You have to feel sorry for social media companies. Take Obvious Corp., creators of the messaging/microblogging service Twitter. The Little Service that Could grew quickly attracted millions of users, who all expected Twitter to be available, reliable and responsive to their needs. Instead, there have been regular outages, reduced features and occasional customer service lapses. The more they succeed, they more pressure they face. Inevitably, they can’t be everything to everyone. In some cases, they can’t even meet some basic expectations. Success sucks, eh? Technorati Tags: twitter,customer service,expectations,scaling,obvious corp,services,tools [Read more]

The reflective Greyhound emblem shone brightly in the still photos and video of the scene where a bus passenger repeatedly stabbed a young man before cutting off his victim’s head and then leering at other passengers and police. The media coverage repeatedly referred to the bizarre attack “on a Greyhound bus,” further tying the company’s name to the incident. I heard a Greyhound rep commenting about the difficulty to providing security for bus services, compared to airline security, but that was almost two days after the gruesome killing. Garrett Saunders found Greyhound’s crisis response lacking, suggesting the company should have quickly had somebody on the ground, ready to comment. Greyhound, according to Saunders: 1.... [Read more]

The average human brain isn’t trained to perform memorization tricks in front of an audience. So maybe we should alter our language and our powers of persuasion to accommodate the vast majority of us drones who are comfortable holding three concepts in our head at a time. A simpler approach has inherent advantages over a complex one. 1)  Things with fewer moving parts have fewer ways to break down. 2)  A single, simple thought has a better chance of being repeated accurately than binder full of strategic plans. 3)  Our eyes and ears seek out the single element that contrasts against the background. A complex pattern tends to blend into the background. 4)  People get bored quickly.  The longer it takes to do something,... [Read more]

We’ve all experienced the rogue employee who wipes out any goodwill you felt for a restaurant or a service supplier with their attitude. Well, corporate cultures can be just as toxic to the customer relationship, but instead of one dysfunctional “brand ambassador,” you have a company full of them. Valeria Maltoni offers two examples of ways companies sabotage the customer relationship. On her Fast Company blog, she describes the way companies drive away customers with poorly thought-out cost cutting efforts. On her Conversation Agent blog, she talks about measuring brand value, and how a weak or non-existent brand strategy can destroy your sales. Put simply, if you haven’t gone through the effort of developing a strong... [Read more]

How many times have you had a bad feeling about a situation or a person, only to have your concerns confirmed? Top executives tend to be very decisive, and a lot of that certainty comes from their instincts, not their processes. You gut instinct isn’t perfect, however. It can steer you away from situations that may not be comfortable for you, but that are necessary for your company’s success. For example, cross-cultural hiring may take a deliberate effort to ignore some of the warning signals going off in your head. The rest of the time, learn to trust your gut. My favorite trick is to act as if I’ve made a decision. Then I wait to see if my body seizes up in alarm. If so, I re-examine the decision and see if my gut is sending... [Read more]