companies frequently through Facebook, Twitter, visiting their website, and following them on LinkedIn as well as reading articles pertaining to them and their industry. By the way, Amazon , @amazon, has finally overcome Borders as my place of choice when buying my monthly book.

What companies are you falling in love with? I would like to hear about them. I may even try them out. Thanks for reading and get back to me on twitter @chrisjschmidt with your responses. Who knows, your company might be next.

Where’s the Weekly Wednesday?

I wanted to give a quick update.  I have been super busy and have been unable to sit down and write a Weekly Wednesday to publish the past 2 weeks.  I’ll have one for this week up on Friday and the post will include some short tidbits for the past 2 weeks.

Thanks for stopping by.

Trust Me, I’m a Doctor

While trying to get inspired to write a few blog posts, I decided to start Weekly Wednesday.  In essence, I plan to write a post regarding something that caught my attention in the world of marketing from Wednesday to Wednesday.

Today, I drove the 2.5 hours to Columbia, MO to visit my roommates for the weekend and on the way here, heard a Dr. Pepper Dr. Love radio spot.  I am a big fan of Dr. Pepper, it is one of my favorite soft drinks, and I enjoy following the company online and through their marketing techniques.  Over the past few months, they have been using their “Trust Me I’m a Dr.” series of promotions both on television and radio.

The marketing campaign is centered around famous Dr.’s in today’s pop culture.  They feature Dr. Dre, Dr. J, Dr. Love, Dr. Fraiser Crane, and Doogie Howser.  For those of you that don’t know, Dr. J is Julius Erving the great NBA player, Dr. Dre is a well known rapper and producer in the hip hop industry, Dr. Love is Gene Simmons from Kiss who is also well known for his TV show and enjoyment of promoting products with his band, Dr. Fraiser Crane is from the hit TV show Fraiser starring Kelsey Grammer, and Neil Patrick Harris who played Doogie Howser.

The campaign first started with a commercial for Super Bowl XLIV celebrating Dr. Pepper’s 125^th anniversary.  For me, this is one of the best marketing campaigns I have seen in a long time.  It grabs attention, the music used pulls me in (I find myself humming along), and who doesn’t like to watch a nice jump shot.  It takes some serious skill to make an ice cube in a small glass.

I could not find any specific results regarding the campaign, but the amount of articles available and postings after a quick Google search show that the campaign did garner attention and reach.  I do not know if sales of Dr. Pepper increased, but it seems at least brand awareness and recognition did.  Following this campaign, Dr. Pepper quickly grabbed a product placement spot in Marvel’s Iron Man 2 which released earlier this summer and earned just above $310 million domestically at the box office.

I look forward to what Dr. Pepper’s does next.  As always, feel free to leave comments or suggestions below.

What’s next for Twitter?

First off, I know that it has been awhile since I last posted anything. Part of that problem was that I have been busy while the other reason is that as soon as I find something I am interested in writing about, it is no longer quote unquote cool because something new has come along.

Recently, I have been spending more and more of my time on Twitter. When it first came out, I never thought that it would last and that people would adopt it like they have. I came up with three ideas I would like to see.

1) I think it would be interesting to see Twitter allow users to add documents/audio/video to their profile pages. This information could be included with the bio or maybe in a section specifically dedicated to itself. I think it would a) allow companies to show their work without directing traffic to the company’s website b) allow jobseekers to have their resume and portfolio examples readily available for connections through Twitter and c) help with seo.

2) The next idea was to add a Twitter marketplace function similar to how Facebook has theirs. One reason I liked this idea was that it could help monetize Twitter in the future in addition to the sponsored trending section. My main suggestion would be to run it similar to eBay for monetization. The other way would be to allow users to post items for free using a special hashtag. The marketplace posts would not update a user’s stream and friends due to spamming issues. I would make it available for users to opt-in to receiving these posts if they wanted. Last, I would allow users to use DM or MM to communicate with one another while the sale is in progress (MM is my new way of communication specific to the marketplace. It stands for “Market Message”).

3) My final idea would be to add a local trending topics section. It is nice to know what people are interested in talking about all over the world, but I would be more willing to join a local trending topic discussion.

As always, I am open to comments and suggestions to hear what you think. If anyone knows someone working at Twitter, it would be interesting to show them these ideas and maybe see them developed for the future.

Thanks for reading.

My LinkedIn Ad Experience

The last week of May, I decided to try out LinkedIn’s advertising platform.  It is similar to the Facebook advertising model but the rates are more expensive.  The minimum daily amount to be spent on your campaign is $10 while the minimum amount per click on your advertisement is $2.

The model allows you to have more than variation of the campaign.  As a user, you get to decide whether or not you want to display your ads evenly (shown the same number of times) or if you want the advertisement that performs the best to show up more often.  You also get to select categories to target your advertisement.  You can choose from company size, job function, industry, seniority, gender, age, or geography.  To create your ad, you get to insert your own title, a certain number of characters, site, name, and URL.

For my campaign, I targeted industry and geographical region.  After selecting my targets, my target market was numbered at 1,148,872 LinkedIn members.  I decided to use their pay per click model at $2 per click and up to $10 a day and selected the option for the advertisement that received the best response was displayed more.  The results of my campaign are listed below:

One advertisement directed viewers to my LinkedIn profile.  The results were…

25 clicks
14,573 impressions
.17% click thru rate
$50 spent

The other advertisement directed viewers to my personal site.  The results were…

3 clicks
1,730 impressions
.17% click thru rate
$6 spent

The totals for this week of advertising were…

28 clicks
16,303 impressions
.17% click thru rate
$56 spent

Overall, I would consider this experiment a success.  Although no one ended up contacting me concerning my ad, I had more people view my profile and personal site then I have ever had.

Please feel free to contact me.

Why do Movie Franchises Stop at 3?

While watching “Quantum of Solace”, James Bond #22, I started to think about some of the great movie franchises in recent years.  There have been a lot of good movies, but the magic number seems to be three movies.  If the first movie does well, most of the time sequels are given the “greenlight”.  With this thought in mind, I was able to come across a few that have done well after movie number three.  The franchises that have done well are Star Wars (6 movies), James Bond 007 (22 with one in production), Indiana Jones (4), Shrek (4), Batman (5), Superman (4), and Harry Potter (6 with one released in November and another in production).  Although the first three movies of Indiana Jones and Shrek were successful, their 4^th component seems to be a bit of a stretch at times.

Some of the more well known movies that have stopped at three movies or have a 4^th in the works but are experiencing problems are listed below:

• Bourne Trilogy
• Spiderman – a 4^th movie is being worked on but Tobey Maguire is not coming back
• The Godfather
• The Matrix
• X-Men – I don’t consider the origins movie to be a sequel
• Transformers – a 3^rd movie is being worked on but Megan Fox is not coming back
• The Lord of the Rings – The Hobbit is a prequel
• The Mighty Ducks
• The Mummy
• Blade
• Oceans Trilogy
• The Santa Claus
• Scream
• High School Musical
• Toy Story – a 3^rd movie is being released this summer

Some of the following ideas are pretty plan and simple to explain this three movie limit.  One idea is that writers and creators simply run out of content whether it is from books, comics, video games, or their imagination.  Another idea is consumer wear and tear.  Maybe surveys have been administered, and the results have indicated that three movies is all that the consumer wants to see.  My third idea is a little touchier.  From a consumer standpoint, if we want an idea (enough to cover the costs of a movie), Hollywood should make it, but sometimes money issues get in the way.  The final thought is about contracts with actors.  Sometimes they are only signed for three, and they move on after the third movie is completed.  Also some actors are not brought back for the sequels, changing the original cast which is sometimes the only reason a movie is successful.  I am sure that these reasons are not all inclusive, and we consumers may never know why additional movies are not made.  For Hollywood’s sake, I hope they reconsider.

Feel free to leave suggestions and comments below.