Your company has an innovative product, a flashy and attractive website, a bevy of investors on board, and a technical support staff consisting of one intern that you spent five minutes training via email. What’s wrong with this picture?

How Tech Support Affects Your Company’s Image

In many cases, your tech support representatives are your only employees that regularly interact with your customers. When your support reps also happen to be your lowest paid, worst informed and (understandably) most short-tempered employees, can you expect your company to build a positive reputation among your target audience?

Tech support is under-utilized. Far too many companies treat their tech support teams as a last line of defense between angry customers and imminent organizational failure, and consider the idea of sending their tech team leaders to management schools as completely ridiculous . You should have two primary goals for your technical support services, both of which will improve your company’s image when accomplished: Continue reading

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There are a few ways to handle competition. You can be civil and friendly and help each other out while focusing most of your effort on getting new customers and making sure existing ones stay on board. Or you can play the tough competitor card, hunt for mistakes, real or not, and point fingers every time you can. While I believe professionals in any field should educate potential buyers when it comes to scams of all kinds, when it’s matters of opinion we’re talking about, pointing fingers is not the way.

But if you did indulge in saying how evil and deceiving a competitor was because they did such and such, make sure you stick to what you claimed to believe. Try not to forget about it and give a thumbs-up example from the same range, but coming from a smaller player that you don’t feel is a threat and would like to take under your wing. While people momentarily forget, they tend to remember negative statements, especially when you’re the one to remind them of it all.

Let’s take an example. Industry publication X says industry publication Y is a loser for publishing a top based on the wrong metrics, just because X does not like the metrics, valid as they might be to others. A few months pass by and industry publication X promotes a different top from industry publication Z, based on the same metrics. The tops cover aspects of the same area of business and what’s irrelevant for one, is always irrelevant for the other.

Why is that wrong? If you pose as defender of all things pure in your field, make sure you don’t change your mind later. It makes you look spineless or scared and a genuine mud thrower, whichever it is, it affects your image, it shatters your reputation and credibility as a reliable expert/source in the field. Taking stands does draw attention to you, lots of eyes turning to see who you’re speaking against. They will look again when you abruptly change your mind and cheer for the other side!

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How often do you come across people hired to promote a company or their products? I’m referring to those spreading coupons, those showcasing products at stands placed in malls, at those looking nice and interesting at trade events and promoting contests for visitors. How many times were they either too pushy or completely unable to help you?

The person you pay to spread out flyers of all kinds, to present your products or just look hot near a car you’re launching, is a company representative in the eyes of your customer. Customers generally don’t care it’s a temporary gig for them, that you had no time to train them or that maybe they’re just having a bad day. Potential buyers either want answers fast or not to be bothered by pushy people. Continue reading

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What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

The first week of spring is officially here and we have some chirpy blog posts for you to read. How you find them as inspiring and energizing as a sunny spring day.

Drew McLellan shared some amazing marketing insight after learnign a few tricks from a dog whisperer. Now that I’ve read the lessons, Drew, could you be so kind as to teleport the dog whisperer here, I think I need some help with my lab!

The newest, coolest thing when going to a conference is to live tweet it. So how exactly do you effectively present to a room full of tweeting birds? The answer comes from Tamar Weinberg on Pistachio.

Do you want a custom design for your blog? I know I did and my dream came true. But before you imlement this project of yours, please stop to consider a few issues explained by Alex Cristache of Blogsessive.

Stuart Bruce discussed PR, SEO and the fact that public relations, while employing quite a lot of search engine optimization, is not really about SEO, it’s about reputation.

We’re all obsessing about elevator pitches. While doing so, Frances Cole Jones, guest writer at Women on Business, point out that we overlook the importance of the FAQ page and the great results such a page can deliver.

What do you do when you want to launch a new product or service and have no idea what customers would think of it? Daniel Secareanu suggest the simplest and best solution: ask your customers.

You’ve all seen your share of teasers before something new hits the market. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger shows us how to get an audience drooling for a blog that doesn’t exist yet. His approach seems a lot more effective than a criptic add!

Google rankings involve a lot of things. It’s a secret recipe everyone’s after. And one of the reason no one has discovered it yet is that it’s learning and adapting to new tricks. Aaron Wall noticed a new trend: Google started placing heavy emphasis on branding.

When organizing an event, keeping the audience interested and excited about it is critical. Barbara Rozgonyi shares 9 ways to keep events alive with social media.

And we’re closing this week’s edition with a business puzzle from Corina Saceanu. Where’s the money?

What great posts have you run across last week? Please share them in the comment box!

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I’ve recently received an email looking like an attempt at email marketing, promising me some world renowned book for free. I was intrigued by a) the fact that the spam filter didn’t catch it and b) my not knowing anything about the book. So I took a second look at the content, thinking it might be some promotional ebook version sent out to bloggers by someone with way too little experience.

I saw the price for the book, big and shinny, along with a promotional discount image. I deleted it and moved on. But it got me thinking about all the promises marketers and PR people make in their emails and how not keeping them makes them lose potential customers, potential exposure on different channels, their reputation and more. Continue reading

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