I spoke to a group of entrepreneurs recently regarding the connection between Support and Customer Development. This has been a favorite subject of mine for some time, but this was the first time I tried to do a comprehensive presentation on the topic. As I put together the presentation, I realized that there was really…
Category Archives: Technology
A platform powerhouse at Salesforce.com?
Dreamforce 2010, the Salesforce.com annual show, has already been interesting after just the first day. There have been interesting product introductions, and lots of announcements from partners and developers that continue to build on the Force.com platform ecosystem. Because of my interest in startups and small, fast growing companies, the new integration announced by Zendesk…
Better, Faster… More Friendly?
The most productive and high-performing teams I’ve seen have had a high degree of camaraderie and fun in the regular workday. Stowe writes about a recent cognition study, with implications for social tools. This suggests that work places where friendly interaction is the norm should have more focused and production workers, while settings where friendly interaction…
ATT’s contract stickiness
TechCrunch reports that there are some disparities between the estimates of ATT subscriber loss expected if they lose their exclusivity on the iPhone and how ATT CEO Randall Stephenson is portraying the situation. Earlier today, a study by Credit Suisse was released stating that 23 percent of iPhone users currently on AT&T would switch to Verizon if…
The UX of SupportUX
[Customer Experience] isn’t about being nice or having people like you. It’s bigger than that. It’s about winning. And winning well.
Tricking people is not “Viral”
You’d think Cluetrain never happened. So many companies, and even sophisticated marketing consultancies, seem to think that tricking people into “sharing” so that their contest “goes viral” is a useful strategy. Note the recent hubbub regarding the Fast Company contest, summarized nicely by my friend Alexia: These sentiments were echoed by countless others. The biggest…
Do you know who the mayor of your business is? « The BrandBuilder Blog
Olivier Blanchard has done a nice no-nonsense overview of Four Square for small businesses. All my friends and family with restaurants, spas, shops of all sorts should take this advice… Pop quiz: You own or manage a restaurant. A hotel. A coffee shop. A specialty goods store. A hot dog stand. A bank. A movie…
Small companies can get sophisticated tools
I’ve long been a fan of Salesforce.com. This Software-as-a Service pioneer has built an impressive platform for business that’s easily scalable from one user to many thousands. The base product continues to get better. For example, now that Chatter is out of Beta ( http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/ ), sophisticated social media features are built in. Also, Salesforce…
