#they’ve responded quicker to negative feedback in the past

[rainia]

also that whole crab day thing seems odd to me because. there’s literally no guarantee that your money will result in a roll back of these changes, right? you’re just paying them. sure it’s good to support the site and I’m not saying you shouldn’t. But like. I don’t think a few people buying the crabs is going to make them suddenly take back all their BS.

[laurelkrugerr]

5 Steps on How to Start a Business and Get It to Market, Quick and Lean

June 29, 2020 12 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

You’ve had a great business idea, you’ve already developed your target customer and determined the size of your market, and now you need to figure out how to reach your clients. You need to get there fast — if you drag your feet, you’ll fail to gain momentum while eating up your capital and may watch your competitors fly right past you.

This is where many founders stumble. It’s hard to strike the right balance between getting your product to market quickly and taking the time to prepare yourself for a successful launch. 

Startups are agile and can rebound from mistakes easier than large corporations, but the competition is fiercer. So if you don’t get a head start going to market, other businesses may end up dominating your niche even with an inferior product, just because they did beat you to the punch.

But you can’t sprint to market for the sake of speed. If you don’t prepare properly, there’s a good chance you won’t achieve product-market fit: the sales won’t come in, no-one will refer you to their friends and neither investors nor the press are interested in your product. Preparing properly means knowing your market, testing your product, gathering feedback and refining your business as quickly as possible. These are the main steps you need to follow.

Related: Want to learn how to start a business? Check out the free on-demand “Start Your Own Business” course now.

 1. Make sure you are building something people want.

A mistake so many aspiring founders make is that they build something they want, rather than something other people want.

“However new your product is, however many resources you have to build it, that doesn’t mean people are actually going to use it,” says Kevin Siskar, CEO and co-founder of fundraising automation business Finta. “Your product has to be based on demand, not just your own desires.”

Before you get swept away by your own excitement over your business, you need to validate your idea, start testing the market, and ruthlessly build up feedback loops.

Dan Wheatley, CEO and co-founder of StraightTalk Consulting, stresses that you don’t need a product to begin tests. “The best time to start testing is when you have a business idea. You can validate that idea without building anything,” he says. “If it’s a genuine pain point for consumers, you will find that people are happy to explain to you how they want it fixed.”

You can get early assessments of what type of product your consumers want by, for example, doing smokescreen tests, in which you drive traffic to your landing page with a simple message: “We solve [X problem] for [X market],” Wheatley explains. 

Today it’s actually cheaper to carry out standard A/B testing using paid ads, as there are fewer advertisers right now than usual. Services like AdEspresso are a great way to create, analyze and optimize your marketing agency strategies on Facebook, Instagram and Google using A/B testing. 

Other fantastic tools for validating your business idea more efficiently include QuickMVP, which helps analyze potential customer feedback, test your website and calculate market-related metrics.

You can only understand how your target market will respond to your product by gathering direct feedback, be it online or in person. This step is worth a section of its own.

 2. Speak to people and get feedback.

Negative feedback is the best feedback you can get — this initial push isn’t for collecting pats on the back, it’s about truly hearing what your customers want you to do for them, rather than what you want to do.

Shortcake founder Coralee Dickson wanted to build a tool that would automatically compile people’s Facebook to create photo albums. Even before she built the technology, she started attending street fairs, showing off her photo albums, and offering her service manually. As well as bringing in revenue, she got priceless insight into her target customers and was able to execute a huge amount of market research, in real-time.

If street fairs aren’t your thing, you could go to Starbucks, buy a load of gift cards, stand outside and ask people to fill out a survey with customer discovery questions, and then give them the Starbucks gift card when they’ve finished. There are always ways to speak to customers even if you don’t have customers.

“When we were getting ready to launch our line of artisanal cookies, we went out to an event and had over 100 people try our cookies,” says Kuda Biza, cofounder of Nunbelievable, a purpose-driven baked goods startup. “Armed with their feedback, we went back to the kitchen and revised our recipe. When we launched, our cookies were a hit because we co-created our product with the customer. That’s what all startups need to be doing with their product — be it a cookie, an app or a service.”

When using surveys, you’re trying to identify your niche market as well as how to improve your product. Try building a simple but telling survey (using platforms like Typeform or SurveyMonkey) using questions such as the following (this particular example works best for people who have been able to sample your product):

1. How would you feel if you could no longer use [my product]?

A) Very disappointed

B) Slightly disappointed

C) Not disappointed

Those who answer A to Question 1 should be your focus. This specific suggestion comes from Sean Ellis, an entrepreneur who helped bring companies like Dropbox and Eventbrite to market. From studying multiple startups, Ellis found that a good benchmark to determine that you’ve achieved product-market fit is when 40 percent of your early users say they’d be “Very disappointed” if your product disappeared.

So, if you can create a great experience for your most enthusiastic customers, you will get to market quicker.

Building honest feedback means being careful not to influence the people by using leading questions that direct people to a particular (desired) answer. You probably need a professional to help avoid these nuances.

“Asking someone: ‘Would you say that finding the right audience is your biggest marketing agency problem?’ is very different to asking someone: ‘What’s your biggest marketing agency problem?” Wheatley says. “You might be tempted to prompt the people you’re questioning, but getting false results will only hurt you down the line.”

Once you’re processing the feedback, isolate the best of it and throw the rest away. This will keep you lean, focus your energies only on productive input, and perhaps most importantly, develop your gut instinct.

“When developing our product, we did plenty of quick and dirty consumer research,” says Barton Warner, CEO, and co-founder of natural supplement company R3SET. “Through focus groups and online surveys we realized that our ‘cure’ wasn’t all our users wanted, our product had to offer healthy lifestyle techniques too. In the end, 50 percent of our product development was about what science said, and the other 50 percent was what the consumer asked for.” 

Related: Want to learn how to start a business? Check out the free on-demand “Start Your Own Business” course now.

 3. Get a landing page up … now.

Your website doesn’t have to launch at the same time as your product. In fact, it shouldn’t — a website is essential in building interest within your target market, starting your customer acquisition machine early, and testing your messaging.

The main aim of your landing page is to grow your audience. To do so you should be testing different visuals and messaging; one tool that’s great for creating a site but also testing, surveying potential users and tracking the effectiveness of your page is Ship by Product Hunt.

With today’s tools, buying a domain and setting up a website is so simple you have no excuse. Using services like Squarespace, you can build a new site in a few hours, without having to learn WordPress skills. Namechk is really useful for checking if domain names and social media handles are available. As well as a basic landing page, you should consider setting up a newsletter: Squarespace has built email subscriptions into its platform and Mailchimp is a classic newsletter option (it also has a new marketing platform to help startups iterate rapidly).

But at these early stages, you want to do as little work as possible, and test whether there is a paying market out there.

 4. Find customers today.

Preparing for market launch doesn’t mean holding off on customers. Getting customers now allows you to test your market and product — everything we’ve already discussed — without the speculation. You have to be OK with the fact that the product you’re offering now will not be the same in some months’ time.

Your starting point is the all-important “Rule of One” — one customer, one problem, one product. By that, I mean that you have to distill exactly what niche you’re targeting, what problem you’re solving for them, and what you are offering them (this doesn’t have to be all the final product features you’ve envisioned). And coming out with a mass-market product only sets you up to face every other competitor out there, rather than just a select few.

In fact, try to use as little technology as possible in the first iterations. It’s great to be ambitious, but rest assured that you’ll have time to build all the features you need in time; right now’s about getting a head start, and your unfinished product won’t be held against you. 

Acquire your first customers by generating leads online (hence the need for a landing page and newsletter) but also by picking up the phone and sending emails; initially, you should save potential leads on an excel sheet, so you can reach out to them in a more targeted fashion. 

Those early clients will give you vital insights to know what features to build. If you miss this step, you’re likely to go down the wormhole building features people might not want.

“Nothing is better validation of your product than people paying you money to use it,” says Siskar.

 5. Iterate on the product to develop something clients really want.

Now, how to make the best use of all that precious feedback to improve the product itself? You’ve spent time gathering it, now you need to spend as much (if not more) time analyzing it. Don’t ever make the mistake of losing feedback by not having a tracking system in place — remember that tools like QuickMVP make the tracking and analysis process far less stressful.

Focus on the feedback you’re getting from your “A” class — those who would be very disappointed to see your product go (if you’re lost, go back a few sections), but also your “B” class — those who would be slightly disappointed. Rahul Vohra, founder and CEO of Superhuman, gives some great examples of how you can segment feedback to identify the product features you need to be focusing on, in order to convince on-the-fence potential clients to fall in love with you.

One great tip is to use feedback to create word clouds — see this tool — of what your interviewees most value and most dislike about your product. Visualizing what your potential customers are thinking is always better than staring at countless survey forms. Another recommended tool is Productboard, which consolidates and organizes user feedback and other insights, helps build roadmaps, and can be integrated with software like Intercom and Zendesk.

While you should be boosting product features everyone loves, the task of adding or tweaking the features people think are missing should happen simultaneously, not before or after. Otherwise, you’ll risk slowing product development down too long without really expanding your customer base.

Founders all too often end up raising heaps of money and launching a product, only to find that no one wants to use it. Identifying and studying your market, and testing it out beforehand, is just as important as placing your product in that market.

“You want to feel like the market is snatching the product out of your hands because there is so much demand,” says Siskar. “You should not try to force something into an untested market. Launching quickly may feel vital for a startup, but taking the time when you need to is a much smarter choice.”

Related: Want to learn how to start a business? Check out the free, on-demand “Start Your Own Business” course now.

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source http://www.scpie.org/5-steps-on-how-to-start-a-business-and-get-it-to-market-quick-and-lean/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/06/5-steps-on-how-to-start-business-and.html

[minnievirizarry]

10 Tips for Providing Top-Tier Twitter Customer Service

Customer service isn’t what it used to be thanks to social media.

And for consumers, that’s a good thing.

Think about it.

Nobody has time to sit on hold for an hour or spend days stuck in an endless email chain to get their questions answered anymore.

Fast forward to present day where time is of the essence. According to Sprout’s 2018 Social Index, nearly half of all consumers have taken to social media to raise questions and concerns to brands.

And a bulk of that back-and-forth happens in the Twitterverse.

That’s why having a concrete Twitter customer service strategy is a must-have for brands who want to keep their customers happy.

Why Twitter Customer Service Matters

Although Instagram and Facebook may be the most pressing networks for marketers right now, Twitter remains one of the top avenues for customer service.

In fact, our data shows that 21% of consumers prefer Twitter to traditional customer service channels.

We ship internationally!

— Hot Topic (@HotTopic) August 20, 2018

Consider for starters that customer service on Twitter is short and to the point. The platform’s character limit keeps people from mincing words. In short, Twitter encourages you to immediately get to the root of any potential issue.

Additionally, anything that happens on Twitter is in the open for the world to see. This means that there’s a microscope on brands as how they treat inquiries is totally front-facing.

To help your business maintain a smiling face and keep customers from bouncing to competitors, we’ve highlighted the must-haves for an effective Twitter customer service strategy below.

1. Set Up a Customer Service Dashboard

Reality check: if you’re haphazardly replying to mentions and interactions with customers, you’re going to have a tough time.

Let’s say that a couple of customers totally put your brand on blast.

Who’s going to respond to them? Who have you already spoken to? How do you know who you’ve @’d back and who you haven’t?

This is why having a dedicated Twitter dashboard is a total lifesaver.

Don’t lose customers due to lack of organization. With a Twitter dashboard, you can track individual interactions with customers in real-time. This means that not only does no mention go unnoticed, but you also have a bird’s-eye view of your Twitter customer service in one place.

Features such as Sprout’s Smart Inbox track conversations on Twitter in addition to your other social channels. This ensures that you effectively “close” any customer concerns, all the while holding you or your team accountable for doing so.

Speaking of accountability, consider also how you can measure the effectiveness of your Twitter customer service efforts. Metrics like sentiment analysis let you know how people feel about your brand at large whether that sentiment is positive, negative or neutral.

This sort of infrastructure helps ensure timely, thoughtful responses rather than customer service chaos.

2. Don’t Ignore Negative Feedback

Although some customers might show you some love via Twitter, expect to spend more time addressing questions and concerns.

And yes, doing so might require dealing with criticism.

Responding with grace is the difference-maker between winning over a customer or losing them for good.

And while there might be some trolls out there, brands should give negative feedback their full attention. Your responses both reflect on your company and determine whether or not your customer sticks around, after all.

For example, check out how Slack was forward with their followers during a recent service outage.

Our apologies for the interruption to your day. We're seeing connectivity issues affecting workspaces, and our team is working on sorting this out as quickly as possible. https://t.co/qk1GLHi2KI

— Slack (@SlackHQ) August 16, 2018

Their openness and ability to follow through actually won them some brownie points with their customers.

The takeaway here is that brands shouldn’t shy away from calls-outs or negative feedback when it happens. Timely responses and empathy are your best bet for keeping people around despite their frustrations.

3. Know When to Stay on Twitter or Go Off-Platform

Again, the beauty of Twitter customer service is that it’s short and to the point.

Yet sometimes it may be the best place to start a customer service inquiry rather than have a full-blown conversation.

On one hand, brands should strive to keep answers simple and remain on Twitter for the sake of convenience. On the flip side, some issues might just get a bit too complex and 280 characters just won’t cut it.

Taking the conversation to your Direct Messages is a smart move, giving you up to 10,000 characters to respond privately to issues.

However, you might need to go in even more depth or pass off the concern to someone else. In this case, asking for someone’s email via Tweet or DM is fair game.

Please try creating a new account with your same email. This should work! Reach out to info@soylent.com for further assistance.

— Soylent (@soylent) August 13, 2018

Just make sure whatever you’re passing off via email is prioritized and not left sitting. Taking people off Twitter is fine, but not when their customer service journey feels like a wild goose chase. As long as you’re keeping their concerns moving and getting to the root of the problem, you’re golden.

4. Mind Your Customers’ Privacy

Even if your tweets are only meant for your customers’ eyes, they’re still out there for the world to see.

This is good news for customers who want to hold brands accountable. That said, this removes the sense of privacy afforded by phone or email support.

Much like the last tip, it’s important to know when to go beyond tweets, and dealing with private information is exactly the sort of situation we’re talking about. 

Here are some pieces of information you should only ask for via DM:

Email address

Phone number

Username

Password

Address

Billing information

Specific items they’ve purchased from you

Thank you for reaching out! Angie's List still offers paid memberships, which offer more benefits than the free membership. If you still have a paid membership, I am happy to help you get set up with the free membership. Please DM us for more info. Thanks, -Jesse M.

— Angie's List Customer Support (@AngiesListHelp) August 20, 2018

Always be sensitive to customers’ personal information and assure them you’re authorized to handle these types of details as early as possible.

5. Sign (or Initial) Your Tweets

If you have multiple employees handling your Twitter customer service, you need a way to track who is responding to each tweet.

The benefits of signing your tweets are two-fold. Doing so creates a sense of accountability and allows you to track interactions between your team and your customers. Additionally, it gives your Twitter customer service efforts a much more human vibe.

Whether it’s your employees’ names or initials, a simple signature serves as a personal touch.

Totally understand and I'll let the car hire know you're up for giving us a hand for testing 👏😊 – Jen

— Skyscanner ✈️ (@Skyscanner) August 17, 2018

Sprout’s built-in social media CRM features make it a cinch to track your team members’ interactions with customers. When a user tweets your company with a question or concern, you can assign the tweet to a specific member of your team. This way you know who’s in charge of replying and resolving the issue without second-guessing.

6. Prioritize Speedy Responses

According to Twitter’s own data, 60% of users expect a response within an hour of reaching out to a business.

Compare that to the expected twelve-hour response time via email and it’s clear that social customers expect speedy service.

While you may not be able to respond to each and every question at a moment’s notice, speed counts. Quick responses signal that you’re a brand that listens to customers and likewise values them.

Here’s a recent example of GameStop personally responding to a positive mention within 10 minutes. How’s that for speed?

No problem! Enjoy that extra power and the great upcoming games you'll play on the Xbox One X!

— GameStop (@GameStop) August 17, 2018

Response time is one of the most pressing metrics for Twitter customer service. An oft-cited Twitter study on airline companies found that customers were willing to spend more with companies who responded fastest.

This again reinforces the need for a Twitter dashboard. For example, you can check how long it takes you to respond to tweets within the dashboard using Sprout’s engagement report. This shows both your response time and rate, helping you to further refine your Twitter customer service strategy. 

7. Track Your Brand Mentions

If you don’t have a streamlined way to monitor your brand mentions, providing customer service becomes an uphill battle. The sooner you know that somebody has given you a shout-out, the quicker you can respond.

Looks great, congrats on the new site.

— Squarespace (@squarespace) August 14, 2018

For many businesses, monitoring brand mentions on Twitter begins and ends with checking their notifications. However, Twitter notifications only give you a partial picture of your Twitter presence.

Here’s a quick kitchen table explanation of how to track Twitter mentions in their various forms:

Track @mentions, #hashtags and mentions of your company name

Search for common misspellings of your company name

Make sure you have Twitter notifications enabled for both the mobile and desktop apps

Save the top queries containing your brand in Sprout to get real-time updates of brand mentions

8. When in Doubt, Be Human

Companies today understand that you can’t put just customer service on autopilot.

And while you may be tempted to take a copy-and-paste approach to your Twitter customer service, think twice before doing so.

People might be willing to deal with automated systems on the phone but not on social media.

The appeal of turning to Twitter instead of traditional customer service avenues is that you can get a quicker response from a person.

You know, a real, flesh-and-blood person.

Feedback like this is like heaven to us! Thanks for the shoutout, Jason.

— Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) August 17, 2018

Twitter is the perfect platform to be more personable with your support. There’s no expectation to be formal, meanwhile the limited character count encourages you to be more conversational.

And while you want to maintain some sense of professionalism, don’t be afraid to let your sense of humor shine if it’s in line with your brand’s voice.

Tempted to disagree but you right Mallory! Free food is superior! *KittyG pic.twitter.com/bvDuG9a5CI

— T-Mobile (@TMobile) August 20, 2018

9. Get to Know Your Customers

Ever walked into a store and had an employee greet you by your first name?

Or maybe you’ve gone to a coffee shop and the barista asks if you want “the usual?”

It’s the sort of service that makes you feel like a VIP, all the while reinforcing that the business you support actually cares about you.

Why not provide your customers with that same sort of treatment on Twitter?

Sprout has a built-in feature that makes this process much easier. You can add notes to any Twitter user you interact with and share those notes among your entire team. Being able to quickly check your prior conversations or special preferences for a customer allows for yet another opportunity to provide more personal service.

10. Go Above and Beyond

Finally, remember that customer service is about more than just answering questions or dealing with problems.

We live in an era where customer expectations are sky-high and brand loyalty is fierce.

This interaction with Instant Pot is a prime example of going the extra mile. This customer probably didn’t expect a response from the brand themselves, but that’s exactly what they got. They also received a helpful, specific piece of content that gets to the heart of their question.

Make sure to check out our app with lots of Keto recipes! https://t.co/NXEvop1Hkm

— Instant Pot (@InstantPot) August 16, 2018

Brands should strive to go above in beyond to help customers while also reminding them just how much they matter.

In other words, don’t be afraid to shout people out “just because.”

If someone posted a picture of your brand or product, why not show some love with a retweet?

And if someone left you a positive mention, let them know you’re listening.

You are so welcome! Hope to see you soon! 🌭

— Superdawg Chicago🌭 (@Superdawg) August 1, 2018

These small touchpoints are critical for creating a stronger sense of brand loyalty. Being attentive and authentic with your customers can be strong marketing firepower if you’re consistent.

And with that, we wrap up our list!

What Does Your Twitter Customer Service Strategy Look Like?

Want to provide personalized, speedy service to your customers? Look no further than Twitter. Going beyond traditional avenues of customer service is a must-do for brands today. By offering up savvy social service backed up by a strategy, you can use your interactions on Twitter to retain current customers and drum up new ones.

We want to hear from you, though. Do you currently provide customer service via Twitter? Any stories you want to share? Let us hear ’em in the comments below!

This post 10 Tips for Providing Top-Tier Twitter Customer Service originally appeared on Sprout Social.

from SM Tips By Minnie https://sproutsocial.com/insights/twitter-customer-service/