“Let me get this straight: The company will side with petulant, unreasonable, angry, demanding customers instead of with me, its loyal employee? And this is meant to lead to better customer service?”

“The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people; a few lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers. Of those two, I think consumers earn the greater reward from the wealth hidden in infinite niches.

But the long tail is a decidedly mixed blessing for creators. Individual artists, producers, inventors and makers are overlooked in the equation. The long tail does not raise the sales of creators much, but it does add massive competition and endless downward pressure on prices. Unless artists become a large aggregator of other artist’s works, the long tail offers no path out of the quiet doldrums of minuscule sales.

Other than aim for a blockbuster hit, what can an artist do to escape the long tail?

One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans.”

“A one day summit in San Francisco, February 4, 2008. Learn how smart organizations are turning customer service from just a cost center into an engine for building culture and creating evangelists. This conference brings together innovative business leaders from several industries to share tips and suggestions about how they got their own organizations to do customer service differently. Confirmed speakers include Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos; Alex Frankel, author of ‘Punching In’; Michael Murphy, head of customer service for Virgin; Robert Stephens, founder of The Geek Squad; and many more…”

“The Long Wow is a means to achieving long-term customer loyalty through systematically impressing your customers again and again. Going a step beyond just measuring loyalty, the Long Wow is an experience-centric approach to fostering and creating it.”

“…out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free. The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances — lost label, my mom being hospitalized and me being away, the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also….” (Thanks Signal vs. Noise!)

“One of the fastest-growing disciplines in business goes by several names, but it’s all about observing customers (and potential customers) at work as a means of discovering unmet needs that your organization can fill. You won’t read much about it on the Web because it’s still competitive-advantage stuff: What I know about the science of it I cannot disclose under a confidentiality agreement, and most of the companies doing it (Steelcase, Intel, Volkswagen, Microsoft) aren’t talking about it much. Mostly it’s called cultural or corporate anthropology or ethnology, but I prefer the term Customer Anthropology — the study of your customers’ people and behaviours in their ‘natural habitat’.”

“Satisfaction is people-powered customer service for absolutely everything. More specifically, though, it’s a place where communities of customers come together to answer each others questions, share ideas with each other or with an organization, report and solve problems and generally talk about about what matters to them around these products or services.

When the organization or company is involved too it gives them a way to engage with their customers around the issues that matter to their customers most. Satisfaction provides a neutral playing ground where companies and customers can interact to everybody’s benefit.”

“I’ve been spending much time with ad agencies and focus groups lately and can only conclude that–with some exceptions–they are mostly clueless. Three years ago they had a traditional knowledge about consumers but didn’t know much about social networking and web 2.0 technology. Today, most of them don’t know about consumers and don’t know much about social networking and web 2.0 technology either. Mainstream ad agencies have one refrain–one message to their corporate clients–do social networking, do social networking, do social networking.”

“Would it come as a shock to you to find out that the most highly paid corporate people do not know the costs of doing business inside and outside their organization? An online survey conducted by Strativity Group, Inc., a consulting company based in Parsippany, NJ, reports that over 300 executives:

81% do not know the cost of a customer complaint
75% do not know the cost of acquiring a new customer
60% claim they do not deserve their customers’ loyalty
51% claim their company does not deliver unique and beneficial products or services
50% do not know their organization’s annual customer retention rates…”

“Anyone who has followed consumer electronics and online services knows that once a product reaches dominance, it becomes very hard for it to be dethroned (hello, iPod, Google, and Windows). Economists have argued for years regarding the costs involved in finding and adopting alternatives, but the psychologists will point out that familiarity and comfort play major roles in keeping consumers loyal to an incumbent.”

“I’m writing this article on the flight back from a week-long trip to Istanbul, Turkey. My wife Kirsten is an amateur rug collector and we decided to celebrate her birthday in Istanbul where the 11th International Conference On Oriental Carpets was being held… Loving husband that I am, I accompanied Kirsten during her visits to a variety of rug dealers in Sultanhamet (the old district of Istanbul which is the carpet capital of the world). This is where The Grand Bazaar is located. If you’ve never been to Istanbul, I highly recommend it. It’s a great city. In any case, here are some of the insights I gained from my experience.”

Real customer service: “The very first order I got was from a store called Lassen’s Market. Lassen’s ordered one case of this product I sell. So, I put the product in my electric car, and drove it the 35 miles to their store. The guy who signed for it, a really nice guy, was a little shocked to see me, but he signed for it, and I left. When I got home from the trip, there was a message from my broker asking ‘What did you just do?’ I told him ‘I dropped the product off. You said they ordered it, so I took it to them.’ He said, ‘They just called, and were so amazed that you brought the product to them that they want to order four more cases!’ I told him, ‘OK, whatever you say,’ and so I drove back again.”

Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website. I often write about the top mistakes in Web design, but what are the top things you can do to make more money? Following here are 10 Internet tactics with a particularly high return on investment (ROI).

“As a bootstrapped software company, Fog Creek couldn’t afford to hire customer service people for the first couple of years, so Michael and I did it ourselves. The time we spent helping customers took away from improving our software, but we learned a lot and now we have a much better customer service operation.”

“I was talking with a friend recently that works the customer service phones for the company she is with. She mentioned that her company expects her to solve any customer’s problem in three minutes or less. That sounds like a policy created by someone trying to save a few bucks while thousands of potential sales walk down the street to the nearest competitor.”