My favorite quote of all time is:

“I drank what?” -- Socrates

But that one doesn’t help much in the business world.  This one works better:

"The way to gain a good reputation, is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear." -- Socrates 

I found this and some other great customer service quotes from ConversationAgent.com.  Let’s take a look a few more good ones.  These are about the power of Word of Mouth:

"If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends."  -- Jeff Bezos

"Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends." -- Walt Disney

"The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers." -- Shiv Singh

How about some thoughts on putting the customer first:

"Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it." -- Peter Drucker

"In business you get what you want by giving others what they want." -- Alice Macdougall

"There are no traffic jams along the extra mile." -- Roger Staubach

"Revolve your world around the customer and more customers will revolve around you." -- Heather Williams

And finally, how should we align our thinking to provide the best possible customer service?

"Well done is better than well said." -- Benjamin Franklin

"Good leaders must first become good servants." -- Robert Greenleaf

“Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” -– Mark Twain

YouTube.com is amazing.  It’s got it all, from undiscovered teenage singers to the latest bear attack.  But there’s plenty of other uses for the millions-of-visitors-per-day website, one in particular is instructional videos.

Even if you don’t have a complex product, or think someone would need instructions on how to use your simple service, you’d be surprised.  People often are multi-tasking, distracted, frustrated, or tired, and need help occasionally figuring things out.  But getting people to use your products or services properly isn’t the main reason to make and upload an instructional video.  The biggest benefits are from the attention and relationships a video can create.

First develop your next video conference with using it as an instructional video in mind--or just do a video conference specifically for this.  Record it, edit it for time and conciseness, and upload it.  Then put links to it on your website, email, and online newsletters.  Talk about it with your employees, vendors, and customers.  Place the links on your print materials and even packaging.  Basically, get the word out.

Your customers will appreciate this because it shows dedication to getting them the most bang for their buck.  And if a product is really too simple for a video, customers will like seeing it in action, or demonstrations of all the things they can do with it.

Now simply uploading a video on YouTube.com will not create worldwide buzz, but it will be seen by customers--and potential customers researching what to buy.  Remember though it should be informative, even entertaining.  It shouldn’t be advertising... people get enough of that already.

Picture this, you’re parking in an upscale retail center--the better, current version of the strip mall--and you check your smartphone.  In the twenty stores around you, seven pop up with “checkin” coupons that you can redeem just by being in their GPS location.  And of those seven, five have direct competitors without checkin coupons in the same retail center.  Where do you think you’ll take your business?

While this may seem like an interesting “future-possible” scenario, checkin coupons are available now in some areas, and probably very soon they’ll be everywhere.  They are also not quite where they need to be.  Currently, the technology is mostly used for text-based marketing, and showing ads seen pretty much anywhere.

And as I heard on NPR, using GPS-based coupons as just another medium for marketing not only misses the point, but could also turn off a lot of consumers.  Flashing an ad on TV, putting it in the newspaper, emailing it, then having it popup when someone is near the store is overkill.  Yes, if they missed everything else, seeing the ad right before going into the store--where I’m sure it’s displayed there too--might get a sale.  But marketing like that is missing the point.

Catching customers while in the area is good, but rewarding them for visiting a particular store is better.  And while they may not buy anything, rewarding them with points or future discounts for simply “checking in” will keep you in their minds, and keep them coming back.

My point here is that not only should we embrace new forms of communication, but also use them in the best way--and not just reuse tired marketing schemes.  If we talk to and connect with customers in a different manner than normal, or reward them whether they buy something that time or not, we develop a relationship that can have benefits for years to come.

When you get down to it, we all cater to our customers.  And we have to, if we want their business that is.  There are many ways to cater though, and each is modified to best reach a specific target market.  Because what works for Harley Davidson customers, probably wouldn’t attract high-end antique buyers.   But when it comes to communicating with our customers, being a consultant is a universal good idea.

The basic caveats of communicating like a consultant is best described on the EdelmanChange blog.  For example, “shift from being an order taker to a strategic thinker” represents a fundamental shift for many businesses.  If we ran a restaurant, well, wouldn’t we automatically be order takers?  If we communicate and consult our diners though, we have opportunities for upselling, ideas for specialty dishes, and many other ways to improve their experiences and keep them coming back.

“Don’t be afraid to ask,” is another good consulting tip.  After all, if we don’t ask, how will we know?  It’s interesting that sometimes even the customer doesn’t know what they want or need.  It’s our job to ask, to find out, and to provide them with what they truly desire.

This one is my favorite: “Align decisions and actions to business goals.”  This basically means that instead of measuring the success for a customer with our benchmarks, we use what’s important to them as goals.  In communicating, it’s not enough that we simply talked to x amount of people a day.  Instead it’s vital that we made x amount of customers satisfied and happy.

Are any of your communication quotas set independent of true customer needs?  Do you dig down and get to what is best for the customer?  Or do you simply expect them to conform to you, and give their order when they do?  Tell us about it in a comment.

All right, so it’s not obvious how heavy construction machine auctions and video conferences resemble each other.  But if you look at each as a tool, how they’re used is very similar... or should be.  After all, both tools are used to build a customer base and sell things, right?

First take a look at the premier, worldwide construction auctioneers, Ritchie Bros.  Now they don’t have an auction every day.  They don’t even have an auction every month in the same city.  So what if we want to buy an excavator in Dallas, but just missed the Ft. Worth auction?  Do we have to go another company to buy?  How can Ritchie Bros gain and retain customers enough to stay in business?

They do two things.  The first is every one of their auctions in the world has international online bidding.  This is easily relatable to those of us who use web conferencing, bringing an event to whomever, wherever they are in the world.  In a Ritchie Bros auction, you can set up an account, log in on auction day, and bid on the machines where ever they are.

The second thing they do is provide a persistent customer experience.  While auctions typically happen every other week or so, you can always log in, see the details of machines in any upcoming auctions, add to a wish list, and request more information.  A customer may only truly participate once a month in an auction, but they interact with Ritchie Bros several times a week!

A common theme for video conferences is to schedule the event and then have it.  Sometimes there is pre-registration, or maybe something to download, but that’s about it.  What if we were to provide a place to interact long before, after, and even during our video conference event?  We could set up a google group, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, or even an event blog.  Anything to allow participation and collaboration independent of the actual, moment-in-time, video conference event.

If we did this, would our participants be better informed?  Would they interact more?  Would they be more invested?  If you look at Ritchie Bros, the answers are a resounding, “Yes!”

It looks as though Lisa Schulz of Women Wine and Wellness has got herself a great idea.  Business networking for women and helping them realize their dreams is Schulz’s passion, one that she’s become very good at.  And for women near the South Metro Denver area, this is a great thing.  For those that aren’t near there... I guess you’re out of luck.

Which brings up a very good point.  Are there any ideas out there that cannot be spread nationally?  Or internationally?  Is there really a business that must stay local to work?  No, not even handcrafted ottomans made by one man in a tiny shop in South Dakota should stay local.  Obviously he can sell them online, post pictures of completed pieces, future projects, how-to videos, take commissions, and even organize tours for the really motivated ottoman lover.

And Schulz with her networking for women idea is confined to one part of one city?  I can’t believe it!  Perhaps the article didn’t mention online courses, or weekly conference calls, or branch locations in other cities with nightly meetings that have video conference linkups.  I hope networking and communication tools like these were simply overlooked in the article, because this is an idea made for sharing across the globe.  This “networking” idea was made for conferencing.

Does anyone out there have a business, or part of a business that they truly feel cannot receive benefits from conferencing?  Tell us about it in a comment, but check back for ideas from everyone on how it can be done.

A great conference call can do amazing things.  It can inspire, motivate, and orientate employees.  It can engage customers, secure their loyalty, and keep them coming back.  It can do many things, but what about when the conference call ends?  Does the conversation have to stop until the next conference?

The wonderful thing about this new social media world that we’re in, is that people can connect and communicate 24/7.  This is one of the many benefits with conference calls as well.  You can have one anytime, with anyone anywhere in the world.  You’re not bound by distance or timezones.

Well, that’s not totally true.  Time is an issue, because every conference call has to end at some point.  So what can we do to keep the goodness flowing?  We take it online.  It’s easy these days to get a group forum where after the conference, your participants can post feedback about the call or the topics discussed, update on actions taken, or even discuss the issues further.

It’s also a good idea to do email summaries of these post-conference discussions to be mailed out to all involved.  This will keep people in the loop, and maybe even pull in others who haven’t posted anything yet, or even missed the conference.  Keep track of the flow and interest levels by posting polls.  Have a live chat room available for any two participants to exchange ideas at a much faster rate.

The point is that when the conference ends, the energy doesn’t have to follow.  If you keep the communication and collaboration going, then at the next conference call, you’ll have a solid group that’s on the same page and ready to do more good.

We’ve talked about many of the ways you can use your recorded video conferences on this blog before.  We’ve even suggested the benefits of incorporating those recordings on a company’s website.  Today we’re going to look at a small company that did really well combining their website and video for promoting a new product.

Okay so the company--Apple--isn’t small, and some would say the launch of the iPad doesn’t need anything special website-wise after the iPhone and iPod had paved the way.  But let’s look at some tips from aWiderNet.com based on Apple’s iPad launch for engaging website visitors using video.

Laser Focus - Apple’s landing page is a big picture of the iPad surrounded by some picture-links to more iPad information.  This big picture-link guides us right to the videos.  There’s not much else to distract you.  If you didn’t know Apple, you’d have no idea they sold anything else.  

Not One, Many – I’ve seen many websites with their one big video.  It’s a good video, but if there’s anything specific I want to see, I have to go through the whole thing.  Apple has three main video sections: guided tours, their TV ads, and a development video.  In the guided tours section, it’s not one video showing us all we can do with the iPad; it’s many videos, each concentrating on one main feature.

Breadcrumb It – As aWiderNet.com points out, people don’t always arrive at a website at its main page.  Often they follow links from blogs or tweets--or whatever--that land them directly inside the website.  On the Apple site, links to the iPad video sections AND the videos themselves are everywhere on every page.  It’s pretty hard to miss them.

I’m sure Apple paid many advertising and marketing gurus a lot of money to have such slick and effective ad campaigns for its products.  The good news about that is we can benefit as well… without shelling out all those ad dollars I mean.