I’ll save you some time and put this first: Everyone is going to go far beyond the scope of their position description, so get used to picking up slack, even if its not your expertise.

Start ups have the same, if not more, work as established corporations with only a few employees. I’m sure no one is surprised when I say that you are going to be working long hours with little pay. People entering a start up should already have those expectations.

But when there are so many things to do, with such a broad scope of types of tasks, clearly delineating and delegating duties can be a tough task.

The most important things to remember:

• Don’t waste resources on one task. Make sure two people aren’t overlapping in their work. You want to be as efficient as possible, which means making the most of everyone’s time.
• Prioritize tasks. Decide as a manager which tasks are most important. Don’t spend a lot of time on this, but make sure it’s clear and decisive. You can put time and energy into the most important tasks first.
• Take a break. Don’t overwork yourself or your team members.
• Have a brief daily meeting to go over what everyone is working on for the day and what they want to accomplish. This can keep your business focused and on track to finishing what it starts.

Technorati Tags: delegating, efficiency, start-ups, team

First, I must say that in no way does this piece represent the opinion of EvoApp as a whole. It is purely my opinion and thoughts on Twitter as a business.

Secondly, I hate Twitter.

Thirdly, I have a Twitter account.

Fourthly, I realize the former and the latter statements are inherently contradictory, in the most annoying way possible.

I signed up for Twitter after I heard my newswriting professor mention it as a resource for connecting with people and finding great, relevant news stories. I had no idea what it was, nor did I want to take the time to sort through the millions of users and find what is relevant to my personal interests. I didn’t touch it for about six months after that.

In June of 2009, I started a blog hoping to make some money off of advertising and started using Twitter to promote the blog posts (so… this wasn’t the best money-making idea I’ve ever had…) and quickly adopted the policy of “get-as-many-followers-as-possible.” This quickly turned into, “I’ll spam you and you can spam me back, and we’ll never read each other’s content.” I learned to hate Twitter. I mean really hate it.

My problems with Twitter:

1. How does it make money? Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t.

2. (As a follow-up to point #1) How does it have such a ridiculously high valuation if it doesn’t make money?

3. Blogging limited to only 140 characters places serious limitations on expression, meaning, and value in general. You just can’t condense actual, valuable, cited, and credible information into 140 characters. This leads me to the point that the reason people love it so much is that they can be lazy and just link to things they like so that they don’t actually have to write anything.

And they just enjoy talking about themselves too much.

4. Twitter CEO, Evan Williams, once called the service not a social network, but an “information network” designed to “deliver to people the freshest and most relevant information possible.” I didn’t know that Justin Bieber was so fresh and relevant. I mean, let’s be serious here. Twitter is almost as bad as the tabloids in terms of popular topics.

5. Hearing the word “tweet” or any other such vernacular stemming from “twitter” in business meetings is just ridiculous. But very humorous and entertaining….

…I’ve changed my mind, this is actually one of the reasons I like Twitter.

6. Didn’t Facebook already do this with status updates?

Twitter, in my opinion, is a fad that will soon be replaced with the next disposable trend. However, my opinion is strongly refuted by the broad customer base that Twitter has acquired. With upwards of 75 million users, Twitter can find the best way to capitalize them and basically make a fortune. The potential value is enormous because of branding, customer loyalty, novelty, and customer growth.

Twitter’s real value? Advertising and self-promotion.

Next time you tweet, think about why you are really doing it.

P.S. The link to this post will be tweeted on @EvoApp #dontjudgeme

Technorati Tags: advertising, social media, Twitter

The Triangle

• September 1, 2010
  • Raleigh Chamber of Commerce New Member Breakfast
  • Free for employees of member firms
  • 8:00 – 9:30 am
  • Cardinal Club, 150 Fayetteville St., 28th Floor, Raleigh

• September 13, 2010
  • BizMix Event by Triangle Business Journal
  • Meet the writers and editor for Triangle Business Journal and other business leaders in the area
  • 5:00 – 7:00pm
  • Mez, 5410 Page Road, Durham, NC 27703

• September 14, 2010
  • Raleigh Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting
  • $65 per attendee
  • Connect with some of the most prominent business and community leaders in the area.
  • 5:30 – 9:00 pm
  • Meymandi Concert Hall, 2 E. South Street, Raleigh

• September 15, 2010
  • Young Professionals Network
    • Free to YPN members, $35 for non-members
    • Aiming past the target: The critical secret to success
    • 7:30 – 9:30 am
    • The McKimmon Center, NC State University, 1101 Gorman Street
  • Earl Scruggs with the Red Clay Ramblers
    • 7:30 pm
    • UNC Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill
    • Tickets

• September 19, 2010
  • Ceremonial Splendor – Classical Music Concert
  • 8:00 pm
  • Memorial Hall, UNC’s campus
  • Tickets

• September 22, 2010
  • Affordable Business Ownership Alternatives
  • 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
  • Holiday Inn: 930 Airport Blvd: Exit 284 off I-40
  • Light refreshments served

• September 27, 2010
  • TBJ Classroom: Selling in 2010 – Using Social Media Throughout the Sales Process
  • 8:00 am – 12:00 pm
  • 3300 Woman’s Club Drive, Raleigh, NC 27612

• September 29, 2010
  • Business After Hours, Raleigh Chamber of Commerce
  • Free for employees of member firms
  • Networking event for members of the business community
  • 5:30 – 7:00 pm
  • Solas, 419 Glenwood Avenue, Raleigh

• September 30, 2010
  • Money Talk: Finding Credit
  • 7:30 – 10:30 am
  • North Ridge Country Club 6612 Falls of Neuse Rd., Raleigh, NC 27615

If you know of other events in the Triangle, either business or community related, please feel free to post them in the comments!

Technorati Tags: business events, chapel hill, community events, durham, events, Raleigh, Triangle

EvoApp board member Ryan Allis, CEO of iContact, just officially finished up a round of funding. iContact announced today that it closed on $40 million in series B venture capital funding from JMI Equity.

The capital will go toward growing the business in several new marketing channels and expanding the customer base.

Congratulations to Ryan and the whole iContact team! Good luck!

Technorati Tags: iContact, Ryan Allis, venture capital

This weeks socially responsible technology start up uses, once again, the technology of cell phones (are you noticing a trend yet?).

Harass Map is a non-profit organization that uses SMS to track sexual harassment in Egypt. The project, based in Cairo, was started by U.S. company NiJel and uses the Ushahidi platform to funnel SMS message locations onto the map. This will be the first project from NiJel that maps the location of SMS messages.

Why is this so important? Well, first there is currently no laws against sexual harassment in Egypt. Second, this is a widespread problem. Nearly 83% of Egyptian women reported exposure to sexual harassment in 2008.

While the technology may not end the problem of sexual harassment itself, it was designed to expose in a very visual way the amount of sexual harassment that occurs in Egypt. Hopefully, this public exposure will push the government to make changes to the current policies.

Technorati Tags: Egypt, Harass Map, NiJel, SMS, socially responsible technology

The customer service experience can be quite impersonal considering customers are talking with a person who has never met them, has never spoken with them, and will most likely never talk with them again. Businesses are continuously striving to improve the customer service experience to increase customer loyalty and decrease customer attrition. One approach some are taking is to build a database of notes on customers — names, basic demographic information, and any other kinds of information that can be gathered through interactions with the company (especially notes on the problems the customer has faced with the product). This information, if entered into a system that can effectively allow employees to access it, can certainly be helpful in addressing the problem more efficiently, but can it be seen by the customer as a little creepy?

Well, that all depends on how your customer service reps handle the conversation. Even though you already have all of this basic intro information on the customer, it is important to first make a human connection with him/her if you haven’t spoken with them before. If a customer service rep starts a conversation with, “Hey Julie, great to hear from you again. How is your second home on the North Carolina coast since that storm hit,” it can certainly be borderline creepy (that noted, I don’t know why Julie would have disclosed that she has a summer home on the NC coast… but that’s beside the point).

The point is that no matter how much information or how in depth that information is, it is critical for your customer service reps to discern the important from the mundane and to make an introduction and form a human connection before jumping into the details.

Information gathered can be extremely helpful in ensuring that  the customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves over and over again, which is one of its greatest values to both customers and businesses.

Technorati Tags: best customer service practices, customer information

In an article by Daniel H. Pink regarding the “professionalese” language that companies often use, he makes the point that while some people think this high-tech talk shows their understanding and exquisite knowledge of the industry, it often pushes the customers away.

His argument? Trust. Any valuable relationship relies on trust and in order to create and build that trust, you have to be able to relate to the other person. In a bold challenge, he questions what would happen if instead of recording an unemotional detached message on your customer service automated call system, a business actually recorded the same kind of message that a person would say to a friend or spouse.

I say – BRILLIANT. What better way to improve your customer service than to relate even more to your customers. Instead of making your business seem like an untouchable entity that is unreachable by the common man, you communicate to your customers that your business is made up of normal people (just like everyone else) working to make their lives that much better.

And what if instead of creating legally friendly statements that protect the company from any prospect of backlash (which more often than not doesn’t even work), a company executive stepped up to the mic and said out loud, “We screwed up big time and we’re really sorry. This is how we are going to fix it and never do it again…”?

The general public has proven, time and again, that if you own up to your mistakes, we forgive you and move on. We expect businesses to have us in their best interest, just as we expect politicians to ultimately work for us. This creates certain moral and ethical standards that we would prefer businesses to live up to, and when they don’t, we want an apology and consistent repented behavior in the future.

Word choice. That’s all it is. And I think it can make a difference in building better, more valuable customer relationships. Even better: it doesn’t cost anything.

Technorati Tags: better customer service practices, business, customer loyalty, language, rhetoric

Tough Stuff.

This company is a start-up based in Mauritius that works to bring solar powered devices to Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) consumers, replacing things like kerosene lamps and batteries that have proven harmful to the environment and expensive in the long-term.

The really great aspect about this company is not necessarily the product, but rather the business model. They are creating widespread distribution through franchising to local entrepreneurs. They’ve packaged their business in an easy-to-start way that allows local entrepreneurs to because distributors of the products. Awesome.

This model is great because not only is the business selling a product that is socially responsible, but it is creating opportunities for people to start their own businesses and create jobs, in turn increasing GDP per capita and reducing rates of extreme poverty. Awesome again.

Technorati Tags: africa, international development, social responsibility, technology

When problems occur in a customer service department, they can be extremely difficult to catch simply because of the sheer volume of interactions that take place on a day-to-day basis. This is especially true in business-to-business industries that have three to five times as many interactions and relationships as consumer based businesses. It is not unusual for issues and/or problems that should be addressed to slip through the cracks.

Fault probably doesn’t lie on one specific person, process or policy, but rather exists within the management and intelligence tools. In order to accurately identify problems that arise in customer service, customer interactions, and customer relationships, you must be able to track every single interaction between your business and clients. The most efficient way to do this is to implement a technological tool that can keep a count of every interaction — when it first started, how many times the customer has been contacted since, who the customer has talked to within the business, and the quality of each interaction.

Think it’s impossible? Try EvoApp.

Technorati Tags: business intelligence, customer interactions, Customer Service, EvoApp, metrics

Measuring the effectiveness and value of customer service is not an easy task. Customer service is vital to the company, and quite often a large portion of resources is allocated to the customer service department to equip them with the necessary tools and training to most effectively and efficiently manage customer relationships. We all know that quality customer service is imperative to business success, but how do we prove that the return on investment outweighs the costs?

Obviously, you could simply look at your income statement and see that the business is generating strong revenues and growth that can justify the costs of customer service and relationship management. That, however, doesn’t measure whether you are maximizing your return on investment. Could your company be more efficiently using customer service to maximize revenues?

Measuring the ROI on customer service to find the answer to that question involves finding the average lifetime value of your customers and finding the link between that and customer service. If more resources are allocated to customer service and you still find that the lifetime value is not increasing, you can look at the processes and structures within your customer service department.

Managing the customer service of a company effectively requires ensuring that information and data are not in silos and are easily accessible and understood by everyone. The data that is collected must be efficiently tracked and managed by a system that organizes and analyzes the information to prepare for dissemination. Tracking and organizing the metrics in your customer service department can be one of the most difficult aspects of maximizing ROI of customer service, but absolutely necessary.

If managed correctly, a customer service department can provide enormous returns that far outweigh the costs. And with the proper tools, analytics, and intelligence, returns can be maximized for a relatively low cost.

Technorati Tags: analytics, business intelligence, CRM, Customer Relationship Management, resource allocation, ROI of customer service