has your company got a Community Manager ?
My support for the Disqus commenting system used on this blog is well documented. I have also had great support whenever I have had minor issues with a service I paid precisely nothing for.
Disqus are a small company with less than 10 employees. However, Disqus are not a cottage industry operating out of Daniel Ha's garage. Disqus are funded by venture capital (Union Square and angel investors) and raised $500,000 in the last round of funding (March 2008).
So it's not surprising that Disqus are growing and hiring people. However, what fascinates me is that in addition to hiring talented developers to develop, improve, enhance and fix the product, Disqus have recently appointed Giannii as a 'Community Manager'.
Ignoring the lack of a surname and some of the Web 2.0 terms sprinkled in this introductory post; for example, 'Chief Happiness Engineer' is frankly cringe worthy, it is worth noting that Disqus have many channels available for people to contact them:
- Disqus forums
- GetSatisfaction
More importantly, Disqus don't just sit by the computer waiting for people to call in - they proactively monitor all these channels and participate. Moan about a Disqus problem on Twitter and count the seconds until you get a response.
What is interesting about Disqus hiring a 'Community Manager' is not necessarily that a small startup can afford one but Disqus (and presumably the people controlling the purse strings) actually view this role as one of the first ten, and most important, positions to be filled in the company.
So what ? Every company has a 'Community Manager' - they are just called different things 'Sales', 'Marketing', 'Partners', 'Customer Care', 'Public Relations' - every company does this stuff but they don't a) shout about it and b) dress it up in Web 2.0 tinsel.
To pick just one example, Apple are a big, successful company who make clever videos and sell expensive, stylish computers, iPods and iPhones to this type of demographic so surely they must have a 'Community Manager' ?
Surprisingly, they don't. In September, Apple released the 2.1 firmware for the iTouch and this update broke WPA2 wireless connectivity. Having recently acquired an iTouch and been hugely impressed with the device, I was surprised Apple could have introduced such a fundamental bug but I ignored it and waited patiently for a patch.
Unsurprisingly, lots of Apple customers experienced the same issue and multiple threads arose to discuss the issue on Apple's official support forums. The most popular thread now has 36,208 views and 436 replies.
- How many of the 436 replies came from Apple ? None.
- Did Apple respond to any of these threads ? No.
- Did Apple even acknowledge the problem ? No.
- Do Apple care about their customers ? Not sure.
- Am I encouraged to give more money to Apple by spending in the iTunes Store ? No.
- What impression does this give to a recent Apple convert ? Arrogant.
- When is 2.2 scheduled for release ? Not known.
- Will 2.2 include a fix for this issue ? Not known.
- Is a fix even on the horizon ? Originally, I would have bet money on it but, given Apple's lack of response to date, I am now starting to have doubts.
It's obvious that Apple don't have a 'Community Manager'. Does your company ?
BA launches bid for prestigious 'marketing campaign' award
British Airways, shocked at missing out last year's trophy, have launched a superlative campaign for 2008. Agency: Itchy & Scraatchi. Cost: £25,000 found in a digger after the completion of T5. Gate 3 - Newcastle airport.Together we can work wonders
Off to a gentle modest start.
Together we can get people talking about T5
That is certainly true.
Together we can make T5 world famous
Some wag has added a prefix of 'in'.
Together we can keep people smiling
Most people smile, dumped in Vancouver 17 hours late with no clean shirts and underpants, don't they ?
Together we can keep things moving
Well most things with the exception of the baggage carousels.
...and the final, closing, crowning glory.
Together we can get off to a flying start
Honestly, if you made it up, people wouldn't believe you.
goodbye pMetrics
Looked good but you forgot the cardinal rule of CRM. It takes 3 years to win a new customer and a mere 3 seconds to lose a customer. I was away for two weeks so didn't have time to follow the 'soap opera'.flowery twats
I am working in Oxford and booked into this small hotel overnight. I arrived at 18.30 and rang the bell. No one is home. I phoned the company who made the booking to get the phone number. They call the hotel on my behalf. Guess what. No one is home. The helpful man from LateRooms asked if I could wait around in the cold for 30 minutes to 'see if someone turns up'. I was convinced my ears had deceived me and asked him to repeat this suggestion. I politely decline his kind offer so he consults his supervisor and offers to find me another hotel. I reply that I wouldn't trust him to tell me the time of day and hang up. I then drive aimlessly around Kidlington until I happen to locate the Holiday Inn. Thankfully, this hotel has a person manning reception and rooms available. Later, the proprietor of the Happy Lodge calls me to explain the situation. Not to apologise but just to explain the situation. When I made the booking, I indicated I would be arriving around 19.00 so that is when someone would have been around to greet me. So it was actually my fault all along. Of course, I see now. Everything is crystal clear. It was my mistake. How stupid of me. The proprietor thinks I owe her an apology because she had to turn a couple away from booking the room allocated to me but now unexpectedly vacant at short notice. I disagreed and politely suggested that maybe, just maybe, she might owe me an apology. The lady disagreed but helpfully suggested that next time I stay at the Happy Lodge, I make an effort to arrive at the designated time and not half an hour earlier. I count to two and half before exploding: 'Sorry but there will be no need for that because I will not be staying at the Happy Lodge. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not ever'.smoke and mirrors
Many years ago, in a parallel universe not far from here, I was involved in a CRM 'proof of concept'. This involved producing a demonstration of a callcenter application accessing customer and product data from disparate legacy systems in a polished, unified, modern user interface. The scenario was pretty standard fare. A motor insurance company where a customer calls in to renew his motor policy and the callcenter agent walks through a standard 'question-answer-retort' guided dialogue. The demo climaxes in a superb cross-sell to add the customers son who has just turned 17 as a named driver to the existing policy (the pre-sales guy was positively orgasmic about this addition) with a substantial discount as part of some campaign. Now, choosing names is very important so of course the demo initially used dead pop stars, politicians, historic figures, alternative comedians and footballers. This was mainly because the marketing guy thought TEST USER wouldn't impress the CEO's of blue chip companies. The initial novelty of using celebrity names soon wore off as we struggled to make the software components actually do what we wanted. In fact, we were desperately tired of the endless repetitions of the dialogue ('Take 369'), that we were completely oblivious to the names appearing. We were just hoping and praying just that the demo behaved and ran through to completion without an hourglass, a blue screen or an unexpected 'cross-sell' opportunity emerging from the 'Home, Buildings & Contents' division. Finally, the proof of concept was finished, we were exhausted and the demanding marketing man was (finally) happy. Imagine our surprise, a few weeks later when he returned with two complimentary CD's. 'Great job guys. The Sales MD was absolutely delighted and thinks this collateral will really help us make that breakthrough into SME in Q3. I thought you might be curious to see the fruits of your labour.' So we thanked him, waved goodbye, then sat down to watch the CD. We were both genuinely dumbfounded when the following words, spoken in best BBC English, came out of the tinny PC speaker:'Norman Whiteside of Manchester is looking for a competitive quote for his car insurance. '