Mack Changes Stats: A Visit to the Viral Garden
Mack Collier, social media curator extraordinaire, changed the stats this week on which he bases his Viral Garden Top 25 Marketing & Social Media Blogs from my blogging nemesis Technorati to Feedburner, specifically Feedburner subscribers. (Thanks to Toby for the heads up!) For me, this switch produced several ironies….(not in order of importance)
Irony #1
I referred to Technorati as my nemesis because from the time that I began my blog in May 2005 until the moment (unrecorded) that I stopped looking or caring I have had issues with Technorati in the way that they indexed, ranked and provided inadequate tech support.
Feedburner, on the other hand, has been nothing but helpful even in trying to solve issues with Technorati.
This past April I noticed that my Feedburner subscribers seemed to have dropped precipitously….as in they were “0″, none. I immediately panicked and clicked on “help” only to find that since they had been acquired by Google, “help” was now at Google and a bit less accessible than my panicked state required.
Dick Costolo, founder of Feedburner (who had been so responsive in trying to solve earlier Technorati issues), is a Facebook friend so I messaged him there. He quickly provided the email addresses at Google that could address my problem. It turned out to be a feed re-direction issue and although some subscribers were lost, the issue has been resolved.
Irony #2
Just a few days ago I had my trustee developer Chris Talkington change my Word Press theme and upgrade to WordPress 2.6.1. He added the Feedburner subscriber widget…..the one that Mack used to base his Top 25 on for the past week. Thank you, Chris….how fortuitous for me.
Gavin Heaton, in response to Mack’s change, asked great questions about the public display of stats…and his commenters responded on this topic as well as the merits of lists in general.
I wholeheartedly agree with Gavin’s statement that, “I think the only way to build links, for the long term anyway, is to create quality content and engage with your community of readers.” Presumably, one’s content is initially “found” by a reader because it has achieved enough Google juice to be visible on a topic search or because of a link from another blog. Ideally this is the result of “quality content” and/or engaging with a community of readers through either your blog or through other social venues, Twitter, Facebook etc.
Therefore, I suppose, the display of stats is not necessary to build readership….on the other hand, truly, most people don’t really like to be the first one to arrive at a party or go into a restaurant where there are no other diners. So maybe there is some comfort in a display of subscriber stats that says the content here is good enough that others want to know when there is more.
I would like to believe that people read my blog/subscribe to my blog because they like the content…..and this leads to irony #3.
Irony #3
There hasn’t been much content, good or bad, on my blog for quite some time. For the first part of “some time” it was mostly about My Unforgettable Mom….and then after she passed away in May it just became about, well…. everything. Even wondering just what it was that I should start back writing about.
So, THIS weekend, knowing that my kids were both going to be away I had decided would be a good time to put all my excuses aside, fire up the procrastinator’s clock and write. But again, what to write?
Thanks to Mack, Toby, and Chris at least for today that is solved.
Dot-Chris: Exceeding Customer Expectations
As I thought about writing this blog post about how wonderful Chris at Dot-Chris Development is, I started thinking that many of my blog posts about service providers are critical; unmet expectations, unsatisfactory performance, poor customer experience.
So although the purpose of this post is to recommend Chris, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at why working with Chris is such a positive experience.
OK, first the recommendations. If you need someone to work on your existing Wordpress blog…..upgrade, re-design, change themes, add plug-ins, enhance SEO, suggest improvements or anything else you can think of that I haven’t mentioned, Chris at Dot-Chris will do a fabulous job for a fair and reasonable fee
He can also move a blog to Wordpress (he moved my Typepad blog to Wordpress) and he will reluctantly even work on a Typepad blog…he just prefers Wordpress. Chris will clarify exactly what it is you want done, tell you what he thinks should be done and he will give you an estimate for dollars and time. What you get will be all the whats and the shoulds for the price he quotes on the day that he promised it.
This past weekend he even fixed my beleaguered Sony Vaio which is now running perhaps better than it did out of the box. He calls this service, Remote Services.
In his own words, ” Have you ever wished you could have someone remotely fix your computer at a time most convenient to you and without even taking the computer out of your home. Well, with Remote Services by Dot-Chris, this is now possible. We will remotely login to your pc and perform tasks such as Start-Up Optimization, Clean-up of unused programs, and organization of your system, but Dot-Chris doesn’t stop there, in most cases if you are just having general computer issues we can guide you to a solution and best of all you can sit back and relax while we guide you.
Dot-Chris also strives for complete security in any dealings with clients. First, we only use software that allows us to use random passwords that only work one time. Second, Dot-Chris computer systems use AES encryption at partition level, thus any data on our systems is encrypted to government standards. This encryption is powered by
Truecrypt.”
Now, why does Chris (who by the way is the same age as my oldest son) get the highest rating in terms of customer satisfaction? Well, let’s look at his Remote Service as an example.
My Sony Vaio has been a pain from the beginning. The original battery had a nano second of life; a new Sony battery provided through a replacement program lasted about an hour. Then one day after about 6 months the replacement battery died so I had to go back to the original battery which means I am really tethered to the outlet. Yes, I could probably get Sony to provide a replacement for the replacement but since there is no obvious place on their website or on the automated answering system and on a trip to the Sony store at a mall my inquiry was greeted with a blank stare regarding the battery replacement program and a suggestion that I call tech support. Oh please, just shoot me.
In addition to this problem (the laptop was purchased in May 2006) and other issues such as USB ports that work unpredictable hours and days, over the course of the past year it has gotten slower and slower. Oh, it looks sleak and shiny but doesn’t act sleak and shiny. Mostly, I use my MacBookbut sometimes I regress.
One night, Chris was telling me about cleaning up and fixing his grandmother’s computer. I asked if he could do that for mine. He asked me what the issues were. I told him. He suggested a date and a time to do the deed. He explained the remote service. He set my expectations. I knew what he was going to do. I knew how he was going to do it. I knew how long it was going to take and I knew how much it was going to cost.
Secretly, I was kind of skeptical that anything would change the performance of this computer. I had spent hours on the phone with Microsoft thinking that maybe the issues were software related. Microsoft troubleshot all kinds of things and “fixed” numerous “problems”. The problem was though, that in the end, the performance by my definition never improved.
The outcome from Chris was nothing short of miraculous. OK, the battery life is still laughable but that would not be Chris’ purview. Everything else is working great….faster, less buggy, and much improved.
So, back to customer experience. He set my expectations. I understood exactly what I was going to get for my money. I knew how much of my time to allocate (Lack of respect for customer’s time is one of the underreported and unlabeled causes of customer dissatisfaction….another blog post).
He then exceeded my expectations, no extra charge. This has been the case with everything Chris has done for me. Further, he provides service beyond the “sale.” He will answer any question, change something that isn’t meeting your needs and otherwise provide ongoing “promise.”
Cam Beck uses the term “promise” as the fourth “p” in a great post about the “new marketing mix.” Although he is speaking of brands marketed by companies, his words apply to Chris’ brand also.
Cam says that a brand promise needs to be set; an expectation. Then the singular focus should be on meeting and exceeding expectations.
In a post written a few years ago that focused on custmer satisfaction surveys, I noted that, “Client experience is a marketing issue….the client experience is really the operationalizing of your marketing. Operationalization means specifying the exact operations that defines the marketing promise.”
I suggested that at the beginning of a client/customer relationship one should
- Determine customer needs.
- Agreeing on how those needs will be met.
- Set measurement standards.
- Then assess satisfaction by surveying performance versus those standards.
- Meet their needs and their hearts and minds will follow…as will high ratings on surveys.
In other words, Chris rocks; I promise.
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