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I’m an Apple fan. I love their products. They look good. They sync up beautifully, and they just work. Most of the time.

I got a new MacBook in April, and just recently started having trouble with it. So I called AppleCare, their customer service/repair line. They suggested I make an appointment at the Apple Store for them to run some diagnostics to determine what was going on. The Apple store is nearly an hour from my home. I was less than thrilled.

I drive to the Apple Store, I’m there for 5 minutes, and they say, “We’re going to have to send your computer in for repairs. You’ll be 3-4 days before I’d have my computer back in my hands. If you’re anything like me, that’s like saying, “We’re going to take your left hand for 3-4 days. You’ll be fine without it, right?” That left me less than thrilled.

I finally get my computer cranked back up, and I hear a rattling sound. Immediately, I’m less than thrilled. So I get on the horn and call Apple. Here was their response:

“We’re incredibly sorry, Mr. Reed. But don’t worry. We’ll make this right.”

Those few words completely changed my experience. I went from being frustrated…to feeling like I had an advocate on my side who was fighting for me.

Good customer service covers a multitude of wrongs. Whether you’re in the foodservice industry, manufacturing, or church leadership, good customer service will make all the difference in the world. Why? Because everyone wants to feel valued.

THE VALUE OF FEELING VALUED

When you feel valued, even a less-than-perfect product doesn’t mean lost business.

Whatever product, service, or idea you’re selling, mark my words: you’re in the people business. And you must value people as people. Don’t brush them to the side and say things like:

“Ministry would be easy if it weren’t for the people.”
OR
“I would love my job if it weren’t for the customers.”

Never let those words come out of your mouth.

Every organization goofs up…regularly. You’re going to produce a product that doesn’t work just right (case-in-point, my Apple computer). Something will go wrong on a Sunday morning at your church. Someone will have a less-than-perfect experience.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, says that doctors make mistakes regularly in their practices. He then notes this:

Believe it or not, the risk of being sued for malpractice has very little to do with how many mistakes a doctor makes…. Patients don’t file lawsuits because they’ve been harmed by shoddy medical care. Patients file lawsuits because they’ve been harmed by shoddy medical care and something else happens to them.

What is that something else? It’s how they were treated, on a personal level, by their doctor. What comes up again and again in malpractice cases is that patients say they were rushed or ignored or treated poorly. ‘People just don’t sue doctors they like,’ is how Alice Burkin, a leading medical malpractice lawyer, puts it. ‘In all the years I’ve been in business, I’ve never had a potential client walk in and say, “I really like this doctor, and I feel terrible about doing it, but I want to sue him.”

Want to create raving customers, whatever field you’re in, that return and tell others to do the same? Maybe it’s time to focus less on development of future initiatives and more on shockingly excellent customer service.

When things go wrong, and they will, people will still feel valued.

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Ben is the small groups pastor at Grace Community Church in Clarksville, TN. He blogs regularly, wrestling through subjects such as small groups, parenting, leadership, social networking, and counseling…all from a distinctively biblical point of view. He’s also a fanatical coffee lover!

Visit Ben at his website or follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s a common practice for churches to have a regular place in their lobby to promote small groups.  What’s less common is making excellent use of those spaces.  A mish mash of plain 8.5″ x 11″ printouts, stacks of cards, a few curriculum examples and interest forms are common sights on small group tables in church lobbies.  Stunning, well organized small group kiosks are far rarer.

One way to improve your small group lobby presence is to utilize full-color cards for each small group. When people can see groups represented in a consistent, quality, visually-pleasing way, they will be more naturally drawn to the small group kiosk.  The problem with this is that making these cards can be an administrative nightmare. Managing/resizing photos, checking for typos, printing cards, cutting cards, and keeping them stocked is extremely challenging.  What if you could have your cards without the administrative headaches?  You can.

At New Life Bible Church, we’ve created an interactive group invite card pdf form that you can email to your group leaders for them to fill out and print. By shifting your focus from administering cards to leading groups to make their own cards, you free up much of your own valuable time.  Simultaneously, you empower group leaders to take ownership of marketing their own groups.

At our church we ask all of our leaders to fill out, print and cut their own cards. Then we ask them to place the cards on the lobby kiosk blow the day of the week their group meets. Group leaders who have “full” groups don’t print cards, but group leaders who are actively searching for new people take advantage of the system. This guarantees that only groups wanting more people are the ones being marketed, and that people looking for groups find nice looking information that is completely up-to-date.

Is this the perfect system? Of course not. Every system has its flaws. That’s why it’s important to remember that it’s never a matter of picking the perfect system, it’s a matter of picking your problems.

Go ahead and download the invite cards and give them a try. If these aren’t for you, see about making ones that fit your needs. We used Adobe Designer to create these.  The links below are for the invite cards in four different colors and the instructions that we send to our leaders.  Then a photo of the kiosk follows.

• Blue
• Gray
• Navy
• Red
• Instructions

Cluster Analysis looks at how words are gathering (clustering) in relation to your search topic. It finds the words that are mostly likely to be associated with your search word, and add insight into what’s being said about your brand.

Semantic Analysis strives to understand what words mean in context. Semantic technology goes deeper than cluster analysis in that it adds the ability to identify entities and nuances in language. I.e. orange (the fruit) vs. orange (the color), live (in concert) vs. live (to fight another day), lead (leadership) vs. lead (the metal), etc.

Sentiment Analysis helps you understand how the public “feels” about your brand. It compares negative, neutral and positive comments about your brand which helps you identify your “brand evangelists” as well as those who desire better customer service.

Geographical Analysis filters online conversations by region and allows you to participate in local conversations. This is undoubtedly the most important kind of analysis for local businesses to succeed in SMM. For example, if you’re a dentist in Akron, Ohio you don’t want to know about conversations about dentists in Orlando, Florida. You especially don’t want to wade through the millions of comments globally. You only need to know what people are saying about teeth, dentists, cavities, and tooth whitening within about 50 miles of your local practice. My partners have developed a patent-pending technology that allows us to track, sort, filter, and interpret local conversations for you.

If your organization is delving into SMM, be sure to understand and utilize all the tools available. Make sure that your marketing representative is doing this as well.

For more information about 3-T Marketing and my partners click here.

Here are 5 questions to ask yourself about your social media marketing campaign.

• Does your social media marketing campaign give you the ability to focus on specific geographical areas?
• Is your social media marketing campaign helping with SEO (search engine optimization)?
• Has your social media marketing campaign gone viral?
• Is your social media marketing campaign creating raving fans (aka brand ambassadors, brand evangelists, or mavens)?
• Is social media marketing getting you the results you want?

I encourage you to ask those questions because they hit on the 5 elements of a good social media marketing campaign.  If you aren’t satisfied with your answers to these questions, you have two options:  (1) give up social media marketing, or (2) learn to do it better. When talking to a firm or consultant who wants to help you with your social media marketing campaign, ask them these 5 questions.  If they can’t answer them satisfactorily, move on to another firm or consultant.

By the way, I help organizations do these 5 things successfully, so you can always contact me.

Have you been reluctant to jump into the social media marketing game because you’re intimidated by the technology, the time, the cost, or the complexity?  Well stop.  Be the  first Dentist in your town to leverage Social Media Marketing and the other Dentists in town will never catch up.  Be the first church in your area to use Social Media Marketing and you’ll reach a demographic no one else is reaching.  Be the first hardware store to do it and sell more nails than your competition.

There is a caveat though:  you have to do social media marketing well.  Don’t waste your time starting a blog, a Twitter account, and making a Facebook fanpage if you’re not going to dedicate the time and resources to doing these things well.  If you do it half-way, one of your competitors will do it better, and you most definitely won’t be the first one there.

THE SUN: The Sun is my blog.  This may seem old-school, but it really makes sense.  After all, your blog is where people can get to know you, it’s where you can express yourself the best, and it’s where you can call people to action.  Whether you want people to buy your book, attend your church, or hire you to fix their broken toilet, a blog is the place where your expertise is truly showcased.  As such, all other forms of social media you use should revolve around your blog and point people to it.  Don’t just point people to your home page or your product, point them to your expertise (your blog)!  This will build credibility with people and they will be more likely to buy your product, attend your church, hire your services, etc.  That’s why my blog is the center of my social media solar system.

THE FIRST PLANET: In my own solar system, Twitter is the first planet.  I use Twitter to give people snapshots of myself and my business.  I believe strongly in authenticity so I let people see my family, my interests, and my quirkiness.  Some “experts” say not to do this.  They say that you should have two Twitter accounts:  one personal and one business.  I say, “Balogna!!”  People will be more likely to buy from you, or to drink your Kool Aid, when they feel like they know you and believe you’re a “real” person.  Thus, I send out links to my blog links via Twitter in betweenother personal “tweets”.

THE SECOND PLANET: Facebook is the second planet in my social media solar system.  I believe that Twitter is a great place to start conversations but Facebook is the best place to have them.  I link Twitter to Facebook so all my tweets become status updates.  Then I go check into Facebook and converse with people who have commented.  I’m also sure to comment on other people’s status updates so that I’m contributing to the community, rather than just taking from the community.

THE THIRD PLANET: LinkedIn is third in my solar system.  This is where I go to meet business people and generate leads.  Because it is unapologetically business-oriented, I don’t spend as much time “being me” on LinkedIn.  I go there for business, not for “hanging out”.

Your Social Media Solar System might look a little different than mine and that’s great, but I think it should always start with your blog.  The planets can be whatever you want them to be.  For you it might be Blog, LinkedIn, Posterous, Flikr, and YouTube.  It could be Blog, Tumblr, Twitter, and Digg.  Regardless of the platforms making up your solor system, my suggestion is to keep it simple. Don’t get caught up trying to use every social media platform out there, there are just too many to be effective.  Pick the three or four that you can do well, and do those.

What does your Social Media Soar System look like?

The problem with SEO is that the public has caught on.  People know you can pay to have your results at the top.  They also know how to “bend” the rules to manipulate the system.  Even my own 79-year-old mother got my Dad’s appliance repair business to the top of Google without paying for any add words!  People know that SEO is a game, and consumers HATE games.

SMO is a term I prefer.  ”Social Media Optimization” is the marketing tool that businesses need to pay more attention to.  This isn’t about getting a Twitter account and forcing your coupon links down people’s throats.  Nor is it about getting the most fans on your Facebook page.  SMO is much more.  It’s about establishing trust in the community, relationships in the community, and a reputation in the community…the online social media community.

SMO takes time.  There’s no microwave solution to leveraging Social Media for your business.  It takes commitment and work.  The way I see it, business leaders have two options for SMO.  First, they can hire an employee or employees to run their social media strategy.  Second, they can hire a firm to do it for them.  Some of the biggest companies in the world outsource all of their television advertising, and I think they will soon be outsourcing their social media marketing.

What’s your SMO strategy?

If there’s one thing we know for certain about Social Media Marketing (SMM), it’s that “annoying” doesn’t work!  People unfollow and report spammers.  They install anti-spam plugins on their blogs, like Akismet.  In general, people in social media communities hate spam and curse spammers.  They say things like, “May the raisins on your Raisin Bran, not be raisins.”  Sorry, I’m rambling.

Anyway, what does work in SMM?  Trust.  If people see you (and your brand) consistently being real in their social media circles, they’ll grow to trust you.  Because of this, SMM strategies can take up to 6 months to start gaining traction.

Living in an instantaneous-fast-food-microwave culture, we want marketing results immediately.  Yet, that flies in the face of social media communities.  Social Media Marketing takes time.  The goal with SMM is to be present, consistent, real and trustworthy.  If you and your organization can master this, then SMM will pay long-term and highly rewarding dividends.

By the way, sometimes the best example is a bad example.  Below are three recent spam comments that Akismet blocked on my blog.  Enjoy laughing at them, as I did.

To learn more about how I can help develop your organization’s Social Media Marketing Strategy here.

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I had the privilege of attending a Business and Technology conference in Oklahoma City called Innotech, and the track I attended was all about eMarketing.  I’m excited because marketing is one of the greatest out-reaching tools at any organization’s disposal, yet many organizations tend to market rather poorly.

Today, consider what marketing avenues your church or business is employing and evaluate how effectively you think your marketing has been.  Here are some questions to mull over about marketing:

1. What are the top 3 things people in the community have to say about your organization?  (If you don’t know, it’s time to find out! There’s no excuse for not knowing in this information age.  Utilize surveys to learn what people think, and if they think about your organization at all.)
2. What are the top 3 things you want people in the community to think about your organization?
3. How well does your top 3 and the community’s top 3 align?  Why do/don’t they align?
4. What marketing approaches have you been taking? (Direct mail, signs, flyers, television, google ad words, social media, word-of-mouth, phone books, newspapers, etc.)
5. Based on your answers to questions 3 and 4, in your opinion, how effective has your marketing been?
6. What are you going to do to improve your current marketing strategy?  Resist the urge to just add new marketing approaches.  Find two or three marketing streams that really work.

Notice that the questions above don’t ask how many people attend your church or how much money your organization brings in.  Participation and finances are certainly good measurements because they are easy to measure.  Perception, though, is something we should also pay careful attention to.  A positive community perception will provide long-term growth, stability and impact.  Yet you won’t fully experience these things unless and until you know what people are thinking.

By the way, one of the most effective ways to nurture the right community perception of your organization is Social Media.  I’m just sayin’.

Organizational leaders know that they are tired of traditional advertising.  They know they are tired of flushing money down the marketing commode.   They know social media is one place where marketing dollars can be effectively used.  But these same leaders often think social media is confusing, overwhelming and time-consuming.

That’s where I come in:  I’ve launched a business venture called Triple-Threat Marketing.  I’m partnering with a phenomenal company, based in Dallas, that has created a patented marketing strategy for businesses called Social Compass.  Our approach to marketing will help businesses cut through the confusion, and utilize social media to effectively market their products and/or services.  The results with Social Compass are staggering!  I’d love the opportunity to talk with you about a strategy that will meet your social media marketing needs.  Click here to set up a meeting.  My buddy, Scott Williams, turned me on to the video below.  Watch it and I think you’ll be convinced that your company needs my help.

You may not run a business, organization or church yourself, buy you know someone who does.  Do them a favor and send them this post.