Posts tagged customer experience
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Introducing Vsnap’s New VP of Community & Customer Experience
By Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder of Vsnap
I am very pleased to share with the Vsnap community that Trish Fontanilla is stepping into a new role as Vice President of Community & Customer Experience.
I can practically hear the cheers already!
As Vsnap’s first ever Vice President, Trish now has an expanded level of input and authority in every single customer-facing activity at our company, from customer engagement and support to product development and strategy. Creating this new role is a recognition of Trish’s incredible work and her great contributions to Vsnap’s success so far, and it is also an expression of the company’s commitment to keeping the customer at the center of everything we do, especially as we prepare to introduce premium features and paid accounts a little later this quarter. Because, whether you know it or not, Trish is first and foremost a fierce advocate for you.
I hired Trish as our Community Manager in the summer of 2011 when Jim Joyce and I founded the company. She is an incredible force for good. She lives the five simple beliefs that Vsnap is built on, and she personifies the character and commitment that defines our whole team, and indeed our whole community. Internally, Trish keeps us all honest. She is like true north when it comes to making sure that every decision is contemplated and debated with the average Vsnapper in mind. Externally, she is a powerful champion of the Vsnap vision for how businesses can bring warmth to the web.
The fact that we created a Community Manager role before we even had a product should tell you something about the value we place on understanding our users’ needs, capturing your feedback, and supporting your success as you experiment with vsnapping. I hope you will welcome the fact that we are doubling down on all of that.
Because Vsnap is about you. Our mission is simply to meet your need for an easy tool that you can use to make your customers feel special. Feel valued.
We are fortunate to have Trish on our team, and so is everybody who uses Vsnap. In that spirit, I want to give you a little nudge to vsnap her today and give her a pat on the back. You can do that via Twitter to @Vsnap or @Trishofthetrade. Or, if your message feels a little more private, you can reach her at trish@vsnap.com. Thanks!
(Picture originally from http://www.the-red-kitchen.com)
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How to Create Emotional Bonds With Your Customers
by Dave McLaughlin, CEO & Co-Founder of Vsnap
At the beginning of November, we quietly introduced a feature we call Feeling Indicators.
Basically, when I watch the vsnap you send me, I can now click to let you know whether I found it “helpful” or “thoughtful” or “amazing”. You then receive an email notification telling you how I felt about your message. That’s all.
Our objective in creating this feature was to give vsnap senders a quick feedback loop. After all, the reason you vsnap your customer is because you care how he or she feels about your company and about the message you’re sending. If you didn’t care how the customer felt, well you could just use email.
We felt it was important that you get some “feeling feedback” to affirm that you are in fact making your customers feel special, and making them feel valued.
After 2 months of usage, we see two big takeaways in the data around this feature.
Takeaway #1: High response rate
In short, more than one out of four people (26.42%) who watch a vsnap respond with a feeling indicator. Now if you’re skimming this, that might be all you need to know. Recipients seem to feel compelled to let the sender know how they felt. That’s because a vsnap is different than any other message.
If you’re doing a deeper dive, then, in the interest of being precise, allow me to share some more detail around that data.
When you share a vsnap via Twitter or LinkedIn, there is no way for us to tell you what a specific recipient did or felt. You basically see total views and total feelings and what those feelings were. But you don’t see who the specific viewers were or who indicated what feelings.
When you share a vsnap via email, however, we let you know if each specific recipient watched it, whether they acted on any links, and – now – what each specific viewer felt about it.
Nancy Jones watched it and clicked on the pdf you attached. Billy Brown watched it but didn’t click on any attachments. Fred Smith watched it and said it was “thoughtful”. You get that kind of granularity when you share vsnaps via email.
So the 26.42% above is about email shares only because that’s the only bucket of shares where we can measure that precisely.
Here’s a bit more context on email shares during the last two months:
- The average vsnap shared via email went to just over two recipients (2.01). Sending a vsnap is a personal thing. It’s a very focused behavior, not broadcast.
- The view rate for these vsnaps was 51.86%. Very high.
Hopefully these numbers help people understand just how different Vsnap is from other online video tools.
By the way, if you’re surprised how high our view rate is, check out this post from November where I shared more of this type of data. And also note that we expect this rate to increase as more people configure our simple new SMTP feature.
Takeaway #2: Highly emotional responses
The recipient feeling indicators skewed heavily toward the more emotional signals (“thoughtful” and “amazing”) as compared to the more practical signal (“helpful”) by a 4 to 1 margin.
This is not a surprise to us. When you use Vsnap, it’s about feelings.
Again, for the more detail-oriented, here are the data:
- Four out of five (80.27%) of all signals back to senders were either “thoughtful” or “amazing”.
- Only 19.73% of respondents said the vsnap was “helpful”.
Now I ask you: what percentage of the customers you send emails to would say that your email is either “thoughtful” or “amazing”?
It wouldn’t be 80%. Because email can’t convey emotion. And therefore it can’t create any emotion. (Unless you count frustration).
And this is the question we ask businesses: why are you trying to use an unemotional tool to handle emotional situations like loyalty events involving your VIP customers, or painful complaints where your product disappointed them?
Related articles
- Vsnap Feature: Feeling Indicators (vsnap.com)
- How Businesses Take Vsnap for a Test Flight (vsnap.com)
- The Perfect Vsnap: Emotional Events (Part 3 of 3) (vsnap.com)
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Event Recap - Top Tools for Small Businesses
By Trish Fontanilla, Community Manager at Vsnap
We helped produce an amazing panel on Monday night, Top Tools for Small Businesses, in the event space at MassChallenge (also home to Vsnap World HQ). And behind every successful event, there are a whole lot of thank yous to dole out.
First off, we wanted to thank all of the fabulous attendees, you made the event so fun and we’re appreciative of every question and every bit of feedback you had for us. We also wanted to thank the very warm, quick, full-o-energy Debi Kleiman (President of MITX) for stepping in as moderator. As well as Ben Jabbawy (CEO of Privy) and Tom O’Keefe (BostonTweet / Brand Ambassador for Pingup), who were both so informative and engaging.
We’d also like to thank Ed Tarlow (shown below on the right) of Tarlow, Breed, Hart & Rodgers, P.C. and the Family Business Association (of MA) for sponsoring the food and some of the beverages for the evening.
And to JC Tetreault (the man bathed in light on the left in the picture above) of Trillium Brewing (a local, family-owned brewery) for giving us all a sampling of some of their soon to be released craft brews.
And of course, we cannot forget, MassChallenge for their continued support of 2012 Finalists like us. Not pictured is Erica, Dave, and Jeremy from the MC team who were running around making sure the event ran smoothly.
Lose a business card? Want to see who was at the event? Check out the RSVP list here:
http://toptoolsforsmallbiz.eventbrite.com
Oh and if you have suggestions about future events, send us a vsnap, email or tweet to let us know what businesses you’d love to be featured (and yes, it can be your own).
And finally, instead of giving my usual recap, I’d like to leave it to our incredible audience of tweeters to dispense some of the nuggets of wisdom they picked up from the event (via Storify). But first, if you want to watch the entire panel, check out the video below. Warning: the running time is 1:03:40 - so go grab some popcorn and a notebook.
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Differentiate Your Business By Enhancing the Customer Experience
By Joe Nigro, Business Evangelist at Vsnap
My grandfather, Donato Gattineri came to Massachusetts from Italy in the early 1920’s. He worked for his father’s tailoring business in a small town north of Boston. When given the opportunity to take over the family business, he accepted.
There were many great tailors that provided a great price and great quality. My grandfather focused on standing out by really understanding what made his customers tick.
THE SOLUTION:
Donato believed in enhancing the customer experience and here’s how he did it.
- He fixed buttons on every piece of clothing for free.
- He created the first delivery service in town.
- He would employ only his 7 kids so there was a sense of family when you walked into the store.
- He would also send notes to customers to thank them for their business and their friendship.
Donato understood that he had to do this because there were so many good, affordable tailors within a close distance. In other words, his customers were empowered to choose his competitors. This is true today more than ever. And the only way companies can endure is creating personal relationships with their customers.
Not sure how to do that? Start by looking at your customer experience. Are you going above their expectations or just meeting them?
