Good Relationships Should Impact Your Bottom-line
05/10/2007
Girlfriend, life as a consultant is a roller coaster ride. I'm buried under a research project that is consuming every waking second. And of course deadline driven. The assignment explores what is important to customers in a price sensitive niche market. Can you guess what that might be? Relationships win out over pricing. As one man told me -
Good relationships save me more money in the long run than a few bucks savings on product costs. His reason .. good relationships = good service = $ savings.
While I go into report writing mode here are two must read interviews from BBFs Rajesh from @Blogworks in India and Geoff Livingston from The Buzz Bin in Virginia that demonstrate how social media can help build relationships .. no matter where your clients may reside.
Rajesh @ Blogworks - discusses the impact of user generated content and social networking communities. Rajesh's moderation brings out insights into what is occuring in India. He is joined by Alok Mittal, Canaan Partners early stage venture fund, Amit Ranjan, Slideshare and Prena Gupta, Yaari.com a social networking site for Indian youths
Geoff The Buzz Bin - Interviews Brian Lusk from Southwest Airlines. Southwest is celebrating its one year blog birthday. Happy blog birthday Southwest! Brian explains that their blog is used for customer service, group/laboratory and a way to build relationships.
The conversation on this multiple author blog (I really like multiple author blogs) goes beyond the happenings at the airline. It's real "people talking with people." Great example was the post about a colonoscopies that saved a reader's life. That alone has to be worth the efforts of putting into play the funny website called a "blog."
A big lesson learned that Brian shared - "While a blog is an excellent tool to hightlight and reflect your culture, it isn't the device to change your culture."