Listen to Customers: How Active Listening Can Improve Your Bottom Line
How well do you listen to customers? I mean really listen? If active listening is not practiced regularly in your business, it could be having an impact on your bottom line. Here’s why. Why Active Listening is So Important Listening involves more than just hearing what’s being said. Or reading a bit of feedback or […]
Online Relationship Building and Offline Sales
Research shows retailers that use Twitter drive online sales, and have a competitive advantage during the holiday season. But what is the effect of online relationship building by employees of retail brands, and eventual offline sales? I’ve always been a firm believer that online relationship building has a direct correlation to offline behavior and retail sales are no […]
Starbucks birthday bevvies, better late than never
I’m a huge Starbucks fan. I’m not entirely brand loyal but I do need my decaf Starbucks every morning whether it’s VIA or freshly brewed. Sometimes I’ll even splurge for skinny lattes with one-pump sugar-free vanilla syrup. No snickering! I love their mobile app and wish other retailers would follow suit instead of having their plastic loyalty cards weighing down my wallet. Thank […]
Where’s the beef?
There are certain basics bricks and mortar businesses, such shops and restaurants, need to get right before they consider incorporating social media into their marketing mix. Face-to-face customer service, competitive pricing and signage are but a few. Do you think the new Hero Burger in our neighbourhood considered what customers would see as they walked […]
Customer service tips for my hair salon
Dear hair salon, I’ve been a regular customer of yours for more than two years now. I love that you’re with in walking distance from my home. The colour tech team is awesome, especially Sabrina. She does a great job of keeping my colour in check and making sure everyone else takes good care of […]
west elm’s Neil Gazmen connects with local customers
According to his bio, “Neil Gazmen is a retail people manager with over 9 years experience in managing high volume, complex stores in the Toronto area. He is a strong supporter of relationship based selling and grassroots type marketing that targets building a community of loyal followers, one customer at a time.” The last sentence […]
A week of firsts… #digitaledu, Storify and Spin Sucks
This has been a week of firsts. Last night, I gave my first lecture to our amazing students in U of T School of Continuing Studies Digital Strategy and Communications Management Certificate program or #digitaledu for short. This morning, I used the Twitter backchannel discussion from last night’s class to create my first Storify. And […]
Jack Astor’s gave me a reason to blog
Our bill from Jack Astor’s And just when we thought we’d have the makings of another Applebee’s disaster on our hands, Jack Astor’s scored a big customer service win for Diane Begin and I the other night. It was late. We’d just finished class and we were hungry. While Diane ordered fries and guac, I […]
The threat of a tweet
Ewww! All was going to do was tweet “Ewww!” with a photo. Nothing more needed to be said. You probably would have looked and seen that little ugly hair on my plate. I had no intention of naming the neighborhood eatery where we were having our weekend brunch. And then, just as I was snapping […]
You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.
Today you’re a part of something special thanks to Keith McArthur who created the cluetrainplus10 project, celebrating the tenth anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto. I’m one of 95 bloggers around the world who has volunteered to write about one of the 95 theses in the manifesto. The 95 theses examine the impact of the Internet […]
