The LugIron Software Blog

As a builder of products, is it more important to simply win customers or should you also strive to convert those users into community contributors–active participants in a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle? Users are people who have to do something with your product for their job or at home. They may or may not want to be [...]

Technorati Tags: community, groups, networking, social networking, social web, wiki

Ideas. Inspiration. Innovation. Ignition. What is the spark that ignites a new idea? Inspiration for ideas can come from any where, any one, and serve customers, neighbors, businesses, or employees. Some companies are finding ways to ignite ideas using web-based applications that give the “crowd” a chance to crowdsource so that their ideas are heard. [...]

Technorati Tags: gift cards, ideas, innovation, inspiration, spark, Starbucks

Here’s a group of links I found useful this week while reading about social support communities, and community growth and management. Some are new, some are old, all are borrowed. Enjoy. Creating Customer Communities « Dachis Group Collaboratory | Social Business Design Our key recommendation, … was to move away from customer community building being a specialist [...]

Technorati Tags: community, community management, Customer Support

As “Avatar” director James Cameron said to The Sun recently, “My reputation probably was deserved at one point” for being an intense person to work with, apparently. But what about building a reputation for being helpful, or a reputation for being knowledgeable? Reputations are built every day using the social tools on the web such [...]

Technorati Tags: customer service, Customer Support, movie, persona, reputation, service, social, social support communities, ssc, support

In early 2000, Warner Brothers released a film based on Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novel, Pay it Forward. It tells the story of a young teenager who is challenged by a teacher to do something that makes a difference in the world. The boy ends up committing three acts of kindness, expecting nothing in return other [...]

Technorati Tags: altruism, community, community building, community management, egoism, motivation, reciprocity, reputation

It’s Thursday night and once again I’ll miss the show Community due to a board meeting. It’s a show that started this fall “about a misfit study group at a community college” with Chevy Chase as a former CEO of moist towlette company. I watched some hilarious clips on Hulu.com, and cracked up at the [...]

Technorati Tags: community, groups, networking, social networking, social web, wiki

A new iPhone app lets AT&T customers report when they have experienced a dropped or failed call, no connection, data failure, or poor voice quality. It’s called Mark the Spot (iTunes link). I had to wonder at first if it was a hoax, because after all, if you have a data failure how are you [...]

Technorati Tags: apps, AT&T, coverage, crowdsourcing, iPhone, knowledgebase, networks, service, support

Just do a search for customer service #fail on Twitter any given time of the day and you’ll see customers complaining about a failure in service. Take this one from a Toyota customer for example. She loves her vehicle, but hates the service. Or how about this one from a Best Buy customer on hold on [...]

Technorati Tags: conversation, customer service, Customer Support, hashtag, software, support, technical support, Twitter