People have been serving customers in “real time” ever since there have been customers. So this is not a new concept. In fact, we’re using technology to correct a problem that technology introduced–distance between company and customer.

If someone walks into your store with a problem, you fix it immediately. If a customer calls you on the phone, you talk to them (hopefully) immediately. But what if someone posts something negative about you on Twitter or to an Internet Forum? What then?

Real time search allows you to monitor those types of interactions, complaints, and complements. It’s still your responsibility to respond, but the time needed to find such messages has been greatly reduced.

The lines between marketing and customer service are blurring. Quickly responding to someone on their own turf in a respectful manner has potential not only to set them straight, but also increase the likelihood they will tell other people about your remarkable effort to make it right. And your public response will serve as a permanent record for anyone else who sees the comment.

Twitter is currently the primary source of real time content, but expect others to get on board quickly. Twitter’s success has driven the major search engines to add real time search features to their products. But Twitter still manages the majority of real time traffic, so you can use Twitter’s built-in search engine as a place to hear what people are saying about you. Otherwise, expect popular online listening tools to start accommodating real time search in the near future.

This certainly won’t pre-empt any traditional forms of customer service, but people are out there talking about you online one way or another. You’ll be better off if you’re aware of it, since it’s not just going to go away on it’s own. At the end of the day, you should view this as an opportunity to serve people better.

 This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles 

 Haven’t experienced an ePiphany yet?  Sign up! 

Comments

Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web, ePiphany Featured Story

Real time search is getting to be a quite the buzzphrase in recent months. But what is it really?  The simplest and most familiar example is Twitter’s search feature, which provides almost instantaneous access to anyone’s tweets.  But given the recent implementations by the major search players, Google and Microsoft’s Bing, there appears to be some disagreement on the finer points. This article by Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land analyzes the concept in a really nice way that I tend to agree with. It also delves into a lot of other specialized tools for real time search, but I’ll stick to the big names here (Twitter, Google, and Bing). Sullivan maintains that real time search is only truly “real time” when its sources come from microblogging services that provide a real time feed of the activity on their networks. For the most part right now, that means Twitter. There is just no single place for search engines to constantly look for updates from news sites or long-format blogs. So they have to depend on being alerted to updates by such sites, or actively crawling around the entire internet looking for new content. Neither of which is reliably real time in the up-to-the-second way that Twitter is.

Read more »

Comments

Andrew Crowe Categories: Social Media, Technology, Web, ePiphany Featured Story

Google is getting smarter and scarier all the time.  Now inserted at the top of regular search results you can find the “latest search results”.  Tweets, news, and Elvis sightings that someone might have posted even seconds ago.

To see it in action put in a Google search for: Coke, or Ford, or even Elvis Presley Lives. Then click “show options”, a new series of “options” will populate the left rail. Scroll down to “Any Time”, and click “Latest”.  A new page will load of all the latest stuff. And if it’s hot it you will start to see the news scroll by. And when aren’t Elvis sightings hot news!?

From an SEO perspective it’s a way to watch the conversation on Google and participate in real time. Twitter is probably the fastest way to get into the stream and make some noise if you choose.

Google put together a video on the new search feature. If you want more click the start button on the embedded video below.

Happy Birthday Elvis!

 This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles 

 Haven’t experienced an ePiphany yet?  Sign up! 

Comments

Tom Lynch Categories: Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web, ePiphany Featured Story, google