Network World — It's one thing to provide technical or customer service but quite a different thing to do so really well. What's really changed the whole concept of outbound service as compared to say 20 years ago is that a company's customers can now find each other and talk. They can discover and publicize your weaknesses with a speed and depth of commentary that, if they are annoyed, can be astounding and result in significant brand damage.

Great balls of customer service

Way back when I was running technical support for the likes of Novell UK our customers had no way to get connected unless it was at a tradeshow or a local user group meeting and even then it wasn't a really "close" connection.

Now it's very different. Users find each other through all sorts of channels and they get connected via e-mail, instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, Plurk and forums. The result is that your product or service problems are now a public issue and managing your company image and brand requires a lot more effort.

There are several things you absolutely have to do to make sure that you have the greatest opportunity to control this environment rather than have the environment drive you.

1. Make contact: Most products and services ask for registration and you should ensure that you maximize the incentives for users to register and when they do, make sure you persuade them to allow you contact them by e-mail (and test the e-mail connection … there's little point in going to the trouble of asking them to be engaged and then wind up sending messages in the black hole of a spam filter).

2. Stay in contact: Keep a regular, relevant connection going. Once a month is good, once a week is usually too often, once a quarter is usually too infrequent (your industry mileage may vary). Be concise, be relevant, by engaging. Dry tech messages aren't engaging. Sales pitches can get annoying. News about internal company matters (for example, photos of the company picnic) are usually naïve and irrelevant. If your product or service allows for it make your communications channel part of the product. That said, do not, under any circumstances ignore the e-mail connection … if the user stops using your product or reconfigures it so your messages aren't seen for whatever reason e-mail may be your only choice.

3. Mind the market: Social networking is where many of your users will find each other. Use the various services that scan Twitter and Tumblr to look for references to what you do. Search for news about what you do in blogs.

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