The Web Platform @ Rohan Thomas' Blog

We read everyday about listening to your customers so that you can get all the feedback and use that to improve your products and services. Very right – we need more of that, but today, let’s talk about the flip side of the coin – how about giving your customers a chance to thank you?

I read Dan and Chip Heath’s column in Fast Company the other day – “I love you. Now what?” where they talked about why companies make it so hard for us to say thank you.

Come to think of it – true, isn’t it?

Companies spend so much to get to us, huge billboards, banners on every online page we visit.

So we use their service and we like it, now what? We liked their product/service and we want to say thanks!

Why would I want to say thanks? Cause I always make sure that they get it when things are not what they are supposed to be!

Go ahead call me a tough customer! But you know as well as I do that we want things to be the way they are supposed to be – especially when we pay a fee for it!

I’m glad that someone in Malaysia is doing something about it

Maxis is the company I am talking about. I’m sure you’ve realized that every time you give their customer service a call, they send you a text message asking you to rate their staff.

That’s great – they are listening!

They are giving us – their users, a chance to criticize when things are not right and they are also giving us a chance to thank them when things are right… They are listening to both the good and the bad – the only thing we can hope is that they are doing something about all that feedback…

Nike Plus – another product that I am in total awe of (but you already know that after reading so many Nike Plus posts in my blog). I love that product, I want to say thanks. No just thanks – but a BIG HUGE thanks – but how do I? Post it in the forum? Nah… I wanna reach someone who came up with the idea and tell him/her – “You Rock!!!”

I hope I get want that chance… *hint hint*

Well, now that Nike has something to think about, how about you? Do you give your customers a chance to thank you?

he’s the man! Not only can he teach you a thing or two about wine (do yourself a favor don’t mess with him when it comes to wine), but he seems to be on top of Web 2.0, personal branding, marketing and a lot of other things that companies, brands, you and I need in this day and age! A lot of goodness in one blog.

Not only a lot of wisdom, but love his style.

Go listen to his video blog… I’m officially hooked!

BTW, I also checked out his wine video blog – this guy knows how to make things interesting… Very good job Gary!

Apparently, the good can be life changing…

That’s what Nike has done for me with it’s Nike+ series and the social platform that Nike built around it.

Building on my previous blog post, I wanted to give you a quick update on how far Nike Plus has bought me…

I’m sure, you’d be happy to hear that

Pretty neat eh? And this is from a guy who used to hate running! FYI, the machine that I hated most in my gym was the treadmill. I didn’t mind lifting weights but hated cardio… I was ok with running as long as it was during rugby, futsal or football; but those events didn’t occur very frequently…

I know… I don’t believe it either!

All that pain that I endured last month(to ensure that I don’t end up in Nike’s Wall of Shame) paid off when my web status showed this:

Phew… What a relief… The things you do to get to Nike’s Wall of Fame, when your friends are watching you…

And this month it starts again(I’m not sighing though; I like running now):

And I’m not afraid anymore… After running 100 km, I am starting to like this running thing.

Singed up for a 10KM run on 19th October and another 7.3KM run on 9th of November.

Yes, a lot of credit goes to me for running of course, my friends, family, but I believe the tipping point for me here was NIKE+ and it’s social platform…

The power of Web 2.0…

I Believe… What about you?

Gene Phifer pointed out in his blog post that some Digital Immigrants “just don’t get” Web 2.0 and probably never will…

Where I think Gene is right, it also worries me…

I constantly talk to our talk to our customers and partners about things like Web 2.0, User Experience (UX), Design (let’s call them WUD for this post) and of course the Microsoft technologies that enable them.

When I started in this position some 15 months ago, it was a very daunting task to talk about WUD. Today I think the industry in Malaysia has matured enough to understand and receive things like WUD.

But the question is, what are you doing about it?

I give talks about WUD, people listen, discuss and email me to discuss. Then what?

Do you tell your management about it? Show them how it can affect your company’s baseline?

Do you think about WUD when you talk about your next software? Next version of your existing software?

Some of the partners and customers who I talk to are taking WUD quite seriously, which is very evident in the common meetings that I attend with their development teams.

Digital Immigrants on top of the command chain

I also think that some of the Digital Immigrants that Gene talks about might sit in the management team or the leadership team. What do you do in that case?

Well, one way would be to say “Ahh… my manager just doesn't get it” and walk off…

But why not take the road less travelled and be the change catalyst in your company? Talk, Educate, Showcase and Push.

After all, history has proved that change doesn’t necessarily need to happen from top to bottom!

Let’s do something

I know that this blog post alone will not make a difference, so let me start you off along the road of being this change catalyst by inviting you and everyone else reading this blog to join this thought process and talk about it, blog about it, discuss it, tell the world about it.

If we try, the Digital Immigrants may just get it…

Let’s see how we can make that change happen…

Helloooooooooooooooooo Penang!!!!

So here I am again planning to visit your beautiful city this coming Saturday to meet with people who have expressed their interest in SilverCamp in Penang!

What is SilverCamp? Check this out

I will be in Penang from this Saturday afternoon till Sunday morning and I am reachable at 017-264-2969.

Do ping me and let’s meet up

Shout out to Kang YauChuang for pointing me to the right people

Cheers~

Of all the social strategies that I read about this is another thing that I would definitely consider exploring

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about Hitz.FM ( a local radio station in Malaysia) and how their DJ's JJ & Rudy were talking/advertising about Facebook

Well, now they are singing parodies about Facebook! (they took Avril Lavigne's song "Girlfriend" and traded the words with very nice Facebook description)

A little background first - JJ & Rudy have been doing parodies for a long time where they take a song and change the words to something funny/witty

Well, fantastic; for Facebook!

I think this is one of the pushing factors which are increasing the Facebook share in Malaysia.

People who are using Friendster or other social networks are instilled with the curiosity to try Facebook - once they do and find their friends there - they are hooked - a few of my non-technical friends fall into this category

People who don't use any social network at the moment are encouraged by this parody and the Facebook ad (both of which talk about the cool features of Facebook and how one might benefit from Facebook) - a few of my technical friends fall into this category

So, how would you use this (considering that it can be used)?

Think of it as a "Will it Blend" series where Seth Godin collaborated for his book Meatball Sundae and Josh Bernoff collaborated for this book Groundswell

Now the question is - if JJ & Rudy are willing to do a parody about your brand - how would that affect your market?

I read this great post by David Cushman on How We Are Made Great and the way he made his selection on who to follow in Twitter got me thinking…

Who do you follow on twitter?

When I started out with twitter, I liked what my friends were telling me about their dogs and where they were planning to go after work while I was slugging away on my reports. It was fun… I added everyone I barely knew and wanted to know what was up with them, but then slowly it got stale; I started to read selected tweets and stopped following people who didn’t capture my attention…

I didn’t want to know “What are you doing?” anymore (except from few personal friends). I wanted to know “What *information* did people whom I followed had to share with me?”

I did think it was kinda mean of me, but little did I know at that point that the whole social ecosystem had already started to evolve...

I’m sure you have read a lot of blog posts (for example) which talk about how to tweet and it resonated with me and I’m sure it did with you too

I realized that I enjoyed tweets of chrisbrogan, jowyang, stevecla, guykawasaki, shelisrael, frankarr, lokeuei, anguslogan, etc. They made me think, they gave me information, they showed me cool informative pics and pointed out interesting things around the world to me.

Of course I like to read tweets from people who I know on a more personal basis like alexisc, wwegner, digory, arsyan, bgoldy, MossyBlog, shanemo, lvchong, etc.

Now quite a few people add me in twitter (no, not thousands…) and the question is who to follow?

We all follow friends of course…

But what about those spammers?

While I was mentally preparing myself to answer this question Matt Balara already wrote a pretty neat entry to answer it

Enjoy~

Jeremiah continues to amaze me with his twitter strategies

Check out this brilliant post by Jeremiah Owyang - Use twitter for presidential debates (unofficially, although looking at the comments you can be sure that people are gonna give it a try - fantastic!)

What's next? You tell me...

Common Craft has done some great work in explaining your social media today in ‘plain English’

Check out their awesome videos below and go here for more

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

After I wrote this post – it got me thinking about a talk that I attended in MIX 08. It was a talk by Lou Carbone – Founder and CEO of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Lou was giving a talk on Experience Engineering and one of the slides that he showed us was of pictures of Harley Davidson Motorcycles fans who has tattoos of the brand on their bodies; something like this:

And the question was - “Can you get this kinda loyalty for your brand from your consumers?”

Very tough indeed – and the brand that can achieve this has obviously cracked the market…

Obviously there is no magic formula to replicate this – but Canon did it as you can see from my post here!

Creating brand loyalty is indeed a humongous task but good news is there is a pathway to it!

And the path is what I read in an old Harvard Business Review on The Brand Report Card by Kevin Lane Keller – which you can find here

Kevin discusses some awesome points that I feel very compelled to reiterate! Don’t worry, I'll give you the pleasure of reading it yourself ;-)

Kevin talks about the top 10 traits that the strongest brands in the world share and they will point towards “your brand is what your customer say it is” and these traits can be your own road to building brand loyalty – want more?

Pick up the book Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester Research and turn to page 78, you’ll see - “your brand is what your customer say it is”

Go on… Enjoy the read and let me know what you think :-)

Cheers!

We hear about “Green” almost everyday these days… But what are we doing about it?

Well, Canon is! http://www.canongoesgreen.com/

It’s a fantastic campaign! Not only it’s an effort towards nurturing nature, it also gives canon very good brand visibility.

My blog is now carrying Canon’s badge

and my desktop is carrying Canon’s wallpaper

Of course I wanna show my friends and peers that I support “nurturing green” but Canon gets just as much visibility – Talk about viral :-)

And why not? Here is this a company which is trying to do something; I will join them – sure!

Do I mind? No! I am happy to be “green” ;-)

Kudos Canon!

So it’s here again! This is when we hire SilverKnights to join SilverCamp. So if you think you have what it takes to join us and be a SilverKnight – come!

So how do you come to the hiring day?

Check out the SilverKnight Hiring Event on Facebook and request an invite – simple :-)

See you next week on Friday!

Chee