Killer Brownies, YouTube Live Streaming and More |  |
- Killer Brownies, YouTube Live Streaming and More
- Nokia Develops Android Phone Despite Microsoft Deal
- Richard White of UserVoice: Customer Retention is EVERYTHING When You Run An Online Service
- 8 Things to Review, Refine and Refocus for Any New Year
- Innovate Err…Like Everyone Else Is Doing It
| Killer Brownies, YouTube Live Streaming and More Posted: 27 Dec 2013 03:00 PM PST
Keeping up with the latest is important for your small business’s success. Here are the top stories of the week from the Small Business Trends editorial team: Marketing & BrandingLocal grocery bakeries battle over “killer brownies.” Or not. Actually this is the story of how cooler heads prevailed in a dispute involving the branding and geographical marketing of a very special bakery product. And we even throw in a recipe for good measure. Enjoy! The Scary Snowman teaches business lessons — with some fun. There are probably harder gigs than dressing up like a life-sized snowman and scaring people silly. But even this business has some things to teach the average business owner about interacting and making an impression. Online ServicesYouTube offers streaming video to all users. Though you must have a verified account in good standing as far as YouTube is concerned, this is importance news for businesses and marketers. YouTube introduced streaming video for selected users in 2011, but is now rolling out the feature for everyone. Google Talk in Windows to be silenced. If you’ve gotten use to the Windows version of Google Talk for communicating with your team, here’s some bad news. The Google Talk for Windows app is going away in the next few months. Happily there are some rather simple alternatives. TechApple’s Mac Pro may face delivery delays. It’s a very niche product with a premium price tag. And those pros who need it will have to wait longer than they might have expected to get their devices. But most probably feel it’s just as worth the wait as it is the investment. MobileAT&T wants to dump phone subsidies. And they aren’t the only ones, it turns out. Businesses in need of regular smartphone and mobile device upgrades to keep up with the technology may have a problem. But there are some options. Nokia is developing an Android phone. Yes, you heard right. The company most closely associated with mobile products running on Windows is making an Android phone. And this is at the same time the company is being acquired by Microsoft. Learn more. Content & CommunicationsReverse guest blogging may be the next content marketing trend. As search engines change the way they evaluate content, you must re-evaluate the way you create it. In this new environment, it’s no longer sufficient to publish just anything guest posters submit. Here’s an alternative. What is a “selfie?” And should you use them to promote your business? “Selfie” is the new trendy term for a self portrait. It should be distinguished from self-portraits in traditional photography by the fact that it is generally taken with a smartphone camera or front facing camera on your laptop or tablet. Small Business Trends CEO Anita Campbell asks whether these often-used photos really present the most professional impression of your business. FranchiseThis franchise could rock your world. See this post on the School of the Rock franchise, a unique business that combines music and creativity with a franchise model. The business offers camps and music lessons for rock musicians in training. Reading via Shutterstock The post Killer Brownies, YouTube Live Streaming and More appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Nokia Develops Android Phone Despite Microsoft Deal Posted: 27 Dec 2013 12:00 PM PST
When you think of Nokia, you think of Windows phones. That’s even more the case with the recently announced plans for Microsoft to acquire the Finnish company for $7.2 billion. Nokia has certainly been responsible for its share of Windows devices. They include the Lumia 625, the company’s largest screened smartphone to date and possibly the world’s largest Windows phablet, the Lumia 1520. And let’s not stop with Windows Phone devices. Nokia also recently made headlines by unveiling it’s first Windows tablet, the long-awaited 10.1-inch Lumia 2520, which runs on Windows RT. So many might be surprised at news that Nokia continues to develop a new Android phone — and that Microsoft may actually be open to the idea. Nokia Android Phone is Code Named NormandyPhotos of the new Nokia Android phone code named Normandy have appeared on well-known tech leak site @evleak, reports The Verge. (See the photo above.) The device is described by sources as being similar in design to the company’s Lumia phone line, but created for a budget market like the company’s recent line of Asha phones. It would have a modified version of Android similar to the modified versions Amazon has created for its mobile devices. And it would feature many popular apps available on other Android phones. Most surprising, however, is that Microsoft might be willing to go ahead with the phone even if it takes over and starts operating Nokia before the new phone is released. There are a couple of reasons Microsoft might not be adverse to the idea of a Nokia Android device, reports AllThingsD:
Benefits for Small BusinessesIf Microsoft lets the Nokia Android phone move forward, it may signal the beginning of the end of the fiefdoms large technology companies have created around their products. Microsoft is already contemplating free licensing for its Windows Phone operating system. This could encourage more smartphone developers to incorporate Windows Phone making it available on more types of devices. It also frees small business 0wners from the difficulties of having to choose between their favorite operating system and their favorite hardware. Image: @evleak The post Nokia Develops Android Phone Despite Microsoft Deal appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Richard White of UserVoice: Customer Retention is EVERYTHING When You Run An Online Service Posted: 27 Dec 2013 09:15 AM PST UserVoice, creators of a platform that makes it easier for 150,000 companies of all sizes to respond quicker to customer needs and gather more feedback from them, was recently named winner of the 2013 CRM Idol contest. CRM Idol is an annual competition among emerging customer-facing tech companies. The winner is selected by a panel of judges, experts and influencers in the CRM space, as well as by the online community of voters. Richard White, CEO and Founder of UserVoice, shares his thoughts on how a small company can scale and build great relationships with thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers. He also talks about the role speed plays in keeping customers happy. And most of all, he explains how when you run an online software service or mobile app, how customer retention is paramount. * * * * * Small Business Trends: Tell us a little bit about what UserVoice does, and a little personal background.
Even back then we really struggled with the same problem we're trying to solve with UserVoice today. That is, how do we have conversations with our customers at what I call web scale? It's not uncommon for a 20-person company to have 200,000 or two million users. How do you support those users? But how do you also go beyond support, and actually have a good grip on what do our users want to do, how can we improve the product? In SaaS, retention is everything — not necessarily acquisition. I mean acquisition is important, but retention's what can we do to build a really big business. Part of retention is customer care and support. But a bigger part of that is building the right product. A big part of that is understanding how to get feedback from users, and not just a vocal minority but a representative sample of your user base, and build the best product you can for them. Small Business Trends: We’re hearing more and more the term, "in-app." What exactly does "in-app" mean? Richard White: Traditionally, when you have a customer portal, a customer community, a survey, these things are only done off-app. What I mean is it's a separate site. There's a link in your footer that takes you off to another site, and that's where you get help. Or there's an email that goes out and it takes you to a link, it takes you to the survey, and that's where you get the feedback. Our main problem with those kinds of approaches is that we know that were someone to click a link in a footer, if you take them to another site, you lose so much of your audience. When we're servicing SaaS applications, people are already living inside your application. Why can't we get them the help at the point they're having the problem? That is in your application. Why can't we ask for their feedback directly where they're actually using the product or the piece of the product you want feedback on? That can be a web app or a mobile app. If you're getting feedback, we want you to get it in-app. If someone has a problem, we want them just to be directly on that page, click a button, fire off that message, read a knowledge base article, you name it. Small Business Trends: Please explain the impact that in-app has. Richard White: One of the first things we built with UserVoice were these little feedback tabs to put on the side of websites. We did that back in 2008. We built that because we found that people were just putting links in the footer that said, "Give us feedback." The biggest problem we had was people clicking through those links and going off to the third party site. We wanted to give them a brain dead, simple way to tell people you really care about feedback. That helped. With our latest batch of feedback, we're doing various different approaches to really get feedback. You can think of these as almost single question surveys in your app. Do you like this idea or this idea, how would you rate us, etc. etc. We've seen in some cases a 700% improvement in the percentage of users engaging. Because what we find is when people have to have all this motivation to click off to a third-party site, you're only going to get what I call a vocal minority. Only the most passionate people will go off. That may not always be the people you want to be listening to. The people that are really angry, or might be just your super-early adopters. Maybe you want to say hey, this quarter we want to focus on the feedback we're getting from our customers paying us over $100 a month that have been with us for six months. We get I think about 7X the number of people engaging when the mechanisms are in-app, and we get just as much depth of engagement. Small Business Trends: As subscription services grow, that means that people are going to have to really be into what customers want, and that means being able to effectively get the feedback on a continual basis, correct? Richard White: The primary concern we're trying to deal with is 3% of our active users at any given time are contacting us for support. How do we stay on top of that? We provide them some ways to do that. In some cases we've seen about 50% of inbound requests get an auto-suggested knowledgebase article, or an auto-suggested piece of feedback from another issue. It will deflect that issue, and you won't have to have a live person respond to it. We can provide context to the agent and make it so they can answer the question very quickly. One of the things we've found is that when it does get to the agent and they are responding to it, in a web world, in the real time world we live in, people value expediency. They want an answer quickly. We focus on agility. We have a huge ratio of end users to support agents. We take this approach that we try to make it as email like as possible, and we have very simplistic opener, close statements. If you respond to a customer, we assume that if the customer still needs help, they'll contact you back. This is different than the traditional resolution tracking and all these things. If you've got customers that are paying you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars a month, maybe you should take the time to follow up with them and make sure everything gets closed and everything gets resolved. But in a consumer environment, that's just not possible. That's not scalable. We've never really gone to a company that's consumer-focused – that doesn't have customers that are paying thousands of dollars a month – and seen them track resolution times effectively. We just don't think it's possible in the consumer environment. What we have seen in the stats we do show is you get a disproportionate number of kudos if you respond within 15 minutes. In this agile world of support that we really try to support, we focus on response times. Resolution times are something that we think are more of a legacy concept, or more of a concept for when you have a much smaller user base, paying you much more money per person. Then maybe it's worth tracking. To the average web app company, and especially for the average mobile app company, it's not a good use of your time and energy. Small Business Trends: What impact do you think Amazon's "Mayday" button may have on customer service going forward? Richard White: Mobile apps are three to four years behind the Web in terms of customer care and in-app customer feedback. No one really put a lot of effort into it. Up until about 12 or 18 months ago, most of the revenue in app stores — and you're talking about retail — but most revenue in app stores was from paid apps. Once you bought the app, there was very little incentive for the company to try to support you (as the customer). They've got your money, they've got maximum value from you. Now in-app everyone's shifted to free-to-play in gaming and freemium for SaaS apps. You have the same problem you have on the Web, where only one in 10 people are going to convert with all of your app installs to a paying version, but you don't know which one in 10 they're going to be. You have to support all 10 of them. That's creating this demand for more in-app customer service. The other thing that's going to create demand for more in-app customer service is things like this "Mayday" button actually raising the bar of people's expectations. We see how quickly we as humans habituate new technologies. The iPhone is great for about two years, and then we're all bitching about how slow 3G is. I think what you'll see is gosh, look how great it is to shop on Amazon, it has a "Mayday" button. Why don't we have a "Mayday" button on every website? I think there are economic reasons why people are already starting to invest in better in-app customer care and customer feedback in mobile apps, because of market dynamics. I think things like this sometimes have an even greater effect, because they change the customer's perception of what's possible, and raise the bar on what you should expect. Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more? Richard White: Uservoice.com. We've got all of our stuff on there. If you're also interested in these topics, we run a conference twice a year. Next one's going to be May in Chicago. This interview on the customer survey experience is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above. The post Richard White of UserVoice: Customer Retention is EVERYTHING When You Run An Online Service appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 8 Things to Review, Refine and Refocus for Any New Year Posted: 27 Dec 2013 06:00 AM PST
Yep, the end of any year is hectic, crazy and disruptive but it's also a key time to review, refine and refocus on our accomplishments, changes and how we dealt with our challenges. Ultimately, we should look mostly at the pluses, but be honest about the minuses and how they have held you back. There are always endless positive insights and lessons to be learned from them. I don't do resolutions as they are too rigid for me. I prefer setting my intentions, which are more fluid and allow me to decide what I would like to see happen, then set myself up and be ready for them to happen. I call it “active dreaming” which adds the “doing” to the dreaming. I have to constantly be monitoring myself on several levels. Self appraisal with a healthy dose of honesty is a valuable tool. Developing our EQ (Emotional Quotient) is a huge asset in business success in addition to our IQ. Our professional success is only possible if our house is in order. We need to know ourselves, change ourselves when it's called for and trust ourselves more than we sometimes do. According to Talent Smart, 90% of high performers at the work place possess high EQ, while 80% of low performers have low EQ. Emotional Intelligence is absolutely essential in the formation, development, maintenance and enhancement of close personal relationships. Below are eight items to review, refine and refocus that can jump start any year. Your New Year Business ReviewWork Life BalanceAll work and no play, or too much play and not enough work, definitely impacts our happiness and success. Trying to put into place your best balance is an effort whose value we should never underestimate. Health and WellnessIt is ultimately your responsibility to take care of yourself. Employee wellness is a top priority now, as it can cost companies $23 billion each year, according to the Wall Street Journal, and impacts hiring and retention. Healthier employees make more productive workers. Take a look at these 46 healthiest companies to work for and what they are doing. Coping SkillsHow are your coping skills? All of us go through uncertainty, health issues, sudden change and other life events that we must be able to work through. What are the best coping activities and mechanisms you have in place and what do you need to do to refine them? We can never have too many coping skills. Skill GapsCareer retention and job search change are ongoing. Make sure you are qualified for the jobs you want and the one you currently have. Don’t fall behind, stay ahead. Upgrade both your hard and soft skills, especially if you are in technology, healthcare, medical and professional services. Develop more likeability, be more of a team player and take more initiatives to develop leadership. People who show thoughtful initiative will be rewarded. RelationshipsNetworking and making quality connections both online and in person are the most non-negotiable part of standing out as an employee or small business owner. Focus on the pillar social media marketing tactics including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogging and eMarketing and go out and meet people in person and at local and national events. Show up, connect, engage and grow relationships daily. Find the time, make the time, invest more time and be selective. ResentmentsGet rid of them, work through them, resolve them and let them go. They are not productive or good energy to hold onto. IntentionsWhat do you want to see happen in your life this year? What do you need to do to make them happen? Move yourself in the direction you want to go. Your career path is your responsibility. Set the tasks, timelines and tone, which will impact the outcome. Optimism and KindnessThese two assets are capable of changing anything and everything and building so much good faith and good will. Be willing to uncover everything you need to know about yourself to get your house in order, inside and out and continue to refine your who, what and why. Big commitment – but even bigger payoff. Review Photo via Shutterstock The post 8 Things to Review, Refine and Refocus for Any New Year appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Innovate Err…Like Everyone Else Is Doing It Posted: 27 Dec 2013 05:00 AM PST
Recently, I was reading a blog that was talking about innovating. This company did this, this company did that – that sort of thing. It was a fun read, and certainly inspiring. But then the author ended by basically suggesting if you did these things you’d be innovative too. Wait – what?! I don’t mean to sound like a third grader, but that’s not really innovating – that’s copying. The good news is, this article did inspire me to create a cartoon on this topic. . .in an innovative way. The post Innovate Err…Like Everyone Else Is Doing It appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
Richard White: My personal background is really what I call design engineering. UserVoice came out of my struggles as someone who is a designer, working on software-as-a-service [SaaS] applications. I started working on SaaS applications at Y-Combinator companies back in 2005, 2006.
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