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EMPLOYEE
Annoucing our first "Customer Service is the New Marketing" Summit.
Since Thor first presented on "Customer Service is the New Marketing" at SXSW and then followed up with a post about it on our blog, we've had a steady drumbeat of interest on the subject from people across a wide spectrum of industries, companies and job titles.
Clearly, the topic has struck a nerve. We knew it was a subject we were obsessed with, but we had no idea so many people felt so passionately about what at a glance seems like it might make for pretty mundane subject matter. People from all sorts of industries have contacted us, wanting to share their stories about how to make customer service a better experience all around, or asking for tips and suggestions about how to get their own organizations to do customer service differently.
And, hey, we're a customer service organization, right? Give the customers what they want, and what our community wants is a chance to learn, organize, and share around some of these emerging ideas. And so we're announcing our first "Customer Service is the New Marketing" Summit, to be held in mid-November here in lovely San Francisco, California (exact date and location to be determined shortly.)
We're currently hard at work putting together a full roster of speakers, pulling from a variety of industries (and not just the usual Web 2.0 crowd, though we'll have some of them, too), all of whom are finding ways to make customer service more meaningful for their organizations. We'll round out the day with some collaborative workshops, some probing interviews, some group discussion, plenty of food and of course the opportunity to mingle and network. More information on all this soon, we promise.
But first, of course, we want to hear from you: Would this be something you would be interested in? Who would you like to see speak? What kinds of other attendees would you want to meet? What topics would you find the most valuable? Let us know!
Clearly, the topic has struck a nerve. We knew it was a subject we were obsessed with, but we had no idea so many people felt so passionately about what at a glance seems like it might make for pretty mundane subject matter. People from all sorts of industries have contacted us, wanting to share their stories about how to make customer service a better experience all around, or asking for tips and suggestions about how to get their own organizations to do customer service differently.
And, hey, we're a customer service organization, right? Give the customers what they want, and what our community wants is a chance to learn, organize, and share around some of these emerging ideas. And so we're announcing our first "Customer Service is the New Marketing" Summit, to be held in mid-November here in lovely San Francisco, California (exact date and location to be determined shortly.)
We're currently hard at work putting together a full roster of speakers, pulling from a variety of industries (and not just the usual Web 2.0 crowd, though we'll have some of them, too), all of whom are finding ways to make customer service more meaningful for their organizations. We'll round out the day with some collaborative workshops, some probing interviews, some group discussion, plenty of food and of course the opportunity to mingle and network. More information on all this soon, we promise.
But first, of course, we want to hear from you: Would this be something you would be interested in? Who would you like to see speak? What kinds of other attendees would you want to meet? What topics would you find the most valuable? Let us know!
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?I'd love to come (and I would speak about our experiences if you want).
(I hate the word I'm using to describe this, but...) I think it would be great to hear from people about how they get customer service to "scale." I submitted a support request to Flickr a while ago and saw that average turnaround time for requests was then about 9 days. They actually responded sooner than that, but it gave me some sense of how much support they must handle.
As we've gotten bigger it's definitely been interesting to see how support grows -- I would love to hear "that didn't work" and "this did work" stories from people who have been through it before.
Thanks! Sounds like a great idea.
I’m excited about the summit!
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Inappropriate?I've thought this was a good idea since Thor first told me about it! It seems like a really interesting idea and I think it will be great to bring people from more entrepreneurial organizations than the typical customer service conference attendees (help desk number cruncher types).
For what it's worth, I would be interested in attending and speaking (assuming people would be interested in hearing me speak!).
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?I think it's a brilliant idea - the idea definitely resonates with people. I've used that line in a presentation before ("Customer service is the new marketing") and had heaps of people come up to me to say they really agreed with that and it gave them food for thought. To have a whole summit would be incredible valuable, especially to hear from companies that have embraced the concept, and to hear case studied on how it's affected their marketing strategy, ROI, etc.
Now if you could just have it in Australia, that would be perfect :) -
Inappropriate?I think Marc's got an excellent point, I'd like to see some discussion around handling growing pains too. For example, how other organizations maintain balance between the objective (number crunching) and the subjective (relationship building). We've all had those awful "take a number" experiences from big companies but Flickr might be erring on the subjective side, if I had to wait over a week I'd be irritated even if it was a great response.
This one may be a little out there, but I think a discussion around 'internet fame' and how it impacts customer service would be interesting too. Not in the sense of driving traffic, but in the way that people you recognize are easy to confuse with people you know. Going back to Flickr as an example, if Heather Champ sends a message to someone on a forum it's going to be received differently than if someone they've never heard of does. Do customer service people need to be a little bit famous? Is it in the company's best interests to boost their rep, knowing they could take it with them? Could it invade the employee's privacy? Is it practical at a larger scale? Is institutionalizing personality cynical and wrong or refreshing and open? I don't know the answers but I would love to hear some smart people bash this topic around.
I’m excited and can't wait
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Inappropriate?+1 to Alicia's suggestion (internet-famous customer support).
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Inappropriate?You bring up some great questions, Alicia. I'm excited to explore these and see what others have to say.
I’m intrigued
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Inappropriate?I spoke today with Morgan Sherwood, who runs customer service for Slide, and she had a really interesting story to tell about scaling Slide's customer service from a handful a day to a couple thousand a week. Particularly how she chose systems that dealt well with the tradeoff of performance/cost, as well as the way she's had to rearrange her approach @ certain critical inflection points (as well as future ones she's predicting they'll have.) sounds like scaling to me! what do you think, marc?
and what other speakers/from what kinds of industries do you think we should look to for speakers on the topic of scaling customer service?
I’m looking for a few good speakers
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Inappropriate?Sounds great to me. How about Tivo, too?
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Inappropriate?nice bouncy ball chair!
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Inappropriate?That's still quite a few, but not that bad. I've written a lot about scaling customer service. In my conversations with some executives from Best Buy, it has been a big problem with them.
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Inappropriate?I'd like to see a discussion around getting more people in the company involved in customer service, including the users. After trying to sell the idea that developers and QA would benefit from the conversations for months, I could use some new ways to convince.
I’m capitulating.
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Inappropriate?Great point. We fully believe in this. I know some customer service reps don't necessarily want their engineers talking to customers in fear of, let's say, a lack of tact. However, with the right tools and appropriate boundaries, I think having the people making and testing products and services talking directly with their users is incredibly valuable.
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?I agree with Amy - But any good Customer Service department will have guide lines for what is appropriate and what isn't. This isn't to say that certain people have a certain nack for explaining things in a way that's both friendly and informative.
I think it would also benefit people within a company (Bus Dev, Eng, PMs, QA, etc.) to at least have the ability to see what people are saying. Everyone at our company has the ability to log into our CRM, but few do. Having a public space that anyone can access anywhere to see what the hot topics are may help influence how bugs are handled and what features are released. People tend to act quicker on topics that are under the public eye.
I’m just a naturally happy person
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Inappropriate?Check out Luxology LLC (http://www.luxology.com/). Luxology is a company that creates one of the hottest new 3D applications in the market. People are constantly speaking about how cool it is and what new features it will have etc.
That is all due to the head of the company, Brad Peebler, doing weekly (and you can set an alarm for his posting schedule) forum posts, where he is showing bits of development or showing off this new feature or sharing weekly news, etc.
Brad is constantly feeding the customers and interested potential customers with news and behind the scenes stuff. People have the feeling that the company is constantly hard at work and that something is happening. Although they needed 1.5 years to actually bring out the new version.
All that is happening in the forum and is not put prominently on the front page. People who seek customer service and go to the forum will see this, but it isn't forced on them in a marketing campaign.
I’m in love with those smileys.
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Inappropriate?I would love to go and share! It's a tough job enlisting the internal and external customer evangelists!
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?Having the opportunity to share experiences is great!
Hot topics such as scale, new delivery channels, community will be killers
Loking forward for more information about this conference
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?I would love to come and speak as part of your inaugural conference! I blog about positive customer service and marketing stories (they are kind of hard to find, as most people end up ranting instead!). I also speak on customer experience and the intersection of customer service and marketing on a regular basis.
From my experience, marketing peeps don't respect customer service peeps, and as a result, customer service ends up being kept an arm's length away (or more) from what is taking place in marketing and sales.
The result, from a customer's persective, is a company that looks disjointed, customers who are disillusioned when customer service doesn't know what marketing sent them, and a general feeling of dissatisfaction all around.
Sharing examples at this conference about how companies can look at their customers' experiences consistently across the board would be very powerful. In addition, sharing ways that marketing and customer service can work hand-in-hand will be helpful to those working to improve the customer experience and ultimately, the customer relationship.
I look forward to hearing more about the conference and these topics, whether or not you ask me to contribute by speaking!
You guys rock!
I’m psyched about this topic!
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Inappropriate?We're big fans of yours, Becky. In fact, you're listed in our sidebar blogroll here: http://blog.getsatisfaction.com. I'll be in touch privately to discuss details.
I’m thrilled you found us
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Inappropriate?I would also be interested in speaking. :) My presentations typically focus on the "Little Things, Big Differences" I talk about, which can definitely be applied to marketing.
I’m excited.
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Inappropriate?Update: We've got a date for the conference set, February 4, 2008; a location, the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco; and, most importantly, a website where you can find out about the current speaker lineup and even register.
Register! Join us! You know you want to!
I’m registered already
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Inappropriate?Yay, a conference worth getting excited over - and in SillyCon Valley, that's saying something. Thanks for setting up a CrowdVine site as well. -
Inappropriate?Can someone from the conference contact be...I want to know if there are still any sponsorship opps!
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Inappropriate?You can send an email to Lane Becker. His email is lane {at} getsatisfaction {dot} com.
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Inappropriate?thanks, trufula! i'm also going to be sending out a message including these directions, and some other stuff, to all attendees at the end of the day today.
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Inappropriate?Maybe! We're looking into doing a "Customer Camp" sometime earlier next year, a two-day event that will go a bit broader into all the ways companies and customers can interact. But it's just an idea at the moment, and we need to figure out if we have the resources to pull it off. Further updates as events warrant.
I’m going to see if we can make it work
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Inappropriate?Yes, I would love to see speakers from the various social media network sites; also the Kelsey Group; and HR leaders in the Silicon Valley (inside customer service at a grass-roots level; training from the inside out); This is certainly a mix-bag, but combined they would add a great mix for companies such as ours that services smiles in Silicon Valley---a healing arts company
I’m excited
EMPLOYEE
EMPLOYEE
