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Customer support is crucial for the company’s long-term success - are you making sure your business has a spotless customer support?

Let me tell you about my very personal experience. My Internet provider is Telstra Bigpond and over the weekend I’ve had all sorts of problems accessing sites in the US. Australian ones were loading fast, the ones in UK too, but going to a US site was taking forever.

My experience with Telstra is that they have no-one maintaining the service over the weekend, so if there is a problem you have to wait until Monday to have it fixed. Well, I waited - but mid-day Monday the problem was still there despite the fact that Bigpond was giving an all-green to the service status.

I did my homework by running a traceroute to see where the delay was and armed with this knowledge I contacted the Telstra customer support.

It is astounding to see how it is harder and harder these days to talk to an actual person. In the next 10 minutes I was held back by a Telstra robot, which kept asking me irrelevant questions, then repeating my answers back to me for double-insurance. The only thing I could do was to fantasize about various ways of smashing the damn thing, and waiting for the electronic nuisance to run out of questions…

… and when it finally did run out of questions it was like being born again - my hopes were up in anticipation of talking to an actual living person. Alas, that’s when you join the queue of other unfortunate souls waiting for some support from Telstra.

For the next 45 minutes I was on hold. That was the easy part, though. The hard part was being forced to listen to the most inane music you can imagine, if it qualifies as music at all - “noise” might be a better way to characterize it. You see, you cannot move away for the fear of missing on that magical moment when your call actually gets picked up.

I tried reading a book, running a video from YouTube and few other distractions, but there was no escaping the noise.

And then, after 45 minutes and when you’re ready to abandon all hope, your call gets answered by Gloria (name changed), a Telstra support person. God, that felt good - what a relief!

Unfortunately, from then on the conversation was rather unidirectional. Gloria persisted in trying to convince me that the fault was with my computer/firewall/security/what-not and not with the spotless Telstra service. It goes to show that the day when Telstra is going to employ a competent person to do customer support is still far away, but at least Gloria had a pleasant voice. She was very determined to get me through the list of remedies that had nothing to do with the problem.

Here is my 4-word sum up of the Telstra customer support: TOTAL WASTE OF TIME.
It is only marginally less painful than chopping off your left leg (not that I’ve tried it).

Here is how you can benefit from my experience: if YOU ever have a problem with Telstra - any problem at all - don’t waste your time in frustration, I can give you RIGHT NOW the same support you’d eventually receive:

1. Reboot your computer
2. Reset the modem
3. Switch off all of the security software in place, and
4. Delete the temporary files.

Will any of this help? Well, it might - if you are lucky enough to have a problem that matches one of these 4 solutions. It is similar to buying a lottery ticket: chances are small, but hey - anything’s possible.

But hang-on, that’s not all: now I am going to greatly improve on the Telstra customer support and add the solution number 5. Here it comes:

If everything else fails, do the Indian rain dance!

Will that fix the problem? Not likely, but unlike all other advice you receive, this will do you good. Exercise helps your health, and prevents the deep vein thrombosis you can otherwise earn from waiting on the Telstra customer support…

…and who knows, it might even bring rain, which is always welcome in this drought-stricken country.

Get in contact with like-minded businesspeople and participate: join the Underdog Marketing Challenge

See you at the Lab!

Controversy by Dr Alex

Social Media Marketing social media, Social Media Marketing

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Facebook is the biggest social network on the web, with over 100 million visitors every month and counting. Increasingly, business experts are recommending that businesses and brands at all levels incorporate Facebook into their marketing strategies.

All the data shows that internet users are spending more and more of their time online in social networks, and less and less time on traditional brand websites. With the numbers of users out there going stratospheric, it’s obvious why digital marketing and business experts are urging businesses to develop a presence on Facebook.

Some business experts even challenge whether businesses need a traditional brand website at all, recommending that they should put their digital marketing energies into developing their online social network profiles instead. Facebook can put your business in direct communication with your customers. While this is a massive opportunity for brands, there is also potential for businesses to do themselves considerable damage if they don’t manage their communications, strategy, and online behaviour well.

Fortunately, for marketers and businesspeople looking for reliable expert business advice on using Facebook for business, help is at hand.

Online business TV network yourBusinessChannel has brought together leading business experts in social media and digital marketing to share their latest expert business advice on the right way to leverage Facebook for you business. The key, say the business experts, is to recognise that people go to social networks to join conversations, not to be advertised at, so brands need to change the way they think about their marketing. Brands need to add value to the conversation.

Many business experts recommend developing a branded Facebook application that customers will find useful, for example, or to post plenty of appealing content like photos, video, and articles.

Business TV viewers can subscribe to the yourBusinessChannel Facebook for business series to be alerted when a new show is released. Sign up is absolutely free.

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