Ian Ryerson v2.3

Now that the year 2009 has come and gone and social media seems to be here to stay, one of the most important thing that I have learned from that year is Customer Service is more important then ever.

With the economy being in a slump and businesses cutting back every where they can, the one sector that needs more attention is customer service. Now that more and more people are getting used to using the “social media” outlets to vent not only their current status, but also their frustration and appreciation with certain businesses they frequent. With this new use of the internet businesses must stay on top of satisfying their customers. Those companies that have not yet started monitoring the internet for what their customers are saying about them are in danger of loosing future clients because of simple issues that never got resolved. The internet is making it possible for companies to stop complaints in their track simply by “listening” to their customers and helping them to resolve issues they may be having.

No longer is a simple comment box placed inside your business the way you gather feedback from customers. You need to be involved in social media, searching key words, and most importantly interacting with your customers. Everyone is starting to flock to these outlets to relay how they feel about certain business. Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, and Google are just some of these outlets being used for consumers to review businesses and their experience with them. It’s becoming so easy that most of it can be done right on your mobile device.

So now that all of this information is being released to the masses about how your customers feel about your operations it’s time to  face the facts and boost your customer service. In my opinion it’s becoming crucial for companies to monitor these outlets because it’s so easy for problems to go viral and and you may never know about it.

Treat your customers right and they will spread the good word, ignore what they have to say and don’t expect them to return.

Business that did it right in 2009

• Comcast (@comcastcares) – I have been contacted everytime I mention an issue with Comcast on Twitter they are quick to respond. They have even offered to schedule a technician to come out same day to fix my issue.
• Virgin America (@VirginAmerica) – Using both Facebook and Twitter to it’s fullest potential this is an airlines that knows customer service. Not only online but also in person. This is by far the most impressed I have been with a company and how great their customer service is.
• Dell (@Direct2Dell, @DellTechCenter, @DellOutlet) – Dell has many Twitter accounts ranging from Sales to Tech support. They have really done things right with allowing their customers to contact them via the web. With this also comes their marketing outlets about special promos and sales going on.

The internet has become an amazing tool over the last decade. To much information used to be so hard to come by, but with a little help from the internet you can find out more then you ever wanted to know about just about anything. News feeds are always coming in, social media sites are constantly being updated, photos and links are being passed around, purchases are being made, and conversations are being had. It’s amazing to look back and try to see how much is actually possible with something as “simple” as the internet.

With all of this information available we are always trying to find the quickest way to digest all of it so we can move on to the next piece of information. We aggregate everything into an RSS feeder and then tie ALL our social media profiles into a tool that will spit out all those updates in one place for us. We are in a position now where it takes to much time to go check in at 10 different websites on a regular basis, we want everything to be focused into one or two tools that will tell us everything that’s going on right at this moment.

With the new standard becoming “on demand” information it seems as if some of us are developing short attention spans. How many times have you looked at a blog post and thought it was to long because it would not fit in a single frame? It seems as if we are overloading our brains with to much information some days and our brain can’t keep up so it just skips certain things, things that could have been important, but we will never know.

With this being said, I know that I personally need to step back from the computer more often then I do and just live in my surroundings that physically exist, instead of digitally exist.

Day one of this conference was pretty straight forward. Another tech event to network at, the usual attendees, and everyone in the crowd with an open laptop or Iphone. Its almost as if no one is paying attention to the speaker, until you search twitter for the hash tag #140conf. The stream is constantly running, everyone updating from the crowd about what the speaker is talking about. This poor guy is up on stage while the audience is having a diverse conversation on the social media streams.

There becomes this combination of conference speakers and audience interaction, but it’s interaction in the digital world not in the theater. This ends up allowing for topic engagement at the exact same time as the topic is being discussed. This really is the state of NOW.

This video was shared with me by @the404error (Mathew Sedlacek) After watching it I had to share it with who ever I knew. There is a lot of power and truth in this video. If you want something bad enough, go get it. Don’t watch as everyone around you creates amazing products or does exactly what they love to do. The internet has made these things possible for all of us to accomplish. Branding in a personal sense is still a relatively new term but is what makes people stand out on the Web. Self branding will allow you to do things you love instead of things you just do for money. Watch this video and try to tell me what is being said is false, just try.

Fast Tube by Casper

It’s all done, the movers left ten minutes ago. This morning our house was just like it was 6 months ago, full of our stuff and everything in it’s place. The movers showed up and took care of ALL the packing for us. Boxed everything up. Disassembled furniture. And loaded it into a truck. I never knew how easy it could be to move.

So many times in the past I have done all of this myself, and it’s a lot of work. I never knew how cheap it was to just hire a company to come in and do all the hard work. So where are our things traveling to, L.A.; well West Hollywood to be exact. never thought I would be living there but it seems like oppotunities have arose that we could not say no to. So I will no longer be living in the great Silicon Valley. Hope to see you in L.A. say hi to me and i’ll see you on twitter!

On Friday May 1st I will begin a journey that will take me from El Paso Texas to Redwood City in a VW Passat. I will have 24 hours to complete this trip and will be traveling with my sister.

My day begins at 3am Friday May 1st when I awake for work. I will then work from 4am to 9am. From there I will head home to drop off my car, board a train to the San Francisco airport where my flight is scheduled to leave at 12:10pm. I land in El Paso Texas at 5:39pm. My sister will be waiting with her VW Passat that she just drove there from San Antonio. From the airport I will jump in the drivers seat and begin my drive back to Redwood City (Bay Area). I am going to be selling my sisters car for her, as she is catching a plane to move back to Alaska for work.
The reason I have 24 hours to complete this trip is because I am scheduled to work at 5am Sunday morning and I would prefer to be back in time Saturday with enough time to get a full nights sleep since I will have had very little sleep in the previous 48 hours.

Along this quick trip I am going to be documenting my trip via Twitter and my Flipcam. I will be putting together a documentary with these two mediums when I return. You can follow my trip on Twitter at #TX2CA24 (search for this hash tag for those not familiar with how # work)

Anyone located along this route I am traveling (which I will tweet at some point before I leave) DM me (only way I’ll get tweets on the road) and I may buy you lunch if you can reach me before I pass by your destination. I am curious to see how many tweets I see along the way, weather they are from people at there computers, or even people driving on the same road as me.

I was at the doctors office today and once I checked in and was placed into a waiting room the nurse said “here let me sign you into the computer here so you can surf the web while you wait for the doctor to arrive.” Huh, the internet in the doctors exam room. I must say this is a huge step up from just being able to read a magazine, now you are granted access to the world!

I almost jumped up and sat in the chair at the desk, but hesitated, I just could not bring myself to using a computer in a doctors office. I know this may sound weird, I think I was just shocked with the opportunity I was handed and could not fully grasp my head around it. Maybe next time I am there I will sign in and do a little tweeting…

Just the other day I was walking out of Peet’s coffee and there was a table set up by the D.A.R.E. team, they were looking for donations. Now I had no time to spare and was in a big rush, but the guy at the table was a great salesmen so I ended up donating to their cause. Just as I finished the transaction I thought; it was probably good that I donated because I’m sure it will come back around.

My next stop was the public library for an appointment I had. I stepped up to the parking meter to pay for parking and just as I put my card in I noticed a woman’s wallet laying on the ground in front of me. I picked it up and took it back to my car to see if I could find a phone number inside or some type of information. The phone numbers I found were no good so I threw it in my glove box, I figured I could send it to the address on the drivers license later. Then I realized that this wallet had all her credit cards, Id’s, cash, and she was probably going to be worried about it until she found it.

I decided to look for her insurance card to see what kind of car she drove and if I could find it in the parking lot. Once I discovered the “Geico” card in there I saw it had only the make of the vehicle and no license plate number (I thought there was always a license plate number) just a VIN number. So I decided to walk around the parking lot looking for all the Toyota Corrolas that I could find and checking the VIN numbers. I looked very susupecies by the way, as if I was up to no good. Once found I placed a note on her window and walked in to my appointment.

Ten minutes later I received a call from the lady but had to ignore it because I was in the middle of an appointment. 5 messages and ten phone calls later I finally walked outside to return her call. I met up with her at the parking lot and she was so excited that I had kept the wallet for her and went through so much trouble to get it back to her. She kept trying to push money on me as a reward, though I tried not to accept it, she would not take no for an answer.

I think all of the events that day took place because of Karma. I helepd out the charity guy at Peet’s and then proceeded to help a lady find her misplaced wallet. Because of this I was rewarded for my actions.

Twestivalsf was a great success. We raised just under $10,000 for Chartitywater.org. It was great to see the Twitter community come out and support such a great cause; around 400 of them. With out them and our sponsors this would not have been possible. Our organizing team was amazing during the event. Handing out T-shirts, running the silent auction, manning the front door, and making sure everything went off with out a glitch.

We had the founders of Twitter and Digg make an appearance, which got everyone excited and helped add to the great vibe that was already in the air for the evening. Guests started lining up right at 6 and got the night off to a great start. The evening went strong through the entire event.

Thanks to Paradise Lounge we were able to accommodate all the extra guests that showed up.

I went to a “mapping party” today for Open Street Mapping (OSM) and I learned that there is so much potential for this type of service. Unlike other mapping software and web interfaces, OSM is user generated and edited as if it were a wiki. This gives the possibility of so much more detail about the location and detail of anything, even a mail box sitting on a street corner. Updates are provided usually within an hour or two of the edit being made which leads to truly accurate and up to date information.

Anyone can use this interface to update a map anywhere in the world. This is providing maps of locations to places that never had online maps before. Projects are taking place for locations such as Baghdad and the Gaza Strip. Trails that are used as everyday roads can be mapped in third world countries. In the end this will create a wealth of information that can be used for so many applications. The best part is there is no closed copyright on it, you can use it for private use or for commercial such as Cloudmade is doing.