I love checklists

(picture from Provide Support blog) 

Checklists are my favorite way of ensuring that i have "EVERYTHING" done.

I recently came across another type of checklist - the type that allows you to check if you are doing things RIGHT. This one was on Customer Service (what could be more important?). It has a somewhat attractive title, but addresses the main ways of communicating with Customers who contact you with and have reached or a near to reach "boiling point" at the beginning of a conversation with a Customer Service Rep.

11 Customer defusing phrases is written by Emily Hunter on a Customer Service blog called "Provide Support". Emily Hunter crafts content on behalf of the call center software experts at Kova Corp.

I'm a shameless cheerleader according to this Guru! ! !

Seth Godin is a person that has always inspired me - mainly by pinpointing in a very straightforward manner what I am doing wrong!

This time he made me aware that I should choose my role in a project very carefully, understand the role and then stick to the rules define my role. Here are the roles when working with a team of brilliant designers and mad scientists:

• Generous skeptic
• Shameless Cheerleader
• Fierce advocate

Take a read here:  Thoughts for the consigliere by Seth Godin

Enjoy and open your mind to be inspired!

The sales funnel for Internet purchases

This is an eye opener. The author Michael Litt of Vidyard and describes for us how to use video to influence the purchasing process on the Internet. Michael breaks down the purchase process into five step:

• Interest
• Learn
• Evaluate
• Justify
• Purchase

This GREAT article from Marketing Land, Michael breaks the sales funnel down by stats and also give excellent insight on how th make Views move through to the Purchase stage.

This is a good article for all those who are struggling with  to convert viewers into purchasers (views into sales).

Sometimes you need to go back to basics!

The begining of the year has some blind traps:

1. We have a new annual budget so we start to think  what to do in January - WRONG! You should start in Summer/Autumn the previous year as January of the comming year is when you need the results! Don't wait till Winter as you will be fully engaged in making the year-end sales targets and closing the fiscal year.
2. Things are slow when it comes to decision making - some people aren't back from Winter vacation while others are still recovering from the New Year's party and are still in holiday mood. Have the decisions you need for January made and signed off against in December - before you break for Christmas!
3. Changes within your organization or with your suppliers/customers - this bring organizational chaos for a while before things start working. People need time to adjust to the new changes. Make your changes in December, so that in January your organization is coming out of the "drop" that changes initially generates.

Neil Patel of Marketing Land does a brilliant job in this article of reminding us about January - he also has 6 brilliant tips on how to keep your web site healthy - have a read. It will be time well spent! the article is called:

6 Huge Marketing Pivots You Might Have To Make In The Next 12 Months

The difference between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the world's problems

"The difference between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the world's problems "

is a quote from Mahatma Gandhi.

Tom Asacker talked about it in a TED presentation titled "Why TED Talks don't change people's behaviors". Take a look at it - very interesting stuff!

I too have watched the passionate speach by Sir Ken Robinson on "How schools kill creativity". I too have never utilized that knowledge to make a profound change in the system of education - I have quoted him - as his story embeds itself in the mind.

But to get back to Tom Asacker, our brain works in a specific way:

• aestetics (the look and feel of what we percieve) that stimulate our sensory pleasure - nice looking goods or nature
• controls  (inforamtion that gives a sense of being empowered) data that gives us the feeling that we are in control
• identity (the story we tell ourselves by ourselves - who we think we are) and this moves our desires

 and that is the path that the brain takes to keep us "powered up" to move forward.

So lots of links today - enjoy!

A great new microsystem that is affordable

5pillows - Help Desk made easy

The thing I like about microsystems as an IT Architecture technology, is that it gives you as the business owner the opportunity to manage change in an agile way.

If it doesn't work, then you fix it or step back and take another route! This is ideal for small and medium size businesses that often don't have neither the time nor financial resources to analise their specific business needs - BUT they always know what they want to achieve.

 



I have been looking at 5Pillows recently. This is a GREAT microsystem that you can add on to your
business to better manage your Customer Experience without having to invest time and money in a complicated system that requires even more resources to use and manage.

5Pillows is built in the philosophy of microsystem architecture and allows a small or medium size company to:

1. Manage the Helpdesk (ticketing, queues, reports and info)
2. Manage both gmail emails, FB and twitter feeds all in one place (voice is apparently coming soon)
3. Maintain history of correspondence with Customers
4. Track NPS (Nett Promoter Score) index on your work with Customers

Have a look for yourself - you can use the system for free for 15 days, and then choose a package that suites your business. They also maintain a GREAT blog that really shows that they understand the meaning of the Customer's perspective

A good search result is one that gives you what you are looking for

Ever wondered why search engines give you results that are either out of context or just not meaningful? Google has openly told content providers what to do to give the users usefull search results. So why don't they do it?

Unfortunately, instead of concentrating on writing good content, most writers are writing text to position the domain or web page. Google talks about his over and over again - one of my favourite Youtube videos is a talk by a lead for search and discovery on google play. What amaizes me most is that there are only 30k views todate. I would have thought that this is the most important subject that website owners, app owners and people responsible for SEO should be interested in.

WRONG!

So why are we not interested in listening to Google tell us the way the architect their algorythms to provide search results?

I'm a google fan

You can love or hate Google, but it is hard not to enjoy and appreciate the products that Google puts onto the market.

Having used many different solutions from email to blogging, I always find myself coming back to Google Apps. Why? - Because it works. Because it is simple. Because Google Apps address my needs as a private individual and running a small business.

Just to make things clear - I know that Google is a mega huge Corporation that is generating massive profits for its stakeholders. But at the end of the day, it shares a tiny little bit of its tools with me, the SoHo type users and makes my life better. I wish other large Businesses could do the same as opposed to there PR departments spending money trying to convince me that they are doing something beneficial for society.

Have a GREAT day!