Phone.com’s Jenny Dempsey Appeared On HuffPostLive.com

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 at 10:57 AM EST

Jenny Dempsey from our customer service team and writer for CommunicateBetterBlog appeared on HuffPostLive.com in a segment called “The Dreaded Call.” During this segment she used her expertise as a Customer Service Supervisor to contribute to a panel discussing typical issues that arise in customer service from both sides of the spectrum.

In her responses, Jenny talked about the importance of taking even the most negative of situations and viewing it as a positive. Negative situations if handled properly are opportunities for improvement for the company.

Also featured in the segment was Shai Berger (@shaiberger), CEO of Fonolo, whose call back widget we proudly feature in the support section of our website. This widget allows customers to request a call back and does all of the waiting for the customer. You can watch the full segment at the Huffington Post website.

What do Small Businesses think?

Friday, January 25th, 2013 at 2:49 PM EST

By Jeb

Alibaba.com recently surveyed 600 small businesses asking them an array of questions.  I thought I’d share some of the results here.  
46% of the small businesses surveyed expect to see revenue growth in 2013.

The top 5 ways small businesses plan to expand their business in 2013:
1.      To create a new website (49%)
2.      To import new products (30%)
3.      To export to additional countries (18%)
4.      To build a mobile website (14%)
5.      To build a new location (10%)

Top 5 most effective marketing tactics in 2012:
1.      Word of mouth (54%)
2.      Social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) (37%)
3.      Online advertising (37%)
4.      Email marketing (31%)
5.      Coupons (13%)

17% of the small businesses have a mobile-ready website; 60% of them don’t; 14% don’t have the time/expertise to build a mobile site; and 9% think it is too expensive to build and maintain a mobile site.

80% of small businesses surveyed are online-only businesses
·         92% of small businesses surveyed have between 1-5 employees.
·         82% of small businesses surveyed had 2012 revenues of $50,000 or under.
·         85% of small businesses surveyed are based in the U.S.

I found the most interesting thing to be that only 17% of small businesses have a mobile ready website.  How is that possible?  Mobile retail is growing and it’s growing fast.  According to Mobile Commerce Daily mobile payments have nearly doubled in the last year and 41% of mobile shoppers used mobile coupons at grocery stores, 41% at department stores, 39% at clothing stores according to Neilsen.

This is staggering and telling as to where retail is going in the next few years.  If you run a web retailer and you’re not offering mobile sales you might want to rethink your strategy.  Obviously there are different forms of retail, if you’re selling tractors for farming online that’s different than kids toys but it’s still needs to be considered.

By the way the single most important tasks for 2013 according to these small businesses is   Cost reductions, streamlining.  If I may make 1 single suggestion to save money and streamline your voice communication… Get Phone.com and make your life 100% easier (non scientifically guessing that is).  Plus you can add a Click to Call button to your site to call directly from the web.

What did your company do to market in 2012 and what are your plans for 2013?  Talk to us on Facebook and Twitter.

The Power Of One Great Interaction

Thursday, January 24th, 2013 at 10:23 AM EST

By Jeremy

One of the distinct pleasures in my job is receiving emails from ecstatic customers who can’t wait to tell me about amazing customer service they just experienced. I am always grateful to these customers for taking time out of their busy schedules to share this with me and I’m not sure they realize that this always works to brighten my day as well as that of our staff. 

At CommunicateBetterBlog.com we have been celebrating “Feedback Week” where all of our blog posts are about customer feedback both good and bad.  Earlier this week I received this terrific note about one of our customer service representatives from a new customer, Natalie Dustman (@proformRE):

I just wanted to let you know that Dorian has been extremely helpful in getting me set up on my  new Phone.com account.  I was intending on trying the service for a month before I ported our three office numbers over to our account.  Dorian’s accurate, friendly, timely and helpful support gave me enough confidence in your system and customer service that I went ahead and ported all of our numbers.  We are committing as a company to use your service, largely due to Dorian’s effort.  As the president and owner of a small business, I truly value my employees and appreciate it when people give me feedback about my staff.  I wanted to do the same.

I gained a new insight from this bit of customer feedback this week.  Every interaction with customer service is a make or break encounter.  Dorian, by simply doing his job well managed to take huge strides in building trust with Ms. Dustman and turning her into a loyal customer of Phone.com.  There are so many elements to the customer experience that, if done wrong, could cause the exact opposite result.

At Phone.com, we understand a few things about our customers.  First of all, we understand that their time is valuable.  Secondly, we understand that every encounter with our product, website and even support is an opportunity to gain or lose your trust and your business.  What a powerful responsibility this is and I hope that you know that while we don’t claim perfection, we are striving toward it. 

I invite you to read about “Feedback Week” on our blog and if you learn nothing else, you should know that we delight in receiving your feedback both good and bad.  Every piece of feedback is an opportunity to improve our service.

Jeremy Watkin is the Director of Customer Service for Phone.com and co-founder of CommunicateBetterBlog.com (and on Twitter: @commbetterblog ); a blog dedicated to learning about good and bad customer service with the intent of providing amazing customer service for Phone.com.