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This guest post is from my friend Melanie G. Snyder. Melanie is a writer from my area, and is currently involved in a very cool research project related to the fascinating history of the house in which she lives, and its previous occupant. (Do yourself a favor and click on that link and read the story. You won?t regret it).
The other day Melanie sent me a message on Facebook that she said might be nice for my blog. The timing was uncanny because there has been a lot of talk lately, both here and on other blogs, about the nature of customer service. What she was relating to me was a great case study of awesome customer service from a great start-up company, and a story that needed to be told. I?ve also experienced the great customer service provided by this company, and they continue to impress me. But rather than just write the post myself, I asked her to write it for me, and she did?
Though I tell the college students I teach never to start a piece of writing with an apology, I feel compelled to start this guest blog post with . . . er . . . a disclaimer.
I am not a social media expert. Don?t pretend to be. Don?t wannabe. Don?t need to be (Ken?s posts and links to other social media bloggers? provide all I need to know.)
But a recent experience got me thinking about connections between the online world and the world where I do much of my work ? in face-to-face human interactions. I teach communications and conflict resolution courses, and I conduct mediations between people who have committed crimes and the victims of those crimes. And I?ve gotta be honest ? I worry about some of the negative (or at least unproductive) ways people interact online and the effects on our face to face interactions. When we look in the social media mirror at how we engage with each other online, it should always reflect how we?d interact if we were looking each other in the eyes.
So ? about my recent experience.
In 5 Ways to Breathe New Life Into Your Blog, Ken recommended Livefyre?s commenting plug-in to ?turn your blog into a conversation.? I decided to try it out. But my blog is built on Expression Engine, and EE wasn?t on Livefyre?s list of supported site platforms. So I sent an email via their generic ?contact us? form asking for help. Frankly, I figured the odds of getting a response were slim. I?ve used online ?contact? forms and organizations? general email addresses and find it surprising (and frustrating) how often no one responds.
But within a couple of hours, a guy named Jeremy Hicks, Community Manager for Livefyre, responded, demonstrating one way social media interactions should mirror real life:
When someone speaks to you (even via a generic ?Contact Us? form), respond.
Jeremy did more than just respond. He gathered information about how my blog was set up, created a custom installation script and provided detailed installation instructions. He also offered to walk me through the installation, step by step, if I wanted that level of help.
I?ve had experiences with other businesses whose customer service staff seemed to be following a canned telephone script and offered a few prescribed solutions, but if none of them was really what I needed, we were at an impasse.
Jeremy?s response demonstrated a second way to mirror positive face-to-face interactions in what we do online:
When someone asks for help, ask what they need and do all you can to provide it.
With Jeremy?s help, I got Livefyre up and running on my blog and things seemed fine. Then a reader who subscribes to my blog via Feedburner email entered a comment using Livefyre. Another reader who accessed my blog via NetworkedBlogs responded to the first reader?s comment, using a commenting feature I?d set up thru EE before I installed Livefyre (are you still with me?) But when I went to my blog using the basic URL, I couldn?t see the Livefyre comments. Ditto when I used the NetworkedBlogs URL. In order to see the Livefyre comment that was entered through the Feedburner-generated URL, I had to go to that same Feedburner-generated URL. So, I contacted Jeremy and spelled out the problem.
Now, I understand that my blog is a proverbial ?little fish? in the great big blog-pond. I knew from the Livefyre website that they?ve got thousands of customers to tend to, including some of the biggest names in the blogosphere. So, clearly Livefyre staff had far more important concerns than my wacky little problem, on a platform that they don?t even support, to boot. And I?ve had plenty of experiences with tech support staff in other companies who made me feel like I was an idiot and was wasting their time with my petty little technology problems (often sensing that they were typing emails, checking incoming text messages or otherwise multi-tasking while on the phone with me.)
But Jeremy got several of the Livefyre engineers to dive into my problem, he gave me regular email updates over a period of several days about various fixes they were trying, and they got the problem solved. Their attention made me feel like my problem was the most important thing they were working on and I was a VIP customer.
Which brings me to another way to mirror the best of face to face interactions in what we do online:
When you?re interacting with someone, stay focused on them and treat them like they are your top priority.
There?s one more piece to the Livefyre story. In implementing the fix to my blog problem, previous comments my readers had made via Livefyre were lost. Jeremy was very apologetic. When I told Jeremy that I?m in the process of writing a book, and that there had been information in those reader comments that I?d been hoping to use for my book, he and his team went back at it and did whatever they had to do to get those reader comments back in place ? simply because I said that I needed them.
I was so impressed with Jeremy?s customer focus that I decided to Google him to check out his credentials. Turns out he was only a year out of college and had gone to Livefyre as an intern last September. Last November, Livefyre offered him a fulltime job as their Community Manager.
I came across this 2-minute YouTube interview with Jeremy, where he shares what he has learned so far about engaging with people through social media. Take a listen:
Jeremy sums up what is probably the ultimate way to ensure that our online interactions reflect the very best in human relationships.
?You?ve got to care about people . . . Just care.?
Great advice for all of us, in all our human interactions, whether online or face-to-face.
Thanks, Jeremy!
Note from Ken: After Melanie told me about her story with Livefyre, I took the liberty of contacting Jeremy and letting him know. Here was his response:
I LOVE Melanie Synder. She was an absolute PLEASURE to work with. She had a pretty complicated issue that took a bit longer to resolve than we would have liked (our engineers have had their plates stacked pretty high), but she was patient with us and when we finally got it worked out, I felt like I had made a friend. She?s awesome.
But Ken, we love being a part of your community. It?s people like you and Melanie that make our job so much fun and make us want to always give you our best. We appreciate your continued to support, and as you know, if there is EVER anything we can do for you, just say the word and we?ll make sure you?re well taken care of .
And yes, THAT is why I love Livefyre?not just because of the product, but because of the people behind it. The product is great, bBut even when things go wrong, it?s the customer service aspect that keeps me coming back and not even bothering to try out a competitor. Plus they regularly engage with folks on Twitter in ways that you rarely see from other companies, big or small.
Have you ever received this type of hands-on, personalized customer service from a company? How does that customer service make you feel about the actual product?
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