Archive for June, 2009

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Great Customer Service Makes Money

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Jun 2009

30

Verizon Customer ServiceToday during my lunch, I went down to the Verizon Wireless store. I had been having issues with my Treo Centro, and was interested in getting my phone replaced as it is under warranty. Upon arrival, I was greeted warmly and was given information relevant to getting my phone replaced (phone number, driver information, advice on how to transfer contacts etc). Everything I would normally expect from this type of conversation, but still a step above the interactions I’ve previously had at cellphone and wireless provider stores.

 

What continued impressed me even more. I was told that due to my employment with Microsoft, I was entitled to a discount, plus there were some deals currently going on at the store. My initial thought was “oh great, now they’re going to rope me into getting a ‘discount’ that costs me $20 more a month for features and services I’ll never need.” No, instead, by keeping the exact same plan, the representative (John) saved me $40/month or over 30% off my current bill. He didn’t pitch me to buy something more either. All I did was speak with him for five minutes and I’d already saved $500 over the course of the next year. Now that’s service.

 

Let it be known that I was 90% certain that I was going to change providers at the end of the year (iPhone, Android, etc, I’d already been mentally salivating). I left the store feeling satisfied and certain that I will stay with Verizon. Now I just have to find a new phone that suits me better than my Treo Centro. Not only will I continue to be a Verizon customer (making them $1,000 a year), but I went and told a half dozen coworkers about it, who were all shocked and seemed very excited to make their way down to either a) look into their own plans or b) look into switching over to Verizon. This is an example of a great, genuine way to conduct customer service, and though I am already a brand ambassador of Verizon’s stellar coverage, they have made me an even happier and (more) loyal customer.

 

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Make Friends, Not Followers (Twitter Experiment Part 2)

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Jun 2009

26

When it comes to Twitter, what’s more important: a large list of followers or a small list of friends? I recently launched an experiment to take a qualitative look at Twitter followers and to help answer this question. My goal was to find out whether it makes more sense to just add/follow back thousands of people with little interaction, or to focus on a few friends but foster relationships with them. I used my main twitter account and one I created a few months ago to run the experiment and compare. My account is labeled “Friends”, and the other account is labeled “Followers”. Please keep in mind that this is a qualitative analysis – I only used 2 total accounts, testing just 12 links over the course of 10 days. In the future I’d hope to duplicate this experiment over a month’s time, testing many more links over a multitude of accounts.

 

So what did I find in this experiment? Well, my hypothesis was that with 4X the base of followers, the second account would certainly get more clickthroughs of links, but that the percentage of users clicking through would be higher for my @jaremy “Friends” account, and there would be higher interaction. I tested 12 links at 4 different time slots, Morning (before 12 PST), Lunch (12-2), Afternoon (2-6) and Night (6PM and later). I also categorized each link (Gaming, Misc, Personal, Tech). Here were my findings (all data analyzed using an Excel PivotTable because I’m an enormous dork):

 

Average Twitter Followers

 

1) Make friends, not followers. Period. Not only was return on interaction much higher (6.4% to 1.5%), but the “Friends” account even got more overall clicks than the “Followers account. As measured by daypart, Afternoon and Night had the smallest differential in percentage, but still received 2X the percentage of clicks on the Friends account.

 

Make Friends, Not Followers (Twitter Experiment Part 2)

 

Make Friends, Not Followers (Twitter Experiment Part 2)

 

Make Friends, Not Followers (Twitter Experiment Part 2)

 

2) It’s personal. The largest differential with regards to content type was a personal link I posted about a story I wrote on my college experience. On that post I got a whopping 23% of clickthroughs to my “Friends” account, versus less than 1% on the other account.

 

Twitter is Personal

 

3) With followers, you have to scale BIG. To make significant enough gains, on an account filled with uninterested followers, you would have to have at least 4.5X the number of people following. So if you have an account with 1,000 followers, to market with an account with more *clicks*, you’d have to get 4,500 followers. Which begs the question: why not just interact and make more friends?
4) Friends have greater interaction, too. Over the course of this experiment, I had 10X the interactions (RTs + Replies) with my group of “Friends” than my group of “Followers”. Needless to say, if you have questions or need help or any sort of interaction, having Twitter friends is the way to go. And one of the big ways that I use Twitter is for that interaction.

 

Clearly the best solution for Twitter is to have thousands of friends, all of whom are interested in your content. But if it’s a choice between creating a huge list of followers and actually making connections, I hope this post helps you to use Twitter (and other social networks) in the right way.

 

Let me know what you thought of this experiment in the comments section. Any input would be appreciated, and if you’re interested in helping on a larger-scale experiment sometime in the future, feel free to contact me on Twitter or in the comments.

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My Oberlin Story

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Jun 2009

22

Jaremy Rich Oberlin CollegeOne of my favorite things that my alma mater has done recently as part of their marketing campaign is to create “Oberlin Stories” – a catalog of experiences, with tales about campus life, post-undergrad work and the world, as told by Oberlin Alumni. Ben Jones, the VP of Communications at Oberlin has done a great job transforming the website, and in many ways the image of Oberlin, and has done a great job of bringing out the best part of the college – its outstanding community. I recently decided to do my part and bare all, by rehashing my first visit at Oberlin, speaking to why I fell in love at first sight. I’ve copied a little excerpt below – feel free to click through the link to read the entire story. I hope you enjoy it.

There are thousands of attributes, numbers and statistics that you could chime off that make Oberlin either marginally better or marginally worse than any given institution. Class size, diversity, average high school GPA. What the Princeton Review or the US News and World Report cannot calculate, however is the Oberlin community. It is Oberlin’s student body and its faculty that set it apart from other colleges. It is an idea and a set of ideals that cannot be quantified or added together, but must be seen, felt, experienced. How can you measure the experience of being taught swing dancing in an Oberlin ExCo or learning bowling from the legendary Tom Reid? How do you quantify engaging discussions at 4 a.m. sitting on “Mount Oberlin” in the middle of Winter Term?

 

 

My Oberlin Story

 

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5 Reasons I Hate Podcasts

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Jun 2009

18

kevjumba 5 Reasons I Hate Podcasts

 

I’m sorry, but I won’t watch your podcast/video blog/webcast. Why? I know, I love reading your blog and I love the things you do. Unfortunately your podcast on Youtube is just not the right medium for me. These are five reasons why:

  1. I can’t skim your podcast. Sometimes I just want you to get to the point. I want to see what your key takeaways are and I don’t want to spend 5-10 minutes just to find out. If you can get to the point in 20 seconds you have a chance to keep me interested. If not, I’m gone.
  2. I have a short attention span. It’s hard to change documents when I’m reading a blog. If I’m into an article, I’m reading every word. If I’m listening to a podcast or watching one, it’s very easy for me to navigate away in another browser or another program. Because your picture is taking up the entire screen, you might think that you have my full attention. You don’t. While I’m listening to you speak, I’m also browsing news articles, checking email and finding out what the score of the Yankee game is.
  3. You talk slowly. I’m sorry, but you talk much slower than I read. And you’re just taking up far too much of my time. If I wanted to read 100 blog posts, I could get it done in less than an hour, depending on length and content. If I want to watch 100 webcasts, it’ll take me an entire work day. You’re just not that important.
  4. You’re distracting me. Whether it’s your mannerisms or your facial expression, you’re distracting me from what might otherwise be interesting points. 90% of podcasts are just a tight shot on the host. There’s nothing else for me to focus on. So if you’re throwing your hands up in the air or talking in a monotone voice, you’re just diverting my attention.
  5. You’re not enhancing my experience. If all you’re doing is saying what you’d otherwise write, how does that provide an improved experience for me, the viewer? If there’s no added value for me, why should I suffer the added time and inconvenience? If you’re doing a podcast because you’re too lazy to sit down, write and edit a post, I’m sorry, but that’s just not good enough.

 

So what makes your podcast an upgrade from a blog? I want you to podcast because there is no way that you could possibly present the information with written word. If you can truly grab my attention for 10 minutes, then be my guest. If every point that you make is salient, well-thought and you get me hooked within my first 20 seconds, you have every right to podcast. But these are rare qualities. Don’t podcast for the sake of doing it. Add value. Just like a PowerPoint presentation – if you’re just presenting a bulleted list that you could have sent me in an e-mail, you’re wasting my time.

 

Remember, this isn’t about what’s easier for you. It’s about providing the best experience for your users. If you’re going to podcast, another suggestion is to summarize, and give me the option of reading or watching. Here are a few great examples: Olivier Blanchard at The BrandBuilder, Jun Loayza at Viralogy and Andrew Warner at Mixergy. The picture above, tied with the title of the post may be misleading, but a great example of someone who adds production value, hooks you in early and always seems to make his podcast entertaining because of his facial expressions and mannerisms is KevJumba. He’s a great example of someone who does it right.

 

What are your thoughts on video blogs? Am I on point here, or totally off base?

 

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