Continue reading »]]> As you may know, I’m a big fan of Twitter for a variety of reasons.  However, my favorite reason is to create relationships with people and companies with whom you otherwise would not have contact.  Take two recent examples of excellent customer service by two different companies with a presence on Twitter.

First, an experience with Granite City Food & Brewery (@gcfb on Twitter).  I’ve recently committed to making running a part of my regular routine, and as part of this commitment I’ve become much more conscious about what I eat.  To that end, I like to check the nutritional information of restaurants before I eat there, just to get an idea of my options.  It turns out Granite City doesn’t post their nutritional information online.  I tweeted about this, and it wasn’t too long before I got a direct message from Granite City offering me contact information for the proper person to contact about obtaining the nutritional information.  We exchanged a few tweets, and all was good.  I’ve always been a fan of Granite City, and their reaching out to me just increased my fandom.

The second was an equally satisfying experience in the end, but started with frustration on my part, and involved Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets on Twitter).  You see the line was über long, and wasn’t moving.  The staff was cranking out the online orders, and the line grew to some 60+ people standing staring at the staff.  I tweeted about my frustration, and it wasn’t long before I had a response from Chipotle asking me to fill out a form on their website.  I did this, exchanged a few more tweets, and was satisfied.  Fast forward a few days, and I get an email from their marketing department indicating:

I agree with you that there must be a better way to handle the mix of customers and online orders. I apologize for the long wait that you experienced as a result of our poor customer management, I can understand how this would be frustrating. I’ll forward your comments along to our store and local area managers so they can help our teams to better manage these competing needs.

Since we let you down I’d like to try to make it up to you. If you’ll give me your address I’ll send you a Burrito Buck – good for one free burrito, bowl, salad or tacos entree. I’m confident that your next experience will be much more pleasant.

Very cool, and very responsive.  Despite an otherwise disappointing experience, Chipotle reached out to me, validated my feelings, and indicated they’d be discussing their handling of future similar situations.

Often times, when I’ve had a poor experience, I just want to know my concern has been heard, and that my concerns will be used to make my next experiences better.   Both companies did an excellent job of reaching out to me, and addressing my concerns.  Best of all both companies reached out to me without me having to reach out to them directly.  Proactive customer service is even better than the sit back and wait model that seems to be so common today.

Continue reading »]]> It’s a good question. Here’s the quick and dirty answer: find me on twitter, if you’re looking to see what’s on my mind, and interact with me. I’m not as prolific as some people, but I’m definitely no slouch (just over 9,231 tweets). It’s there that I’ve met some amazing people. They’re all pretty awesome, and many keep up a blog in some fashion or another. I’ve added most of the links to the sidebar… although, it seems that I’m missing a few. I’ll update them as I come across them. In the meantime, happy reading. And if you know of a link that I should include, let me know in the comments.

Ohh, and watch for an exciting post coming from me this weekend… something about social media usage and advertising. I know, I know… such an exciting topic. Actually, I wrote a post about turning finances upside down… it’ll post at 8am Central on Monday.  I’m also working on a post that stirred up some discussion on Facebook in the last week about the concept of “the conflict of tradition vs. necessary future practices” into which it’ll be fun to delve. Who am I kidding? I wrote a post about being allergic to love… scheduled to post on the 14th at 8am Central.

Continue reading »]]> All this social networking can be intimidating.  In the struggle to stay on top of the two major sites Facebook and Twitter, it has been increasingly common for the same status to serve both services.  I’m all for it.  In fact, I do this for our company page and personally.  Yet, most get it all wrong!

Like I said, I’m all for implementing a “touch it once” philosophy when it comes to posting to Facebook and Twitter.  However, I’m all for it being done correctly.  You may be asking yourself “there’s a right way and a wrong way?”  I’m here to tell you that indeed there is a wrong way and a right way.

First, the wrong way.  It seems simple enough to enable the Facebook to Twitter application.  Using this application, offered by Facebook, posts your Facebook status to Twitter.  However, when it posts the status it also posts a link.  The link directs users to your status on Facebook.  No more information is obtained by clicking on the link.  Fundamentally, links should be informational, and the use of a link to direct me to the exact information I just read is inefficient, and inconsiderate of your reader’s time!

Now, the right way.  You should be posting from Twitter to Facebook.  Why? Because Twitter is set up to share 140-character messages (similar to a status in Facebook).  Using any number of applications – Selective Tweets, a Facebook app; Seesmic, a standalone social network app; and my favorite TweetDeck, a standalone social network app – you can update your Twitter status and your Facebook status (even multiple accounts – I have both personal and work Twitter and Facebook accounts) from one place.  You can easily share links that give context to your status and not send readers to links that share no more information.

Why is this important?  Because, when providing me with links that offer no other information, it’s like crying wolf.  I eventually tune out your links, and stop clicking on them all together.  Which means, when you do provide an informational link, I’m likely to miss it altogether because you’ve cried wolf so many times!

Take a serious look at how you’re implementing your social networking.  If you’re using Facebook to update Twitter, you need to understand what the Twitter user is experiencing, and how you’re negatively impacting their experiences!  If you’re trying to reach both social networks and their users, you need to act like you belong.