I have learned (as many of us have) that customer service at most companies generally sucks. Companies are in love with frustrating & endless voicemail trees (hey, at least if you're going to subject us to the VM tree, make it so that if someone presses "0", it goes to a real live person. Please?) and the customer service reps are usually just there to tell you why you're wrong and how they have to stick to their policy.
So I've found a way to bypass this mess and go straight to the top. As a business owner myself, I have realized that senior management generally does care about the customer's experience. I think they're the only ones that realize a customer's revenue is what drives their jobs. Using my technique (which I'm about to tell you about - hold your breath!) I've been able to communicate with the CEO or appropriate VP of basically any publicly traded company with which I have a quarrel.
Now, keep in mind that what I'm about to show you is kind of like Karate. If you're suddenly empowered with these great tools but you don't know how to use them, you give the whole thing a bad name. So please use this newfound knowledge judiciously. Think of it as a GNU public license for a process instead of an application: You can use what I'm about to tell you, but first you have to promise to try going through the normal customer support system. (It makes a better story to the CEO anyway when you can tell him or her how & why their customer support system sucks, and use specific examples).
OK enough lead in, here's what I do. Let's say, for example, that you are having a problem with your mortgage company, as I recently did. I was on direct deposit with Washington Mutual, and the payment was supposed to draft out on the 15th of every month. Well, their collections agency kindly sent me a letter on the 11th saying I hadn't paid... this is 4 days before my autodraft (which they set up) was supposed to happen.
So after getting nowhere with their customer service folks, I took out my secret weapon: The first thing I do is go to www.Hoovers.com because first, I have to know who the executives are. Hoovers is not the only place for this information, but it's a great place to get it. Although they don't really publish it, they have a "lite" annual subscription plan that costs about $300 that'll get you access to all this information (Note: I am NOT affiliated w/ them, I just like their service). So using Hoovers I was able to learn lots of things... for example that WaMu had $15 Billion in revenue in 2004. Not a small player by any means. I also clicked on the "people" tab to learn who the executives were. I learned that Kerry K. Killinger is their CEO and Stephen J. (Steve) Rotella is their President & COO. So now I had the names I needed. This is the magic step part #1.
I have learned (as many of us have) that customer service at most companies generally sucks. Companies are in love with frustrating & endless voicemail trees (hey, at least if you're going to subject us to the VM tree, make it so that if someone presses "0", it goes to a real live person. Please?) and the customer service reps are usually just there to tell you why you're wrong and how they have to stick to their policy.
So I've found a way to bypass this mess and go straight to the top. As a business owner myself, I have realized that senior management generally does care about the customer's experience. I think they're the only ones that realize a customer's revenue is what drives their jobs. Using my technique (which I'm about to tell you about - hold your breath!) I've been able to communicate with the CEO or appropriate VP of basically any publicly traded company with which I have a quarrel.
Now, keep in mind that what I'm about to show you is kind of like Karate. If you're suddenly empowered with these great tools but you don't know how to use them, you give the whole thing a bad name. So please use this newfound knowledge judiciously. Think of it as a GNU public license for a process instead of an application: You can use what I'm about to tell you, but first you have to promise to try going through the normal customer support system. (It makes a better story to the CEO anyway when you can tell him or her how & why their customer support system sucks, and use specific examples).
OK enough lead in, here's what I do. Let's say, for example, that you are having a problem with your mortgage company, as I recently did. I was on direct deposit with Washington Mutual, and the payment was supposed to draft out on the 15th of every month. Well, their collections agency kindly sent me a letter on the 11th saying I hadn't paid... this is 4 days before my autodraft (which they set up) was supposed to happen.
So after getting nowhere with their customer service folks, I took out my secret weapon: The first thing I do is go to www.Hoovers.com because first, I have to know who the executives are. Hoovers is not the only place for this information, but it's a great place to get it. Although they don't really publish it, they have a "lite" annual subscription plan that costs about $300 that'll get you access to all this information (Note: I am NOT affiliated w/ them, I just like their service). So using Hoovers I was able to learn lots of things... for example that WaMu had $15 Billion in revenue in 2004. Not a small player by any means. I also clicked on the "people" tab to learn who the executives were. I learned that Kerry K. Killinger is their CEO and Stephen J. (Steve) Rotella is their President & COO. So now I had the names I needed. This is the magic step part #1.
But having the names doesn't help much if you don't have their email address. So this is the REAL genius step. :) One thing you can try doing is just sending an email to several variations, like firstname.lastname@company.com, etc., and this sometimes works. If you're going to try it this way, you should put the other variations likefirstinitiallastname@company.com, etc., in the BCC line, not the TO or CC lines. That way they won't know you're guessing. However, here's the better way: First, try a search in Google. For example, you can try typing "@washingtonmutual.com" to see if any email addresses come up in the search results. However, that usually does not work. And in this case, I didn't even know if it was truly "washingtonmutual.com" or if it might've been "wamu.com" or "wamu.net".
But what I realized one day after about a year of pondering this issue was that most companies put press releases on their sites. And most press releases have the name of a PR publicist who usually uses the same email addressing moniker as the CEO will use. So if you can just find the name to their PR contact - say it's Jane Doe, and you see that Jane Doe is atjane.doe@company.com, then you know how to address an email to the CEO. And here's an easy way to do that: Just go to Google and type in your search box "Press site:wamu.com". That "site:" designation will search for the keyword "press" ONLY within the domain "wamu.com". (You can see the actual search here.) This saves you hours of poking around their site. And bingo! Up pops this result URL, which lists, at the bottom, their PR contact as JoAnn DeGrande - and what do you know! Her email is
joann.degrande@wamu.net
Now we're talking! Joann just gave me the keys to email the COO - I now know it's firstname.lastname@wamu.net !!! So I sent Steve an email, and he wrote back (on his blackberry no less) within 10 minutes. Here's what he wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Rotella, Steve [mailto:steve.rotella@wamu.net]
Sent: Saturday, February 19, 2005 2:48 PM
To: Daniel@DROdio.com
Cc: Gross, Jeremy; Davis, Brad
Subject: Re: From Wamu customer - erroneous collection notice
I am truly sorry for the problems you have encountered and that we have not met you expectations. And, no customer is lowly to us. You are our highest priority.
I will get this to an executive who will deal with it first thing Monday. I am traveling but will ask him to keep me informed.
Again, accept my apologies for the problems.
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld
So there you have it - problem solved (thanks Steve, in case you ever see this, for your fast response - at least someone at WaMu cares about customers!).
Like I said... use this tool with care & caution! And spread the word, maybe companies will get rid of their voicemail hell trees and actually teach customer care reps to "care" about the customer's needs, not just repeat the company mantra.
There's so much buzz about social media that you're probably sick of hearing it.
But for all the buzz, I always have people asking me, "How can I use it to my benefit?"
To answer that question, I have to explain exactly what social media is (at least, to me), why it's so powerful, and what that means to you. So finally, here's my take on social media, and how you can leverage it in your business, right now.
A definition of social media:
First and most importantly: Social media is not advertising. In fact, people often think of social media like an ad in a telephone book. But that's wrong. You don't place ads in social media. Instead, social media is a tool, like the telephone. In fact, the telephone was an early example of social media. But with social media, it's like you have a telephone that's connected to thousands of phone receivers, instead of just one. And not only that, but social media is asynchronous, meaning you don't have to be talking to those thousands of people at the same time - they can listen to you when they want to. And whenever you remove time from the equation, your message becomes infinitely more powerful, because it lasts forever instead of happening at one point on a timeline (see my related talk at a Georgetown MBA class on the importance of capturing content).
There's so much buzz about social media that you're probably sick of hearing it.
But for all the buzz, I always have people asking me, "How can I use it to my benefit?"
To answer that question, I have to explain exactly what social media is (at least, to me), why it's so powerful, and what that means to you. So finally, here's my take on social media, and how you can leverage it in your business, right now.
A definition of social media:
First and most importantly: Social media is not advertising. In fact, people often think of social media like an ad in a telephone book. But that's wrong. You don't place ads in social media. Instead, social media is a tool, like the telephone. In fact, the telephone was an early example of social media. But with social media, it's like you have a telephone that's connected to thousands of phone receivers, instead of just one. And not only that, but social media is asynchronous, meaning you don't have to be talking to those thousands of people at the same time - they can listen to you when they want to. And whenever you remove time from the equation, your message becomes infinitely more powerful, because it lasts forever instead of happening at one point on a timeline (see my related talk at a Georgetown MBA class on the importance of capturing content).
So, my definition of social media is this: A way to transfer knowledge and expertise out of your head, and into the hands of the people that want it when they're making a decision that could be affected by what you know.
You must remember that social media is a tool, not an ad. And it requires an investment of your time to be leveraged effectively. In fact, that's the biggest barrier that keeps most people from really using it to their benefit: You have to learn new skills, and you have to dedicate time to utilizing those skills. You can't just buy an ad and be done with it.
These barriers are enough to keep most people from using social media effectively.
The benefits, however, are enormous. The funny thing about social media is that anyone can do it, because everyone has expertise in something. And at its core, that's all social media is: sharing your expertise with the world in a structured way.
The good news is that you can pick & choose certain ways to get involved in social media that are easier and require less of a commitment to get started, and graduate from there as you see results. Here's a list of some options, from easiest to hardest:
Start a blog:
Back in 2007 I wrote about why Henry Ford would love blogs. I recommend you read that article to understand the benefits of blogging. Your goal should be to become a subject matter expert in the eyes of Google, so when people search for keywords, your name comes up. The narrower your topic, the easier that will be.
Difficulty rating: Easy. 2 on a scale of 10 (10 is hardest)
Time commitment: Medium. 2 hours per week, minimum. You must build up 100+ blogs before you'll be picked up by Google for your blogging.
Tools: Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress
Make Videos:
The power of videos is often underrated. Here's an example: I made a YouTube real estate video titled "Making successful lowball offers". It's been viewed over 10,000 times (remember what I wrote above about social media being asynchronous and letting people consume your content on their time? 9,000 views is a perfect example.) That video has paid handsome dividends over the years, as clients have contacted me asking me to represent them.
Consider, for a moment, the significance of this: Just from making one YouTube video, which took me about an hour to produce, prospective real estate clients contacted me vs. me making cold calls trying to find clients. I call it the "celebrity effect" - just like we all feel that we know Angelina Jolie because we've seen her in the movies, clients felt like they knew me from watching my videos, and more importantly, they knew what knowledge I had that they thought could benefit them.
Want some tangible proof? I made this video in 2006, four years ago. And yet, here's an email I received just today from someone who just watched the video: and letting people consume your content on their time? 9,000 views is a perfect example.) That video has paid handsome dividends over the years, as clients have contacted me asking me to represent them.
Consider, for a moment, the significance of this: Just from making one YouTube video, which took me about an hour to produce, prospective real estate clients contacted me vs. me making cold calls trying to find clients. I call it the "celebrity effect" - just like we all feel that we know Angelina Jolie because we've seen her in the movies, clients felt like they knew me from watching my videos, and more importantly, they knew what knowledge I had that they thought could benefit them.
Want some tangible proof? I made this video in 2006, four years ago. And yet, here's an email I received just today from someone who just watched the video:
And he's in Seattle! He's contacting me from Seattle! There must be at least 25,000 real estate agents in Washington state, and yet he's reaching out to me, on the opposite coast of the USA, because the video was so powerful to him. And to reinforce my telephone analogy, it's like I've been on the telephone for over four years, with over 9,000 people, with just this one video alone. Now that's the power of social media.
My friend Frank LLosa, also a real estate broker, has done amazing, cutting edge things with videos, as evidenced by his "wheel estate cam".
Difficulty rating: Medium. 3 on a scale of 10 (get past your fear of appearing on camera, of thinking you have to make it 'perfect', and of uploading videos to YouTube)
Time commitment: Low. 15 minutes+ per video; make as many as you'd like.
Tools: social media bag, Kodak Zi8, YouTube, Vimeo
Tweet:
I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter. I recently nuked my following list because there was too much noise for me to use it effectively.
However, it can be a very powerful way to contact people that would otherwise be inaccessible to you. One tip for Twitter newbies - use it to search for content, instead of feeling like you have to use it to create content. For example, do you love Costa Rica? You can see what people are saying about it, right now. Maybe you need a job in Washington DC? You can search for that, too.
Difficulty rating: Low. 1 on a scale of 10
Time commitment: High. Getting into the habit of using Twitter can be difficult.
Tools: Twitter, CoTweet for business users, TweetDeck and HootSuite for power and mobile users
Facebook
I'm not much of a Facebook user personally, but many people are. I like to run Facebook through TweetDeck and just keep that open all day. It's a way to get updates on what's happening on Facebook without having to go to the site.
Facebook Groups and Fan Pages are a good way to spread the word of whatever your business or cause is, and get people to sign up as fans. I recently did this for AppMakr and with 1410Q, so we'll see how well it works for us. I also run all my tweets through Facebook, so instead of creating content in Facebook directly, when I post a tweet on Twitter, it shows up on Facebook.
If you have good tips on how to leverage Facebook, please leave them in the comments below, as I don't have any big ones here.
Difficulty rating: Low. 2 on a scale of 10
Time commitment: Varies. You'll get out of it what you put into it.
Tools: Facebook
LinkedIn
I'm not a big LinkedIn fan, mostly because of its limited utility to actually contact people from the tool. It's like a tease to me - you can find many people on LinkedIn, but you can't actually contact them. I much prefer Jigsaw, which I recommend for all salespeople as a powerful secret weapon to be able to contact anyone.
Difficulty rating: Low. 2 on a scale of 10
Time commitment: Varies. You'll get out of it what you put into it.
Tools: LinkedIn
Mobile:
Mobile is an emerging part of social media. Many of you know that I co-founded PointAbout, a company that makes high-end custom iPhone and Android applications for brands like The Washington Post, Gannett, Kaplan, Burger King, and Cars.com. We've also launched a service called AppMakr, which lets anyone make their own iPhone app.
Most people just refer to mobile in the singular sense, but mobile is actually comprised of three main areas, which we call the "mobile pyramid". Here's a chart we made to describe all three:
If you want to get into mobile, you'll have to have a strategy for all three areas. For now, really digging into mobile is an advanced area of social media, although tools like AppMakr are making it much easier. But you'll probably want to save this one for last, as the mobile distribution channel still has a smaller footprint than the web (at least in the US). If you're progressive, though, mobile is a very hot and fast-growing area you should focus on.
Difficulty rating: High. 10 on a scale of 10 (or 4 on a scale of 10 with a tool like AppMakr)
Time commitment: High up-front, then low ongoing
Tools: AppMakr, PointAbout
I'm sure many of you will have comments on other tools or approaches to social media, and I'd love to hear them. Please leave your comments below.
Yesterday, my iPhone stopped working. No warning, it just stopped receiving calls. I could still make calls, but not receive any.