Bearhug consists of four main modules:

Pulse: This module gives your customers and your team real-time status information about your product or service. You can create “pulse updates” and sync them to your company Twitter account to keep everyone updated on issues, downtime, anything that affects their immediate satisfaction. Customers can subscribe to the updates via SMS — for quick notifications if time is of the essence — or via email or Twitter.

Answers: This module is where your consumer community can ask a question and then get an answer from both other members of the community who use your product or service and from your company. Using this module, you can moderate the questions and pick the community answer that best responds to the issue. You can also craft a company response. People can then access the best of both worlds in terms of information. This section builds a robust and interactive live FAQ for your customers.

First Rate: Customers post reviews — both good and bad — all over the web. Customers can post their reviews through this module and you can respond to feedback immediately, provide advice, moderate, publish and syndicate the reviews you want to feature.

Overheard: This module is Bearhug’s listening post. At presstime, it could pull in Twitter mentions of your company, product or service with more services pending including Yelp, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. Through Overheard, you can immediately reply to mentions of your company or product on the web.

The Bearhug Dashboard gives you a global view and statistics of the activity about your company. You can also access metrics such as your company’s average response time, average rating and customer satisfaction. When you set up Bearhug, you can change the header text, language and messaging to display not only your branding but your brand personality. You can have Bearhug for each product you offer and turn modules on and off depending on your needs.

There’s also a sidebar widget to place a Bearhug support button on your web site.

Bearhug helps you embrace the organic feedback your customers are providing all over the web, while also bringing some management and metrics to the mix.

Bearhug’s currently in closed beta. Use this code to try it: webworkerdaily

What are you doing to reach out to and manage your customer community?

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Many technology companies have come to the end of the line on providing personal customer service. I won’t point any fingers, but some of the biggest names in software, web sites and online services have no way for customers to contact them by phone or even online chat; even email forms go unanswered. Instead, users must rely on volunteer help on bulletin boards, discussion groups and the like.

We should be taking advantage of our “end-of-the-line” position. Web workers and small businesses can maintain professional relationships with customers in ways that large companies cannot. Clients should know that they can get help from us, and we should make clear what support services we offer. Service is how we can differentiate ourselves, compete with larger businesses, and thrive in difficult economic times.

Unfortunately, saying “we provide outstanding customer service” has become a cliche. It’s up to us to convince current and potential clients that the service we provide is worth the added cost.

• Provide ways to connect with us. Many of our clients prefer to talk to a human being. As the founder and co-owner of a three-person web development and hosting company, I spend what sometimes feels like an inordinate amount of time assisting customers. But I’ve concluded that providing excellent customer service is the only way that a company like mine can survive.
• Provide self-help options. In a recent talk, Chip Lackey of J.D. Power and Associates (the people who do the well-known ratings) said that customer satisfaction goes up when self-help options are provided. You don’t need to be a big company to offer such options. My company offers status updates (available on two separate web sites, on Facebook, on Twitter and as recorded phone messages), a knowledge base/FAQ, and a blog. We’re also experimenting with offering technical support through Get Satisfaction.
• Maintain reliability and responsiveness. We try to answer phone calls immediately during business hours, even when we’re out of the office, thanks to call forwarding. And we respond to emails within 24 hours. We’re also on call after hours; we’ve found that most clients don’t abuse our availability.
• Stress creativity and uniqueness. Our customers come to us because they don’t want a web site that looks like a tired template from a stock source. And despite our small size, we have the content development, graphic design and programming skills matching those of larger companies; we also have arrangements with others who offer services that we don’t.
• Make the cost as painless as possible. We have found that most clients don’t want to pay extra for a service contract, so we include the cost of service in the project fee. But we make clear which services are included, and spell out rates for services that are not part of the project cost. We also take credit cards, and set up payment plans when needed.

Like Darrell, I’m not a big fan of personal branding. I have a journalism background, and am skeptical of advertising/marketing jargon. But, unlike Darrell, I do think that it’s important to be visible, so I’ve used the above strategies to stand out in the crowd.

Share your customer service tips in the comments.

Image by sxc.hu user thadz.

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Now, I’m not famous, so I doubt that any news about me would cause a spike in Internet traffic, or get me invited to appear on “The Colbert Report.” But recent events made me realize that I still needed to have a plan in place to be able to respond to news (both real and false) posted online about me. Here’s what I came up with.

• Be prepared to respond instantly. The speed with which people heard about Jackson’s death was amazing. A friend of mine who happens to be a radio announcer smugly announced on his Facebook status that he was able to broadcast the news before CNN did. So if someone posts information about you, even (or especially!) if it’s not correct, there’s no time to waste. You must comment immediately, even if it’s a bare-bones “that’s wrong, more later.”
• Make sure that someone else has access to your accounts in case you aren’t available to post.
• Remember that the social networks are connected. If someone is talking about you on Twitter, the same comments are probably being made on Facebook, and other places as well. Check, and be ready to respond accordingly.
• Use Twitter and social network updates as backups to your usual means of communication. Recently, a much-hyped new web site found that it couldn’t cope with the traffic, so it put up a “down for maintenance” notice, complete with a “meanwhile, follow us on Twitter” recommendation. It was able to post updates on Twitter when its own site was overstretched.
• Don’t rely on just one site, or just one medium, to get the word out. My customers know that they can get the latest info on my web site, a backup web site on a leased server in another state, on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and by pre-recorded phone message. I’m also experimenting with sites like Get Satisfaction and Yelp as backup information sources.

I hope that I never have to implement my emergency plans. But it’s a comfort to know that I’ll be ready if someone posts a “did you hear the news…?” message about me or my business.

How have you prepared to respond to news and rumors about you?

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