That was the question that Bea Fields, a top leadership coach, asked 14 business leaders. I’m flattered that she included me in that group.

There were a variety of answers, as you might expect. She printed them, including mine, in her post Gaining Loyal Customer By Building a Strong Leadership Brand.

Bea’s Definition

Bea’s summarized own take on the question as follows, “When you build a brand based on true, enduring leadership, each person in the company not only speaks about the brand and the promises you make to your customers in your marketing strategies… each person in your company truly lives those promises every day in both their personal and professional lives…”

What is Your Definition?

Both personal and company branding can be confounding to define. How do you define your leadership brand? Don’t be shy. Please leave a comment below.

This isn’t going to be an in-depth discussion about Google+. I’ll leave that to the experts. In fact, before my search tips, let me point you to two sources that provide updates on all that’s new on Google+.

HubSpot has published a comprehensive free e-book How to Use Google+ for Business. Just click on the title and you will be able to download the PDF from the home page.

The other is also a lengthy tutorial (slightly more technical) but well worth reading on Blind Five Year Old by AJ Kohn.

My Tips

These are predicated on your being a member of Google+. My good friend Richard Newman at the Newman Group pointed out this new feature when you conduct a search on Google.

Search Personal Results    

You now have the ability to search a subject and get the results, plus see your own Personal Results for that search. The way you do that is by clicking on the tiny icon on the upper right side of the screen. It’s the one on the left that looks like a head and shoulders. The icon next to it, that looks like a globe, allows you to Hide Personal Results.

Here is a screen shot of the two icons:

Google+ Personal Results Icon (head and shoulders)

I put in the search term The New York Times, which I happen to mention often in my posts. I’ve also written letters to the editors and commented on their stories so I knew something of mine would show up if I typed in “The New York Times” in Google search.

First, I clicked the Personal Results icon. Sure enough, I found a reference to a recent post I wrote about The Times and its mistake in accidentally cancelling the subscriptions of 8 million subscribers.

My Google+ Personalized Search of The New York Times

When I hit the globe icon, that reference disappeared. Neat.

Highlighting Words in Google+ Posts

I wish I could find where I read this because I would give attribution. It’s a tiny but nice little touch that Google+ has incorporated so that you can highlight important words in your posts. Highlighting may improve your search results. I tried this tip and it works.

For example, see the bold face in this mock post:

 “Learn more about Google+ in HubSpot’s new ebook”

Here’s how you do it. Type the words you want to highlight. Then type an * in front and at the end* of the words. Like this: Learn more about Google+ in *HubSpot’s new ebook * and you get “Learn more about Google+ in HubSpot’s new ebook.” Viola!

I’ll pass along other easy-to-understand tips on Google+ as I find them. Please include your tips in the comment box. I’d sure like to know about them.

Richard J. Mast

A few weeks ago I was in Bloomingdale’s when a friendly young store employee approached me to ask if he could help. I wasn’t obviously shopping at the moment so I asked him who he was and learned he was Bloomingdale’s Director of Customer Loyalty, a new position in New York. This led to the following personal  interview about the store’s robust customer loyalty program with Richard J. Mast, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Bloomingdale’s 59th Street in Manhattan. Mr. Mast discusses how understanding and responding to customer needs engenders customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Why did Bloomingdale’s create the Director of Customer Loyalty position? Is it part of a corporate branding program?

If you’re in the retail business you know that satisfied customers will continue to shop with you. So it’s our responsibility to enhance the customer experience. We’ve had employees assigned full-time to customer loyalty for several years. There are four Managers of Customer Loyalty in the Manhattan store but we decided to strengthen the structure by appointing a Director of Customer Loyalty with the other MCL’s reporting to him.

What are the responsibilities of this position and who does the Director report to?  

The role of the Director of Customer Loyalty is to interface with the senior executives in charge of ready-to-wear, Men’s Young World, the Home Store, Fine Jewelry and other departments. They tell the Director what they need and what customers want, and then these needs are translated to the MCLs assigned to these departments who then implement the actions to be taken.

The Director of Customer Loyalty reports directly to me. I don’t see him a lot because he and his staff need to be out on the selling floor interacting with customers. Nothing replaces the experience of talking to customers.

We also conduct focus groups – I sit in on these, too, so I get to hear directly from customers about what they like or don’t like and what would make them have a more satisfying customer experience.

It would seem that good customer service leads to customer loyalty. Are employees trained in customer service?  

Our employees are trained in what we call our “b-connected” system. It’s love at the point of sale. Employees are trained in relationship selling and not simply transactional selling. When a customer using a Bloomingdale’s charge card buys something, that information is entered into our database so we begin to build a profile of that customer. After a second or third visit we understand his or her level of spending and interests. We call it “client telling.”

This benefits the customer because capturing this information draws customers into our “family.” We can send them information about events they may be interested in attending, or invite them to private sales, or suggest making an appointment with a personal shopper. Whatever we can do to strengthen the customer relationship.

Is Bloomingdale’s undertaking any customer loyalty initiatives?

Yes — throughout the store we’re making changes based on what we’ve learned our customers want. For example, we learned that a woman in a dressing room becomes very annoyed when she needs a different size garment and there is no sales associate to help her get it. So in our Intimate Apparel dressings rooms on the 4^th floor, we’ve introduced phones in each room. When a customer picks it up she is connected to someone who can help her. The associate helping the customer also leaves her business card in a slot on the door.

In our shoe department our initiative is called “4 to the floor and 2 out the door.” Sales associates are trained not only to get the particular shoe a customer requests, but also to bring out four different styles. That gives the customer a broader choice and may lead to an extra sale.

Another example is in our men’s department. Our customers have told us that when they pick up a suit that’s been altered, they would like to see a selection of shirts and ties to go with the suit. Don’t just hand them the suit.

Sometimes it’s the simplest changes. We’ve learned that people tend to buy shoes and belts at the same time. So we’ve moved belts to the shoe department and we’re selling more belts than ever.

What has customer response been to your customer loyalty program? Is it working?

They love it. The customer experience begins when a customer steps in the store. We have what we call Brand Ambassadors stationed at all the entrances and strategically around the building. They are there to greet customers and answer their questions or take a customer to the department if he needs that extra help. Our Concierge desk will help with your shopping needs but also purchase theater tickets for you and book restaurant reservations.

Bloomingdale’s is a leading destination for tourists. We invite them to visit our International Visitors Center on the balcony for help and special offers. At the end of the visit, we’ll give them a gift just for shopping with us.

We’ve made great strides in customer loyalty and satisfaction here at the Manhattan flagship store – there is always more that can be done. But it’s working and other stores in the system are following our lead with more robust customer loyalty initiatives.

Richard J. Mast is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Bloomingdale’s New York City Flagship Store, with responsibility for 150 Executives and 2500 selling and sales support associates. He has been with the company for 28 years, having held various operating, financial, and merchandising positions both in the flagship and in branch stores.

Imagine my surprise yesterday when I received the following email from The New York Times at 1:04 pm.

Not me. Of course, as you may have read, The Times committed a big boo-boo yesterday when it accidentally cancelled the subscriptions of 8 million print and online subscribers. The media and Twitter scribes were all over it in the intervening three hours before the Times sent out this correction at 4:19 pm:

The Correction

The Times did the right thing, of course, but I’d like to make a point about content and tone of the correction. Aren’t they in the communication business? Note the cold tone of voice and shortness of the second email. Why was the first email sent in error? How did it happen? Subscribers would have welcomed a more detailed explanation.

A Missed Opportunity to Engage Readers

A Forbes writer, who also received an email, tried calling the Times and kept getting busy signals. It’s a sure bet that many, many other subscribers had the same experience.

Sure, it was nice to receive an apology. But The Times missed a great opportunity to engage with its subscribers. The paper could have used some humor in its message and personalized it with the signature of an actual person.  Can a company write a letter?  Didn’t a human being write this missive?

The Times wrote a story online about the mistake at 2:29 pm and sent out this  message in its official Twitter feed, “If you received an e-mail today about canceling your New York Times subscription, ignore it. It’s not from us.” Oh, yes, it was. Turns out the email was sent by a Times employee, according to Eileen Murphy, a Times spokesperson. And why the delay of almost 90 minutes before the subscribers received the apology?

The Times Email Could Have Said –

Dear Valued New York Times Reader,

Wow, did we goof! We did NOT cancel your subscription. Please ignore our earlier email with the subject line, “Important information regarding your subscription.”

It was an honest mistake — someone pushed the wrong button and we had 8 million unhappy readers for a couple of hours before we fixed things. Your email was not compromised. Everything is back on autopilot. You’ll continue to receive your New York Times as you always have.

If you’d like to vent, we invite you to visit us on our official Twitter account at https://twitter.com/#!/nytimes. We’ll also answer any questions you have about your subscription or any of our other services.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. We value you as a New York Times reader.

Sincerely,

Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr.
Publisher

— now isn’t that better than the email I did receive?

PS – see the comment below. The email went to non-subscribers, too. What a goof-up.

The old definition of public relations is out. Public Relations Society of America will adopt a new definition by the end of 2011. You can chime in with your version of PR by December 2^nd at Definition of PR Submission Form.

PRSA is crowd sourcing the public for help with the definition. My, how electronic communications has changed everything. The race to a definition began on October 31^st with the launch of the Public Relations Defined Initiative.

Here is the old definition adopted in 1982:

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

In almost 30 years we’ve seen the Internet radically change how we communicate so it is more than time for a new definition. Here is the form that PRSA is asking members of the public to complete:

Public relations defined

I submitted my definition but thought I’d be able to review it after I hit the Submit button, but I couldn’t. So write yours down before submitting if you want to save it to compare to the final definition selected.

PRSA began accepting submissions on November 21st and created this word cloud after the first two days that shows the words most often submitted are public, communication and organization:

If you decide to submit your definition I would love to know what it is. Just leave it in the comments box.

Slowly, but surely, more companies are seeing the wisdom of enlisting their employees as brand ambassadors. I’ve written about this several times, including the post 7 Steps to Making Your Employees Brand Ambassadors.

Employees are eager to help because if their company succeeds and grows, they will too.  Employees who are actively engaged on social media as brand advocates help to burnish the company’s brand, they are motivated by being asked to take on the assignment, and customers receive better service.

CommProz.biz has identified 10 companies with outstanding brand ambassador programs. What companies would you add to their list?

Pick your best blog posts

I’ve been inspired by my fellow blogger and marketer Danny Iny at Firepole Marketing and taken up his challenge to curate seven of my blog posts for my readers.

These will be my own selection of seven posts that I’ve written: the most beautiful post, the most popular post, the most controversial post, the most helpful post, the post whose success surprised me, the post I didn’t feel got the attention it deserved, and the post I am most proud of.

Danny, in turn, got the idea from Stuart Mills at Unlock the Door who borrowed the idea from…you get the idea. Hey, viral marketing at it’s best.  So, here goes.

7 Posts in 7 Categories

My most beautiful post. There is actually a tie for the posts I wrote about my wonderful late husband Charles. What I Learned From My Husband About Having a Passion for Life and Do People Write Love Letters Anymore? These are written from the heart and I hope you enjoy them. Tip: don’t be afraid to show your emotions in your writing.

My most popular post. I wrote Profile of a Social Media Director over a year ago and it still regularly tops the charts or is close to it, depending on what I’ve written that week. It’s not surprising. I simply went through the job boards and wrote a list of what I found most often. Hmm. I need to go back and see if it needs an update. Tip: know what’s being searched and write about it.

My most controversial post. This has to be “Connect by Hertz” Car Sharing Deal Leaves Me Spinning My Wheels on Facebook in which I complain about Hertz forcing me to use Facebook to book a $5 car which wasn’t really a deal…well, read the post and the very long response from Hertz (guess they will never hire me). Tip: don’t be afraid to stick your neck out.

My most helpful post. I was surprised that my post How to Insert the Name of Your Website into Your LinkedIn Profile received so many comments. The default “Company Website” in a LinkedIn profile can be changed to the actual name of your website but few people even know you can do it – or how to do it. Made me feel good to help out. Tip: do not be afraid you’ll be talking down to your readers with simple how-to posts.

The post whose success most surprised me. That would be another simple how-to post entitled How to Write a LinkedIn Invitation. I had received a well-crafted invitation that so impressed me that I wrote about it. (You never use the default I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn do you?). Tip: see above.

The post I didn’t feel got the attention it deserved. Considering that I feel a lot of my posts don’t get the attention (read traffic) I want, maybe the post should have been better written. Anyway, here is one that landed with a thud. It received one comment – from my blogging coach. I still think it has a lot of good content even though it didn’t do what my advice said it should! 11 Types of Blogs To Generate Web Traffic and Please Your Readers. OK, stop laughing. Tip: don’t overestimate the power of your writing.

The post I’m most proud of. I didn’t think this post July 4th is a Day to Celebrate Life, Liberty and the Heart and Soul in Writing would generate a lot of traffic, and it didn’t. But I’m grateful to live in America. I have so much to be thankful for when I see the suffering in the rest of the world: hunger, poverty, social unrest. So I hope you don’t mind, if you live elsewhere, that I took the opportunity to celebrate the red, white and blue. Tip: write from the heart.

Which of my seven posts is your favorite?

Taking a cue from Danny at Firepole Marketing, do you want to do a 7 Links Challenge on your blog? (If you do, let me know, and I’ll link to it as Danny will link to mine).

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook will be delivering another roundhouse punch to members when it eliminates the Discussions app on October 31^st.  The behemoth wants you to have these discussions on your Wall.

So what happens to all those juicy discussions you’ve had over the years? Poof. Gone. So if you want to save them, better make plans to copy and store them someplace else.

Why a Blog is Essential

Facebook’s latest announcement – and fans are still reeling from all the recent changes (for the better?) – reinforces my oft-stated case that a business needs to have its own forum for discussions with customers and other stakeholders. And that forum is your blog. (Even Facebook has its own blog).

You own your blog and its content. Imagine someone coming to your website and arbitrarily taking down a couple of your pages and all its valuable content. Well, that’s just what’s happening. Facebook owns its site and, remember, you’re just a guest and another pair of eyeballs for Facebook advertisers.

Facebook’s Explanation

Facebook explains in its Help section What happened to the Reviews and Discussions tabs on my Facebook Page?

ZDNet has a detailed story about this new change if you want to learn more about it.

Help With Your Blog

Write Speak Sell is built on a WordPress content management system. It is my website. When people refer to blogs they’re usually talking about a blog post. A post is an article like the one you’re reading now. So my website hosts content about me and my company as well as my blog posts.

I’m a fan of the WordPress platform because it is easy to go “under the hood” to make changes and add content and search engines love to reward new content. I recently became an affiliate for Bea Fields’ Become a Blogging Maniac program (Bea Fields was my blogging coach and she’s terrific). So if you’re interested in setting up a self-hosted blog, or become more proficient if you already have a blog, click on one of the two images at the bottom of the right column.

Take Control

Take control of your own content and don’t be at the mercy of Facebook and other social networks that can make your discussions disappear without your permission. Start a website on a blog platform or link a WordPress blog to your existing website. You’ll be happy that you did.

Richard Shapiro, President, The Center for Client Retention

National Customer Service Week is being celebrated from October 3-7. I have a question: are you delivering the best customer service you can? That is the key ingredient to generating repeat business, increasing customer satisfaction, and building your company.

A company’s front line employees can be an organization’s “secret” competitive advantage to securing repeat business.

Too many companies don’t understand that while delivering excellent customer service is the key ingredient for repeat business, it’s that special personal relationship between customer and employee that provides the link between customer satisfaction and customer retention.

The service delivered by front line employees must be viewed as the first step in the journey of loyalty. Your employees can be your most effective brand advocates.

10 Tips for Generating Repeat Business

1. Make sure that every one of your front line associates is capable of making a good first impression. Positive or negative opinions are formed within the first 10 seconds. You never have a second opportunity to make a warm and welcoming first impression.

2. Show appreciation to your customers. Thanking customers in a meaningful and thoughtful manner in every customer/front line encounter shows customers you care and appreciate their business. This seems obvious but not everyone does it.

3. Review your letters and email communications to ensure that they sound welcoming, personalized and make your customers feel important and appreciated.

4. Create a culture whereby your associates are treated as family and neighbors and they will, in turn, treat your customers the same way. Customers notice and appreciate when a company values its associates.

5. Answer questions from customers by not only responding to their direct inquiries, but by providing them with additional useful information. Customers often want to learn more about a potential purchase than what’s written on a tag or in a brochure.

6. Understand that the underlying ingredient of customer service is “helping” people. Make sure that every front line associate is trained to help people — to give that extra 10% of service. It will almost guarantee a great customer service experience. Employee training will improve customer service and satisfaction.

7. Say hello and smile. People are more stressed than ever as technology takes over our lives. Getting a big, warm hello can go a long way in giving a customer the feeling of “Hey, this company is really happy to see me.”

8. Make customers feel comfortable about returning an item to a store. Then, offer special attention to help them find what they need. Customers don’t like making returns, so be sure the return process is enjoyable and non-defensive. Customers will really appreciate it!

9. Listen to customer comments such as “This is the first time I used your site”, “I just moved into the neighborhood”, “I just happened to stop by,” etc., and leverage those opportunities to engage customers to learn what their needs are. Then find a way to meet those needs. In doing so you will  build a relationship and lifetime of loyalty.

10. Reward front line employees who make every customer feel welcomed and important. Be sure that you continually thank the employees who are the lifeblood of your company.

Remember, the customer relationship starts with the first hello in person or over the phone, or the first response to the click on a link to your site. A company’s front line associates are the “voice of the company.”

Are employees who “touch” the customer properly trained to build a customer relationship? If they aren’t then give them the training they need. Employees want to do good work because if the company is successful it will thrive and grow and they will, too.

###

Richard Shapiro is the founder and president of The Center For Client Retention (TCFCR) and author of the forthcoming book, “The Welcomer Edge: Unlocking the Secrets to Repeat Business” (Feb. 2012). His company designs and conducts customized customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement systems for Fortune 100 and 500 corporations and small businesses. This post is adapted from a blog originally posted on his site.

Is paid advertising dead? To hear the experts, it’s certainly on life support. Inbound marketing is all the rage.

HubSpot is credited with coining the term inbound marketing and the company makes its living by selling services to help companies figure out ways to get customers to come to them instead of the other way around. HubSpot describes it in this diagram:

It’s true that consumers are tuning out paid advertising and more often finding you by searching the web – your blog, through your participation on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and now Google+. Those of us who write blogs are continually fretting over key words and SEO. We distribute our content to a wide range of social media networks. Build it, promote it, and they will come. Or, maybe not.

Inbound Marketing Campaigns

Thing is the companies that are reaping the rewards of inbound marketing are spending millions on inbound marketing campaigns. They run sneaky display ads to get you to their Facebook pages and corner the market for keywords by bidding up the prices of Google ads that will get you to visit their sites. More power to them.

So the notion of inbound marketing being “free” is a misnomer. Of the hundreds of thousands of blogs out there, many thousands never receive a visitor or get a comment. A lot of marketers are sitting around still waiting for their first visitor.

Going Offline

I may be in the minority. But going offline has me intrigued. You remember offline don’t you? That involves calling a prospect on the phone and making an appointment to discuss your business in person. Two live people in an office talking to each other. How novel!

I’m being a little facetious, I know, so please forgive me. But it’s important to re-evaluate how we communicate with our customers and how we sell to them. There are too many social media “gurus” out there who are selling programs that promise to “monetize” your blog. Take their advice and rake in the money from products and services you sell directly to consumers. Web searches will lead them to you like the Pied Piper.

What Works For You

Can we all take a breath for a minute and think, really think, about how we’re going to build our business? Inbound marketing is great and growing but it’s not the whole story. I have a friend whose husband is a lawyer with a special niche. She spends $100 a month for a local Google ad that’s always at the top of the page and that’s how he gets all his leads. Paid advertising.

Some people do make a nice living monetizing their blogs. But others use their blogs as brand builders and as portfolios of their work.

Find what works for you. Don’t be embarrassed just because you found your newest customer next to you in line at the movies or in an elevator leaving a networking meeting, like I did.