I was recently asked to speak and do a book signing at Georgian Court University. I spoke to business people and marketing / business students.

At the event I had a chance to sit with some of the attendees and discuss marketing issues.
One of the topics we discussed was online surveys. The general opinion was that online surveys are annoying and intrusive.

The particular surveys I am talking about are the ones that appear after a purchase has been made a purchase through a website’s shopping engine. Typically, there is little to no incentive to fill out these surveys other than helping the website owner better their service and sales process.

I got to thinking about this, why ask the customer to take their valuable time to help you? This seems like a total disregard for a customer’s time only to make the process better for the store. It’s not a customer’s responsibility to help you get better, not directly anyway.

We should, “listen” to our customers even when they say nothing. It would seem to me that it’s a futile effort to survey the people that made it through to checkout. I’d much rather know about the experience of the people that didn’t buy.

Website statistics and analytics programs give us great information about what people look at; don’t look at, where they leave the site and more. You can track failed site searches, abandoned carts and time spent per page. Sure it takes time and it’s a tedious process to analyze this data and then fix the issues but it’s your site, it should be your time spent not your customer’s. You’re the one who will benefit so take the time and stop asking me, the customer to do it.

Ironically, after coming home that night I received a call from my health insurance provider (technically a call center they hired). They wanted me to take a customer satisfaction survey so they could improve their performance.

At first I thought, okay, my insurance company doesn’t have an analytics program tracking my movements in the doctors office (at least I hope they don’t – how embarrassing would that be?) so I’ll take a minute to give them some feedback. If figured it was a general,  “What would you like to see improved” . I would say, “Charge me less and stop making me submit the same claim 15 times before you pay it.” They would reply, “We’re on it, thanks for your time”. Unfortunately it was a little more complicated.

Once I agreed to take the survey I was told, “This should only take 8 to 12 minutes”. Eight to twelve minutes! Are you friggin kidding me! I don’t want to spend that kind of time on the phone with someone I don’t know, I don’t want to spend that kind of time talking to people I do know!

I told the woman I really have no interest in spending that kind of time answering random questions. She told me she could call back when I had more time. I said sure, I’ll be retiring in about fifteen years, try and catch me then but don’t call too late, I’m sure I’ll be going to bed early.

I am sure that an insurance company gets boat loads of complaints on a regular basis. How about surveying the unhappy customers? I’m sure they would have no problem telling you how to improve your service – at length!

If you truly need my feedback you better give some kind of valuable incentive to make it worth my  while. The insurance company offered nothing other than the satisfaction I would get from knowing I helped a large corporation become larger. They proved what I already knew about insurance companies. They do not value my time and they proved it by offering me nothing in return for it.

As marketing people and as business people we all need to realize that in our clickable culture customers are busier than ever before. Respecting a customers time is one of the best things you can do to make your service better. Get me in, get me out. Make it easier for me even if that means it’s harder for you. 

If you want me to answer survey questions, you better be Richard Dawson and I better win some cash if I get the answers right!

Written by Larry Bailin. Bestselling author of the marketing book,
Mommy, Where Do Customers Come From? ® Writen for Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog

I recently was invited to be a speaker at the Blog World and New Media Expo in Las Vegas where I gave a presentation titled, “Using social media to drive traffic to your Blog”. Personally I hated the title (not my choice) of the seminar. Being from New Jersey it’s hard to associate the term, “traffic” with anything positive. The word “traffic” sends the wrong message and is counterproductive to the thought process needed to succeed on the social scene.

I focused my presentation on changing the point of view of the 150 people in the audience. If they were to truly succeed in the competitive social media landscape they would need to remove, “driving traffic” from the top of their goals list and replace it with, “driving customers”.

In order to succeed in the social scene everyone needs to stop measuring visits and start measuring victories.

After my presentation I was approached by Michael Mattis of Yahoo and he told me that he’d like me to write a blog post for YSM (Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog) with a few points from my presentation. We agreed that my examples of, “social rules” would fit the bill.

Offline business rules have always applied in the online space so it would be a safe bet that the social rules we all grew up with, the ones our loving parents drilled into our heads, the rules that kept us safe and happy would also apply when used in online social situations.

Social Rule # 1 - Choose your friends wisely.

It seems that building a large number of friends is the goal for most online socialites. The more friends you have the more popular you are In an offline situation, a good example of this is high school.   The less popular nerdy type only had a few friends which happened to be other less popular nerdy types with similar goals and interests.

By grouping together, sharing ideas and staying hyper-focused this social solidarity seemed to always achieve levels of success later in life that most of us could only dream of (Bill Gates for example) while the more popular captain of the cheerleaders ends up marrying and divorcing the adulterous football player and having to move to Arizona and balance being a single mom with two crappy jobs. That’s the way it happens on television anyway.

Summary: Social networking works the same way. Be choosy when selecting friends. A smaller group of like-minded individuals allows you to spread your message through a more targeted audience. Large groups of broad targets and views will muddy the waters and stop you from achieving the results needed to succeed.

Social rule #2 – Treat people the way you want to be treated.

You get what you give is a rule that has stood the test of time. You cannot expect people to do for you unless you do for them. If you are to make a mark on the social scene first you have to do for others. You need to participate, comment, visit and support others if you expect them to do the same in return.

Summary: By participating you become part of the community. People start to recognize you and appreciate your efforts. These efforts will not go unrewarded. I started my marketing blog (ConnectedCustomers.net) eight months ago. I spent the first six months visiting other blogs in the marketing category and commenting on them. I added some to my blog-roll and even sent personal messages to a few that I really liked. The result was others responding in kind. Within eight months I developed a following of over 15,000 readers.

Social rule #3 – If you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all.

This one is simple. Bashing and negativity runs rampant through the social scene. I’m not talking about negative comments. If you don’t agree with something you should post your opinion. Bashing someone is something totally different. If you are nasty or tend to post inappropriate negative comments all the time it won’t be long before a community labels you a jackass and no one will take you seriously. Obviously this is counter productive to your goals.

Summary: Take the time to think through your comments and actions. Try to give constructive criticism as opposed to a negative view. Choose your words wisely and it will showcase your expertise as opposed to your dark side.

Social rule #4 – If you keep doing that you’ll go blind.

Whether it is a website, blog, or MySpace page, take the user into consideration. Lots of renegade code, widgets and advertisements can not only slow down the site but may even crash a browser or two. Take the time to think about how every element will be seen and reacted to by your potential customer (which is what a visitor is). Will it have a positive or negative impact and does it enhance or detract from your message?

Summary: The point of this rule is to take the visitor experience very seriously. This is where the rubber meets the road. Make things that you want viewed easy to access. When a site is cumbersome to use people will stop using it, they will become blind to your existence.

Wrap-up

Follow these rules to achieve higher levels of success and create your own personal set of rules to socialize by. Social media is a two way street and the oncoming traffic will either help you or kill you – the choice is yours.