Week in Review: Homeless Man Unveils App, Microsoft Acquisition, More

Week in Review: Homeless Man Unveils App, Microsoft Acquisition, More
Vertical Measures Welcomes New President Chris Bird
Sean Whiteley of GetFeedback: Embracing Mobile for a Better Survey Experience
If You Finish the Cocoa, Make a New Pot!

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 04:00 PM PST

SBTNewsRondupDec20

If you missed any news this week pertinent to your business, don’t worry. The Small Business Trends editorial team has it here. Check out our week in review.

Startup Stories

Homeless man unveils a new car pooling app. After being taught going by a good samaritan, Leo Grand has gone from years of living on the streets and in shelters to launching his own app. It’s an exciting story about the potential of entrepreneurship.

Acquisitions & Mergers

Planned Microsoft acquisition of Nokia gets federal approval. The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have given the go-ahead for one of the biggest tech acquisitions of the year. Business owners are waiting to see what Windows devices could result.

oDesk and Elance merge. It’s huge news for the freelancing community and for those who use their services. But the question remains whether the merger of the two giant communities will be good or bad…and for whom. Small Business Trends CEO, Anita Campbell, has more.

Verizon plans to acquire EdgeCast. The communications giant is hoping to use this content delivery network’s technology to improve online business performance. EdgeCast says it gives companies of all sizes the ability to scale their digital presence.

Marketing

WestJet creates a viral sensation by playing Santa to passengers. The Canadian airline found out what recent passengers on two of its flights wanted for Christmas. Then they fulfilled those holiday wishes while the planes were aloft.

Japan could be the place to sell your app. If your app is a popular game, that is. Of course, the point here is to think about how different markets may receive your product, whatever it is. Don’t assume you know what markets will be most receptive.

E-commerce

eBay brings same day delivery to Dallas. The e-commerce site famous for online auctions has another card up its sleeve. Look out Amazon. eBay too is speeding up delivery of online orders. And small businesses could eventually benefit.

Tech

Developers of the Smarty Ring raised nearly $300,000. This device is the latest in wearable technology. It’s a catch-all phrase that includes items like smartwatches and Google Glass. This one supposedly helps you manage your smartphone.

Microsoft is considering free Windows Phone licensing. The software company is considering the new arrangement to convince more developers to install Windows Phone on their devices. The company is also reportedly considering free licensing for its Windows RT tablet operating system.

Operations

Vertical Measures welcomes Chris Bird. Well-known speaker, author, podcaster and trainer Arnie Kuenn announces Bird’s new position as president of marketing firm Vertical Measures. Kuenn, the former president, will retain his position as CEO and evangelize for content marketing and the Vertical Measures brand.

Image: Shutterstock

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Vertical Measures Welcomes New President Chris Bird

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 01:30 PM PST

Arnie and Andi Kuenn Vertical Measures Edit

Phoenix-based marketing agency Vertical Measures welcomes a new president, Chris Bird, as head of daily operations. Bird was scheduled to take over the reigns of leadership effective today.

In an email detailing the change in leadership, former president and current owner and CEO Arnie Kuenn explained:

“I firmly believe that Vertical Measures is poised to make a big leap forward over the next few years. But I also recognize that we are going to need some help to get us there. With my travels, it’s just becoming too difficult to manage the business on a day-to-day basis. I am not as involved with you as I should be and our team deserves quicker, better leadership.”

Kuenn is pictured above with co-owner and Vice President Andi Kuenn.

Kuenn is a well-known speaker, author, podcaster and trainer. He will continue to function as CEO and evangelist for content marketing and the Vertical Measures brand.

Bird’s experience includes a previous position as senior vice president of business development for Lane Terralever, an all-digital agency, says an official announcement issued by Vertical Measures.

He will be responsible for ongoing operations and business development.

The company provides search, social and content marketing for Cisco and institutions like Keiser and Norwich Universities. Other clients include eCommerce sites, SEO firms and other Fortune 500 Companies, according to the Vertical Measures website.

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Sean Whiteley of GetFeedback: Embracing Mobile for a Better Survey Experience

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST

Most of us are experiencing more and more of our lives by looking at the screens of our mobile devices such as phones and tablets. Which is why GetFeedback designed their online customer survey platform – to make it more appealing, attractive and efficient for users to provide companies with the kind of feedback they'll need to create better products and services.

GetFeedback Co-Founder, Sean Whiteley, shares with us why it's more important than ever to create an effective process for collecting information from customers, and the role mobility will play in building the kind of experiences that get people to take your surveys on a regular basis.

* * * * *

customer survey experience Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your personal background?

Sean Whiteley: My Co-Founder, Kraig Swensrud, and I founded a company in 2006 called Kieden, which integrated Salesforce CRM and Google AdWords. We were actually the second acquisition that Salesforce had done.

We spent about six years over there in various executive roles at the company doing a breadth of different initiatives in the product and marketing organizations. We’ve started a new company called GetFeedback. Essentially, a new take on the online survey. Surveys built for the world of billions and billions of smartphones.

Small Business Trends: How important is it to get constant, good feedback from your customers today?

Sean Whiteley: Everyone is familiar with surveys. Everyone has taken a survey. Many people have distributed surveys. What a lot of people probably don’t know is that surveys are a $2 billion industry.

The reason it’s a $2 billion industry is that feedback is the lifeblood of a company. It doesn’t matter what kind of company you are. Customer service is going to be important. Being able to get feedback from your customers, from your employees, from your partners, from your ecosystem, it’s vital. It’s how you improve, it’s how you get better. It’s how you know it’s not working and it’s how you know what you need to do better.

Historically, surveys started back in the “Mad Men” era where they had focus groups get in a room. That quickly moved to the telephone. Shortly after that, it moved online. Companies like SurveyMonkey were really disruptive in putting surveys online so people could take them right from their email or in a browser.

But we’ve seen this colossal shift to mobile computing. People refer to it as the “Mobile Era” or the “Post-PC Era.” You’ve probably seen some statistics recently where over half of all emails now are opened on a phone.

It’s on your phone, it’s on your tablet and sometimes, it’s on a computer, too. So, we really think that this shift to mobile is as significant as any of those shifts I spoke out before. The shift from focus groups, to telephones, to online surveys, to mobile. We think that this is as significant a shift.

That was really our main goal with GetFeedback. To build a mobile-optimized survey experience that was easy to use and that anyone could leverage.

Small Business Trends: How does mobility impact the response rates compared to the traditional way of using surveys?

Sean Whiteley: A lot of it comes down to user experience. Many times, I’d like to give somebody some feedback. But I’m not going to sit around and pinch my phone and I’m not going to strain my eyes and move it around and click the tiny little buttons. A lot of people give me these surveys, they may look pretty good in my browser, but if I’m in a cab on my phone or I’m sitting at home watching TV and I happen to be using my iPad, I’m really not going to go that extra mile to give you that response.

Maybe I’ll forward it to my email inbox or the top of my inbox or maybe I’ll get to it when I’m in front of my computer.

You want to provide that experience for somebody that wherever they are, whatever they’re doing, they can actually give you some feedback right then and there. Because what happens when you can take it on any device is – you’re going to get higher response rates.

We did a lot of research when we started this business. We were in awe at the response rates that people had gotten used to. People were talking about getting 2, 3, 4 percent response rates on surveys and we thought that was crazy.

It’s hard enough to get your message in front of somebody. It’s even harder to get something that’s relevant and targeted in front of someone. The last thing you want to do is give them a bad experience.

Once you have them there and have taken the time to read through the content of your survey, you want to make sure that it’s optimized for a good user experience. So, we think people should be getting exponentially higher response rates to their surveys and mobile is a huge piece of that.

The other piece is incorporating rich media content – things like video, photos and images. We all know how engaging these things can be. Look at companies like Snapchat and Facebook and Instagram. We know that photos and video are engaging. We think that you should be able to easily incorporate rich media assets in your surveys.

Small Business Trends: What role does speed play in being able to not just roll this survey out, but to actually take the information and create the services that people are giving you this information for?

Sean Whiteley: Speed is everything. And I think speed is two things.

You talk about page-load times and things like that, of course. But also, people’s attention span on the Web is not what it used to be. I’m sitting in front of my computer right now and I’ve got several windows open. I’ve got Twitter, I’ve got Facebook. I have a chat application. I have a couple of different browsers. I have a bunch of different things open.

Everything is pushing me alerts and updates and the attention span is short. So, we think that going forward, surveys are going to be shorter. They’re going to have to be more engaging and they’re going to have a better experience. At the end of the day, you’re going to get more feedback, which is going to lead to quicker insight.

Small Business Trends: When you think about it, services like yours really are one of the pieces in the puzzle of creating what I call “FAIR” organizations. Fast, Agile, Interactive and Responsive. Having a service like yours is one of the main pieces.

Sean Whiteley: I think Salesforce has done a really good job. They’re a customer of ours. Salesforce has all these fantastic events. Dreamforce, which is, of course, fantastic. And one of the things they’ve gotten really good at is, every time they have an event – and it could be a webinar or it could be something like Dreamforce – they send out a survey right after the event.

What’s great about that is they will incorporate actual imagery and video from the event that the customer was just at. They get them when they’re driving away from the event. Maybe they’re at the airport going back home or maybe they’re in the cab or maybe they’re in their hotel. Or maybe they’re back at their office or maybe they’re at home.

But they hit them when that event is fresh in their mind. It takes them right back to what could have been a couple of hours ago. So, they’re really getting that emotional, very real initial feedback that they need. They incorporate that feedback and they get it to the right people.

Having that real-time feedback mechanism and that consistent feedback loop with their customers is something that they’ve really mastered. And GetFeedback is how they’re doing it.

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us where people can learn more about what you guys are doing over at GetFeedback?

Sean Whiteley: Sure. Go to GetFeedback.com. There are some customer stories there and also a free version.

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.

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If You Finish the Cocoa, Make a New Pot!

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 05:00 AM PST

christmas cartoon

When I get stuck for a caption, one of my tricks is to take the idea I’m working on and put it in a boring business setting to see what happens.

So, for instance, if you’re stuck trying to find something for the holidays about elves, you imagine a break room, that burning empty carafe smell, substitute cocoa for coffee and you’ve got yourself a fun cranky elf cartoon!

Happy holidays!

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