Our First Ever @Commbetterblog Meet Up

If you are new to our blog you know we like to occasionally have conversational blog posts.  In this post, we will dialog back and forth about what we learned from our first ever Communicate Better Blog meet up. 

Jeremy and Jenny share their CommunicateBetterBlog story.

Jeremy: Well Jenny, our first ever Communicate Better Blog meet up is in the books.  We had seven people at the meet up plus about five Phone.com people.  The intimate setting in New York was nice and I am finding it is really easy to talk about our blog. The purpose of observing good and bad customer service with the intent on learning and improving is quite energizing for me.  I loved talking about little things like smiles, names and celebrating birthdays and the big difference they make in customer service.  What was your favorite part of the evening?

Conversocial’s Dan Hesmondhalgh shares his perspective.

Jenny:Well Jeremy, first off I’d like to give a big pat on the back to the both of us for the amazing work we’ve done with our blog. It’s motivating knowing that what we’re doing here is inspiring to others. I really enjoyed listening to to everyone share their stories of customer service. The discussions we had with the group showed such great perspective and insight to various avenues within the customer service field. When we have our next event, I think it would be awesome to have it even more as an open forum and we can toss questions out to the group to get even more ideas flowing. What do you think we can do differently for our next event?

Phone.com CEO Ari Rabban introduces us.

Jeremy: Great word Jenny.  I agree that the collaboration and discussion that occurred at the meet up was terrific.  I think leading off with more interaction is indeed better.  One thing I want to do better in general is to have the ability to show in many ways that our work with the blog is tangibly making a difference.  I would include testimonials as well as metrics like customer satisfaction, net promoter score and others.  Ultimately though I think we made some terrific connections and hopefully spoke some words of encouragement into the lives of a few customer service professionals.  Jenny, when we do meet ups like this, what’s the lasting impact you hope they leave with?

Jenny: I guess I just hope that they leave with some fresh perspectives on customer service. That they challenge themselves, acknowledge their strengths and find passion in their day to day work. That our discussions encourage them to work hard to strive to provide awesome service for their customers and know they are not alone with the difficulties that this sometimes presents. Wait, I’m saying more along the lines of the impact I hope I leave with! By the way, you’re really good with metrics–that’s going to be a necessary component of our next event!

Jeremy: Well said Jenny!  I would like to thank Aaron Rosenthal for organizing the event.  It was also terrific to have Phone.com CEO Ari Rabban, CTO Alon Cohen, Peter Hogan-De Paul, Eric Lituchy, Yangbo Du and Dan Hesmondhalgh and Arielle Sklavos from Conversocial.  Thank you to everyone for enriching the discussion!