Asking questions and understanding your customers’ business is the foundation of great service.
I’ve heard estimates that more than 60 percent of customers who moved their business to a different supplier did so because they were dissatisfied with the people who were servicing their business. They felt that they weren’t understood and received poor customer service.

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Virtual events have all the benefits of an in-person meeting without the expense and headache of actually going to one.

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Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demo SixthSense | Video on TED.com.

This video presentation from TED shows is pretty interesting-beginning Minority Report type of stuff. The fact that it does iconic gestures and is possible on any surface (non-computer) are great.  The ramifications for social media or inbound marketing are just the least of it. The commercial aspects-consumers finding out more information suited to thier profile-are fantastic. Have a look.

How to combat “too-good-to-be-true” objections

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Marketing 4 Digital (M4D)

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When sending a book for review, it’s essential to include the following: (1) a copy of the book; (2) a personal cover letter to the reviewer that sells the book and tells why it is important to the readers of the review; (3) a press release that enthusiastically describes the book and its benefits…

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GOOGLE INC. has been racing to extend its reach on the Internet and in traditional media. Now it needs advertisers to follow. Among those it is wooing is Alan Cohen, chief marketing officer of Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc.

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Creative people want to express that creativity. Meanwhile, they need to make a living – possibly by finding an audience for some buyable form of that creativity. This is an old predicament, but the Internet enables new experiments in resolving it – like the Swap Meat, a project of a Web site called Coudal.com.

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Wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing. Wisdom is the application of knowledge: the ability to recognize a fact, trend, or signal as significant; the ability to take a technique and apply it to accomplish a goal. Modern enterprises know plenty about their customers-every day transactional systems chatter, Web logs fill, and customer activities are tracked. Most companies don’t need to know more about their customers, they need to know what to do with the knowledge already in hand. Fortunately, there are a number of emerging strategies for companies that need to gain wisdom about what they already know-and many don’t require opening up the corporate coffers, only taking a new approach to turn customer knowledge into wisdom.

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EBSCO Publishing’s Stratton Lloyd explains how a close read of customer challenges enabled the firm to increase loyalty and sustain its rapid growth.

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