More than just good and fast coffee

Sitting here in one of my typical hangouts, Panera.  But this may not be my typical hangout for long.
Way back in February I wrote a blog article on tips for good service
http://chrisgeier.blogspot.com/2009/02/tips-for-good-service.html

In this blog I discussed how important good service and good food is to your choices in dinning.  But I now feel there may be even more to that idea.

Over the past few years I have come to this particular Panera A LOT, in fact I am there as I write this.  I have always enjoyed the experience.  The people were very nice, they recognize me, ask me how i am doing.  I genuinely enjoyed the interaction.  The "vibe" I got from the lot of them was all in all very good.  The food was always good, the "service" was always good.  Not to mention free internet.

Over the course of the past few months there has been a gradual and continual amount of employee turnover.  One by one the cool people I was used to interacting with stopped being there.  Replaced by...well more boring less interactive versions.  They still provided good service, the food was still the same, the wifi was still free.  Yet I have found myself not really all that excited or interested in coming in as often as I once did.  This has made me realize how important that customer connection is.  I felt connected in some small way to several of the people i interacted with on an almost daily basis.  In some strange way I wanted to go in and see them. I felt comfortable in the environment and a sense of belonging there. (Odd I know) At this point I do not feel drawn back, and as such I have dramatically reduced the frequency at which I go. 

The new people that have replaced those I have come to know, are not bad at their jobs, they are not bad or mean people.  They just don't have "IT" that customer facing connection making (Charisma, Authenticity?)  Those that had it here at panera, helped make this particular location into a place that i raved, and talked about.  I think it is precisely those types of people that can help you turn your company, your product into one that has a following of raving fans , one that has a connection with its community.  Its not just about the product you put out there, its not just achieving some arbitrary level of service like how fast they make me my coffee.  Its about that connection and that community they help build and foster.
How do you connect with your community and your customers? 

 

While not necessarily a component of this instance, I think social media can help establishing that connection with your community/customers.  If you can use social media in this way and establish that link, you too can work to stay connected with others and ensure you keep that link going.  Social media can help to establish and maintain a broader sense of community beyond employees and customers in one location but across geographies, product lines, groups, divisions etc.  Establishing that sense of belonging is the thing that builds communities and keeps people involved coming back.

 

What are you favorite haunts? why do you keep going back?  What community do you feel connected with, and why?  Drop me a note on twitter http://twitter.com/chrisgeier

Impulse contact

The Impulse Contact.

Marketing and retail companies alike are generally smart folks, and everything they do is for a reason. one example of this is the idea of the "impulse buy".  When you go to any store these days be it in the checkout line or by the register sometimes even surrounding area. There are a variety of other small things that they are hoping to entice you with and hope you buy. These can be higher profit items or just generally small ticket items they hope you will just throw in with your purchase to increase profit. 

They are "impulse" buys because you don't go to the store looking for them, they are typically not on your list. but you see them, and on an impulse you buy them. Companies make these items very easily accessible, and convenient. Thus making the barrier to purchase small and the likelihood of purchase higher.

Some quick links for further reading on this..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_purchase

http://www.kindredmedia.com.au/info/tempting_shopping/199/1

I would like to correlate this idea to something i would consider an important point in

• Social Media
• Customer service
• General community

Many times i have been in a situation where i wished i could ask a quick question or make a comment to a company. Sometimes even an idea to improve something.  However, I would not be willing to take the time to call them, write a letter, sit on hold, try to find what to do or who to call. So i never did.  But as a company who would truly be interested to hear my feedback, my complaint, my compliment or the like, would you miss this opportunity?

If so. Enter in social media.

If I run a company and i have a presence on Facebook, or twitter, and i prominently promote it. I Ensure people know its there and SHOW people I am listening. I have just enabled "the Impulse contact"

If you follow the premise that typically customer contact is good, and the more contact i have with a customer the more likely they are to be a happy customer, more likely to be a repeat customer, more likely be be a referral or fan. If so I need to ensure i give people every opportunity and every avenue to be "touched" or interacted with. 

So you are involved with social media and being out there listening, waiting for people to talk about you.. That's great.  But you can also use it as a quick connect for easy quick access to the impulse contact.

As an example I could be on a southwest flight or in this case (while i am typing this) waiting for Southwest flight 125 en route to Ohio. and notice how awesome the gate area is and how much i love the chairs with outlets and USB hubs and think. WOW this rocks.  I can quickly go to twitter and say @southwestair I LOVE THIS. Thank you, or maybe tell them that this is the first time i have tried the business select and i am liking it so far. 

This could be feedback that i am sure @southwestair would love to get. they now have real direct empirical evidence that some of the investments they have made recently are working and are improving their customer experience.  Chances are that if they were not on twitter and made it SOO easy for me to provide that feedback that i would not have given it.  Southwest is putting themselves out there and are in the channels that i use.  They are participating in a genre that i am comfortable with and not forcing me to use the one they want.  I am not being directed to a specific feedback channel rather i am being given the options and i can participate in the southwest conversation in a manner I CHOSE.

I for one think that is a FANTASTIC way of doing business. If your company TRULY values this type of feedback, and you WANT to interact with your customers. Then just having a phone number and email address is NOT ENOUGH.  You must expand your presence and use of social media. You can use social media to benefit you and your customers in innumerable ways.  But you have to be willing to get out there and figure it out.

What do you think?

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com

The underground beginnings

In my previous blog I told you how i started the idea and planning process of the K2 community.  Now it is time to tell the story of K2 underground.

When we started to plan out what we wanted in a community site, and figure out how that manifested itself in a platform decision.

I had a list of technical requirement list i used at the time as follows:

1. Support Blogging functionality
2. Separate “Areas” for classes of users.  “Insiders” “Partners” etc
3. Content targeting based on based on user preferences.
4. Ability to support rating posts, articles, blogs, uploads etc.
5. Ability to mark forum items as solved, answered etc.
   1. Search through forum for unanswered questions and or posts
6. Points system, different points accumulated raise levels different membership levels amounts to different rights and status on the site.
7. Ability to establish user profiles, to provide a self overview and points accumulated.
   1. Moderators of the site should also be able to give points or take them away. 
   2. Advanced Profile support for personalization.
8. Ability to link internally to other posts, copying one post to another and giving it credit.
9. Private message support for members to contact each other
10. Reporting for:
    1. Most active threads
    2. Most popular posts
    3. Newest posts
    4. Top rated posts
11. Events Section to post upcoming events
    1. Ability to sort by time or location or type such as on line or in person etc.
    2. Ability to publish event postings for Live Meetings etc.

Overall I really wanted to enable to community on its own to adapt and grow and not have it limited by the technology we use.  Nor would i want to tell the community how to work or what parameters to use. Based on this we needed to ensure that the platform we chose had to be very flexible, and configurable.  Based on that and the above requirements we chose Community Sever over SharePoint.  It would take too long to bring SharePoint up to the point that Community Server was. Primarily in terms of membership, points, and forums.  (mainly forums)

During the design and envisioning phase we had several Primary areas of focus:

User Group Area

We wanted to establish a separate or sub-area within the site to act as a hosting area for various user groups. The goal being to allow members of the broad community to establish sub-communities on their own.  Being a part of this sub-community will allow them to have discussions, post announcements, agendas, minutes from past events and allow them to connect virtually with other members.  Members of these user groups can also post to a more general announcement board on the main site.

Presence awareness

When you hit the home page of the site, users should be able to see who else is logged on. How many others are currently on the site etc.  Future additions will allow users to IM them.  Initial version will just allow for PM.

Blogging
The site will have a Separate section for blogs, that should be easily browse able and utilize “content TAGS” for ease of search.   Initially we chose that only K2 employees and Insiders would be allowed to have a blog. In future revisions we opened this up to partners but had no takers.

File Sharing
Each individual post can contain an attachment with example code etc. However there will be a self service file sharing area where users can upload their own little creations. These will also be rated and can be fuel for the points system.

Now that most of the techie stuff is out of the way, we needed to establish some site policies, visions, rules etc.  We wanted to have a site/community that encouraged discussion and participation and have that be the driving goal. To first to attempt to get the conversation going, and encourage people to jump in.  To achieve this we came up with the following:

1) Encourage newer users--especially those who've been active askers--to start trying to answer questions We will do this by making sure that the moderators are not always the Ones Who Know All.
2) We will give tips to the community on how to answer questions
3) At any opportunity we will ensure that people know it's OK to guess a little, as long as they ADMIT they're guessing
4) The site will Adopt a near-zero-tolerance "Be Nice" policy when people are posting to the site and or answering questions.  We will not allow other participants (especially the more advanced users) to slam anyone's answer.

So what does all this mean?  All of this boils down to a couple easy things. I wanted create the best community site possible.  A community site that people got a ton of use from, one that truly benefits those who participate.  The community also could use the site for a variety of reasons and not just for raw K2 technical discussion. But as a way to interact with others in their preferable way on their preferable topics.  This is not all there is to it, there is lots more. I love to talk about this and my experiences in the K2 community so there will be more to come soon

What do you think? What would you do differently?

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com

Me and the K2 community

It occurred to me that i have not really told much about who i am and what i do.  I wanted to give you some insight into who i am.  For those of you who don't know me, I am the "community guy" at K2 (WWW.K2.COM) and run the community web site www.k2underground.com

I have been a techie for my entire career so I have been a member of many different communities similar to those I was trying to develop.  So I thought I should be able to help a bunch of people just like me.

I sat down to try to figure what goals I had for working with the community.  I believe that in most cases, the community is already there, people are already working and people are already talking.  So the question really is:

• What are you going to do to help them,
• What are you going to do in order to hear them?
• What are you going to do to try to get more people involved?

My goals/priorities became more obvious the more research i did

1.  Establish an online gathering place. (k2underground)
2.  Ensure that this gathering place enabled the community to network with each other, grow, become a place to do research etc.
3.  Create and grow content.  Once i really began to think about what this community needed most i found that it lacked good content.  Being that this is a primarily technical community what they are going to be seeking first is information. Information about how to do their jobs, learn, grow, be better, solve problems. Content is also going to keep people on the site, keep people coming back, and give people a reason to at least be passively involved.  Good content is/was the most difficult component of my challenge, and one to this day i have not done as well as i had hoped.

4.  Get/Grow community leaders.  I considered myself merely a helper in the community and a biased helper at that.  What this community needs are leaders.  Leaders that were self motivated, not motivated because K2 incents them.  These leaders help evangelize the community, help to get the community talking, engage them be the technical go to people if possible and when necessary. In addition we need solid people in the community that can help us know what the community needs.  We wanted bi-directional evangelists.  Not only did we want to have people go out and tell the K2 story, we wanted people to come to us and tell use the community story so that we can make it better. We have come to call these fine people K2 Insiders. I consider the Insider program a pillar of the K2 community strategy a piece that HAD to be done right and done first.  It has really been that and more.

Now i had my list of goals, to work on.  Once i established these goals, and things began to move, Focus needed to move onto the Underground, what did this site need to be and do to truly help the community?  More on that in a future blog post, as well as other blogs on my adventures building the K2 community.

What do you think, does this sound good to you? What could I do differently?

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com

Can you see the intent

 

When i was first in college i did some internships at a local hospital.  There was always the talk of the differences between those doctors who became doctors because of prestige and or money and those who were in it for the money.  when being around them regularly you could really begin to tell who was who. 

or 

The intent became obvious.  When you being to sit down and think about your dealings with all professions you can tell peoples intent and why they are doing what they are doing.

• Do they really care?
• Do they really want to help you?
• Are you just another customer to them or are you a valued client that they truly care about your success, and or satisfaction?

Getting out there, using Social Media, and  building community gives you more exposure and gives people more views into your work, more exposure insight into your intent.

So ask yourself what is your intent?  Why are you out there?  Why are you interacting with others?  Why are you trying to get more involved in the community?

Think back to some good examples of great experiences as a customer you have had in the past 6 months.  Was the service extra special because you thought that they really wanted to help you?  Was the service great because how you felt special?  Try to be more conscious of this as you interact with people i think you will find that as you try to to notice it more you will see how it affects you more than you thought.

I don't believe that all businesses are going to have good intentions when they start out, or even at any point in their lifecycle.  However I believe that those that do have solid intentions will have the advantage.  This advantage will be even more obvious when delving into social media.    The more you interact the more it will become obvious and the more people will talk about it.

Something i believe everyone should do BEFORE getting out there in Social Media is to completely and honestly examine their intentions.  Ensure you understand why you are doing what you are doing.  What are your motivations?  What do you hope to gain by being involved?  If these motives became obvious, how would people react?  Would this help or hurt your cause?

What do you think? 

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com

Social buying

I know there are some great online shopping sites where people can write up reviews and then even say how useful those reviews are. (reviewing the reviewer)  But I think we can use some social media to take this a step forward (at least I would love it)  I was walking through target yesterday and came across a series of computers. These computers were for gift registries.  You all know what that is, whether they are for bridal registry, or baby registry i am sure most of us have participated in some way.  But what if we used the very same concept but added in some cool social media.

Imagine this:

You go into your favorite store and walk up to the computer, punch in your favorite reviewers twitter name.  The computer spits back a list of that twitterers favorite or recommended purchases.  So i am going shopping for a new geeky gadget.  I know that @mattbremer  is very geeky and must have a good recommendation. I look him up on the computer and it spits out his favorites (much like it would a registry list).  I click on my product choice and print out some info. Run to the back and pick it up. 

Wouldn't that be cool?

We could even take this in a few different directions.  When i buy it it could auto tweet it. 

If i buy it, the system could give points to the recomender and then each store could keep track of the top recomenders.

There are literally thousands of options. All of them could work great. My point is that we have the ability to bring social media into the normal brick and mortar stores.  Especially in today's economy, stores need to think differently and improve the experience customers have in their shopping at their stores.  As much as i hate to use the old expression, it does fit.  “Think outside the box”

 

What do you think?  Would you use a system like this?

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com

The Star List

An old teacher of mine “Mr. Lester” who taught a writing class established a star list.  We were never allowed to break any of rules established on the Star List.  I thought this document was lost forever. But while cleaning out my old 3.5’ diskettes.  I found it, I thought it would share it

1. do not use contractions they are informal

2.do not use the word there

3. do not use it

4 do not use first person (i me my we our)

5 do not use second person (you your)

6 do not use the words good,bad nice,really,very a lot,thing,anything

7. do not underline to emphasize

8. do not use slang

9.do not use abbreviations

10. do not use like as a comparison use such as

11. do not use absolutes such as always,forever,never

12. do not use upon

13.do not use people, or person

14.do not use the word different alone you must use different from

15 use between when speaking of 2. Use among when speaking ok 3 or more

16 do not use !!!!!!!!!

17 do not use due to use BECAUSE OF or AS A RESULT OF

18 no numbers to organize

19 do not refer to your own writing such as in this paper as i mentioned etc

20 do not use big little or interesting

21 do not use ONE as a person

22 do not use off of

23 do not use () ( )

24 do not use fun

25 do not use healthy use healthful

26 do not use situation or issue

27 do not use type of person

28 do not use centered around

29 do not use ::::::

30 do not ask questions

31 do not use "the reason and because in the same sentence

32 do not use the words in conclusion

33 never use extremely

34 do not use mad

35 do not write what something is not write what it IS

36 do not use many

37 do not use located

38 do not bring up a negative in a comparison or argument

39 do not use obvious simply state the fact if it is obvious

40 never assume anything the reader knows or believes

Tips for good service

 

No this article is not about how to provide customers with good service, sorry but maybe I will cover my thoughts on that area in a later blog posts. This post is about how service in many forms affects your view and interaction with not only the provider but the overall product as a whole. For example, if you went to a restaurant that was renowned for its food, but the service was horrible. How likely are you to go back? How likely are you to choose that establishment regularly? On the opposite of that, what if you went to a restaurant were the food was average but the service was some of the best around. Which combination would you choose?

 

Another angle to this, do you tip your waitress solely on the basis of the service they provided you? Or do you let the cleanliness of the establishment, the speed the food was ready, and the quality of the food affect your decision on how much to tip?

Why am I talking about restaurants and tips on this blog? It dawned on me while eating at a local restaurant,   while I was sitting there waiting for a long time for my steak, regularly interacting with the waiter who appeared to be good. How much am I going to let the kitchens problems affect the tip I give my waiter? How often do others do the same? And how does a similar mentality affect other industries.

Do you own a product that is good at what it is supposed to do, but the level of support, consulting, training, or basic customer service you have gotten from the company or its affiliates negatively affect your ability to use it and does that  affect your level of satisfaction with it?  Based on that would you recomend the product to others?  Would you talk to others positively about the product?

I believe you might not actually realize (without really stopping and thinking about it) how you let it affect your thought process. I believe a lot of people have made good purchases in software, electronics, or other, however the level of "service" they are provided in the form of instruction manuals, documentation, training, implementation or install services may affect the end view/result in a negative way.

Is this a bad thing? Is it wrong? I don't think so, and I think more companies out there need to realize that the end all and be all is not just the product. Your product is only as good as the weakest link in the package that makes it up So if you make a simply fantastic product that in every respect is the best there is, but there is not enough information on how to use it "right" or not good enough support when you have questions, not good enough support where something goes wrong, or even not enough good people out there to help you put it to use. Is the company out there listening, trying to find ways to improve?

So I wonder (out loud sort of) how K2 is viewed. What kind of tip are we going to get? And will that tip be mainly because of the product (a.k.a food) or will it be influenced good or bad, by our support, our documentation, our partners, etc? 

Obviously you probably don't run a restaurant but the correlations can be the same. The food you serve is your primary business. For K2 this is BPM software. Our service, our restaurant facilities, bathrooms etc are our documentation, training, consulting etc. Thus rounding out the full K2 experience.

So what does your restaurant look like? Do you provide excellent service? Think about your customers' full experience, what does it look like? Correlate this to your next visit to your favorite eatery. Think about your experience and take notice of everything the cleanliness, the food, the service, the bathrooms, even how the tables are laid out. All of these can affect your overall experience and how you feel about going there.

Then think about how this correlates to your business, what is your table layout? What is your cleanliness? What kind of tips would you be getting?

I think social media and “community” are a fantastic way for companies to learn about what tips they are getting. Its a great way to get out there an listen. Great way to get out there and converse with your diners, see what they are saying, ask how the service is, listen in to how the experience is for them.

What do you think? Let me know what you think. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com

To back track or to not backtrack

I recently read another great blog post from one of my favorites @AmberCadabra called Its ok to backtrack  its about a company getting into social media in the not necessarily the best way.  A consultant that asks the hard questions and the resulting backtrack that is done to rethink how they use social media.  It is a great example of many things including a company that has to rethink their social media strategy.  I agree it is always ok to reanalyze your strategy (i believe re-thinking your strategy is a must at all times) but i ask you how far does this backtrack go?  Is there such a thing as getting to a place that is too far to backtrack from? 

Most of the examples given in the blog entry are not huge mistakes and can be gotten past with relatively small effort.  So what if the mistakes made are much larger and create more buzz just about the mistakes?  Lets look at an example.

A company lets call them XYZ widgets (i know not creative) This widgets company thinks they need to get into social media so they take all the steps they read about and jumped right in.  This company got out there, tries to build community talks about being open, and of course talks about being involved in the conversation.  However they forget that being out there and connecting with customers and potential customers is a 2 way street.  If people are taking the time to converse with you and give you feedback you don't necessarily have to do every suggestion,  but not following up and not doing ANYTHING with it can be disastrous.  

The old adage that bad news travels fast can be at play here.  If you get out there and are fake, your intent is not to be out there get feedback, converse and  help the community, then it will show through.  I think people can forgive a lot of mistakes and can see past a lot things.  But if you are not being authentic and are just out there to get links, get leads etc and not taking the feedback seriously people will rebel.  You will get all kinds of people talking about you, but it will be talking negatively.  People will be talking about how you say you are open, you say you want feedback, you say you are there for your customers.  If you get out there and you say these things you better be true to it, you better be authentic.  If you are not then the consequences will be worse than if you were not there in the first place.  Think about how many times a company or person could say they are going to follow up with you or send you something and they never do.  Think about about how many times you will put yourself out there looking for some kind of real response.

So i ask you.  If you are an user of XYZ widgets, and you are a regular participant in the community what are your expectations of that company. What if that company is regularly involved in the community and loves to talk about wanting your feedback, regularly talks about wanting to connect with you.  So in return you try to provide it.  You work to give constructive feedback, you are a supporter of the company and you stay involved.  What if now, you never see any result of your feedback, you never see any acknowledgement of your suggestions or the like.  Are you mad? or are you just glad they asked?  Do you begin to to see this company as not being really authentic?  Do you start to believe that they are just out there because they think they should be but that they really don't believe in it or truly WANT to be there?  If you start to believe that what will your view on this company start to be?  And will that start to be worse than if they were not out there in the community at all?

I contend that this lack of authenticity, this FAKE involvement in the community is actually worse than not being involved at all.  Think about a company that seems somewhat closed off, and that you don't know how you would give feedback to.  How strongly a positive feel do you have for them.  Vs your thoughts on a company that is out there, says they are open, and takes feedback but does nothing with it.  How positive a feeling do you have for them?

Let me know what you think. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com

Give it away!

Does the future of software involve giving it away?

Companies will not be giving it away 100% of their software, after all how would any of them make money? Today some business models have found ways to do this, but I don't like having sponsors and or advertising in software, as i don't think this model has long term viability.

For a software company to be truly successful they have to be open to some sort of free edition.  To a fair amount of people out there this is crazy unless its a free limited function or limited trial type download. While this is will work well for certain markets,  I don't feel that it really accomplishes all it would need to in order to achieve its maximum potential.

Let me explain why.

To achieve maximum potential you need to first have people that know about your product, (as many as possible).  These people must know how it works, why its needed etc.   Not only this but they have to be fans, in fact they should be RAVING FANS

Where do RAVING FANS come from?

Some of these people will be employed by your company, some will be partners who benefit from the sale of the software either through commission or services. Some will be passive agents that just think what you are doing is cool.  There is something to be said for having each of these sets of people be fans, and each set will will need to know something about the software. But how far will this scale?

What’s missing from this analysis?

Community, Social media, and camaraderie.  This will be covered in a few follow on posts i am working on. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic so drop me a note.

Now back to this post. Let us assume that you are using some kind of social media and you have started getting your name/product out there.

Inevitably people will find you, they will be interested in learning more.  People will want to play with, experiment and test your software out.  The question is how do you better enable this, nurture it encourage it?

Achieving this will be very difficult to do if you don't have some “developer edition” or some kind of free version of your software.   Many companies out there have limited function or 30-day trials.  However This does not encourage a long term relationship.  This would allow someone to play with the software for a short period of time maybe make some observations but that's it.  What happens on day 31?  The person would either have to buy the software or let the relationship go. 

If you follow Jeff Shuey’s concept of Corporate Authenticity which connects Social Media to Enterprise Content Management systems you would know a smart company would have been having a dialogue all along. But, what about the other 90% - the not so smart companies? How should they think about Freemiums

30 day trials are perfectly fine for many cases, I have downloaded many 30 day trials and played around to get an idea of its capabilities.  But what about more enterprise type software.  In this case many of these types would not be willing to pay thousands of dollars for this software just to learn it.  this would be true even if they would make a profit from it by providing services for it. 

How do you empower these people and begin the conversation with them to take your software beyond the basics?

These people who work to evaluate your software will usually have a circle of influence no matter how small.  They will influence others about your product.  Consider David Armanos influence diagrams

Even if you manage to reach a level 3 they can in turn influence a 2 or a 1 which flows out like a ripple in water.  However to begin this ripple people need to not only find your software they have to get their hands on it, learn it, understand it, and believe in it.  The only way to get someone to that point is over time and through some kind of communication channel.  This will take longer than 30 days, (thus the 30 day trial wont work)  You will also need to take the time to work with these people and make them an ally. 

I don't want to try and make this entire entry seem like a marketing ploy, that is not my intent.  Merely 1 step in the process.  Once people have your software you still need to have avenues available to them to provide feedback and be able to establish multiple communication channels with them, establish a relationship at some level, i feel social media is one of the best places to achieve this, but much more on that later.

So what do you think?

Are you someone who thinks that a free edition is a good thing or do you view is as a risk?  Should people who really want to learn your software have to buy it?  Even if it benefits you more than them?

Let me know what you think. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com

Build a better mouse trap

I have to admit somewhat sadly, I watch a lot of television. I use the DVR to capture a lot of it because it allows me to watch it on my time. The DVR i use is from Comcast, the software is not the best (I cant wait for the TIVO interface). In any case you setup shows to record and then you can get a season recording so it gets all the new shows. Great stuff, and works well until recently. It seems that they have started to schedule shows at odd times. Now i wont go so far as to say there is a conspiracy at work here. But, it certainly can cause one to think. Lets take a look at an example.

From 8-9 I record both CSI and Law and Order

From 9-10 i record Mythbusters and a special on the cosmos.

This works great for me, unless there is something else i want to record. Luckily it does not happen all that often. But now on occasion i am finding that some shows run from 8-901.

I would have expected that the shows i wanted to record from 9-10 would just start recording at 901 right? NOPE. They wont record at all since there was overlap. Very odd i know.

Do you think this is some messed up way to keep people watching the shows they want you to. Perhaps if you can’t DVR it, you will not record the other show, or perhaps you wont DVR it and you will watch it commercials and all? Maybe this will be a way the networks can get more people back to watching live TV?

I don't honestly know if the networks have any ulterior motives for this stuff or if Comcast just has a crappy DVR. But i think there is a good point/example to be made.

I see a fair number of companies out there who rather than trying to help the consumer enjoy their product/service more they are trying to prevent you, hinder you or make the other guys stuff less appealing. They are trying to make it harder to move from their stuff to the other guys stuff in totally the wrong way.

Rather than trying to put up barriers to exit, why not simply make your product/service that much better. Spend the time, money, resources on improving the product/service or getting out there to connect with your community. Build and awesome, product/service, build a strong community, grow a raving fan base, and connect with them. THAT will work better than trying to be sneaky about it.

Playing a sales role in different organizations has given me the opportunity to see other forms of this first hand. Constantly disparaging your competitors, starting rumors, good old FUD is always a tool in the belt. I could never participate in this, I think those methods stink. I would rather work to help the customer understand the product, what I feel its strengths are, help them map the strengths and features to their needs. I always encouraged them to evaluate all their options even if that meant other products. If they end up choosing my product/service. I have made not only a sale, but probably a loyal fan. If they chose the other guy, then I now have an opportunity to learn what we may need to improve but I probably also still made a fan them a fan of the company, and that can help in the long run.

Here is a great place to get you started in learning about social media. One of the best places i have seen to read about Social Media

http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/how-to-sell-social-media-to-cynics-skeptics-luddites-tips-resources-advice/

And one of my new favorite sites

http://altitudebranding.com/

Just found a post that speaks to this as well. Find it here

http://mediatransparent.com/2009/01/01/10-leading-trends-in-social-media-for-2009/

"Business Week’s Steven Wildstrom notes that consumers can’t find many great old movies on DVD or online in this era of the long tail retailing.
The battle is between an industry that wants to tightly control who gets to see what when and customers who want to watch what they want wherever and whenever. This clash is slowly being resolved in favor of consumers. Movies are becoming available for download and on DVD more quickly after theatrical release. Director Steven Soderbergh has a deal with Mark Cuban’s Landmark Theatres and HDNet that allows some of his movies to be released on disk and online the same day they show up in theaters. I expect more movies to be launched this way.
The day you can choose to see a new movie in a theater, on your TV, on your laptop, or on your iPhone is still some time off, but it is coming.

Let me know what you think. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com

Social Workflow

Think it’s an oxymoron? Not so fast. There is more to it if you think about it.

The terms BPM, Process Improvement, Workflow carry some baggage with them that you should acknowledge and re-examine in the cases of “Social Software”

Process and workflow have very similar meanings, they are essentially a series of discrete steps that are linked together to achieve a result. This can take on many forms and have different “sub-types” such as “system to system”, “human to system”, “human to human” etc.

Contrast this with the terms community, social, and “the conversation” typical terms found when researching “social software” Some would say these two mindsets are somewhat opposed. But I say they can work together.  Workflow can actually help you be more social.

Examples

What if you wanted to better facilitate discussions in your community that take place on your forums.  You could accomplish this  by starting a process/workflow each time a thread gets started, this could then assign a task to a “moderator” or “facilitator” to watch it and make sure it gets attention and can add follow-up if necessary. (for resolution see below) . This can be done only on some forums or with all. Taking this one step further you could only kick off this process if a thread does not get a resolution within a certain amount of time, or after a certain number of replies.

What’s the best part of Social Workflow?
It’s global. Conversations happen in real-time anywhere around the world. Tasks can be assigned in real-time, anywhere around the world. Why does this matter? It matters because it brings people and process closer together. It matters because people can connect with other people no matter where they are to effect a common cause. It means that a social effort can effected by Social Workflow.

More specifically Microsoft Discussion Threads need help

I have done research recently for some of my MOSS issues, I typically find dozens of good threads that speak exactly to my problem. Yet NONE of them have any resolution. Just every few weeks/months someone adds to the thread and says I am having this problem too has anyone found a resolution? Especially on your technical or general support type forums even general customer service, this is VERY important. The more of these threads people see the more likely they are to not even try to post.

Think of similar examples with blogs, and blog comments, or even with Google alert search results. If you setup a Google alert and you get email when new search results come in. What if you could kick of a process each time one of these emails come in. The process could assign an owner and ensure it gets paid attention to.

From a collaboration perspective what if I have a group of friends I trust, those with whom I network and collaborate often. Each time I am working on a new blog entry or an article I want to share it with them before I click the publish button and expose my thoughts to the world or even just the company. I simply upload the doc and boom a new process gets kicked off where it collects thoughts and feedback from each of them and sends me the results. I can then incorporate their feedback and then finalize it or just take it in and not change anything. But that process helped me collaborate and “socialize” that document. The process helped me connect with those people but it also adds a touch or manageability and helps me later on know how often each of my inner circle actually gives me feedback. Later on I could try to figure out why that is, or perhaps it makes me want to re-think my circle.

This kind of thing really reminds me of twittergrader, and mrtweet etc. These are looking at process data. Where each tweet is a step in a process, someone following someone and that person following back are also steps. These can then be reported on.

This is all still about the conversation and participating etc. Adding process just makes it more manageable and in the end allows you to better see how you are doing at it. For individuals who are just out there looking to network, connect with other individuals its less so. However for companies who want to get out there and make sure they are doing it right, adding process is a start and it helps.  Adding the the social media technologies will create the foundation for “Social Workflow”

I have read a fair amount on the ideas of “Process Aware Applications” so building in process features into all your applications. I think this is an area that is going to make huge inroads into every area of technology. Building process into everything just makes sense. I would love to see more of it in my social software. There is some of this in MOSS today, but it is very low level. I am sure more will come soon, but there are a ton of other areas where people could apply some process and get MUCH more out of their community.

So have you ever thought about “Social Workflow” or have you been touched by some one else using it?  Do you think you would know it if you were?  Or would it be transparent? 

Let me know what you think. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome here.  You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.  Or you can email me directly chris dot geier at Gmail.com

Welcome

This is my new blog. Hopefully we will be able to share a lot of thoughts together