Eday: Kicking off with the zealous advocate of Crowd Sourcing
Story byEdial Dekker
Edial Dekker is a New Media student at the University in Amsterdam. He works as a freelancer and is specialized in the arts of data visualiz(show all)Edial Dekker is a New Media student at the University in Amsterdam. He works as a freelancer and is specialized in the arts of data visualization. He is also co-founder of BLOG08 and is involved in many side-projects that have to do with new media. If you are interested in data visualizations, be sure to drop an e-mail.
See hisLinkedIn profileandBlogfor more information.
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Jeff Howe (Wired)
Crowd sourcing, a term first coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 article of Wired, has gotten a lot of interest ever since. Business authors, trend watchers and journalists are often referring to the therm when talking about the mass elaboration of the web since the 2.0 era. Both the term and its underlying business models have attracted controversy and criticism, about two years later Jeff Howe is kicking off Eday with a presentation about, guess what? Crowd Sourcing. After finally receiving some kind of intertube signal, here goes.
Introduced as the man who ‘lives up to his book’, Jeff Howe starts with an intro about how MySpace and other social media were the futile ground for Crowd Sourcing. Howe realized that it was more than just kids making funny videos — something more fundamental was at work here. One month later he published his article about the phenomena and came up with a new word for it. Diversity, open and subversive are the keywords for this new development he called Crowd Sourcing.
Howe does not really add anything new to his speech he has been doing for the last few years, I’d suggest you check out anearlier articlewritten here on The Next Web blog. Howe ended his talk with a quote from the X-files:’The answers are out there’. With Crowd Sourcing thriving like today, Howe concludes: ‘Together we can solve problems that otherwise seemed impossible to solve’. I hope Howe will be writing a new book soon, living up to his book and living from his book is hopefully not the same thing…
Brian Kalma (Zappos)
Zappos, an online shoe company, has had a very fast growth in the last few years. A revenue of 1 billion dollars from shoes with 1600 employees proves that their approach to business works – the customer is king. Brian Kalma, who functions as a Creative Director, talks about Zappos and their unique way to serve their customers where retaining customers plays the most important role. Not ‘unlike many others’, as Kalma puts it, selling to the masses. As an online company, you want to add value to a product to make a customer come back to you. Kalma sayscustomer touch pointsare the magic words for creating a succesfull online brand. Note that when you order something at Zappos, the product is shipped for free. You can even send your product back without any costs.So what do users experience when they are buying things at Zappos.com?
Brian Kalma is visibly proud of the company and by this point, his enthusiasm spreads like a fever among the audience. Kalma explains that their commitment to customer service is their unique selling point. With an delivery accuracy rate of 99%, 1600 people employed, a revenue of over 1 billion dollars, and a few hours between your order and a UPS vehicle – Zappos proves to be a good example of how an online business can add a lot of value by always listening to customers.
The almighty pizza story
It’s the stories about Zappos that make the brand Zappos as strong as it is today. Creating as many customer touch points as possible gives a lot of room for these stories. Kalma recalls a story of a drunk night when he and some other employees were in need of pizza and they called Zappos customer care. You probably see this coming: the Zappos employee found five companies who could deliver the pizza’s that night.
Thefour thingsto make a brand thatreally matteraccording to Kalma:
It’s the stories about Zappos that helps the company to foster and promote their wares, but it also creates a very valuable buzz. Word of mouth is the by-product of the service that Zappos employees offer to their customers.Blogs,TwitterandZappos TVare all examples of touch points for the customers to interact. Social networks are not just a ‘Hey! Join us’, but they are new touch points for our customers to interact with the brand.
