Alberta Business MarketingFeb
9
2011
May
1
2010
David and I managed to find a couple of iPads in the Phoenix area. Trying a blog post on the iPad for the first time, pretty cool. This makes three Apple devices I own now and everything speaks to each other, pretty amazing stuff.
Thanks to the great folks at Apple for their innovation.
If you are in the Phoenix area, try the Apple store at Arrowhead Mall. Great bunch of guys work there and awesome customer service.
Mar
27
2010
Every once and a while in my travels as a Calgary social media consultant I run across a gem of a business or a group of business that simply impress me. During my recent travels to Arizona I met up with a great Canadian firm who help out the busy and often stressed out IT professional by providing help desk services to managed IT services providers and the average IT professional. I got chatting with Neil Jones as a enjoyed the beautiful Arizona sun and instantly became great friends and learned lots about what they are up to in beautiful British Columbia.
Neil’s firm “Live Virtual Help Desk” provides help desk services to Manage Services Providers. You maybe asking “what the heck is a managed services provider? Fair question…think computer support guys, IT folks and computer professionals for us out there who are not in the IT support industry.
In chatting with Neil I learned about the struggles computer support companies have working with their clients and dealing with the simple calls for help.
Have you ever had a printer stop printing? I am sure this particular example happens to all of us and when we try to call our IT guy we get caught in the endless abyss of voice mail or transferred from department to department often scratching our heads wondering if someone will take care of us.
Well my friends at Live Virtual Help Desk has a cure for this feeling of loneliness and your dead computer system. They take on your calls for help by working with your IT folks to solve your basic to somewhat technical calls for help. They are sometimes the knight in shining armour when your techy guy is swamped with a bunch of other things happening around them.
If your IT guy isn’t using these guys…they should be – maybe you can refer Neil’s firm to them.
If you are an IT guy reading this…you need to reach out to Neil and his team at 1-866-677-3256.
BTW, I am not an agent for Live Virtual Help Desk nor do I receive any payments for sending business to Neil. I simply think he and his team have their head screwed on pretty tight and can help all IT firms succeed in customer service.
Mar
16
2010
I am reading a very interesting white paper today on “10 Key Marketing Trends in 2010″ which covers the overall adoption of online marketing strategies in small business. Number 9 jumped out and hit me on the side of head and something that at one time in my life was very near and dear to me. Last week when I was at Spring Training For Business in Arizona with MSP business coach Stuart Selbst I mentioned during my lunch presentation on exactly this topic.
IT Bottlenecks Drive adoption of on Demand Marketing solutions
In this published report (you can download here) the author report on the disconnect between IT and Marketing, especially how IT and marketing are not seeing eye to eye on the whole online marketing momentum. The marketing folks see IT as a complex bottleneck and IT sees marketing/sales as an expense or risk to the organization. To be completely candid in my opinion, no wonder so many small business IT shops are horrible in their own marketing efforts and struggle with this important part of business.
Also in the report, the author identifies how more and more marketing folks are starting to use software as a service (SaaS) offerings where the IT departments, MSP or IT Pro are bypassed and not involved in the process of choosing a solution. 67% of those surveyed complained about their IT service provider (or in-house IT) and are moving towards other online or web-based solutions to bypass the complexities put in place by IT and also the high costs demanded by some technology firms. Marketing solutions are moving towards the “on demand” model vs. the old on-premise models. These include social media platforms, CRM solutions and even email technologies.
By the way, how does IT respond – they invest in more complex solutions to block applications or web services, building more of a separation in the organization.
During Spring Training I mentioned to the group that consulting with their clients on marketing and removing the barriers will bring additional value to those they serve and position them truly as a business consultant and not just another techy firm. This is why Ulistic launched the Ulistic Partner Program to help those Managed Services Providers and IT consultants help serve their clients in a different way and with services they are looking for.
Feb
20
2010
I recently return from a trip to Phoenix, Arizona and during my travels on United Airlines which I normally travel because I collect Aeroplan points and since I am a Star Alliance Gold member it just makes sense for me to travel on the airlines that allow me to collect points and keep my status. I actually enjoy the lounges at the airports and I noticed this time around that United is really trying to become friendly. I made this observation a few times during my travel.
During this trip United started advertising their “connect to us on Twitter” as part of their in-flight entertainment system and really encouraging people to connect with them on Twitter. Kudos to you United. United may now be understanding the importance of offering other ways to connect with their customers especially in our socially connected world in which we live in today.
It can also be a brand reputation activity as well.
However, does the big bloated company culture spill over to the social media space? It is no secret and something that is not unique to United, all big firms suffer from a certain degree of being bloated. I would guess the older corporate culture still plays an important role and it really doesn’t matter what the tool is. If your firm has problems returning a phone call, replying to an email or offer poor customer service when dealing face-to-face with people, what makes you think you can reply better with Twitter?
Corporate culture still plays an important role. When I arrived in Phoenix I tweeted about my great trip to Sky Harbor via Denver but then realized my suitcase was still in Denver after my first tweet on the pleasurable trip I was on. United Airlines never did retweet my good comment about my experience nor did they get back to me on my tweet about my bag not making it to Phoenix.
Let me make this clear, the staff at Sky Harbor were awesome in dealing with my lost luggage. No complaints what so ever, I am just focusing on the culture around social technologies and if you are going to use them you need to embrace the culture.
United is on the right track, just need some tweaks.
9th sphere website design |