HOW TO: Use Twitter for Customer Service
http://mashable.com/2009/05/09/twitter-customer-service/

Customer service can evoke some serious misgivings or negative emotions. Although customer support is designed to help the consumer, the pain of waiting for a phone representative and the impersonal emails can cause more damage than good for a brand. People are turned off by the term and companies have begun to use different terminology to describe their efforts.

examples and rationnale of bad design ex: white font, black background; too large logo; bag photograph; flash intro; too much info on website

Using white text on a black background (for the web) is one of 5 most allday design mistakes all clients seems to want to have

In doing so we discovered Customer Development, a product development methodology formulated by veteran entrepreneur Steve Blank. Based on the premise that start-ups tend to fail through lack of customers rather than lack of technology or product features, customer development is a systematic way of identifying who the customer is, what it is they need and whether that need is sufficient to build a business on. One of my co-founders describes it as ‘an algorithm for building products users want and are willing to pay for’.

The crucial question in the survey is “How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]?” Sean has benchmarked the results of that survey and found that if less than 40% of respondents say “Very disappointed” then your product doesn’t yet have sufficient traction to scale.

A few months ago I was tipped off to world of Steve Blank and customer development. Simply put, if you’re an entrepreneur understanding these concepts will likely mean the difference between success and failure. Steve personally has taken five companies through this process to IPO. Not a bad track record. While there’s a ton of great stuff about customer development on the Web I wanted to gather up all of the resources and put them together in one place. I’ll update this post over time as I come across stuff (please add any additional resources you find in the comments so I can add them to the post) so bookmark it and check back from time to time (or just subscribe to the RSS feed).

Customer Development: The Definitive Resource w/tons of links

large

Can record call history when calling a 1800 number

Deep Dialing: Tired of pressing 1 for this and 2 for that? We've mapped out the phone menus for hundreds of companies. Find the spot you need to call, then click, and we'll automatically connect you.

connect more quickly to customer service reps and record the conversation

"The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset. The moment you earn your keep as a public speaker is when the room isn't just right or the plane is late or the projector doesn't work or the audience is tired or distracted. The best time to engage with an employee is when everything falls apart, not when you're hitting every milestone. And everyone now knows that the best time to start a project is when the economy is lousy."

Seth Godin: "it´s difficult to improve your performance in the downhills", lección aprendida andando en bicicleta. http://bit.ly/YL30f [from http://twitter.com/dariuus/statuses/2761368400]

Summary: In Four Steps to the Epiphany, Steve Blank lays out a customer development process that complements a startup’s product development process. This post includes video and slides where Steve explains the ideas in his book.

Great for client develpoment

Tipos de Clientes

In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key

e lead

Esto es para dar de alta tu negocio. Algo así como para que vayan tus clientes y te pregunten. Está badado en twitter, pero hay que mirarlo.

Michael practices proximity management. Every month he meets informally with each employee group. No agenda. No speeches. Just conversation. That helps him solve problems: for example, the time guest check-in was being mysteriously delayed.

Guter Bericht über das Vorgehen von 37signals beim Filmen ihrer Customer-Storys. In den Comments sind ein paar der Fragen gepostet + Info über die Technik

Matt Linderman of 37Signals, 20090204.

case studies

...very cool idea...