Blog

Online feedback is critical to the success of any business or organization. It is important to know and understand how customers are feeling about products, services, customer service, employees, and specific processes within the company. If customers are not satisfied, then they will simply take their business elsewhere, most likely to a competing business. A very inexpensive way to receive feedback from both loyal and new customers is relatively simple if you use your online resources. Below are 4 suggestions for staying in-touch with customers online:

1. Online Customer Surveys

In order for your business to keep making money, you must keep your customers satisfied. The only way for you to know the level of satisfaction you are giving to your customers is if they tell you! Online customer surveys are a great way to give customers an opportunity to express how they are feeling about a specific product or service. Have them rate their satisfaction on a number scale and give them a space to give feedback in their own words. Compile this data and come up with new marketing strategies based on the results.

2. Contact Forms

Even if a customer is satisfied overall, they may see some areas of your business that really need improvement. For example, if they loved the product they received but a customer service representative at a hosted call center was very rude to them-how do they report this? This is where internet contact forms come into play. Sometimes people call customer service to complain, but where do they go when they need to complain about customer service? Online contact forms are a good way for customers to talk to a company when phone representation is lacking.

3. Social Media

Facebook and Twitter are your instant online conversation with consumers. Moderation of your Facebook Page and Twitter Feed is critical in keeping your clients happy and being good at social media. In today’s world, more and more people are voicing their opinion, whether good or bad, to companies via social media. If companies aren’t represented on these mediums, they are basically invisible. Take advantage of these FREE applications and you will see real results. It will also be the faster way for clients to communicate with you online.

4. Utilizing Online Polls

When a business considers releasing a new product or service, they have to think about how customers will respond.  Creating an online poll on the front page of your site will be a great place to gather data. Giving a customer something to vote on is a good way to gather an estimate of how many people would buy the product or invest their money in a specific service. You can then use this feedback to help decide whether it is a good financial decision to move forward.

Customers enjoy knowing that a business they invest their money in truly cares about them. They like to have a voice when it comes to the decisions that are made about the business and they like to know that they are being heard. By giving outlets for consumers to go to online, you are showing your customers that you care about what they have to say and that you are listening to them. In the long run, you will hopefully develop long term relationships with customers and thus gain brand loyalty.

Posted By Thomson Chemmanoor

Twitter mashups and tools put a unique spin on the way we use Twitter. By “mashing” information from Twitter with other applications, you get an unmatchable user experience that can be both fun and useful. Enjoy these top 19 Twitter mashups.

1) Twitter Burner – Tweetburner is a twitter mashup that allows you to create tiny URLs and also allow you to track how many times they where clicked on it. Ideal for someone who lets out a lot of links on twitter.

2) Twalala – Get ready to take control of your twitterstream. twalala is a client for Twitter that allows you to control what you see, and more importantly, what you don’t see in your twitterstream. Using twalala, you can filter tweets out of your stream by keywords and phrases or mute individuals who get a bit too chatty. Finally, Twitter with a mute button.

3) Twitspy lets you see what people are posting on Twitter in realtime by spying on the Twitter public timeline. Twitspy also tracks website links within tweets.

4) Twitter stats – In your Tweets, Graphin’ Your Stats! Weekly Stats. Graph your Twitter Stats including. Tweets per hour; Tweets per month; Tweet timeline;

5) Twittervision is a web mashup combining Twitter with Google Maps to create a real time display of tweets across a map.

6) mail2twitter is a free service that allows you to post tweets through e-mail, and the most important, from any email-enabled mobile device.

7) The TwitterCounter -Add a daily updating TwitterCounter to your blog so everybody can see how popular you are

Twit Pic, Share photos with your friends on twitter with twitpic. No signup required, just login using your twitter account.

9) Twittercal – It’s a free service that connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar. Add events in a snap from your favorite Twitter client.

10) Geotwitter - This mashup uses the Google Maps API and Twitter API. The most recent updates are fetched from the public timeline and mapped once every minute. If you have any comments suggestions or ideas feel free to leave a note on our blog.

11) TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets of Twitter. (previously known as TwitterNotifier)

12) TwittyTunes is a FoxyTunes companion Firefox extension – it allows you to post your currently playing songs to Twitter with a click.

13) Twitbin – Send and receive messages to all your fellow twitterholics, right from your firefox browser.

14) TwitterBar – allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your address bar; clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over it to see how many characters you have left.

15) StockTwits is an open, community-powered investment idea and information service for financial investors.

16) Twitterholic – Provides a list of the 100 best twitterers based on their followers, the people they follow and the number of their updates

17) TwitterFeed – Feed your blog to twitter, post RSS to twitter.

18) TwitterBuzz shows you what people using Twitter, a microblogging service, are linking to.

19) Twitter Map – Provides users with the ability to update their locations on a Google Map and send a tweet with it

These great Twitter mashups and tools represent some of the best ways twitter data can be used to create a great twittering experience. Please feel free to leave your thoughts on these mashups and tools in the comments on our Web Design and Marketing blog.