* * * * *

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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Matt Trifiro of Desk.com: Meeting Customer Service Expectations in a Social World is a post from: Home Wealth Project
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One of our readers alerted us

Michael McDermott of BashFoo wrote a few days ago:

The leaders in online reputation management services, Ratepoint Inc. of Needham, MA reported this afternoon the abrupt shutdown of all operations.   In an email that was sent out this afternoon to all “partners, customers and friends” they stated:

“RatePoint’s assets and technologies are currently being acquired, and unfortunately this means that all RatePoint accounts will soon be closed. Effective February 2, 2012, all RatePoint services, including Reputation Management, Email Marketing, Surveys, and Product Reviews will be discontinued. Your ability to access your RatePoint account will end at this time.”

Although the date of February 2, 2012 was mentioned as the deadline date that accounts could no longer be accessed by customers to retrieve their data, some RatePoint customers are reporting that they are unable to access their accounts  now.

Poor Communications

According to a thread at the Web Hosting Talk forum, some customers were taken by surprise by the news of the closure.   They are scrambling to find a replacement for customer reviews.

What baffles me is that from the homepage of the RatePoint website, it is still apparently business as usual.  There is no notice of the pending closure on the RatePoint homepage, as of this writing on January 28, 2012.  You have to dig into the Customer Support center to find the notice of operations discontinuing buried deep, with the date of January 4th on it.  Yet over 3 weeks later, there’s nothing on the home page about it.

But here’s the worst part:  RatePoint made the decision to shut down as early as November 2011, according to this item in their Customer Support database.  Yet they seem to have done little to notify customers and — so it would appear — kept accepting new ones in the meantime.

A Venture Funded Company Goes Sour

RatePoint was venture capital funded.  According to a press release back in 2009, the company reported at the time that it had “closed a $10 million Series B round of funding led by Castile Ventures of Waltham, Mass., with participation by existing investors .406 Ventures and Prism VentureWorks.”  Which goes to show … venture funding is no guarantee of business success.

We reviewed RatePoint back in August 2011 during happier times for the company. Since then, Constant Contact acquired the email marketing portion of the business, leaving the reputation management/reviews piece behind at RatePoint.  It’s the reputation management (customer reviews) piece that is shutting down at this time.

What Should You Do if You Are a RatePoint Customer?

So what should you do if you are a RatePoint customer?

• Try to export your existing customer reviews if you can —  immediately.   There are these instructions for exporting your Business Reviews buried in the Customer Support database.
• What if you’ve prepaid annually already?  Buried in the help center is a notice of where to mail your refund request.
• Search for a competitor offering a special deal for a replacement.  Customer Lobby and Shopper Approved are two such that are offering special deals to RatePoint customers left in the lurch.

From Small Business Trends

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This review is about one of the first email marketing companies on the Web: AWeber Communications. As far back (in Web years) as I can remember, AWeber has been the simple-to-use autoresponder service. If a person emailed you, you could set a sophisticated auto-reply via the service and keep the sales conversation going (or do whatever nurturing you wanted to do). They then branched out to let you send email newsletters and have sign-up forms on your website. Soon after, there were advanced analytics to analyze performance and better tools for segmenting your subscribers.

What I really like

• Unlimited emails. You are charged by subscribers, not email messages. It is a healthy approach compared to many in the industry that charge by the message (or tiers of messages).

• They’ve changed the signup forms. It used to be you could only create an ultra-simple form, but now there are many templates and styles to choose from. You can add checkboxes and radio buttons, just to name two of the flexible options.

• You can set when and how autoresponder messages are sent. You can track who opened a message and who didn’t. You can track if they clicked a link. The key is that it’s all easy to use and set up. Not all email systems are as easy to use or set up. I’m sure you’re not surprised by that statement if you’ve played around in email marketing at all.

Now, most email marketing platforms will let you do this stuff. But AWeber keeps the interface and steps to a minimum so you can get on with running your business. Marketing is important, but many of us do not have a dedicated marketing person or unlimited hours to get our messages out there.

What I think could be improved

Their pricing language is confusing to me.  It is $19/mo for up to 500 subscribers. If you go to 501 subscribers, it is $10 more per month (on top of the $19). Now, I eventually figured it out, but it would have been easier to just say, “501 subscribers is $29/mo.”

Again, email marketing platforms have all evolved and have many advanced features, but AWeber has done a great job over the years of focusing on what the customer, often a small business owner, needs and wants in a customer messaging system. They are fairly prolific with sharing advice and ideas for improving your email marketing, and if you do some searching you’ll find that they have been around a long time. In Internet years, that says a lot, and their blog is worth studying no matter which platform you use.

Learn more about email marketing with AWeber.

From Small Business Trends

Review: AWeber Email Marketing Service for Small Business

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Review: AWeber Email Marketing Service for Small Business is a post from: Home Wealth Project
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However, most businesses rely on word of mouth and customer loyalty. And because of that, huge amounts of effort and resources need to go into keeping the customer happy. A friend of mine sent me this infographic called The State of Customer Service in a Consumer Driven Market and it reminded me precisely why I made the decision I did.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that customer service is taken so seriously. And I get as irritated as the next person when a big company’s bureaucracy takes me for granted as a consumer. But yeah, there are also plenty of loony’s out there, and the less of them you have to deal with in your business, the better.

Click to enlarge

Source: ClickSoftware Field Service Management

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Every business is driven by an initial idea. Even as you protect the practical parts of the business, do things to protect the dreamer in you:

• the one who believes you can make money and do something that matters at the same time;
• the one who believes you can create something that doesn’t exist;
• the one who believes you can solve problems that others ignore.

As you grow your business, be sure to give that part of you a chance to grow too. In “5 Tips Today’s Entrepreneurs Can Learn From J.K. Rowling,” Susan L. Reid says:

“Focus on the unique something you have to offer to the world. The rest will surely come, in ways you may not even be able to imagine.”

Business is driven by service. 

We build businesses around taking care of people but it’s easy to get caught up in the list of what has to be done and forget that business really is about the people who want and use what you have. It’s all about taking care of them.

In “What Do Today’s Fast Food Junkies Like?” Joel Libava refers to a study by Market Force that tries “to find out why customers chose one fast food restaurant over another.” It turns out that friendliness and customer service matters more than you may think.

To me, service is a key way to differentiate your business. Take care of the customers and take the service to another level.

Leadership is driven by service. 

John Mariotti, in “What Makes an Effective Leader?,” says:

“Effective leaders have to be ‘servant leaders.’ They have to be coaches and cheerleaders and collaborative problem solvers…Only when a tough decision must be made should the boss/leader step up and say, “OK, here’s what we need to do.”

Taking a service position allows you to step back and see your team. It gives you the space to create an environment where they can be heard. You need to know what they know, and the only way you can do that is by listening.

Idea Photo via Shutterstock

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Are you a consultant, copywriter, accountant, Web designer, PR professional? Or some other kind of professional services provider?

If you’ve ever dreamed of getting off the treadmill of  selling your hourly services, year after year, then read on.

How do you escape the service firm trap? The answer, according to former consultant, hyper-successful entrepreneur and author John Warrillow, is to re-invent your business and position it more like a product company. It involves “productizing” your services by naming and branding them so that they can be sold by salespeople instead of only you. It involves turning the project-to-project hamster wheel off and creating a recurring stream of revenue.And eventually you may even create a business that one day you can sell, for your retirement.

It’s a hard process, but not impossible.  Best of all, it’s something you can learn.

If this sounds like you, then you’ll be delighted to know that John Warrillow, Author of Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, is here to help.  John is hosting a workshop:

Creating A Sellable Service Business

Two different cities are being offered for this workshop.

Location 1: Chicago on Thursday, September 29th at 7pm EST and also on Friday, September 30th at 4pm EST

Location 2: Toronto on October 2nd and 3rd

And the best part is that he’s also extended an “early bird special” to Small Business Trends readers offering a discount of 25% off!

Discount Code: SMALLBIZ

Registration: Chicago, September 29th and September 30th

Registration: Toronto, October 2nd and 3rd

The topics John will be covering are:

• Putting your business on autopilot
• Maximizing the value of your business
• Negotiating with leverage

The insights John has to offer are many and his agenda is for dinner, conversation and a good meal followed the next day by the workshop and exercises for techniques that you can apply to your small business.  Sounds like an intimate gathering full of knowledge and insightful experiences – you won’t want to miss this one!

From Small Business Trends

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It’s the power of compassion and it has a place in business.

It’s also September and with the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 just behind us, I think about tragedy and hope…how things are ripped apart and how we piece them back together.

It’s called survival and there is a place for it in business.

In “The News Business Changed After 9/11” Joe Marren says, “The heat and the angst and the emotion still burn because I still feel some of the memories. I guess we all do in some way, but I was trying to lead a newsroom…” His words make me think of the fact that we are trying to lead our businesses (and our lives) on the other side of 9/11 and in a lot of ways things have changed. I’m not sure we are fully aware of how much it has changed yet, because time often exposes new perspectives. And in some ways 10 years ago feels like yesterday.

I know this: Some things were reborn or renewed that day: service and survival.

Running a company doesn’t mean that we lose our heart–just the opposite. Our business can be a platform to show how much we care about our clients and our community.  Our clients are the people we solve problems for, and our community reaps the financial impact of our business and the resources and the income that our companies bring back into our cities.

In my opinion,  the best gift that we can give 10 years later, in the middle of hurricane season (and, for some, in the wake of their own personal tragedies) is to succeed at what we do, no matter the odds, and to support the people and services around us, because there is always a way and a reason to give back.

May we never lose the spirit of survival and the spirit of service that leaped forward that day.

How has 9/11 impacted your business?

From Small Business Trends

The 9/11 Business: Survival and Service

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The 9/11 Business: Survival and Service is a post from: Home Wealth Project
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