Apr 18th, 2008 |
Lane Becker is co-founder and president of Satisfaction Unlimited, developers of Get Satisfaction – a tool to foster better communication and collaboration between companies and their customers.
Read his recommendations on the exciting talks taking place at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco next week.
1) What is your talk about? Why should attendees come to it?
“Customer Service is the New Marketing” is designed to help companies (and the people who work inside them) deal with the very real changes brought about by the introduction of the Internet and the unprecedented degree of access it gives customers to the companies they know and love — and sometimes hate.
So many companies are frightened by the idea that their customers now have deep access to both information about their company and, more importantly, to *other customers* of the company. Having been up to this point able to avoid interacting with their customers in any real way, many of these companies just want to shove their heads in the sand and pretend that the world hasn’t changed.
But the world has changed, and innovative businesses are recognizing that this change also represents a huge opportunity: to actually talk to their customers, to give their customers opportunities to say what they think and in the process and find out what they really want. These companies see customer service not as customer support but instead as customer *engagement* and treat moments of customer interaction not as a cost to be minimized or a transaction to be hurried through but as an opportunity for real and honest interaction with the people that matter to their business.
In doing so, they gain all sorts of benefits to their organization that weren’t possible before. Hence, “the new marketing” — not just brand messages to ram down your customers throat’s during 30 second commercial spots, but genuine, two-way conversation and community that builds long-term value and lasting relationships for both companies and customers.
During our talk, we’ll review the issues and challenges that arise for companies taking these steps, and we’ll also present an overall framework and initial steps that companies can take to get started.
2) What’s the most important, cool, scary, or useful product or technology (not made by your company) that’s recently arrived or on the horizon?
I’m of the opinion that if a new technology isn’t important, cool, scary, and useful all at once, there’s not much point to it! At the moment I’m really intrigued by Tom Coates’ FireEagle, a project out of Yahoo’s Brickhouse that basically acts as a presence negotiator — developers can use it both to get and give information about a user’s geographic location, which significantly augments what they can do inside their own apps.
Sounds scary to some, but it’s impressively done and should serve as an excellent example of “how to do it right” for other designers and developers who are dealing with the sticky issues of privacy and access to information in this highly transparent, interconnected world we now live in.
3) Aside from your own talk, what’s the most interesting / entertaining speaker, talk or panel happening at Web 2.0 Expo?
Well, Scott Fleckenstein, from my own company, is giving a talk on “The How of OAuth” that nobody should miss. OAuth is a new third-party identification protocol that promises to significantly change the way we manage multiple accounts on the Web. Tired of creating Yet Another Account? Then OAuth is for you.
I’m looking forward to hearing Toby Segaran talk about data mining, because he always manages to take a dry and complicated subject and turn it into something pretty spicy and entertaining: “Social Data: Collecting, Mining, and Using it in Your Applications.”
I’d also recommend Rob Hayes from First Round Capital and Jeff Clavier from Softtech VC, both of who are our investors here at Get Satisfaction, who are presenting on “Starting Up: Strategies for Financing & Growing Your Web 2.0 Startup.” Neither Rob nor Jeff is your typical VC — I’ve never seen either of them in either a blue denim shirt or pleated khaki pants, for example — and I know from experience their advice on starting a company is invaluable if you’re thinking that might be something you want to do.
Oh, and one other workshop: Scott Berkun, “How to Innovate on Time.” Scott is brilliant, and comes at his thinking about productivity, and innovation. And, again, an incredibly entertaining speaker (I think that’s important, in case you can’t tell. No one should ever be bored at a conference about the coolest technologies in the world!)
