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Posts Tagged ‘customer service’
 Good customer service is hard enough to come by these days. Everyone’s in a rush to check items off their to-do lists and sometimes simple customer service takes a back seat. Recently I experienced such amazing customer service that I needed to share.
Busted. Old. Cracked. Broken. I am not talking about me; I am describing the mangled kitchen drawer that sat on my kitchen counter. Apparently the Gorilla glue that the previous owner had used just couldn’t take another tug. I needed a whole new kitchen drawer.
I assumed a quick call to the local home improvement store would be sufficient. My kitchen cabinets are pretty standard; surely there would be an easy replacement. I took the measurements and made some calls.
First off, as a customer and someone who is not handy at all, I expected to reach someone knowledgeable and willing to help. All the branding and commercials with smiling associates helping folks like me become DIY experts makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But what I encountered wasn’t quite so warm. Or fuzzy. Here’s an excerpt:
Me: “I have a broken kitchen drawer. Here are the measurements. I looked up on the internet and saw that you had one slightly bigger but not the size I need, do you carry this size?”
Home improvement store (after being transferred to two different people): “Nope. That’s not a standard size we carry. Sorry.” (hung up)
Once they knew they didn’t have the size I needed, it wasn’t their problem, and I felt I was being pushed aside so the next call, person, task could be tackled, without any suggestions about how to solve the problem. I was feeling pretty frustrated. So I called a store that specializes in cabinetry.
Me: “I have a broken kitchen drawer. Here are the measurements. Can you help me?”
Local cabinetry place: “We can’t do it if we didn’t install it. Sorry.”
Me: “Do you know of anyone who can do this?”
Local cabinetry place: “I would go to the local lumber yard. They may do custom drawers.”
This was better. I now had some sort of direction. At least the local cabinetry place was helpful enough to present me with an option, but I still felt like I was being pushed off on someone else because my problem didn’t fit a particular mold for them.
So I made another call. (more…)
Tags: customer service, digital marketing, facebook, facebook for business, marketing
Posted in Blog | No Comments »
 Backstage at Miss America A SilverTech client of 11 years, MissAmerica.org gets tons of traffic during its high-profile event. Our job was to make sure all aspects of the site, including real-time updates and more – ran smoothly so online audiences could stay connected with the event.
Our team diverted insane amounts of web traffic to six different locations to ensure every single web user had access to the nearly-constant updates. We worked directly with the media and photographers to keep fresh information flowing through MissAmerica.org.
We also got some great backstage shots – in fact I even got to select the front page photo of the newly-crowned Miss America Mallory Hytes-Hagan.
One of our favorite parts about our jobs is that we have our clients’ back no matter what. We’ll go to Las Vegas (or anywhere, really) to make sure they can focus on priority number one – which in this case, meant producing a top-class event. We’re excited we were able to lend a hand by managing all the backend tech concerns – and have a front row seat for one amazing evening.
Tags: customer service, Miss America, Nick Soggu
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As a matter of creed, nearly everything we as digital marketers do is highly measurable with clear ties to return on investment. Because of this digital marketers have a reputation and expectation to track everything. But, could the best uses of new media be too traditional to track effectively? (more…)
Tags: customer service, Marc Frechette, social media
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Image source: flickr.com/codoaustin
I wish I could dig up Elvis, reanimate him and make him record a new album. I want to develop and host the official Elvis website, manage his social media campaign and promote his return album release. Not just so I could own the rights and make a fortune, but to stage the biggest pop-culture-geek-fest-cloud-war ever. (more…)
Tags: cloud, customer service, e-commerce
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You find a coupon online for a free muffin and coffee at a small bakery you’ve never thought to try. That Monday, you break your normal routine to wait in line at the bakery only to learn that the coffee and muffins have run out. You’re late for work, hungry and uncaffeinated. The baker apologizes and offers you another coupon you have no intention of ever using.
Marketing efforts can be too good. We’ve discussed plans for dealing with downtime. In this section of SilverTech’s ‘Avoiding Disaster from Downtime’ series we take a look at the curious pitfalls of a campaign that is ‘too successful’ and the importance of strategic marketing and infrastructure partnerships.
A ‘so good, it kills’ campaign generates an overwhelming increase in consumer action, leading to reduced quality of service and cognitive dissonance. The common, detrimental and avoidable mistakes often made during a campaign result in traffic spikes capable of overloading the company’s infrastructure and ruining the brand to both new and loyal customers, thus rendering it ‘so good, it kills.’
Read how your bakery distaste was the result of a disasterously good campaign and a disconnect between marketing and infrastructure. (more…)
Tags: Avoiding disaster form downtime, customer service, infrastructure, Marc Frechette, promotion
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This is a survival guide for a digital communications response from a web outage to stolen client data. This post’s tone is light-hearted, but the reality is quite serious. No failure, no matter how improbable, is impossible. Proactive planning of your communications in the cases of specific problems before they happen can be the difference between an understandable downtime and utter disaster.
A glance at communications disasters and debacles from a major apparel brand’s scramble for recovery after a week-long web outage to the Twitter lampooning of stumbling oil giant BP, highlights how unforgiving our ‘always connected’ consumers are of any lax, or lag in communication, and how potent the improbable can be.
Five years ago your team could take a day to evaluate, prepare and disseminate the official response for almost anything. Today’s digital powered public demands instant response (or they’ll start making one for you.) They want a response now, and they want it across the plethora of channels they use. The only way to respond on your public’s instantaneous deadline is to have planned your response before the panic.
Zombies at your door: A Proactive Digital PR Party game
The goal of this PR party game is to form effective communications procedures for the situation presented, no matter how ridiculous. Zombies are a fun starting point because the situation is a) ridiculous and b) pushes the limits of communication.
As a game, it’s a great way for your team to have some fun without trust falls, not that there’s anything wrong with trust falls. (There is.) As a practice, this skill and forethought puts your organization in a state of readiness so that you can respond clearly, quickly and effectively to any situation.
The Case of Zombies:
Zombies have descended on your facility, making you, your products and services unavailable until the hordes recede. You may be back up and running at daybreak, or the curse of Romero could take your business down permanently. You’re not sure.
Aside from a cricket bat or S Mart chainsaw, your plan should include these 5 key elements, and be built with my number survival-school secret for preplanning success.
(more…)
Tags: Avoiding disaster form downtime, communication strategy, corporate social media, customer service, facebook, Marc Frechette, public relations, social media, twitter
Posted in Blog | 2 Comments »
As an avid coffee drinker and vegan (yes, you heard me… no dairy products by choice), I live for Starbucks, who offers soymilk as an alternative.
Starbucks caffeine addicts will tell you that few things beat the sweltering heat better than the sweet relief of one of their Frappuccinos. When the hot summer days roll around I find myself wishing, hoping, praying and begging for Starbucks to find a way to make this holy-grail of coffee concoctions non-dairy. For years there has been nothing but 90 degree days lacking cold, frothy, caffeinated beverages to break the heat. (more…)
Tags: customer service, facebook, google, Starbucks, twitter
Posted in Blog | 5 Comments »
If so, I may know where it is.
I had one of the most disturbing experiences I have ever had this past weekend. We found a human tooth (with a filled cavity and all) in our Chinese food. More specifically, it was nestled inside the last fried Wonton in the box.
We were having dinner with close friends and their relatives when all of a sudden my friend’s seventy-something year old mother-in-law spit out the tooth on her plate with a strange look on her face. Not knowing what it was at first, we asked her if she was okay. She looked at the tooth and said something hard was in her Wonton. When she discovered it was a tooth, we all looked at each other in disbelief and then inspected her mouth to see if maybe it was hers? (more…)
Tags: Boston University, clients, consumer, customer service, dining experience, facebook, monitor social media, re-tweet, social media, Tweet, twitter
Posted in Blog | 11 Comments »
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