December 2015 Summaries

When faced with a critical situation like the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy maintained his official schedule to stay productive and avoid falling behind on other pressing issues. This approach is echoed in six other US presidents who shared productivity tips, including prioritizing tasks consistently, letting go of non-essential tasks, automating life, exercising regularly, investing time in one's partner, setting rules for how to treat others, and focusing on what truly matters. By adopting these principles, individuals can improve their work-life balance, increase productivity, and lead a more balanced life.

MistoBox, a personalized coffee subscription service, connects customers with tailored blends from around the world. To manage their inventory and improve customer retention, MistoBox uses Zapier to automate tasks such as updating products in Magento, creating new cases for customers based on reviews, and triaging support efforts. The company's goal is to work with the best coffee roasters while maintaining a high-quality experience for its customers. With over 500 different coffees from 35 roasters, MistoBox relies on Zapier to streamline their operations, ensuring that every customer receives the perfect cup of coffee.

The text discusses various apps and tools to help track and improve personal health, productivity, and overall well-being. It highlights the importance of tracking data on factors such as sleep, exercise, food intake, and screen time to identify patterns and make informed decisions. Several apps are mentioned, including FitBit Flex and Jawbone UP for tracking basic health metrics, Runkeeper and Strava for runners, MapMyRide for cyclists, Lark, Lifesum, Noom, and MyFitnessPal for meal tracking, Beddit and Sleepio for sleep tracking, RescueTime and Exist for productivity and well-being tracking, and others. The text emphasizes the importance of accurate goal-setting, selective sharing, and analyzing outcomes to achieve success with self-tracking.

The way sales teams measure their success through email marketing is often misguided, focusing on metrics like open rates and response rates instead of revenue. To optimize for the right metrics, businesses should focus on tracking progress consistently and measuring the strength of their funnel, which includes every step from opening to closing a sale. By focusing solely on revenue-driving metrics such as demos set up, pipeline opportunities, and closed deals, businesses can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to increase sales. It's also important to track variables that affect these metrics, experiment with different campaigns, and analyze results using tools like Trello or SalesforceIQ to inform future marketing strategies. Ultimately, the goal is to create a data-driven email marketing strategy that drives revenue growth.

The internet is an infinite resource of knowledge, connecting people to information and each other. Online communities make the internet feel alive by providing spaces for discussion, sharing advice, and making new friends. These networks can be distracting but also foster growth and learning. The best online communities include social news sites like Reddit, Hacker News, Product Hunt, Versioning, Designer News, GrowthHackers, Inbound.org, Quibb, FounderDating, Moz Community, Slack Groups, Online Geniuses, and Founded X. These platforms offer opportunities for networking, learning from peers, and finding resources on various topics, including programming, design, marketing, and entrepreneurship. They also provide spaces for discussion, Q&A forums, and expert advice, helping users build their skills and businesses.

The allure of a side project is enticing, as it can be a way for companies to solve problems, experiment with new ideas, position their brand, attract more customers, and even have fun while doing so. Side projects can come in various shapes and sizes, from internal tools to customer-facing undertakings that impact the bottom line. Companies like Crew, Kissmetrics, and RJMetrics have successfully started side projects that have contributed to their growth and success. These projects often start with a problem or need, are kept simple, prepared to fail, and foster innovation within the company culture. By embracing side projects, companies can exercise their idea muscle, create something new, and potentially even turn it into a full-fledged product or service that attracts customers and drives revenue.

In the context of customer support, Tina Fey's "Rules for Improvisation" offer valuable insights into effective communication with users. By applying these principles, support teams can create a more empathetic and solution-focused experience. The first rule, "Say Yes," emphasizes acknowledging user sentiment and frustration while also providing clear answers. This principle is closely tied to the second rule, "Say Yes AND," which encourages guiding users towards solutions by adding value to their message. The third rule, "Make Statements," promotes taking ownership of problems and providing explicit responses rather than raising questions or hedging. Finally, the fourth rule, "There Are No Mistakes," reframes mistakes as opportunities for growth and authenticity in communication. By embracing these principles, customer support teams can turn user interactions into positive experiences that foster trust and loyalty.

"In 2014, Vasyl Rabosyuk, director of technology development at the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee (OHROC), was tasked with connecting silos of voter data to create a more accessible and usable platform. He used Zapier, an integration tool that connects over 550 apps and services, to bridge the gap between their SQL database, NationBuilder campaign management app, Mandrill transactional email software, and OCR app. This allowed OHROC to automate tasks such as sending personalized emails to early voters and follow-up calls when canvassers couldn't reach them. The system also helped with voter engagement, as candidates could send targeted messages to undecided voters. With the right approach, Rabosyuk's solution enabled OHROC to break a historic political campaign record by filling 65 of the 99 seats in the Ohio House of Representatives with Republican candidates."

Plushcap here! The author, who worked on the Zapier support team for three years, emphasizes the importance of numbers in understanding customer support effectiveness. They discuss various metrics used by customer service teams, including Volume, Response Time, Happiness, and Product Trends, highlighting both their benefits and pitfalls. For example, Total Conversations can be noisy due to irrelevant data points, while Average Response Time can be distorted by outliers. The author also explores more nuanced metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and In-Signature Happiness Ratings, which provide valuable insights into user satisfaction. By understanding these metrics and their limitations, teams can make informed decisions about support performance and prioritize improvements to enhance the customer experience.

Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom, emphasizes that customer feedback is crucial for a business's growth and success. However, he also stresses that not all feedback is created equal and that companies should focus on collecting valuable feedback from the right users. The key to effective customer feedback is to start small, talk to users about something while they're doing it, and ask meaningful questions that lead to quality responses. Traynor also advises against confusing quality assurance with customer feedback, providing meaningful timeframes for questions, ensuring users feel qualified to respond, avoiding hypotheticals, and treating feedback like a hypothesis. By following these tips, companies can establish a stable connection to their customers' oxygen supply and drive business growth.

I can summarize the text for you in one paragraph. Here is a summary of the key points: Customer service is often perceived as an easy job, but it's actually challenging due to the varying emotions and expectations of customers. To de-escalate interactions with angry customers, the H.E.A.R.D. technique can be used, which involves listening, expressing empathy, apologizing, resolving the issue, and learning from the experience. In other scenarios, such as server outages or feature requests, businesses should apologize sincerely, communicate openly, and offer solutions to mitigate the impact on customers. Additionally, customer service agents must handle situations where they can't provide a discount or build a requested feature, and sometimes even fire customers who aren't a good fit for their product. By using these techniques and being prepared for unexpected challenges, customer support teams can turn difficult interactions into opportunities to build better relationships with customers.

At Zapier, all hands support means that every person on the team, regardless of job title, spends some portion of their day solving problems for customers. This approach has been adopted by many fast-growing companies, including Stripe, StatusPage.io, Olark, and Basecamp. These companies have found that effective all hands support focuses on making life better for customers, leading to benefits such as improved customer service, a team learning directly from customers, faster and easier support, the whole product being touched by the team, support getting the respect it deserves, and a culture built around empathy. However, setting up all hands support also comes with challenges, including hiring difficulties, wear and tear on staff, leaving people out of the loop, time and monetary investment, and potential poor customer experiences if not executed properly. To set up all hands support, companies need to experiment and find what works best for them, but some common strategies include rotating engineers in for week-long shifts, having non-support staff do a half-day of support every week, documenting everything, pairing new support staff with dedicated support people, and making sure the whole team is trained on support.