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The jobs report that came out today said that unemployment is at a 3 year low of 8.3% – according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics – and that we added 243,000 private sector jobs in January.  Not sure about you but I like that.  The market was looking for 150,000 new jobs so expectations were exceeded. I realize it’s not the 4.5% unemployment we had in 2Q 2007 but it’s also not the 10.0% we had in 4Q 2009 so we’re heading in a better direction.  And, yes, I agree that we have a long way to go but I like the current trend.

What else am I (cautiously) optimistic about?  Small business lending is slowly beginning to come back.  About 15 months ago we heard from Bank of America that they planned to hire 1000 people primarily dedicated to the small business sector by 2012.  Citi announced some impressive “results” – and, by the way BofA, you get more cool points for results than you do for intentions!  Chase has also recently announced some great strides in the small business lending “results” category.

I agree with my friends and colleagues who contend that it was the local banks and smaller banks who helped us through The Great Recession with their SBA-backed lending efforts so I mean no slight to them when I say I’m happy about the direction of lending in the big-bank category.

So while the Negative Nancy’s are rolling their eyes at me and the Positive Peggy’s are ready for the big celebration here’s why neither of those extreme’s is the right place to be.  8.3% is still too high and we want a lower unemployment rate.  Additionally, since we live in a global economy where ripple effects cross borders and can circle the globe, the larger concern is how the European debt defaults will impact both the world and the US economy.  Greece is close to a likely default in the next month or two and some of their neighboring countries are looking at the same issue on the not-too-distant horizon.

Let’s not forget the global impact that was felt by our own US subprime mortgage defaults that have all occurred just in the last 5 years.  Wasn’t it Ben Bernanke or Alan Greenspan that said, “It’s a global economy, dude?”  Okay, maybe not but you get the point.

If the trend of lower unemployment continues like it has for the last 6 months then we’re all likely to be happy.  Housing is still not good but can you imagine what would happen if more people get back to work and then those same people buy or refinance their homes since rates are at historic lows and then that creates more jobs in banking and lending and the unemployment percentage continues to decrease even more?

That’s one reason the Fed is keeping rates low – let’s call it the New Fed Stimulus Package or the NFSP…what do you think?  I like how William Dunkelberg from the NFIB summed it up “The market was looking for 150,000 jobs, and we got 257,000.  We’ll rejoice, and hope for another good month next month.”

Job Photo via Shutterstock

From Small Business Trends

Cautious Optimism For Small Business

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* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little about your background?

Matt Trifiro: I have been a startup marketing person my entire life. I have been a co-founder and founder of a number of start-ups, and I joined cloud service provider, Assistly, at the end of 2010 to run their marketing team. Within nine months of my joining, they were acquired by Salesforce.com. Now we are a business unit of Salesforce.com and we are called Desk.com. I am the Sr. Vice President for Marketing at Desk.com.

Small Business Trends: Let’s talk a little bit about the speed and expectation around getting great customers experiences.

Matt Trifiro: Mobile has completely revolutionized our relationship to the Internet and similarly our relationship to companies. When I had a good or bad customer service experience, chances are, the device that is nearest me is going to be my mobile phone. The easiest thing to do was to Tweet, and I’ve done that.

With personal publishing systems like Twitter and the ability to contact thousands of people, if you are going to deliver great customer service you have to be connected to all of these high velocity channels 24/7.

Small Business Trends: How effective do you think small businesses are today being able to roll that out to their customer base?

Matt Trifiro: I think completely ineffective. The larger companies spin out a Facebook team, they spin out a Twitter team, they put two or three people on it, and they build it into their work flow and policies and eventually they build tools. Small business cannot afford to do that. It is hard enough to just learn what tool to use with Twitter. So I think that most small businesses are behind the curve in keeping up with their customers.

As a user it is really fairly simple. I just tweet. But as a small business, what would you do with that tweet? How do you assign it to somebody within your company to resolve the problem? How do you ensure that it does not fall through the cracks? When you don’t have a dedicated person on it, it is your job to answer every tweet. Small businesses cannot afford to do that so you really need to look to tools and automation solutions to help you address what is needed.

Small Business Trends: How does a small business prepare themselves to be able to handle the kind of service experience that customers really do expect today?

Matt Trifiro: You have to recognize your customers have different expectations. If you want to be competitive in this new world you have to go where they are. You will have to be there at hours when you are not normally expected to be, using technologies that you may not have ever used in the past.

The second thing you need to do is identify the tools that empower your organization to utilize those channels effectively without completely bringing you to your knees. If you cannot afford to hire a social media person, and an email person, and a customer service individual, you need to leverage technology in all aspects of your business.

Small Business Trends: How does it impact the overall organization in terms of service impacting sales or service impacting marketing?

Matt Trifiro: It is all becoming sales and marketing. If I was selling coffee at Starbucks, the most important thing to me is not that you bought a single cup of coffee, but that you come in every day and you order that triple latte with extra foam that is five bucks. Five dollars every day is a maximum amount of money over the course of the year.

When you look at a customers lifetime value perspective, customer service is almost more important than sales. It is where your revenue is coming from. A lot of customer service questions that happen in public social media are really sales questions and if your customer service team is empowered to respond to customers over social media, that becomes a sale. I think that it effects the entire organization.

Small Business Trends: What are some of the new things Desk.com offers?

Matt Trifiro: We have completely rebuilt our product to service the needs of small and medium size businesses. We have a new agent interface that is super easy to use and very easy to set up. You can attach Desk.com to a Twitter account and be servicing your customers over Twitter with literally five clicks.

You can attach a Facebook page in a similar number of clicks. You can attach an email account. All of the different channels that your customers demand service from are now organized in one place on our new agent interface. All of the interactions with the customers are stored at one place so that if multiple employees interact with the customer, they can see the entire history.

In addition, we have an entirely new mobile agent. A buyer who does some customer support but is on the road all the time now is able to interact with customers to provide support using any HTML5, Android or IOS mobile phone very simply and easily. That is new in Desk.com as well.

Small Business Trends: Where can people go to learn more about Desk. com and how it can help small businesses get up to speed with delivering the customer experience that they are really looking for today?

Matt Trifiro: Go to www.Desk.com. Every account gets their first full time agent for free. There should be no barrier, even to the smallest of companies to try it out.

This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.

From Small Business Trends

Matt Trifiro of Desk.com: Meeting Customer Service Expectations in a Social World

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Are you leaving behind an easily found trail of accomplishment?

Few people are interested in your resume any more. Plenty are interested in what you’ve done.

The second thing you’ll need to do is regularly note what you produce in a log or find some other way to keep track.

The first thing is more difficult: If the work you do isn’t worth collating and highlighting, you probably need to be doing better work.

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I mean for a business, or any dream for that matter, to work we can’t just care a little bit, we have to go all in. Likewise, we can’t manage a little bit or market a little bit – we have to go all in. They’re fundamental to our business.

Here are some quick  marketing lessons learned the hard way that could same you real time and real money. And you know what they say about time . . .

Lesson #1: Do the work and then do it again. 

You have to do the work to create a great product. And then you have to turn around and do the work again to create a smart marketing strategy and management solutions. Having a great product doesn’t excuse poor management or weak marketing.

Lesson #2: Website strategy shouldn’t be an after thought. 

Every website is not the same. Some are like brochures, they just lay there until someone stumbles across it and picks it up. But others are like the energizer bunny, they just keep going and going and going. The owner creates new and relevant content and marketing campaigns that go out gets attention and visits. The energizer bunny website goes to work (just like you).

Lesson #3: Make my website simple please.

You don’t have to design your own website. You can put your energy into something else while you pay an expert to create it for you.  But in the end you still want something with a login, so that you or a member of your team can change the text, plus add a few videos when you want to. Beware of designer hijacked websites.

Lesson #4: One time around the marketing block is never enough. 

Just like we all want more than one client, then we have to market more than one time. Consistent marketing is a about a systematic approach, not a random collection of hodge podge solutions.

It’s hard to implement 15 marketing ideas at once, especially when you’re learning at the same time. It’s difficult to remember what everybody told you. But it’s easy to choose one strategy, study it, implement it and then start another.

Lessons Learned Photo via Shutterstock

From Small Business Trends

4 Quick Marketing Lessons: Some Learned The Hard Way

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