When I first started to manage the Twitter account here, I tried to take it from the perspective of “all business”. I didn’t make jokes, laugh, or say snarky things. I wanted to be this little pillar of customer service and professionalism that would woo and wow the masses, and bring the flocks to me. I was wrong – but that’s okay. I guess I didn’t exactly get it at first. There’s a big difference between the old fashioned ways of customer service and what Twitter (or any social platform) can do for a company.

1. It opens a dialogue with the customer, giving the customer an opportunity to make suggestions for ways that we can improve the product we’re offering.
2. Monitoring social platforms gives you the ability to solve a problem quickly. I logged into Twitter once and had a customer who was unable to connect to his conference. I had him email me his account information and come to find out; there was an error in the code he was using. We caught his concerns before he had to call us and everything was fixed quickly.
3. It makes us real people. When our customers can relate to us, when they know our likes and dislikes, it makes us easier to relate to. I’m more than just “that girl at AccuConference”. I’m Maranda. That makes a huge difference in customer relationships.

I’m sure there’s more and there will always be more to learn. Using social media with customer service is one of those things that will be forever evolving. It’s completely different today than it was six months ago and then it will be six months from now. What have you learned about customer service from social media?

Today marks my two year anniversary at AccuConference – and I didn’t realize it. Now I am sitting here thinking about the different things that have happened in two years. Good things, frustrating moments, shining moments, and the things that are so every day, I can’t even remember them. Every job has all of these aspects and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. I’m sitting back and thinking about the first post I ever wrote for this blog, my favorites, as well as the things I’ve learned.

Favorite Post: It’s hard for me to pick just one, but I’d have to say one of the first posts to come to mind is “Music is My Inspiration”. I truly believe that music can change your entire attitude with one note played and I liked being able to share that all with you. (PS – Currently listening to The Goo Goo Dolls “Iris”) I learned some things, changed in some ways that were probably a long time coming. I’ve learned that you are your own worst enemy and that today is just one day, and another will be along tomorrow, so you better be ready for it.

I’ve learned that change is something that should be embraced and not feared and that you’re not going to figure out what “works” right away. Above all, trust yourself – intuition is a powerful factor in any job and you’re usually right on when you have a feeling.

Think about the time you’ve spent at an employer, even if it’s not the one you’re at now. Are you learning things? Are you paying attention and trying to expand your horizons? No matter how old we get we’re never going to know everything – the people around you might know something you don’t.

If you’ve been following the news at all, then you know about the flooding in a little town by the name of Caddo Gap, Arkansas. Before this weekend, it was never a town that was on the news, and it wasn’t exactly listed on any of the local maps. Before Friday, this part of Arkansas has never gotten a bit of national news coverage, and suddenly, it’s a town inundated with CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. While for many of you, it’s just a sad news story that you see, but for me, it smacks me right in the heart, because that’s home.

Through all the sadness I can’t help but find an interesting study in community here. We talk about social media and how it’s a community, how we are all connected and how we help out when we need to, no matter what the cost. Twitter campaigns have been successful in events like the Nashville flood and the earthquakes in Haiti, and through communication, we have created sub-communities that stretch across oceans. What I’ve come to realize this weekend, is we treat Twitter like a small town community, not a large social network.

I truly believe that each of us, even if we can’t send money, we can send thoughts – we watch a news program and a story can touch us in a way that we didn’t expect. What you heard all weekend were rescue/recovery attempts and survivor stories – but what you didn’t hear about was how a small community pulled together to help out total strangers. I know this because I know people that were involved in the rescue as well as some who were affected personally by the tragedy. In a small community, the ties run deep.

Think about someone you might talk to a lot on Twitter, even if just about mundane things. Recently, a woman in my friend’s list daughter went missing, and though I didn’t know her, I found myself retweeting her “Missing” posters and joining the Facebook page for her daughter. Could I help? Probably not, but may someone who reads my Twitter would see it, and forward it to someone who could. It’s the small community idea – one person picks something up and runs with it and soon, everyone is pitching in. That is how Twitter is like a small community – we help strangers like we would family.

How do you treat Twitter like a small community? Do you reach out when someone needs help?

One of the most amusing ads I have seen in a long time is that of the Burger King King sneaking into the McDonalds’ headquarters and stealing the Egg McMuffin recipe. The first time I saw it, I backed up the DVR to watch again – a rarity with any kind of commercial. 

Burger King was basically saying to the public, “Oh, we’re offering the same thing, but it’s cheaper.” Here’s why it is such a great advertising campaign: it’s honest. All companies “borrow” ideas from others. If something is really popular with one company, another will want to duplicate that success to their own client base. 

Look at what recently happened with the search engine Google. They allowed for background pictures in a mimic of the Bing search engine.  How did people feel about it? Well, they weren’t too pleased about it. One of the draws of Google has always been the simplicity of the search page:  enter your text, hit search, and you’re good to go. 

Google’s attempt to mimic something a competitor was doing didn’t take off the way they hoped, so last night, they pulled the background pictures, citing a bug in the system. There’s no indication if Google will be trying that again. 

Competition is all about watching what the others are doing and trying to do what they are doing even better. Its hit and miss – BK managed it, with a sandwich just as good, but cheaper, but Google couldn’t make it happen – and by doing so they alienated some of the customers. 

So you tell me – Google never made it official that they were testing out the similar background settings as Bing, but BK came out and said “here is what we are doing”. What makes the difference in the situations? Is it honesty, loyalty, or simplicity that had Google users displeased? 

I love history. It’s one of the things that I am very passionate about. One of the reasons that I love history is because everything that is done, it can be traced back to something that happened many years ago. Thanks to the History Channel, I’ve been getting a reminder of some of these inventions that, when we look back now, seemed like child’s play, but they were the basis for many of the technological advances we have today. Here are some of my favorites:

Cotton Looms: The cotton mill is the birthplace of binary code. In the 1800’s the machine was plugged with punch cards that told the machine when to turn “on” certain colors and when to turn them “off”. As the machine read the holes in the card, it knew what color to use in the fabric. This is the basis for binary code, which changed the way the world operated.

Fun Fact: A laptop computer of today, to have the same computing power, would have had to be the size of a passenger bus in the 70s to have that kind of output.

Oil Drilling (Naturally): The United States first mined oil in the early 1900’s, and it caused a shift in the way everything was done. The price of gasoline plummeted, making cars and electric lighting wildly available to the masses. Steam power was long forgotten and traded for gasoline and oil powered machinery.

Fun Fact: In the 1920’s, more money was spent on advertising than education.

Hoover Dam: Frank Crowe’s massive undertaking to block the Colorado River not only gave jobs at a time after the Great Depression to men who were willing to work, but it also provides power to the states out west; AZ, CA, NV, etc. The Hoover Dam also serves as a connector over the Colorado River, continuing the merger between east and west.

There are a lot of things in our past, both in the United States, and across the world that has changed the world. I bet the first person to use the cotton loom didn’t think that they were using what was, in essence, a basic computer system. Stories like this are the reason why I am passionate about history in the first place. You never can tell what’s going to change the world. What are some of your favorite stories in history and what did you learn from them?

This morning the boss men ran out to Sprint and picked up the new HTC EVO. I gave them a couple of hours to use it, before I started to pester them for information.  I also opened my Twitter account up for questions and received one from @brandingme that I'll go ahead and answer and then I’ll highlight some of the differences.

@brandingme asked: “do you have iphone users who are testing out the htc evo's? if so, what do they think?”. Yes, both of the boss men have had the iPhone since the 3G first launched and today is the first day with a new device since. So far, the feedback on a transition from one to the other is that if you like to “tinker” with a device the transition would be easy.  Those who do not consider themselves to be “tech-savvy” might find the transition difficult.

There is a kickstand. I have to point this out first, because it made my day. There is a kickstand on the EVO. That is awesome and needs to be specially pointed out. Here are some of the highlights that were mentioned:
• Email is a little smoother layout. Instead of having to use the “back” feature over and over again, all of your inboxes are in the same menu; you just select the one you need from the dropdown menu.
• Music menus are essentially the same on the EVO as the iPhone, but the thing I really like is when you do a “search” for a band, it automatically pops up the keyboard.  I’ve never liked the search feature on the iPhone and tend to use the shuffle feature more than anything; those tiny letters on the side of the screen were hard to navigate so I like the auto pop-up of the keyboard, rather than the scrolling feature.
• The keyboard on the EVO is an improvement over the iPhone keyboard.
• The camera has flash, which is an improvement, but we’re still in debate over if the quality is better. I think it is, but we still haven’t come to a full determination if the quality is better, but again, it has flash, so win.

There’s a quick run down of the HTC EVO as compared to the iPhone – bottom line, tech savvy people will find it to be an easy transition, but if you don’t consider yourself to be a tech person, you might consider sticking with your iPhone for now.  Let me know if you have any other questions about the EVO. Have an EVO? What do you think?

AT&T is trying to fix the network problems. By trying, I mean, changing everything so you'll use less on your data plans. Anytime you offer something "unlimited" users are going to test the limits and it's exactly what happened with the iPhone 3G.

AT&T announced yesterday that they will be rolling out new data packages, right in time for the OS4 launch. These new data plans are DataPlus ($15.00/month for 200MB) and DataPro ($25.00/month for 2GB).

I figured up the usage on my iPhone plan and I realize that it might actually benefit me to decrease down to the DataPro plan. I don't know if I've ever used 2 or more GB a month, so I wouldn't mind saving a couple of bucks a month on my cell phone bill. If I do go over my plan, then it's only an additional $10.00 for each GB over. The likelihood of extreme usage is low in my case, so it's something to consider.

These data plans are not meant to affect what I would consider to be a regular user - in fact, according to USA Today, only 3% of smart phone user's account for 40% of the data usage. The data plan package change is not directed to users like me, but instead to these 3%. These are the users who cause the network outages, and AT&T must get control of them.

If you have a massive amount of data use each month and you know that it’s going to affect your bill and make it higher, you might want to call AT&T now and get everything squared away. My unlimited plan will be grandfathered in but it might be worth it for me, in price, to go ahead and change. We all were screaming for AT&T to do something, now that they have, how do you feel about it?

Note: I spoke with an AT&T rep that let me know that if I decide to change my voice plan down the road, it will not force me to change my data package to one of the DataPlus/DataPro plans, just in case you were wondering if that would make a difference.

Amber’s drawing for today is a characture of me. I think it’s amazing and is going to end up being my new profile picture on some stuff. Here’s a little bit of info on why I look the way I look.

I am an amateur chef. I love to cook and create recipes. It makes me happy to spend an hour in the kitchen and come out on the other side with something amazing. I have a pencil and a pad because I love to write, whether it’s for work or for something more personal. I always have my iPod in and my music is up loud. Once, I ran out of the house to work with a brown shoe and a black shoe on and everyone had a good laugh about it all day.

So that’s me in a quirky nutshell. What are your quirks?

In addition to the blogging, twittering, and various other duties as the AccuConference socialite, I also provide customer service to our clients. I take phone calls and respond to emails throughout the day, and my goal at the end is to have a happy person at the end of the call.

While providing service, I’m also a lot of companies target market – between the ages of 18 and 35, female, a bit of a techie, and so forth. People want to sell to me, because I’m willing to buy. I’m going to go ahead and give you the secrets on how to sell to me.

Customer service. You want my business? Great – I probably want to give it to you, but you need to be polite and kind to everyone in my household or workplace and not just to me because I’m the one you’re dealing with. If you fail at this, our relationship is over. That’s rule number one.

Do you use the product you’re selling to me? Make up counters are the best place to try this one out. I love makeup, and there’s one store I go into all the time that you can tell the girls use the company’s product. I feel confident asking her a question about foundation or eye shadow. If she’s trying to sell me a bottle of $15.00 makeup and can’t wear it herself, then I don’t trust that company.

Why? Mainly, what makes you think I’m right for this product, or am I just a warm body to fill your quota? If you can’t tell me why you think I would be a good person to use this product, you haven’t done your research. If it’s a more retail location, like a mall or shopping center, slipping up to me and asking me what brings me in is a good place to start. I’m a tricky kind of girl, so even if I’m in a sporting goods store, I might still be looking for myself. Don’t assume.

So, there you have it. That’s how I want to be sold to. How do you like to be sold to? Are their things that a company can do that would be considered unforgivable and you would never go back?

A few weeks ago it was suggested I check out The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life by Julia Cameron. Naturally, I hopped on over to Amazon to see if I could get a good deal on it and got to take a peek inside.I skimmed the first part of the book and one of the first words that stood out to me was procrastination.

I balked. Procrastination, me? Impossible. I am on it, together, and always getting things done. I feel busy most of the time and I would think that’s the opposite of procrastination. Isn’t procrastination more of a conscious thought of letting something slide so you can do something else that you feel more desire to do? When I was in college, I used to put off my Rhetorical History projects because I would rather do something for another class. That, I’ll admit, was procrastination, but I didn’t think I fell into that category now.

According to this, I am one big procrastinator. Do I fill my day with “low-task” priorities? Sometimes. Do I wait for the “right mood” to strike before tackling things? I would have to admit yes I do. I don’t believe that procrastination is a symptom of laziness, as I am sure that many procrastinators are highly skilled and successful. In fact, many perfectionists are often the ones out there procrastinating, in fear of doing a project wrong the first time.

According to the folks over at MindTools, there are a couple of things I can do to help detour my trip to procrastination town.

•  Figure out why I am procrastinating. If I can determine why I don’t feel inclined to complete the task right away, I can figure out how to tackle it. By focusing on figuring out some inspiration for what I’m working on, I might stumble on the motivation to tackle that project first.
•  Reward myself. When I do finish a project I should give myself a little treat – like a quick break from my desk or something horribly bad for me for lunch. (I’m thinking Chipotle when I finish this post.)

I am defiantly not lazy, not in any sense of the word, but I find that I procrastinate due to my perfectionist streak. What makes you a procrastinator and what do you do to rise above and get things done?