Adoption of social media is in transition as brands try to understand their place in the connected consumer conversation online.  What may have begun as a means to support an advertising campaign or to syndicate the company’s news is met with the reality that, for a growing population, consumers are expecting the brands they do business with not only to have a presence and listen to the conversations happening there, but to also offer a resolution through social channels to the problems they’re having.  If a company posts something on its Facebook page about a product, the expectation is that they’re also able to see the customer complaining about the service their experiencing or problems they’re having with a product – and respond. Go to Facebook and search for the page of any Fortune 500 brand, and you won’t get half way down the wall without seeing this dynamic in action.

Fortunately, companies are coming to the realization that social channels are customer channels.

But, building a system that can adapt to having the entire conversation requires skills and resources beyond the marketing, advertising or PR teams.  This is where those in the customer service business can be the missing link between promotion and satisfaction.  They’re the group that takes hundreds of calls each day, with access to the customer database and history, and are those responsible for making things right.  And, for PR and marketing teams, they can be your best asset when managing the connected conversations in social channels.

But, integration and collaboration takes a dedicated approach and executive-level buy-in, among other things.  While each brand is different in social media, with its own set of assets and liabilities, I’ve found that these foundational elements can serve as a starting point to helping the brand be able to manage the entire conversation:

• Executive buy-in and support (this can grow over time)
• Cross-team coordination and collaboration
• Flexibility of internal processes to help facilitate and not impede issue resolution
• A technology layer to facilitate the exchange of information quickly (email at first, until a more robust solution is necessary)

Once the philosophical foundations are agreed upon, there are a few tangible next steps that can get the internal collaboration started:

Activating a Social Engagement Program:

1. Quantify the level of discussion about your brand online by individuals – a Twitter search can give you a baseline of the discussion, but search other platforms as well to get a broader view
2. Measure the overall sentiment about your brand or product online (Radian6, Sysomos, Evolve24, etc.)
3. Identify the top three to five issues people have with your brand each day; keep track of the specific words that are used to express those issues – they’ll come in handy in your SEM work
4. Take a handful of the issues, making up a representative sample by issue type, from the entire group of issues and analyze the discussion
5. Map an engagement and resolution plan for each issue, making note of the internal processes necessary to reach resolution
6. Once you’ve accounted for a clear resolution path within the company to quickly get the issue addressed and resolved at the speed of the social conversation, then you can begin to activate a proactive program for addressing these issues on a broader scale

There’s a technology layer to consider when rolling out an integrated program – from monitoring, to triage to responding and reporting.  The tools continue to evolve, and the one that’s right for you depends on your company’s structure.  Jack Serpa, EVP of sales & marketing at Engage121 recently discussed one of these here.

The companies that will win in this new reality are those who can bridge the expectation chasm.  And, many companies are doing this already.  Some have entire customer service teams dedicated to managing the social conversation.  Most of those were forced into it for various reasons but have learned more and have gotten closer to their customers in the process.  Some are using these channels to preempt or minimize issues before they see them online or hear them at the call center.  And, some are creating hybrid teams made up of people with the skills and experience across the business areas necessary to fulfill the entire customer experience – from promotion through satisfaction and recommendation.

Most large brands have to deal with this reality from the moment they open up a social channel.  The more customers you have, and the more consumer your business focus and the more frequent your billing cycle, the more likely you’ll need to prepare to have the entire brand conversation – the good, promotional parts that are fun for the advertising team to think us ideas for, the bad, customer complaints that the customer service team have to deal with and the unimaginable, brand-eroding conversations that are shared and gain steam and can impact operational decisions.

With the comment, like or ReTweet button just a click away, consumers are connecting with brands directly in ways they couldn’t before.  Eventually every consumer-facing brand will have to address the entire brand conversation – the good, the bad and the unimaginable.  Those that can will win.  Those that can’t will have a hard time building a lasting presence.

And stay tuned to the Common Sense Blog later this week when Brad Mays discusses more about the expectation chasm and how companies can begin to have the entire brand conversation with customers in social channels. This will be a follow-up to his previous post on the subject.

The workshop group and the following discussion on twitter concluded that medical education should:

• address an actual educational gap, and not reinvent the wheel
• define and refine clinical practice
• be ongoing, have varied formats, and be cross-speciality
• revisit a message regularly and consistently across channels
• address the different learning styles of the audience
• be field-tested and use tools to better measure quality and outcomes

Here at WCG we believe in integrated communications and apply the ‘pre-commerce’ model of evaluating outcomes not just outputs across all our activities for clients, including medical communications. We believe that educational outcomes can be measured as further message dissemination as this demonstrates ongoing assessment of data and individual ambassadorship.  We also feel that digital technology enables personalization of learning to different learning styles and assessment of quality and outcomes. Our ‘education through interaction’ approach also leverages clients’ cross-functional data and insights, and focuses on doctor-patient interaction and interaction between healthcare professional roles (e.g. nurses and GPs; primary and secondary care professionals; different specialisms).

According to the dictionary, the word Curate is defined as:

cu·rate/ˈkyo͝orit/
Verb: Select, organize, and look after the items in (a collection or exhibition)

Image courtesy Greenprophet.com

The noun form of the verb “curate” is “curation” and it translates into the act of “selecting, organizing and looking after items in (a collection or exhibition).” For hundreds of years, museums and art galleries hired people called curators who decided which pieces/exhibits to show and which to tuck in the basement. This makes sense because if a museum were to display all of its art or all of its collectibles at the same time, you wouldn’t be able to make your through the physical building. You also wouldn’t have the benefit of seeing similar pieces or periods being grouped together. Instead, you’d get a hodgepodge of things that ended up looking like clutter versus art or something educational.

Over the last few years, this concept of curation has enjoyed a resurgence as it is being applied to content. Given the trillions of megabytes of information that make up the internet, you can only imagine how hard it is to find anything of value out there. Without this problem of course, there wouldn’t be a need for Google or Bing. But with so much data out there, oftentimes a search engine isn’t enough. We need human beings to help us curate content with computers assisting us on the back end.

Examples

All types of data can benefit from curation. In fact, I’ll argue that data becomes exponentially more valuable once it has been curated. Here are a few examples:

• Slide presentations: some people think that if some slides are good, more are better. Not true. Just today I took a 100 slide presentation down to 25 slides. It was hard deciding which slides to consolidate and which to put in the appendix. But six hours later, I had a strategy deck that was easily three times more effective at telling the right story.
• Twitter streams: there are over 200 million Twitter accounts out there. Some are valuable. Most are not. Unfortunately, finding the ones that are valuable is a little like looking for a needle in the haystack… unless of course you have the right tools or know the right people to follow. An easy way to find people that tweet about a particular topic is to use Listorious. It’s not perfect but it will give you a good general sense of who’s talking about what. Once you find a few people you like, start looking at the lists they follow. Twitter lists are a fantastic form of curation.
• Photos: I love taking pictures. Because pictures are mostly digital now and storage space is either free or next to free, you think it might make sense to just upload all of my pictures — good and bad. But by doing so, I make it hard for people to find the wheat amongst the chaff. In fact, I ran a contest several months ago to help me find the best of the best (uber-curation) in my Flickr account. The result was the pictures you see below.

Why Companies Should Care

While many businesses have learned the value of outsourcing over the last 30 years, many don’t believe in ceding control of their content to third parties. I’ll caveat that by saying, many companies do trust their agencies to help them create content but almost all of it is blessed by the brand and is white labeled as the brands own content. What doesn’t happen much is companies endorsing other peoples’ content. Or better yet, curating third party content on their “owned” or “rented” properties like their website or Facebook pages.

The biggest argument I hear against using unbranded content is, “what if they say something bad about me,” or worse yet, “what if they talk about my competitor?” But here’s the rub… people trust third party endorsements much more than they trust a brands opinion of itself (thus the popularity of sites like C|Net, Consumer Reports and Yelp). So don’t you think that putting other people’s content — especially if it’s well-curated — is more valuable to your customers than your own infomercials? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t talk about yourself and include your own product information on your owned and rented properties. But rather that you’ll make yourself a whole lot more interesting if you treat your “patients” or customers more holistically and give them content at the category level versus the brand or product level.

An easy way to pull this off is to find bloggers or Twitterers that you like and find valuable. It’s not hard to grab an RSS feed off their blog or a Twitter list you’ve created. In the case of a blogger, you might reach out to them and ask if they mind if you syndicated their content into your site/social media properties (chances are, they won’t say no). If you have a brand that has strict guidelines about keeping the content family-friendly, you may want to employ a tool like those offered by companies like FeedMagnet. Or if you really want to have human intervention, you can use tools like Co-Tweet to pull in feeds, and approve the tweets that you want and kick the ones you don’t.

How about you? Are you curating content either for yourself or your company? If you have a great example of curation, please include it in the comments.

Then enter Google+. Millions of people beg for an invite, get in, and then wish that the G+ interface was just a little bit different. Rather than submit the ideas to Google, they simply build their own browser extensions and problem solved.They didn’t have to wait for Google to make the improvement, and don’t even care if they do. Google on the other hand gets to see working examples of how Google+ could be better. This is hundreds of times more valuable than an idea that had to be reduced to writing and submitted via a Google spreadsheet form.

Fortunately, this user-innovation isn’t only limited to Chrome, Kynetx has made it easy for anyone to build browser extensions that can be installed on Chrome, IE, Firefox as well as on mobile devices. See (apps.kynetx.com) This opens the door for users to make the web work how they think it should work. Smart companies are monitoring these apps and using them to improve their digital products.

Who works for you?

But not all of us are in the tech space. What can we do to make it easy for our customers, employees, or anyone who cares, for that matter, to innovate for us? Beyond obvious things, like listening and responding to what people are saying on social channels; here are a few questions that can help you assess how open you are to innovation:

How open is your digital real estate? Are you too strict in moderating what is allowed on “your” spaces?

Do you communicate challenges, or problems you’re trying to tackle as a company? Or do you keep them locked down internally in a “need to know” vault?

How easy is it for your stakeholders to share their ideas with you? Are your processes so complex that they indirectly prohibit contributions, collaboration and innovation?

When ideas are contributed, who gets to see them, are they publicly accessible, or do they go to an internal overstuffed email box? How can outsiders collaborate if they can’t see others’ ideas?

Can others build on your products without violating your terms and conditions? Can they customize what you offer? Can they share that customization with others?

So often I hear people say that they are “open for suggestions.” But are they really “open?”

-As a bonus, a few of my favorite G+ add-ons are listed below.

G+ to Facebook Share by SocialPhreak

GoogleMinus by: 40win.com

Google Plus Comment Toggle by Phil Windley

And Plus One Anything by Scott Adie

While they’re not for Google+ I can’t help but mention

Bleep Tweets and Craigslist Inliner both by Mike Grace

Craigslist Inliner
Bleep Tweets

** Additions

Jonathan Wilson shared his app with me G+ Fixed Position Notification Bar I added it, and I love it!

Got another great extension? Add it to the comments!

Originally, my colleague Bob Pearson, was supposed to present along with fellow author, Rick Mathieson. An immovable set of meetings combined with the fact that I too happen to be a book author (and know a thing or two about Bob’s book, Pre-Commerce) conspired to put me in the presenters seat at the event. After chatting with Bob and Steve, we decided to do a mashup — a best of so to speak — of Pre-Commerce and my upcoming book, Location-Based Marketing for Dummies.

What made my presentation relatively easy is that we live and breath the concepts from Bob’s Pre-Commerce book at WCG. It is also helpful that the idea of location-based marketing works nicely as a sub-discipline within Pre-Commerce. And lastly, location-based marketing fits perfectly across one of the most important core concepts of the book, namely the 4 A’s (which replace the 4 P’s), by providing ways for businesses to create greater awareness, assessment, action and ultimately ambassadorship for their products and services.

While I won’t share all of the slides I presented — you can find all the models, back-stories and anecdotes from Pre-Commerce in the book — I’ve incorporated three of the slides that really resonated below.

These are a few of the major shifts taking place in the world that are driving the way consumers want to (and should be) engaged by businesses big and small.

Leveraging the what people are doing online versus trying to change their behavior is critical to becoming a Pre-Commerce company

Recognizing the "Ten Channels" of online influence and how to create meaningful content for each is key to improving SEO and engaging customers.

As far as the location-based marketing portion of the presentation, I used the content from a previous blog post I did titled, Ten Keys to a Good Location-Based Marketing Campaign. If you want the Readers Digest of the ten rules, I’ve listed them below:

1. Claim your location
2. Pick a service (or two)
3. Find your influencers
4. Set goals
5. Pick a great offer
6. Measure, refine, optimize
7. Gamification FTW
8. Market your program
9. Operationalize, operationalize, operationalize
10. Play with the API

Based on the audience feedback, it appeared that the event was a success. It didn’t hurt that Rick picked up where I left off sharing several important trends from his latest book, The On-Demand Brand, including two that are near and dear to my heart i.e. mobile and augmented reality. My two favorite examples Rick shared were 1) the increasing importance of branded games (people like to play games) citing Burger King’s success with its Kings Game. It sold over 3 million copies and was linked to a direct increase in food sales at the locations where the game was sold and 2) the shopping experience of the future. This second example included not-too-far from reality concepts such as:

• auto-checking in as you walk into the store (he had me at “check-in”)
• receiving special offers based on your profile
• sharing which clothes you are trying on with friends on Facebook and getting their opinion
• watching videos of runway models wearing the item you are trying on background on design by the designers themselves
• the ability to walk out of store while wearing the clothing you just tried on because you are already registered with the store and an RFID or NFC reader scans the item as you walk out

Have you read Pre-Commerce yet? Or On-Demand Brand? If you have, what’s your favorite model or example from the book?

One of the areas of growing expectations, and where there’s huge opportunity, is in the ability for people to get resolution online to problems they’re having with the brand – defective breaks, poor network coverage, billing disputes, etc. Consumers no longer want to wait on hold or wait for an email to discuss the issue they’re having.

With the company’s Twitter or Facebook page just a Google search away, more people are forcing brands into two-way conversations there.  The challenge is that most companies aren’t ready for a true dialogue online.

Much of what companies have done in social media to date has been about pushing out offers, promotions or beginning a discussion from the brand’s point of view. What many are finding now is that there’s a need to have the entire brand conversation, one-to-one and in full view of everyone – the good, the bad and the unimaginable.  Brands are good at having one-way conversations, but it’s these last two categories that will begin to change how companies structure their social media teams and how they begin to rethink how they use social channels.

Understanding how to navigate the social discussion, including where, when, and how to use content strategically and knowing who is driving the conversation is fundamental to bridging this expectation chasm.  It also requires bringing the other areas of the brand together – marketing, legal, corp comm, customer service – to have the entire brand discussion, no matter the topic. Because, in the end, if brands can’t address the conversation in it’s totality, it will eventually find it difficult to have any conversation at all.

With that in mind, there are two developments taking shape in my house… the adoption of technologies that definitely aren’t trending on Techmeme.

Enter the age of email.

My wife and I recently set my son up with a Gmail account. We did so, initially, to allow him to share Flip videos with family.  He’s completely taken to it and has started to have email conversations with grandparents, cousins, and, most recently, friends from school. He loves to add emoticons to help express how he’s feeling.  The other day he came home with the email addresses of three friends and “HAD TO” send an email to one before going to the dentist. 

Say what you want about email…to us, this is a clear way that technology is having a positive impact on our son.  He’s connecting with people, sharing information and emotion — and growing those relationships on/offline.  With many Aspies, interests can sometimes escalate into obsessions.  As long as we establish clear boundaries and internet safety, email communication removes all the vague “tone and irony” stuff from his interpersonal conversations. Win!

Hello Caller! 

Although he’s been known to have longwinded, often one-directional phone conversations with family, it is just recently that my son has been making/receiving phone calls with friends from school.  To hear him have a 20 minute conversation with a friend (and let the other person talk!) brings a smile to my face.  This might not seem like a big deal, but, the phone, like email, is helping him socialize and that will pay dividends offline as well.

Ok, so no major tech breakthroughs here today folks.  Sometimes it’s the simple things that make a difference.

What do you think?  Should I spring for the iPad2 (check out this video from the iPad2 lauch re: autism education) or ride the email fad for a bit?

The key is to plan ahead for that. It may have been the case that a shoe company started a Twitter profile to talk about their corporate and social responsibility, but the conversation then turns to color offerings or return policies or shipping or coupons. The tide of social media conversation is an unstoppable force, so don’t try to fight it. You have to go with the flow but be prepared for it. Don’t be naive to think you can truly steer the conversation to your liking. As best, you can nudge it in a certain direction … for a time.

One area that companies often don’t consider when starting their YouTube channel or Twitter profile or blog is customer service. Inevitably, customers will find a way to reach a company to voice their complaints. A company may have a 1-800 number, a ‘Contact Us’ form on their site, or even a live Web chat, but when they truly want to voice their complaints, they’ll turn to social media. Just look at @comcastcares. Comcast realized that frustrated customers were taking to Twitter in droves, and they got there to listen and to respond.

As the head of marketing, or human resources, or IT, you might think that customer service “isn’t my area,” but it is, inasmuch as it is the company’s responsibility. If you’re in charge of your company’s social media channel, there is no area that isn’t now your responsibility. Your customers will just see COMPANY NAME on the Facebook page and think that it’s a way to reach your company with questions — any questions. Customers don’t make distinctions like CSR, PR, IT, internal comms, etc. They just want answers. And with (very public) customer service complaints on social media, it’s even more important to resolve them.

The advice I’ve always given when it comes to customer complaints on social media is “publicly acknowledge, privately address.” What that means is that you should respond to the complaint in the same open forum in which it started but then resolve it privately. Some other considerations:

• Respond quickly. Time is of the essence when it comes to responding to issues in social media. For one, you don’t want other customers piling on and starting a conversation thread that “you suck.” Second, responding quickly shows that you are, in fact, on top of social media and that you’re listening.
• Acknowledge the complainant. When responding, do not issue a blanket statement that could have been pulled from a press release. It’s a person doing the complaining, so talk to them like they’re a person. Address them by name. Be human.
• Don’t (necessarily) apologize. I learned long ago that there’s a difference between saying “I’m sorry” and saying “I apologize.” For former implies sympathy, while the latter accepts responsibility. When someone complains about a service issue or a bad product experience, you have no idea if it’s true or that it happened in the way the customer explained. You should express concern for the situation while not accepting responsibility, unless you know that it is true. For example, someone complaining about a known product defect is not arguable. Instantly admitting fault could show up in court documents later, if it came to that.
• Request their info. In the public social media response, tell them that someone will be in touch with them. Then, if you can get in touch with them directly (Direct Message, Facebook mail, etc.), then ask them for their contact information (phone, e-mail) so that you can privately address the situation.
• Listen. The customer who complained obviously had a reason for doing so. It may be warranted or completely unfounded, but they still have their reasons. You have to hear them out no matter how erratic they may seem. I’m convinced that 51% of customer service is simply saying “I hear you.”
• Resolve it. This sort of goes without saying, but the other 49% of customer service is actually resolving the issue. Whatever you do, do not respond that you’ll look into the issue and then never get back to the person. That can (and probably will) make the situation worse, since you not only didn’t fix the problem, but now, you’ve created another one by ignoring the customer.
• Close the book. When the customer service issue has been resolved, you can go back to the comment thread and say as much. Better yet, kindly ask the customer, where appropriate, if they can comment about how their issue was resolved.

Before customer complaints start finding their way into your social media channels (and they will), you need to have a plan in place on how to address them. Who will they be sent to internally? How will they be tracked? Who will respond?

These are areas that may not be part of your job description, but when you oversee your company’s social media outlets, they all become your responsibility. Develop a plan to deal with that.

Here’s what Zappos did in relation to their 6pm.com online store:

[...] While we’re sure this was a great deal for customers, it was inadvertent, and we took a big loss (over $1.6 million – ouch) selling so many items so far under cost.  However, it was our mistake.  We will be honoring all purchases that took place on 6pm.com during our mess up.  We apologize to anyone that was confused and/or frustrated during out little hiccup and thank you all for being such great customers.  We hope you continue to Shop. Save. Smile. at 6pm.com.

Do you think this would be the outcome you’d expect from many companies doing substantial business online? Would it perhaps be more likely that, once the mistake was discovered, you immediately notified the customers, apologized and said anything purchased during the error period was a mistake, unfortunately it couldn’t be honored and here’s a $10 gift certificate to compensate you for any inconvenience.

After all, $1.6 million is a lot of money. A bunch of $10 gift certificates won’t amount to anything close to that and you’d still look good, wouldn’t you?

I think what Zappos have done is a terrific demonstration of transparency and, more significantly, simple honesty.

While you might argue that absorbing $1.6 million in this way doesn’t make much business sense, I’d argue that the goodwill, attention and ensuing customer satisfaction from their action surely outclasses $1.6 million. Especially today, where the internet amplifies word-of-mouth commentary and opinion at frightening speeds.

Take a look at what people are saying online already about this mistake and Zappos’ action. Do you get a sense of the overwhelming positive sentiment?

So I say: nice one, Zappos. You’re the model. And such an apt tag line to your logo.

How do you see it?

As part of my role in managing a Twitter account, I was asked to drive awareness and build interaction with followers through a trivia contest.  Initially, although I liked the idea, I was not convinced that this simple approach would return results.    I had my doubts that a “trivia giveaway contest” would motivate  the semi-dormant Twitter followers. Could a prize valued at less than $100 motivate people to look up the answer and respond?   I moved ahead, but somewhat skeptically…

I began building buzz amongst followers a day before the contest by “teasing” the contest and letting them know what time it would take place.  On the day of, I reminded them a few hours beforehand.     Now came the time to post the trivia question….

I tweeted and waited… prepared for the hours I was sure it would take to get a response from the “5^th follower to correctly answer”…maybe I should have said “first correct answer wins?!”

Soon, though, I was informed by my co-worker that we had our first response.  Surprised, I went to the @replies and, sure enough, there was the answer followed by many exclamation marks.  I felt strangely excited about the prospect of people answering this question. I quickly became an official geek and  started refreshing the page every 20 seconds.  As I began looking into the responses, I found that many of the answers were actually coming from followers who hadn’t posted previously.    Had these people actually created Twitter accounts just to participate in the contest?  Perhaps they saw it announced on Facebook?   Did my colleague, Lauran Driver, and I single handily bring people to Twitter? Well… probably not, but the connection of the two social networks is an interesting detail to consider.

In the end, it took only 20 minutes to hear from our winner – this for an account which, at the time, only had a bit more than 200 followers.    By this stage, I was really elated – it was as though I was getting the prize myself!

Through this experiment I was quickly reminded that people are paying attention to what they read online and following on Twitter can be an interactive sport.  If you work for followers and interact with them, they will listen to what you post.  Of course, free stuff doesn’t hurt either, but interaction is the foundation of the excitement and success I experienced.

Now I must ask, have you had a similar Twitter experience?

Sound familiar? It’s the cadence of corporate life these days……we are half-listening, which in my view, is not listening at all.

Strategic listening is becoming a competitive advantage for companies. And for those who truly listen, they are realizing that it is not as simple as it sounds. When done well, it becomes incredibly powerful – it is the cornerstone of your online strategy.

The reason is that strategic listening involves a number of variables. It’s the nuances of listening that lead to the breakthroughs. Conversations provide clues that three-ring binders never could compete with. Leaders talk about where conversations occur, who has influence and which words are most powerful. They are developing their own knowledge base that only gets stronger with time. Followers are still talking in conference rooms looking at slides with pie charts and using group-think to debate what may be happening.

It’s time to look at the “walk” as well as the “talk” in listening.

Here are 7 important areas in strategic listening.

#1 – Location, Location, Location – remember the old adage that the three most important factors in buying a home are location, location and location? Same with conversations. Know where your customers hang.

#2 – Share of Conversation – throw away the slides showing positive, negative and neutral comments. When data makes you guess what is happening, you don’t have data, you have just “collected noise”. Leaders know exactly who is driving share of conversation for their brand….with precision….they know what is happening behind the pie charts, graphs and tables…..they don’t guess.

#3 – Customer Expressions of Faith & Concern – they are equally important. When a customer takes time to tell you what they think, either via a rating and review or a complaint or by answering a question, they are giving you a view into their way of thinking. What do your most active customers actually care about and how is it trending? Is your knowledge real-time or is it based on data that is months old? Do you know exactly?

#4 – Ideas – customers like to do three things…share ideas, share product knowledge and provide each other with solutions to problems. Customers can’t wait to provide you with their best intellectual capital. All you have to do is grant permission by asking them in an idea site or on the phone when they call technical support. Let your customers loose and watch what happens.

#5 – The New Language – leaders know the exact words their customers use when they are talking online. They don’t think in terms of keyword dictionary spreadsheets. They think about the language of the customer. Search is about customers using their language to find what they want. Too often, our search strategies actually don’t reflect the prioritization of the customer’s words of choice. Pretty amazing to me.

#6 – What’s Bothering Me – many companies hope to avoid calls with complaints, but, in reality, you can learn so much. Imperfect companies improve immensely by listening, learning and sharing what they are being told…..right away. And we all know there are no perfect companies..yet.

#7 – How Customers Learn – now that you are listening to your customers, you develop an understanding about how they like to learn. For example, maybe it really does make sense to start telling your story via video. Or a certain group of customers would prefer to only receive information via their smart phone. Do you know how they like to learn? Or how you want them to learn?

When you become a strategic listener, the world opens up along with opportunities for your brands. What was that? Huh? Click, click, click…just a second….yep, be there in a minute…huh?