May 2008

Click-to-Call Isn't Just For Business

Click-to-Call isn't just for business. With the ubiquitous mobile handset morphing into an on-the-go media center, click-to-call offers a simple and elegant user-interface for any mobile Web application.

National Public Radio apparently sees it that way.

The recently debuted NPR Mobile Web is a partnership with ten local stations that delivers specially formatted text, pictures and audio - including streaming audio -- to Web-enabled mobile phones.

To listen to news stories, or play the interactive version of NPR's popular quiz game, "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me," simply click on the "call' icon and start listening. The free service is carrier- and device-independent.

Think of how useful this could be for GPS navigation or any other service people look for when they're on the move. We keep saying this: keyboards are for typing - phones are for talking.

Customer Service is a community

I was reading this excellent post by Paul Sweeney today. One of the things he touches on regularly is customer service. Today he mentions a couple websites I frequent: Summize and GetSatisfaction. Summize is a search tool for Twitter, and GetSatisfaction is a website that shows conversations surrounding particular companies and products.

With so many ways to publish information (Twitter, blogs, websites, Facebook, etc), it is becoming increasingly easy for consumers to let people know they're unhappy with a company. You've heard the expression that word of mouth is the best advertising? How powerful is word of mouth when you can press a few keys and complain about poor customer service to hundreds of your friends on the internet? How much damage can one unhappy customer do?

This can be a little scary for companies. But it shouldn't be. View it for what it is: an opportunity. Pay attention to your customers. You have all kinds of information about what they think about you and your competitors. Find it. Read it. But more importantly, act on it.

Call them. I recently had an experience with DirecTv, where I was close to canceling my account after being a vocal proponent for 10 years. When they found out about my unhappiness (via searching Summize), they called me. That phone call was more important than anything else they could have done. Someone with the ability to help me took a proactive step and called one of their millions of customers and had a conversation about how to make it right. Now that negative press I was giving them turned into a positive customer service experience and positive press.

As we like to say, the phone is the Rodney Dangerfield of technology. It gets no respect. But really, it's still the most powerful and productive technology that most business have at their disposal. So use social media and the internet to find out what your customers think. But follow up by the phone. Your customers want to hear from you.

A better tool box

Recently in this space we've talked about the lack of interesting VOIP Applications. It seems that people all over are asking where the apps are. No less than Jeff Pulver has decried the lack of innovation in this space. At first, I objected to Jeff's post, saying that there were several companies doing interesting things (us being one of them!).

Some New Ways of Looking at VoIP

VoIP may be thought of mostly as a way of communicating with voice over the Web, but the functionality of it allows for a wide variety of uses. A new article in VoIP-News.com titled 30 Ways to Use VoIP That You've Never Heard Of lists a bunch of possibilities. Some of my favorties:

Number 4, Do business while you're in bed Number 8, Create podcasts Number 15, Speak in other languages

Moving Beyond Plain Vanilla Voice

More than a year ago PhoneGnome CEO David Beckmeyer posed the question Where are the Voice 2.0 developers? We're still waiting for the answer, says FierceVoIP editor Doug Mohney in his post, Pulver's Purple Prophesies--And Fallout Thereof, charting VoIP's journey from industry-disrupting new technology to plain vanilla status quo.