Loyalistic Blog

Why we cut our phone lines and voted for unavailability.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

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Today we terminated our PBX and phone line contracts. You won't find our phone number from directories, or even from our web site. We don't have one.

"Make people available wherever they are" have been touted by teleoperator sales. And companies have invested to latest and greatest availability solutions. We included.

At the same time, many corporate citizens choose the go opposite direction: be unavailable.

Everyone who makes purchase decisions, or can be seen as one, spends too much time fencing off telesales like a cow flies. Every sales call is a interruption that distrupts you from achieving what you should be achieving.

We tend to tolerate such an interruption, as you never know who might call. A new customer, we may hope.

But we have never experienced such a miracle.

Instead we receive many sales calls every day. Selling this or that. From here, India, UK, US, wherever... Some talented, some not so. Relevant, hardly never. And if I am not available, they call our...

Forget Facebook and Twitter, Hello Instagram and Snapchat! – Our Teenage Trainee Reveals What's Hot or Not

Friday, August 22, 2014

Written by Fanny Tallgren

Are you feeling lost with all of these millions of social networking applications, wondering which are now in and which out in the world of teenagers?

I am a 17 year old Finnish girl living in Brussels, Belgium. My friends come from all over Europe as their parents work in the European Commission. Thus they represent quite well European teenagers.

During the past week I have been working as a trainee here at Loyalistic and now I will reveal you what's hot or not among us teenagers.

Let’s start with the biggest question you have been asking.

Are teens leaving Facebook?

Before talking about the apps that have established a strong position among us teens, I first have to explain what is going on with Facebook. Although Facebook was for quite a while the dominant social networking app, it now seems like it is slowly losing its ground to other applications. Last summer, I realise I was still an active user of Facebook. However, throughout the year I noticed something weird: my friends were becoming increasingly inactive on Facebook. It finally got to the point that I found it “awkward” to share or post something. I was very careful that nothing appeared on my timeline; I was able to restrain myself to just update my profile picture once in a month (I get easily annoyed by my current profile pictures). I have not changed my profile picture since June, which is very unusual.

Of course I still chat with my friends on Facebook (although WhatsApp is taking over that, but more of that later). I also use Facebook to be aware of birthdays (because you can’t remember all of your friends’ birthdays, can you?), to check out any upcoming events and to see the latest clothes on sale on the second-hand sale pages.

Instagram’s takeover

Last summer I signed up to Instagram as I had noticed that an increased number of my friends had joined. So I made myself an account, posted a typical selfie and waited for the fun to begin.

Nothing happened.

A year later, it is a different story: people have left Facebook and all the action is now on Instagram. I am constantly checking my news feed and can spend whole evenings just “stalking” other persons’ accounts! Instagram has definitely become my new “Facebook” where it is not awkward to post pictures.

Snapchat: this year’s new hit application

As Snapchat is not much in vogue among adults, I might as well explain the app very briefly: It is an app where people have usernames and send pictures (usually selfies) to their contacts. It is popular because the pictures sent can only be viewed for a maximum of 10 seconds, and are later destroyed. No embarrassing reminders of that ugly haircut from the past. The ones who found the app ridiculous were proven wrong; it is now one of the most popular apps with 350 million pictures sent every day. I am not sure that even Evan Spiegel, the founder of Snapchat, had anticipated such a success.

Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp & Kik : The three most popular messenger apps

It is still a mystery why Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Kik stand out so clearly from the rest such as Skype, Viber and Telegram. Teens just love them. They are very appealing as people can use them to talk with people in another country or to make group conversations with a maximum of 50 friends (Many classes have their own group conversations on Whatsapp). The difference between the three applications is that WhatsApp works with phone numbers, Kik with simple usernames (making it easy to talk with strangers) and in Facebook Messenger you must have a Facebook profile.

Tumblr, We Heart It & Pinterest: the fading blog mania?

These three applications have basically the same idea; you create an account and start liking and reblogging cool pictures and deep quotes that usually are not your own. I have always had a preference for Tumblr, although many of my friends are actively using the two others. I used to have an account on Tumblr but deleted it because keeping it active demanded too much of my time. What I like about Tumblr is that it enables you to blog very easily. These applications are now popular, but the problem lies in how teens use them: the accounts are usually anonymous, but they are used like diaries; revealing very personal secrets.

Tinder & Hot or Not: the future of dating

Like Snapchat, these two are recent apps that made a buzz among “youngsters”. You might find it a bit cruel; they are apps where you rate people’s attractiveness from the opposite sex based on a picture. If you like the way the person looks, you press the big heart, and if not, you press on the cross and forget about the person. You may only speak to the person if you have both “liked” each other. Many use these to actually find their future partner, to flirt or to just enjoy rating people without really intending to get in touch with anyone (like my friends and I do).

Twitter, Skype & E-mail

Now you are probably thinking, what about Twitter? Isn’t that a place where young people keep on posting irrelevant stuff? Well here is a bummer: I don’t have a Twitter account and neither any of my friends. A couple of years ago I used to have a quite successful (at least in my opinion) Twitter fan account about the now infamous Justin Bieber. I spent my time posting facts and news about him, trying to get his attention. I never did, by the way. I have never had a personal account because no one could ever be really that interested in what I say or do. This is the main point: Twitter is more a tool for famous people to be in touch with their fans, because they can at least think that people are interested in what they say.

Skype, together with Windows Live Messenger were probably the first tools for chatting with friends online. Unfortunately, they have been overtaken by WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Kik and others.

Our parents are still obsessed with e-mail. What a radical innovation it must have been back then. However, for teenagers like me, e-mailing is reserved for communicating with older people, such as teachers or grandparents.

So, What’s hot or not?

These apps are not going to stay popular forever; sooner rather than later, teenagers will no longer send countless selfies to each other. But they might be tweeting like crazy. Or how about an app, where teenagers send each other voice records? Who knows...

4 CRMs that are changing the game

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Most CRM-suites feel bureaucratic monoliths unsuitable for real life selling. Whether it's Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics or SugerCRM, the main focus is on managing the relationship data, not helping sales to achieve results. Not, if you are asking a practicing sales man himself, anyway.

So here is my picks of 4 CRMs that are currently changing the CRM game.

These challengers approach the need from different and fresh perspectives. Nimble and Pipedrive provides the usual CRM-database, but can link to your existing CRM, e.g. Salesforce. So they can help the sales team while rest of the organization still uses Salesforce. Or they can be used independently. GetSalesDone doesn't even try to offer that database and rather is a mobile front to Salesforce. Streak on the other hand starts where the job is being done, from your inbox.

What's interesting here is that two of these challengers are from our home waters from the Nordic and Baltic region.

1. Nimble

Nimble is a Social CRM. Nimble adds social network information to your contacts. So when you are viewing a contact, you can see her LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter data on the same page. It notifies you on activity such as change of title on any of your linked contacts, so you know when to act.

The core idea is brilliant. But at the same time its too much like Salesforce or other CRMs. Slow and bureaucratic to manage real life sales pipe.

There's another glitch as well, and it's one-way Google Contacts integration. Nimble reads Google Contacts, but cannot update them. So there is no point of updating contact information at Nimble. You may wonder why a CRM should update Google Contacts? Well, you really don't want to use a third party app for calling while driving. Google Contacts is linked to my iPhone and I want to find the correct person and number quickly.

2. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is, like they name says, focused on driving sales on the pipe. It's visual sales pipe, where you can move opportunities with mouse, or finger on a mobile device, from step to step is much more inspiring than endless lists and reports. And Pipedrive have a two-way street to Google Apps.

Pipedrive is the most inspiring sales tool. You do your work mostly on that inspiring pipeline view. Everything is quick and easy. No complicated forms to fill.

But Pipeline is not for managing relationships. It is for selling. You cannot add multiple contacts to a customer, although this feature is coming. Linking to existing calendar events is possible, but quite difficult. And I book most of my meetings from the iPhone calender. Or from Google Calendar. I don't know why all CRM vendors think sales people want to work from their CRM suite. Most sales people I know use CRM to document stuff, but rather use iPhone, Inbox, Calender, PostIt Notes and so forth as their main tools.

In any case, Pipedrive become my tool of choice to replace Salesforce. It's fantastic and inspiring.

3. Streak

Streak is an interesting beta-stage cloud-CRM. If you are like most sales people, you work from your inbox, Streak builds up customer relationship management on top of your GMail. It's good for sales, support, managing accounts and many other CRM-tasks.

The idea itself is rather inspiring. Inbox is where things are really documented. Even if you book your meetings on the phone, you usually send confirmation by email. And send thank you or memo after that meeting. So with Streak you don't have to do much CRM-work.

4. GetSalesDone

GetSalesDone takes totally different approach.

Salesforce is principally perfect CRM. We used it for many years. But it's anything but nimble. It's not for doers. It does not support actual sales work, you update stuff later. If you remember.

GetSalesDone is a iPhone App on top of your Salesforce. You do your sales with GetSalesDone and information is updated to Salesforce. You get sales, and management is happy to have everything updated.

Rather than explaining more, watch this short video instead.

What do you think?
There are perhaps dozens of other great CRM game changers. What are your picks?

Is insider really outsider in customer experience?

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Insider is outsider in customer experience
© Rodeo/Andres Rodriguez

We were going through an industry lately, selling our services to executives.

In one call, it came to me, how outsiders these industry insiders really are, when you think about a customer perspective to their business or industry.

Their product was used by virtually all households, so every executive was also a customer. But not one of these executives have ever bought their product the normal way their their customers do: through a normal purchase process. They all had used internal ways:

- they didn't have to select the supplier, so they have never compared the companies

- they do not pay normal price, so did not understand how the customers see the pricing

- they did not had to fill any forms themselves, someone in their organization took care of this for them. And if they would have to do that, they already speak “the industry”, that it, they understand the industry’s mambo jumbo.

- if they had any problems, they would always get best service from best people. They would never have to call customer service or support, they would call the customer service manager, or ask their secretary to do that.

Thus they were total outsiders of how their customer perceive their business, how the customers compare companies, prices, products, how easy or difficult it really is to buy the product, how low the quality really is and how frustrating it is to try to get someone to fix an issue, or how difficult it is to understand any communication, conditions, forms etc because of the industry’s internal language.

I am not going to tell you which industry I am talking about, as it really does not matter, the problem is universal. Consider for a while a car industry. First consider how you buy a car, how you get it serviced, what problems do you face, when something needs to be fixed and so on. Now consider the car executive from the brand. Do you think he or she goes through the same processes you do? Definitely not. If her car broke down, she will get it to service in front of the queue. She will not need to fight whether the fault should be covered by warranty or not. She would not need a courtesy* car (if even available), as she can always borrow from internal or press fleet.

*I read a story from a British CAR-magazine: A customer has left his new + 200 000 € Aston Martin for a warranty service and got a 10 000 € Ford Ka as a courtesy car. Or as the customer put it, a discourtesy car.

If you blog, update or tweet, don't stop

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Great product, but latest update 14 months ago (news, blog, FB, Twitter).
Looks like a dead company, so I didn't signed up.

Once upon a time every company web site had a news section. A news section that should demonstrate how active, successful and newsworthy the company is.

That, at least, was the plan. Few more months, and the news feed had dried out.

Enter Web 2.0 and every company now has a blog, a Facebook page or a Twitter handle. Some still have a news section.

Your digital agency has told you these will help engage with your customers, help establish you as a thought leader and bring many free leads, which all are very good to get.

So you start full of excitement. You blog, you update, you tweet. Your SEO rankings rises. You get inbound from your posts. People will like you, and follow you. All is good.

But after some time, you get tired. Posting, updating and tweeting is hard work and takes many hours a week. You get other priorities, some problems to solve, a project to lead or a rise perhaps. So you take a month off.

But what happens when a company stops blogging, updating or tweeting?

You have your posts, likes and followers and they are not going away. Your blog posts will get you inbound traffic, and it's not going to fade away quickly. So it's easy to take a month off.

Which of course extends to two months, six months and finally it's all forgotten.

But all is not good. Your in activeness is slowly going to kill your company. And I am going to tell you why, and what to do about it. It's all simple really.

Dry blog, Facebook page and Twitter account is a warning flag for prospects

When a prospect arrives to your web site, she gets excited about your products. You make all the right claims and promises, you have testimonials and everything is how it should be. Your web site is perfect, you might think. And she thinks too. For a second.

Then she wants to know if you are doing well. She follows your links to news hoping some proof your product is as good as you say it is: Big deals, awards, customer stories, new hires. But the latest update is from last year. She clicks to your blog. Nothing happening. Your Facebook page. Ditto. And finally Twitter, and sees you don't even bother to retweet other's content, let alone produce your own, so you really must be dead, out of business or something. It's time to look elsewhere.

By having news, blog, Facebook or Twitter available and not updating them, means you lost your prospect. A dry feed means your company is not active, is not successful and is not newsworthy. It's a warning flag about a dead company.

What to do if you want to stop?

Social networks come and go, so you might want to fade off from a network. If you do, follow these three steps:

Remove links to your blog, page or account from your web site and stop marketing it elsewhere. Check email signatures, marketing material etc.
Direct your followers to other networks where you are active or your web site.
Consider closing the account as people may not read your redirect message. But there are downsides such as freeing up your name on the network for others to take, so you might still want keep it.

But my blog is still generating traffic?

On a blog you might have content that's still generating traffic. If you take it down, you'll lose traffic. If you keep it, you loose credibility.

One thing for sure, you don't want your prospects see you are not updating the blog. So remove links to blog front page and remove navigation from the blog. So when someone gets to a post, there is no table of content, no way of seeing it's not being updated. Be sure, you have links that leads to your web site though. The posts are your landing pages, not a dead end.

But if you remove links, Google will soon forget your posts, so you need something else to aid Google to find them. Maybe you could link to best pieces within your web page copy where it's relevant.