Tag Archives: internet

Haters and fake convent provided via social media.

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Dear Readers

Today in the wake of the huge popularity of sharing the content via social media, when people felt much more anonymous, they basically means as much as their signs, emoji or nicknames, which identify them. It caused that they are feeling much more free in providing their posts, which very often are offended or fake. Facebook representative still tries to reduce this kind of problem, but its scale is huge and difficult to control. They mostly concentrated on fake ads, which sometimes we can notice during opening fb web or in the message folder called “ different”. As written in techcrunch.com Mark Zuckerberg said that the fake news are in the minority of the general content provided via Facebook, but as we can easily notice false information takes place pretty often. I am one of the moderator of the music band fun-page, where people are able to provide their opinions, comments, adds. What I observed is the fact, that minimum once per week what happened is sharing the negative, even as I mentioned above offended and fake comments. 99 percent of them are sending from the unreal accounts, which used strange names or pics taken from google- graphs or someone’s Instagram ,what is basically under the law. How we are fighting with that?

Well, the solution is pretty simple and for now that is the only solution, which is coming into my minds. It  is basically blocking, cause every critiques, (of course best if it is constructive criticism) are welcomed, but the curse or racist comments are not allowed. Probably many of us met, with this kind of negative experience in our life, especially if we are giving something publicly.

You re more than welcome to share Your feedback and opinions, how You are dealing with haters in the social media, or other platforms, where You re sharing Your content, ideas of simply Yourself.

If You are more interested in the issue, how Facebook currently is dealing with that staff check the link

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/19/zuckerberg-reveals-plans-to-address-misinformation-on-facebook/

Thanks for reading and see You soon.

Magda Skorodzień.

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A farewell to the Middleman

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The typical business model, supply chain used to be quite straight forward; There is a manufacturer that sources the materials and creates a product. A wholesaler would buy the product from the manufacturer and resell it for a small margin to the retailer, which the again sells the product to the end customer. On every step of the way, a little extra margin is added to the original price of the item so that everybody gets its share. The internet has changed that.

middlemanFrom TechCrunch, to New York Times or WSJ, everybody has proclaimed “The Death of The Middleman”. The internet has made it possible for manufacturers to reach customers directly via a website. Thus creating a better offer for both ends as the intermediary does not receive its share anymore. The supply chain is getting shorter, as manufacturers started to sell directly to costumer, at times even via their own mobile application, which even allows customers to personalize their purchased goods according to their needs.

The middleman is redefining itself and we see him again as concierge service and the like. Offering that extra service the modern customer of today is asking for. But how sustainable is that? In a highly technologized world, will it not be only a question of time until manufacturers than again are able to offer state of the art service by themselves via an App for example?

Amazon may be one of the most extreme examples. Not only does amazon.com offer the largest product range on the web for the end consumer, they increasingly start to offer own products. We see products like “amazon basics”, which are sold under the amazon brand and cover products all across the categories. Amazon knows its customers and it knows them well. How can any concierge service compete with amazon offering tailor made products?

Amazon does it, Netflix does it too. Increasingly becoming a competition to Hollywood, by offering their customers their own productions, often financed with gigantic budgets that make Hollywood productions seem small.

What’s the value of a middleman in modern eCommerce?

 

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Internet Time Machine

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If you know what it is – to ask relatives to release the phone to connect to the Internet, then you caught the wonderful time. When the image loads in 15 minutes, and the miracle of the downloaded files on the disc carefully kept and passed from generation to generation. Internet 90. Today, few remember what he looked like. We offer to refresh your memory with a nostalgic service oldweb.today.

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On oldweb.today can surf the Internet using older browsers NSCA Mosaic, Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. To start the “Time Machine”, you must select the Online browser, select a year and enter the link you are interested in. Page loaded on the virtual desktop – with the old operating system and browser antediluvian.

If you do not remember what they were 90 sites, answer: colorful and bright, with chaotic fonts and a wide palette of colors. It looked all like this:

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On the site you can see modern sites, although many of them are too long to be loaded. Author of the project – the programmer Ilya Kremer from San Francisco. The project is available on GitHub, where Ilya publishes its development.

This is not the first project in the nostalgic world of Web 2.0. Using the service, you can see the Wayback Machine looked like any site throughout its evolution. And 404PageFound you to find the ancient sites are still online. There is a page dated 1993.

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eCommerce Certificates

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For years, decades we have been going online to purchase, music, electronics, books and literally anything you can imagine. We should be quite familiar with shopping online, however, in this so familiar environment, trust is still an issue, if not, the issue in the e-commerce sphere.

I will be looking at the German and Polish e-commerce market. One of the most developed e-commerce market in the EU and Poland, the fastest growing e-commerce market in the EU. Both markets full of opportunities. What can the Polish market learn from the more developed and established e-commerce market in Germany? A lot, but let’s look at the issue of trust that I mentioned earlier.

A representative study sponsored by the D21 Initiative and the “Federation of German E-commerce and Mail-Order-Companies” reveals that 96% of people questioned already ordered something online. Furthermore, customers prefer shops that have been rated by other users positively, the companies are based in Germany, they are certified shops and customers do not have to pay in advance. Another interesting fact, 47% of people that have never purchased online before or rarely said that the fear of misuse of their private data is the reason why they have not made purchases online.

All these facts point towards one issue – trust. Trust is the conversion rate booster and literally the only thing that stops your users from becoming loyal customers. Trust is a rather complex construction of the human mind, usually established over longer periods of time and repetitive interaction between the parties involved. However, this will not work for first time customers. Providing excellent service and constant communication with your existing customers will help to build a loyal customer base, users that have not been customers previously will need some extra convincing to make their initial purchase in your shop.

How do we convince these potential clients that we are a trustworthy shop with excellent customer service and an uncomplicated and well-designed customer experience? First things first, the e-shop itself should be clearly structured, transparent and the order process should be as easy and uncomplicated as possible. There is a variety of elements to look at, starting with product presentation, pricing, legal representation of the shop, contact center, customer data required and last but not least an FAQ and terms of service section. Interesting fact, only about 30% of German online buyers claim to not read the “AGB” or terms of service, which is usually a very long and boring document written in legal German. This shows once again, people want to be assured that in case things go south, they are safe and backed by a legal framework and they can deal with a “real” company, with an office, hopefully located in the same country.

Customers at this point are looking to build a trustworthy picture of a shop themselves; the shop has to just facilitate that process. Let the customer find what he is looking for, offer a world-class return policy and easy shipping. Certificates like “Trusted Shops” and SSL security can help to build the image of a safe shopping environment.

Certificates as trust builder

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Certificates like Trusted Shops try to offer a guarantee for the reliability and trustworthiness of shops. People do actually look for this kind of reference on a webpage in order to build trust. A trusted shop and SSL certificate are therefore highly recommended and relatively affordable in their implementation.
Even though trusted shops tries to provide a European certificate, I think there is still room for improvement. The European E-Commerce and Mail Order Trade Association (EMOTA) is working on an own certificate, however, personally, I see here a lot of room for improvement and a stronger image and reputation, as well as higher level of recognition are required to give these certificates the desired effect. Internationalization of e-commerce seems to be still developing, as customers are highly suspicious of foreign companies on the e-commerce market. Even though, we imagine the internet as borderless space. This is especially challenging for foreign E-commerce shops that would like to enter e.g. the German market.
This is also a call out to European law makers to facilitate the development in e-commerce and provide a truly international e-commerce marketplace with a common set of rules, regulations and customer protection acts.

What does this mean for the Polish Market?

 

The Polish e-commerce market is not mature yet, which provides a lot of opportunities for e-commerce, as well as supporting functions like Logistics to benefit of the developments in the fastest growing e-commerce market in Europe. Trust is in fact a major issue in Poland, since there is still a large amount of the population unfamiliar with e-shops or even the internet in general. The market will have to educate and build trust to the customer. Certificates are not as widely spread and do not have the recognition, even though trusted shops entered the Polish market a while ago. As a lot of people are not online yet, especially in the older demographics, it is crucial to use a combination of online and offline tools to give people a feeling of trust in companies that do not have a physical shop. E-commerce leaders are so far almost without exception a combination of online and brick-and-mortar stores. This will certainly be one of the biggest challenges for the Polish e-commerce market in the future.

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Chinese woman is considered to be dead for ten years lived in Internet cafes playing online shooter

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Chinese girl Xiao Yun, which over the last ten years, presumed dead, discovered during a police raid at an internet cafe in the province of Zhejiang. This is with reference to local newspaper Qianjiang Evening News Portal reports The Star Online.

According to parents, Xiao Yun left home at age 14 in 2005, and since that time considered as missing. She was presumed dead until 20 November 2015, when it was early in the morning during the ordinary police raid discovered at a local internet cafe.

14 Mar 2006, HEFEI, China --- Chinese use computers at Internet cafe in Nanjing --- Image by © STRINGER/CHINA/Reuters/Corbis

Check showed that the 24-year-old Xiao Yong used forged documents. She was taken to the nearest police station for questioning, which found that in the last ten years she lived mainly in Internet cafes.

The girl, a fan of multiplayer shooter CrossFire, almost all the free time spent on the game, and for personal hygiene use public baths. For the life of Xiao Yun earned from time to time settling a cashier in an internet cafe. In them she usually slept.

Police fined Woman on one thousand yuan (about 150$), and then against her will contacted her parents. Mother Cao Yong’s conversation with the Qianjiang Evening News reported that in the last 10 years did not change your phone number in case the daughter wanted to contact her. The woman admitted that because of her quick temper often beat daughter, but promised never to it is no longer in conflict.

The history of San Yong – not an isolated case. In the spring of 2013 the media reported on the Chinese who had lived for six years in an Internet cafe, leaving it only to take a shower. Man provide for themselves by selling virtual goods in online games for real money.

At the beginning of 2015 on this kind of “Internet cafe refugees” in Japan, was cast a documentary film. In the picture it was reported that many Japanese because of the lack of a permanent job are forced to live in small closets in an Internet cafe, where they spend most of their free time sitting in a network and playing online games.

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Social Media in State of the Art Customer Service (Customer Service Trends)

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There it was; I could not access my email account anymore due to “unusual activity”. Recovering password etc. did not work either. My last option, calling the AOL customer service, which is unfortunately based in the US. Apart from the big time difference between the USA and my location at the time, the not existent Customer Service for accounts created in Germany, as well as the fact that the customer service on the phone just could not solve my problem; I was sure that I will never get access to my email account ever again.

After a little bit of browsing on AOL’s help pages. I found the companies twitter account. I actually never tried to solve my problems with products via social media, but it looked like it was my last shot at gaining access to my AOL account.

The big surprise, where the phone contact failed, the guy behind the AOL customer service twitter account was actually able to resolve my problem within 10 minutes. We exchanged 7 DM messages and that was it! Considering the fact that twitter also limits the number of characters, it was a very effective chat.

Being happy that I could solve my problem like that, I decided to look a bit deeper into social media customer service, also on the background of a project I’m working on currently. So is the future of customer service social media? I think yes – and – no! It will certainly become a part and one of the multiple channels we will be able to use. The phone is still the predominant customer service contact channel and in years to come it will remain almost untouched. Nevertheless, various new channels pop up and Social media might gain some “market share” from email based customer service for example. Online applications that allow customers to help themselves with a large amount of smaller problems, will become standard procedure and reduce the amount of actual customer contact with a customer service agent.

Customer service has to be proactive, but is social media the most proactive tool we can use? In my opinion it is and will definitely be one of the elements of proactive customer service. Simply because customers will demand that social media customer service is available, whether they use it or not. In a b2c environment this seems totally rational. In b2b, Social media based customer service has not established itself – yet. However, there are already a few voices out there that announce the rising importance of social media, even in a b2b environment. There are significant differences between b2b and b2c customer service, especially when it comes to social media, in general it can be a much more powerful tool in b2b! Social media in b2b is a perfect platform to exchange ideas and discuss problems with customers on eye level and transparent. It is just giving your customer another channel to make his or her voice heard and have rational discussions. In b2b it is much more unlikely that a customer will hurt your brand with overly emotional expressions of dissatisfaction in public, like you see it in b2c. E.g. LinkedIn is a good platform to exchange ideas with customers in closed or open groups.
Even today there is still a bit of rebellion in companies towards implementing a social media strategy effectively, however it was same with email and web pages and a lot of other things that seem essential today. There will always be early adopters and people afraid of change. Which one of them are you?

Here a summary of a few trends in customer service, not only social media, that are likely to shape customer service in the years to come.

 

Trends in Customer Service

Customer Service has gone through significant changes and development in the past few years and has become a lot more customercentric than it used to be. The focus shifted from being a cost centre to actually becoming a part of the organizations competitive strategy and creates sustainable competitive advantage. Especially in the logistics sector, sound customer service can be the deciding factor when choosing between different service providers.

Proactive Service

A proactive approach to customer service has turned out to be one of the most effective measures to improve the customers experience within a company and overall improve customer loyalty. Rather than reacting to customers problems, actively looking and preventing problems before they appear is key. Constant communication with customers improves the overall relationship. In practice, this means to alert customers of possible problems, advice and recommend better solutions and support the customer in their field of business. Being helpful, once a difficult situation arises.

Web tools and applications

This trend is very much connected to the above mentioned, as it is one way of seeking proactive communication with the customer. The webpage of an organization is nowadays usually on the front line of customer service, being the first stop most customers take when trying to get in touch with a company. Therefore it is crucial that the web presence is customercentric and in the best case already offers solutions to the most common problems or requests by customers.

A company’s website is, after word of mouth, the most important channel consumers use when prospecting. (Accenture, 2013)

Social Media

While already having established its place in the B2C business, social media is now also finding its way into the B2B world. It allows direct and fast communication and allows an organization to give itself a human touch. The main difference here is that social media in a B2B context is much more of a 2 way communication platform, compared to social media in B2C. Social media and professional platforms like LinkedIn can be utilized to open a discussion with customers and industry experts in order to address common issues or problems. In addition, the interaction in a B2B environment can be a lot more open as professionals are a lot less likely to contribute with unconstructive negative feedback, compared to an “angry customer” in B2C.

Furthermore, it is expected that in the next years to come, social media will evolve and become a much more significant part of the B2B business world as it already is among the market leaders.

Multi channel

Customer contact by phone is still by far the most used and preferred way of communication in terms of customer service

, followed by email and live chats. Nevertheless, the trend is going toward offering various channels of communication and shifting between the contact channels. E.g. Customer service may start on the phone, but the request will be solved by email.

Big Data

As customer service utilizes more and more technologies, various channels of communication and is shifting towards web-based applications, companies have a lot more data available. They key here is to utilize the gained data and use it to gain new insights into customer preferences, behavior and needs. Understanding the customer has become a lot easier, once the data is properly analyzed and evaluated. Not only the customer service itself, but different organizational functions like sales will benefit greatly from the new insights into the customer and maintaining a good customer relationship is that much easier when so much information is. Possibilities to respond faster and much more customized to the customer needs arise.

Combine Sales, Customer Service and Marketing functions

One of the major trends that will reshape entire organizational structure is the combination of sales and customer services, as well as Marketing. With growing emphasis on customer relationships, especially in b2b, the combination of the functions make sense. It reflects the necessity of the repeated effort to not only gain business once, but also continue to close deals with the same customer over a longer period of time. This development also reflects the customer centricity that will be required in the future. A combination of the different functions helps to deliver an end-to-end solution to the customer and keeps up the interaction between business and customer. A crucial rule and a point to start is to assign a central person that combines all the different departments: A Sales and Customer Service Manager for example. This will already help to maintain a more consistent service and overall customer service performance.

 

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Accenture, 2013

 

Interesting figure, demonstrating the cultural differences associated to good customer service and customer relationships in the world.

Think I am making this all up? Think again: Forbes: Reasons you need to be using social media as your customer service portal

 

Zendesk as one of the leading Web based customer service management tools providers also provides you with a nice guide to improve your social media customer service strategy Zendesk: Customer Service through social media

 

Find an interesting Accenture report on the the “Consumer Pulse” and customer service here:

Accenture-Global-Consumer Pulse Research Study 2013 Key Findings

 

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Your habits are going to change…

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…when it comes to buying online. eCommerce as we know it is about to change. We may have just got started with buying our electronics, books, home appliances and vacations online, but eCommerce is constantly changing and faster than ever. Just this summer, twitter introduced product pages, amazon offers grocery shopping to prime customers and Instagram is turning more and more into a promo machine for brands . One of the most anticipated eCommerce revolutions is Pinterest’s buy button. E-commerce is advancing into new markets and the offering is growing exponentially. Some of the sectors, highly restricted at this point, will change drastically over the next few years. Thinking about online pharmacies, we are in for a revolution, once e-prescription becomes a common standard in many countries. The healthcare sector, already in the spotlight due to the possibilities that arise in the field of big data, etc., will also become a strong force in the e-commerce sector. These may be just assumptions at this point, but the signs are obvious, if we look at the growth rates in eCommerce sales.

We start hearing about “uber for deliveries”, drones and many more services targeted at the boom in eCommerce. Probably, more than any other supporting industry, we will also see the logistics sector literally transforming overnight. While in most cases 24h delivery is not a thing yet, we are already talking about delivery a few hours after an online purchase has been logged. A challenge and a sea of opportunities, especially in markets like Poland with strong eCommerce growth rates, but a rather fragile logistics network that still has some room for improvement, if we compare it to its German neighbor.

A cha7aaace0f44fe1ecf06be692d148b4959llenging situation also for many shops that are currently still trading exclusively offline, facing a growing online competition, which is able not only to offer better prices, but also faster deliveries. In how many cases do you really need something right now? Might it not be more comfortable to order something in the morning and pick it up on your way home after work? A chance for offline shops to become part of the online landscape, enabled by platforms of various industries that make setting up your e-shop as easy as creating a Gmail address. Increase your reach of customers significantly, just by signing up on a webpage.

Going back to the so called „mail order pharmacy“, issues that we are currently facing are high abandonment rates, specifically in this sector. The reasons for this are various. One of the most apparent reason is that people tend to compare prices in different eCommerce outlets, thus abandoning the basket once they compared different baskets in different e-shops. With a growing number of e-outlets, consumers start to get lost in the eCommerce jungle of hundreds of shops that seem to offer products for the same conditions. While offline stores have the possibility of differentiation through their location, this is not possible for eCommerce businesses. In most cases this leads to hard price competition and smaller businesses are usually the ones left behind in this battle.

Many smaller businesses that would like to advance into eCommerce are going to have to change the way the play the game. eCommerce is a different game, with different rules and a lot of businesses do not seem ready for the challenge yet, which at the end leads to bigger businesses taking home the grand prize. The winner takes it all.

What are the limitations to eCommerce? What would you never buy online?

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