The MatriX Files

I was on the phone with a company receptionist the other day, trying desperately to reach someone in sales or customer service. Trouble is, the person I was speaking with could not have cared less about me or my needs. She kept repeating that she had no idea where anybody was, she could not leave her desk and all she could do was put me through to voice mail. You can imagine how that encounter made me feel about the company and their products.

In the corporate world, it’s conventional to believe that the person answering the phone is the lowest person on the totem pole. Worse yet, many companies believe we can replace receptionists with automated attendants: ring the doorbell for service or dial by extension.

Me, I’ll always have someone answer our main line because most people calling Matrix Group are customers who need help or prospects who need our services. So you better believe I want a warm, friendly, knowledgeable and committed person answering our phones! And because it’s not always clear to people who does what in a Web agency (do you talk to the programmer or a front-end developer or the PM about an error on your admin site?), a good receptionist can field and route calls efficiently.

My Creative Director Alex Pineda says that every employee is a brand ambassador for the company. So my receptionist, as the person who perhaps has the most contact with the most people, is arguably the most important brand ambassador I have. Which is why her title is First Impressions Officer. The other admins in the office, who also share customer interaction responsibilities, are equally important brand ambassadors.

Scott Spandauer defines a brand as “more than just your company image. It also includes your customers’ experience and the expectation you set when doing business with your company. In short, it is (a) promise.”

As a CEO, I may set the tone for our corporate culture and brand, but it’s my staff who live and reinforce it with our customers. Company owners everywhere, remember that your customers’ experiences start with the person who answers the phone and greets people at the door.

• No Comments
• Tags: branding, corporate culture, customer service, Matrix Group

So I’ve been on Google Plus for a while now. Actually, I’ve had an account for a while now, having received an invitation early, but I rarely post updates and I rarely read updates from my various circles. I’m simply struggling to integrate it into my life.

It’s not that I don’t like Google Plus. On the contrary, I like the interface, I like that it’s so easy to add people to circles and post updates to only specific circles, and I like that the interface is (for now, at least) nice and clean, not cluttered with ads.

It’s just that I’m feeling saturated. I already have my routine of posting interesting news items to Twitter, posting personal updates on Facebook, uploading my weekly video interviews to YouTube, checking into FourSquare when I go out to eat or visit a new place, and blogging once a week.

The question for me has become: what place should Google Plus occupy in my life?

I guess I could simply post the same updates to a bunch of social networks, but that doesn’t make sense to me. If I’m connected with the same people on multiple networks, they would see the same posts and that’s no fun and a waste of time.

Perhaps Google Plus will become, like Twitter, another public persona for me, whereas Facebook is the network I reserve for family, friends and close network.

Sean Parker, a co-founder of original music file-sharing service Napster and a prominent Facebook shareholder, says that, “power users have gone to Twitter or to Google+.” Could this be true? In my case, my techiest of friends and co-workers seem to be more active on Google+ these days but my network is still firmly on Facebook. And yet, Google+ is grabbing subscribers fast. GooglePlusWiki says that there are now over 20M people on the network.

After pondering this issue for a while now, here’s where what I’m thinking. Although the majority of my network is still not on Google+, I need to be on it. Because no one network will dominate and it will be hard to ignore Google+. Just as I tell clients that they need to be on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr because their audiences are on these networks, I know that I need to be on all the major networks personally. I will figure out where to find the time to post to Google+. I will repeat some posts because there is some overlap in connections but it’s not 100%. I will hope that HootSuite will soon let me post to Google+ in addition to Twitter and Facebook. And I will figure out what brainspace Google+ will occupy.

How about you? Are you on Google+? What is Google+ doing to your Facebook and Twitter updates? Are you posting different things? How are you integrating Google+ into your day?

• 5 Comments
• Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Plus, Twitter

I was driving home from dinner tonight when I heard on the radio that Steve Jobs had died. This blog post will be one of zillions proclaiming how Apple, under Steve Jobs’ leadership, changed lives.

My story is simple. My many Apple products made it easy to share the wonders I call my sons and made technology easy at home. I’ve been an Apple fan for a long time and have slowly accumulated a collection of Apple products.

Apple Should Have a Campaign About How Macs are for Moms

My Mac is my mommy machine. I use iPhoto to store and manage my over 30,000 photos, mostly of my sons and photos from our travels around the world. And when I want to share photos with my family, I select the photos I want and then ask iPhoto to send lower resolution versions, so I don’t clog e-mail inboxes with photos that are 4MEG each — no need to resize the images first, which means my mom gets photos nearly every week!

At the end of each year, I made video slideshows of my children’s activities using iDVD. The themes make it easy to put together a great looking DVD and I get a terrific keepsake from the year.

My older son learned how to use a computer on our Mac (the baby isn’t old enough but he’s definitely interested). He immediately understood the intuitive user interface and can play games, watch videos and surf the web.

iChat and now FaceTime make it easy to stay in touch with Grandma, who lives in California. She loves that she can see the boys, although she often frets about how she looks (as if the boys care, they love her!).

Apple Devices Make Home Networking Easy(ier)

I joke with my techie husband that setting up a home wireless network is not for mere mortals, although I have to admit that Apple has made it easy. We have Airport base stations around the house to ensure that have a good wi-fi signal thoughout our 4-story townhome.

We’ve set up speakers in the different parts of the house and downloaded an app that lets me control the Mac and send music or radio programs to different parts of the house.

We’ve owned an Apple TV for many years. We use it to watch movies, watch YouTube videos on the big screen, and enjoy our photos. We were worried that Apple would discontinue the Apple TV for lack of sales but it looks like this device will be around for a while. Thank goodness!

I don’t think I could live without my iPad at this point. My husband, older son and I were vying for iPad time so much time that we now have 2 of these tablets at home. I use my iPad to check my schedule, check weather, check e-mail, surf the web, find recipes, play games, manage my user manuals, listen to music, watch movies on Netflix, and so on and so forth.

Finally, I love how all my Apple purchases (music, apps, games, movies and shows) are done through my one iTunes account. And I absolutely adore how synching my devices regularly means I can enjoy these purchases on all (or most) of our devices — PC, iPad, iPod Touch and Apple TV.

Thank you, Steve Jobs. Thank you, Apple

If you haven’t already noticed, I’m a huge Apple fan and a big consumer of Apple products. I’m passionate about Apple products because the products clearly were developed with end users like me in mind. I love the form factor of the devices, I love the easy user interface, I love the diversity of the apps and functions, and I love how all the products work together.

Thank you, Steve Jobs for making my life as a mom better.

• 6 Comments
• Tags: apple, branding, Gadgets

I have a giant stack of user manuals in my house. Manuals for the stove, the microwave, the gas fireplace, the digital camera, the DVR, the game consoles, yada, yada. Yes, I’m the type of person who actually reads user manuals so I can use my devices better and do my own troubleshooting when there’s a problem. When I don’t have a user manual for a device, I look for it online and bookmark or download the PDF.

Well, I’m going paperless with my user manuals because they’re all going into my iPad.

Just imagine this: all (or most) of my manuals in one portable device, searchable, and including a dictionary and ability to write notes. Here’s how to do it:

• Download the PDF to the computer that you use to synch and back up your iPad.
• Drag the PDF to your Books collection in iTunes
• The next time you synch your iPad, voila!, the user manual is now on your iPad

This means I can get rid of the ugly stacks in my house and I never have to worry that a manufacturer will remove a user manual for an aging device.  Want to learn more? This article from MakeUseOf shows you how to paginate, bookmark and annotate in iBooks. Love it!

• 2 Comments
• Tags: apple, Gadgets, Productivity