Listen and grow your business

Listening is such an important part of customer interaction. I recently read a great example of this by a company named Cinch on Scott Monty's blog (from Ford).

Cinch is a company that combines Social Media with voice messaging, which is a pretty amazing service. It allows you to hear the intonation and other cues of those who are messaging. This a company you would think would excel at listening. I am pleased to state that they do.
This is what Scott Monty wrote on his blog;

"On May 31, Cinch announced to its customers via email that it would be changing the service's URL from http://www.cinchcast.com to the shorter http://icin.ch. Easier to remember, right? And since they have an iPhone app, iCinch seemed logical.

Evidently not.

Customers didn't take it that way, at least. And while I didn't see any violent backlash online, the team at Cinch must have gotten an earful, for on June 1 - the very next day - they issued the following email to their customer base:
Yesterday, when we sent out the message regarding our upcoming website transition from http://cinchcast.com/ to http://icin.ch/, we heard back from several of our community members that they did not like the new domain choice. While it was short, they thought it was hard to remember and share with others, and did not clearly represent the Cinch brand.


Well, we took your feedback to heart. We still need to transition domains on June 7, 2011. However, we have decided to transition the Cinch website to http://cinch.fm instead. Again, other than the URL change this transition will be seamless to our users.


Please let us know if you have any questions. We apologize for any confusion.
Best Regards,
The Cinch Team"


I agree with Scott that this is an amazing example of listening; not only that, it acknowledges their customers. Cinch really wanted to let their customers know they listened, and acted on the comments.

This is the power of social media and e-marketing. Many of the comments came via the social media accounts linked to Cinch.

I also wanted to add a great social media tip I learned from Belgium Brewery. They ran a contest to promote pictures of people's dogs where the winner got dog-related prizes. What made this contest unique was that they also gave $1 for every entry to the Humane Society, which created a huge support from dog lovers everywhere. Giving to charity often motivates people more than just a prize because people such as myself don't believe we will win, but we are doing something for charity.

Another great idea my wife is addicted to is Free Kibble  where you answer questions about dogs and cats and they give away kibble to animal shelters whether or not you answer correctly. A great cause you should go check out!

The message for today is: listen and provide service and people will come.