Podcasts about Conversocial

Join us for one of our most insightful edits to date, as we welcome a stellar guest in Adam Kay to the Sales Code Leadership Podcast! Adam is CRO at Playroll.com a business offering Employer of Record solutions. Prior to this, Adam successfully led and scaled several revenue organisations such as Shoutlet, Conversocial and Paddle, the latter achieving unicorn status and exceptionally rapid growth. Adam has progressed in his career from a trainee sales rep to CRO and has learnt and developed a people-centric playbook for scaling startups into successful businesses. In his spare time, Adam enjoys spending time with his 3 kids, he also has a passion for sports such as snowboarding as well as an avid reader and chess player.Connect with the show host Kevin Thiele: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinthiele/ 

In 2021, a lengthy analysis was published by a now-defunct online news outlet concluding that cultivating animal cells at commercial meat industry scale was simply a pipedream. Josh March didn't really disagree. But he thought if you could bioengineer the animal cells to get more comfortable at production scale, and add those finished cells into otherwise plant-based meats, you could both commercialize meat cultivation and make animal-free burgers taste even better. Not only did March persuade himself of it, but he persuaded investors, too. In 2022—a very difficult time for startups to raise VC cash—March's startup, SciFi Foods, raised $22 million to bioengineer better animal-free beef. Of course, many in the cultivated meat world shy away from talking about or practicing bioengineering for fear that it will turn consumers off. But not March. He's betting big that technologies like bioengineering and CRISPR are actually the only path to success in this field, so he's going all in.  In this interview, we talk all about Josh's story, including two previous startup acquisitions, his motivations for doing this work, and what he sees as the future of meat. Discussed in this episode Josh became interested in cultivated meat after reading The Singularity is Near and Player of Games We discuss the 2021 Counter story on cultivated meat's prospects Josh recommends reading How to Get Rich Paul recommends reading Tender is the Flesh Josh is currently reading Mythos Paul references Circe as a female-centered retelling of Greek mythology BTW, Josh is the author of Message Me: The Future of Customer Service in the Era of Social Messaging and Artificial Intelligence More about Josh March Joshua March is the co-founder & CEO of SCiFi Foods, on a mission to disrupt the $1.2T meat market by leveraging the power of genetic engineering to make cultivated meat (real meat grown from cells) a commercial reality. He was previously the Co-founder & CEO of Conversocial, a digital care platform for messaging that works with many of the biggest brands in the world (acquired by Verint).

On this episode, we're excited to have Joshua March. Joshua is Co-founder and CEO of SCiFi Foods, a startup creating transformational products by combining cultivated meat with plant-based ingredients to make burgers shockingly close to the taste of conventional beef. A serial entrepreneur with two exits to his name, Joshua was previously the Co-founder of Conversocial, a digital care platform for messaging that integrates with many of the world's leading brands. Joshua has a passion for all things food science, environmental sustainability, and believes in the potential of synthetic biology to create superior products for a rapidly growing world. Originally from England and now based in San Francisco. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/futurefoodshow/support

Joshua March is Co-founder and CEO of SCiFi Foods, a Bay Area food tech company focused on making transformational meat alternatives first by combining plant-based and cultivated meat to make burgers that are drastically closer in taste to the real versions. But his journey began in a completely different industry.One line in a scifi book sparked his passion and led him to take serious action, and it has been an incredible journey from there!Josh has two exits to his name. He was previously the CEO and Co-founder of Conversocial, a digital care platform for messaging that integrates with many of the world's leading brands, and he is also the author of Message Me, a book about the future of customer service in the era of social messaging and artificial intelligence.In this episode, you will hear:How Josh blew through his first business loan learning the ropes and what he did to get himself back on track financiallyThe key areas Josh and his team focused on to tell a compelling story to investorsHow to identify the biggest risk factors in your startup businessConnect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com

Today's guest is Joshua March, co-founder & CEO of Sci-fi foods. This Coldplay-backed startup is on a mission to empower humanity to eat sustainably. Their innovative approach consists of growing cultivated beef cells while combining them with plant-based proteins to achieve a better-tasting burger at a fraction of the cost. In our chat, we touched on the alt protein market, as well as their vision, mission, technology, and their latest funding round that brought in a new board member from leading investor a16z, Vijay Pande. About Joshua March Joshua March is CEO and Co-founder of SCiFi Foods, a Bay Area food tech company focused on making transformational meat alternatives first by combining plant-based and cultivated meat to make burgers that are drastically closer in taste to the real versions. A serial entrepreneur with two exits to his name, Josh was previously the CEO and Co-founder of Conversocial, a digital care platform for messaging that integrates with many of the world's leading brands. He is also the author of Message Me, a book about the future of customer service in the era of social messaging and artificial intelligence, and has been featured on Bloomberg, CNBC, and the BBC, amongst others. Josh has a passion for all things food science, environmental sustainability, and believes in the potential of synthetic biology to create superior products for a rapidly growing world. Originally from England and now based in San Francisco, Joshua can be found on Twitter @joshuamarch About SCiFi Foods SCiFi Foods works on the next generation of meat alternatives by cultivating meat, instead of harvesting meat from animals. SCiFi develops and executes a strategic vision for a biomanufacturing company that grows meat from animal cells, thereby empowering humanity to eat sustainable food.

Shane Mac is particularly proud of one of the several successful companies he co-founded in the last 10 years: Squared Away. Co-founded with his former assistant without venture funding, Squared Away connects military spouses with quality remote employment opportunities.  In addition to Squared Away, Shane is the co-founder and President of XMTP, founder and General Partner of Logos Labs, and a passionate writer and musician. He also co-founded and served as CEO of Assist, which was acquired by Verint after merging with Conversocial. In this episode, Shane provides insight into his impressive trajectory, beginning with crucial advice he received from his brother during his senior year of high school. He discusses the additional influential figures who have helped shape his path and what they have accomplished together by embracing curiosity and communication. Shane opens up about managing anxiety and sobriety while discussing relocating from San Francisco to Nashville, and his exciting ideas for the “switchboard” city. Later in the episode, Shane talks Eric through his current projects, including a glimpse into his ready-to-launch XMTP, a new communication protocol for Web3, which, if all goes well, will be virtually invisible. (1:44) – Following his curiosity (4:55) – A brother's impact (6:21) – Baseball (8:09) – Finding music (12:32) – Exploring e-commerce (15:00) – Microblogging (17:25) – Developing Assist (23:33) – Examining company culture (28:03) – Squared Away (35:12) – Escaping San Francisco for Nashville (37:01) – Dealing with anxiety (40:24) – Designing the perfect day (43:50) – Cauliflower gnocchi and Taco Bell (47:05) – XMTP (57:44) – Logos Labs Eric Satz—entrepreneur, serial investor, lover of hot peppers— is the founder and CEO of Alto. The idea behind Alto was born out of a problem. Eric found a clear need to give people more control over their investments (and investment opportunities) in a simple, streamlined way and created Alto to make these opportunities available to all investors, not just the ultra-wealthy or institutional investors.  If you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, please subscribe to The Altogether Show with Eric Satz in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps others find the show. Podcast episode production by Dante32.

Shane Mac is particularly proud of one of the several successful companies he co-founded in the last 10 years: Squared Away. Co-founded with his former assistant without venture funding, Squared Away connects military spouses with quality remote employment opportunities.  In addition to Squared Away, Shane is the co-founder and President of XMTP, founder and General Partner of Logos Labs, and a passionate writer and musician. He also co-founded and served as CEO of Assist, which was acquired by Verint after merging with Conversocial. In this episode, Shane provides insight into his impressive trajectory, beginning with crucial advice he received from his brother during his senior year of high school. He discusses the additional influential figures who have helped shape his path and what they have accomplished together by embracing curiosity and communication. Shane opens up about managing anxiety and sobriety while discussing relocating from San Francisco to Nashville, and his exciting ideas for the “switchboard” city. Later in the episode, Shane talks Eric through his current projects, including a glimpse into his ready-to-launch XMTP, a new communication protocol for Web3, which, if all goes well, will be virtually invisible. (1:44) – Following his curiosity (4:55) – A brother's impact (6:21) – Baseball (8:09) – Finding music (12:32) – Exploring e-commerce (15:00) – Microblogging (17:25) – Developing Assist (23:33) – Examining company culture (28:03) – Squared Away (35:12) – Escaping San Francisco for Nashville (37:01) – Dealing with anxiety (40:24) – Designing the perfect day (43:50) – Cauliflower gnocchi and Taco Bell (47:05) – XMTP (57:44) – Logos Labs Eric Satz—entrepreneur, serial investor, lover of hot peppers— is the founder and CEO of Alto. The idea behind Alto was born out of a problem. Eric found a clear need to give people more control over their investments (and investment opportunities) in a simple, streamlined way and created Alto to make these opportunities available to all investors, not just the ultra-wealthy or institutional investors.  If you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, please subscribe to The Altogether Show with Eric Satz in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps others find the show. Podcast episode production by Dante32.

Thomas Hopkins is the Engineering Manager at Getro, the platform for independent professional networks to easily make and receive introductions. Their customers include over 400 independent professional networks — like venture capital funds (Union Square Ventures), membership communities (Women 2.0) and government associations (Techleap.nl) and have raised ~$4m in seed funding. Prior to Getro, Thomas was Lead Engineer for Strategic Projects at Conversocial where he developed software to simplify how brands communicate with their customers by combining human agents and bots in a single platform. Thomas holds a BSc in Physics from the University of Southampton in the UK and previously served as co-founder and co-chair of the London Pro European Forum - a network for local and national political organisations to collaborate on campaigns to improve ties between the UK and EU.Connect with Behind Company Lines and HireOtter Website Facebook Twitter LinkedIn:Behind Company LinesHireOtter Instagram Buzzsprout

This week's guest is Joshua March, Co-Founder & CEO of Artemys Foods.Artemys Foods is on a mission to empower humanity to eat sustainably. It's working on the next generation of meat alternatives by cultivating meat. To replicate the full flavor profile and aroma of meat, Artemys Foods uses cell-based meat, growing real muscle and fat outside of the animal in bioreactors. Then they combine plant-based meat with the cultivated animal cells, enabling the team to create a more meat-like taste and texture. Artemys Foods is working to increase the efficiency of production and decrease the cost of bio-engineered meat.Before Artemys Foods, Joshua founded Conversocial, a customer experience platform that helps brands develop meaningful relationships with their customers at scale, and iPlatform, a social application company that was one of the world's first Facebook Preferred Developers. In this episode, Joshua walks me through his motivations for starting Artemys Foods, the alternative meat landscape, and how Artemys Foods fits in. Joshua and I talk about the differences between software and biotech entrepreneurship, what critics have to say about cultured meat, and how to scale alternative meat production. He also explains the stage of the company, where it is in its go-to-market, and what is coming next. It was great to learn more about the world of alternative meat and Joshua's journey.Enjoy the show!You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.Episode recorded February 18th, 2021To learn more about Artemys Foods, visit: https://artemysfoods.com/Artemys Foods is hiring! Various positions across engineering, research, and operations, including a Chief of Staff position: https://artemysfoods.com/careersTo learn more about this episode, visit our website: https://myclimatejourney.co/ctss-episodes/artemys-foods

Founder's FAQ: answers to all the possible questions of a founder. Hosted by Ilker Koksal. This episode's guest is Shane Mac. Shane is a general partner & co-founder at the Logos Fund that invests in startups defining remote work globally. Previously, Shane was CEO & Co-founder of Assist, the automated assistant platform for messaging and voice, which was acquired by Conversocial in 2019. And he's currently an SVP at Conversocial. He's also co-founder and chairman at Squared Away, which employs military spouses as executive assistants. He ran product at Zaarly and worked on Gist.com, which was acquired by BlackBerry. In this episode;1-) Keeping the momentum early on2-) Create a great place to work3-) Focusing on relationships before you need them4-) Realize that the exit happens three years before the exitFounder's FAQ is a book for founders and you can pre-order through the website. You can also reach us through @foundersfaq on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

A few weeks back I spoke with Shane Mac, SVP of Marketing and Partnerships at Conversocial, and Shane introduced me to the idea of using "errors as intelligence." The basic logic goes something like this. Errors are basically your customers' way of telling you what services you should offer. Every time your chatbot fails to give them what they want, that's your bot telling you what you should include for the next customer. If you want to learn more awesome chatbot design tips like that one, listen to our interview with Shane above.

If you ask Shane Mac what he thinks about the current state of technology, he'll tell you that he believes tech has barely even started. We're only 20 years into the full use of the internet, yet Shane believes we've already become lost in our devices and technology. So what if we told you that the future of tech might actually be creating a world that allows us to disconnect digitally and reconnect socially? Shane is the SVP of Conversocial and he's trying to build that future, which he calls a world after apps. In this episode we will talk about how Shane thinks technology will evolve to help us become engaged personally, where the money in this industry is going to flow, what consumers really love and want, and one tip from Shane to the telco and communication companies. 3 Takeaways: We are entering a new era of technology called the “assistant era,” which could spell the end of mobile apps and the rise of voice tying tech systems together  The technology of the future will be built to help us be more social by automating things that will allow us to get off our devices Consumers love messaging, but they hate messaging humans for transactional purposes --- Future of Tech is brought to you by Amdocs Tech. Amdocs Tech is Amdocs's R&D and technology center, paving the way to a better-connected future by creating open, innovative, best-in-class products and continuously evolving the way we work, learn and live. To learn more about Amdocs Tech, visit the Amdocs Technology page on LinkedIn.

In this episode I talk with Sutton Kauss about her work with Getro.org, how remote hiring requires the right mindset from companies, and how the recruiting process works at BCG.Sutton is a People leader who loves to question the status quo and get curious about the root problems companies really need to solve. She considers herself a bit of an HR rebel, perhaps the first “beg forgiveness, don’t ask permission” HR leader you’ve ever met! Sutton has held People roles at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Axiom, BlackRock and most recently as Head of People at Conversocial. Her strategic HR partnerships span across recruiting, organizational design, change management, talent development, and leadership coaching. She’s most passionate about partnering with leaders to help solve their toughest business problems through a people lens.

This episode of Machine Yearning is special. Shane is joined by Google's Cathy Pearl for a live recording where they take a deep dive into the topic of Compassionate Conversational Experiences. To say conversation design is a passion of Cathy’s is an understatement. She built her first chatbot before chatbots were even a thing - 1984 to be precise - and now uses her wealth of knowledge to help people make the best conversational experiences possible. Topics include: - Best Practices for Designing Conversations - Conversational Design Frameworks and Examples - How to Launch a New Chatbot Some of the resources referenced in the discussion are available here: 1. A Conversation With My 35-year-old Chatbot 2. Google's conversation design best practices 3. The conversation design collection (including this guide to writing sample dialogs) 4. CathyPearl.com for links to previous talks / FAQ on conversation design This podcast is brought to you by Conversocial - conversocial.com

Are companies collecting the right data for the customer experience? Would people rather chat with a bot or a human? How do companies ensure they reach customers the way they liked to be reached? In this episode of IBM thinkLeaders podcast, we are joined by guests Ido Bornstein-HaCohen (CEO of Conversocial) & Gabe Larsen (VP of Growth at Kustomer). We talk to Ido and Gabe about using bots to deflect reduce expensive FAQ-type interactions, treating customers as unique individuals as opposed to tickets, and using AI to augment customer service agents and improve the overall customer journey. Hosted by Amanda Thurston & Emily Winchurch. Connect with us @IBMthinkLeaders & the guests at: @IdoHacohen @Conversocial @GabeLarsen @Kustomer @MandyLewToYou (host) "[W]e're pretty good at understanding the inputs. But you know, the challenging piece is really understanding the outputs." -Ido Bornstein-HaCohen, CEO of Conversocial "I think we've got to get better at personalizing, not around the account but at the persona or the industry." -Gabe Larsen, VP of Growth at Kustomer

Tu cliente… ¿dónde está? En las redes, y lo sabes. ¿Cómo no mimar, entonces, este canal como base fundamental de tu estrategia de atención al cliente? Y, para que lo consigas, nuestros faros en lo que a social media se refiere, Sheila Martín, Head of Social Media, y Alicia Medina, Social Media Manager de esta, nuestra casa, te lo ponen fácil. Escucha este podcast y entérate de cómo debes responder a los usuarios, cómo crear un protocolo de actuación y las herramientas que te pueden ayudar a gestionar las incidencias o tickets. Así que pilla tus cascos y deja que la información que va a mejorar la atención al cliente de tu proyecto fluya de tus oídos... ¡a tu empresa! ¡Y también puedes vernos en YouTube! En este episodio hablaremos de: -Cuándo usar las redes sociales como parte de atención al cliente. -Importancia de saber escuchar en redes. -Beneficios para tu negocio de usar las redes como atención al cliente. -Redes que utilizar (y que no) para atención al cliente. -Cómo establecer un protocolo de actuación. Importancia y objetivos de este protocolo. Partes de un protocolo de actuación en redes. -Gestión de crisis en redes sociales. -Herramientas para la gestión de tickets o incidencias en redes. Enlaces y recursos recomendados en el programa: -Artículo de Buffer sobre cómo dos equipos gestionan la misma bandeja de entrada: https://buffer.com/resources/social-media-inbox -Herramientas para gestión de tickets desde redes sociales: Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/es/ Lithium: https://khoros.com/ Chrysalis: http://www.socialmediacrm.es/wordpress/ Freshdesk: https://freshdesk.com/es/ Sprout: https://sproutsocial.com/es/ Conversocial: https://www.conversocial.com/ Zendesk: https://www.zendesk.es/ Zoho Desk: https://www.zoho.com/es-xl/desk/

Following on from my recent interview, Social customer service can make your business more customer focused – Interview with Joshua March, Conversocial, today I am very, very excited (this was one of my blogging goals this year!) to share with you an interview that I conducted with Chris Brogan CEO & President of Human Business Works, a business design company using publishing and media to provide tools and insights smarts to help professionals and business owners work better. He's been blogging since 1998 and his site, www.chrisbrogan.com, is one of the most popular business and marketing blogs in the world, ranked at number 3 in AdAge's Power 150: A Ranking of Marketing Blogs. The Impact Equation is Chris' new book (co-written with Julien Smith) and is about how to get your important ideas distilled, spread across a platform that you've built, and cared for and understood by other people. It's not a sequel to the New York Times bestseller, Trust Agents, but it does encompass a lot of what the authors have learned between the publication of that book and the years following. This interview makes up number thirty in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.

Following on from my recent interview, Spread the love – Interview with Alexis Dormandy of LoveThis.com, today I'm very excited to share with you an interview that I conducted with Joshua March, the CEO and co-founder of Conversocial, back in August about his company and social customer service. This interview makes up number twenty-nine in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.

This is a great AI conversation with Bornstein-HaCohen who joined Conversocial as COO in 2017 to oversee all commercial operations. Before coming on board, he achieved significant success growing and scaling companies with more than 15 years of experience in executive leadership positions at LivePerson, a leading Salesforce Consultancy and SAP. In early 2019, he was appointed Conversocial's president, expanding his responsibilities to include product and engineering oversight.

Given the choice 75 percent of customers would prefer to use messaging channels for service - Interview with Joshua March, Founder and Board Director of Conversocial, a digital care platform for social messaging, and also author of Message Me, a book about the future of customer service in the era of social messaging and artificial intelligence. Joshua joins me today to talk about some recent research that Conversocial just released, the overall state of digital customer care, what the future of messaging and customer care looks like and what we should be doing about it.

Today, Voice Summit Programming and Content Director, Janice Mandel, welcomes Shane Mac to the Inside VOICE Summit podcast. Shane co-founded Assist, a conversational solution platform for chatbots and voice applications, in 2015 with Giovanni Vatieri and Geek Squad founder, Robert Stephens, who made headlines when he sold his product support company to Best Buy and become the first CTO to integrate and mine the data from messaging support provided by over 100,000 employees. Assist became known for deploying Facebook Messenger chatbots for leading brands, including its first customer, 1-800-flowers, whose CMO will take the main stage with Shane at this year’s VOICE Summit. Last March, Conversocial, a UK-based social media management and customer service software provider, acquired Assist and named Shane its Chief Automation Officer. In this conversation, you’ll learn what led Shane to his first major exit, why he says he was “overly passionate, completely ignorant, and way too confident,” how he’s grown to collect the right people, and hear his take on the convergence of diverse players that make today’s voice community so cool.

Hey everyone! In today’s episode, I share the mic with Josh March, the CEO of Conversocial and the Author of Message Me.   Tune in to hear Josh share how he started iPlatform that became one of the first Facebook app development agencies, how Conversocial developed their business model, and why social messaging is so effective.    Click here for show notes and transcript Leave Some Feedback: What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, leave a short review here. Subscribe to Growth Everywhere on iTunes. Get the non-iTunes RSS feed Connect with Eric Siu: Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @EricSiu

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Conversocial is the digital customer care platform for social messaging. Delivering a unified approach to a new generation of customer interaction, Conversocial enables global brands including Hyatt, Tesco, Alaska Airlines and more to ensure they are supporting in-the-moment resolution, at scale, to drive profitable and lasting relationships.  I got the chance to speak with the founder and CEO Joshua March.  Enjoy!

Minter Dialogue Episode #298Joshua March is founder and CEO of Conversocial, a leading social customer service solution, used by some of the world's biggest brands. Joshua is an expert in social media and customer service and just released his book, Message Me, The Future of Customer Service in the Era of Social Messaging and Artificial Intelligence. In this conversation with Joshua, we discuss the state of customer service, examples of companies and industries that are killing it on customer service, what it takes to get customer service right, the role of AI and much more. Meanwhile, please send me your questions as an audio file (or normal email) to nminterdial@gmail.com; or you can find the show notes and comment on minterdial.com. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to go over to iTunes to rate/review the podcast. Otherwise, you can find me @mdial on Twitter. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/minterdial)

Joshua March, bestselling author and Founder of Conversiocial, shares how social media messaging helps create better customer experiences while cutting customer service costs. Customer service efficiency through social media messaging Besides the fact that customers want help via social media messaging, it’s cheaper, faster and more efficient that traditional channels. But most companies have yet to adopt it as a core channel for customer service and communication in general. “If you’re taking a day to respond, then people will just end up phoning” @joshuamarch These channels aren’t going away, friends. In fact, 8 billion business-to-consumer messages are sent via Facebook messenger monthly, and this number has grown 4 times past 12 months. So we invited Joshua March, Founder of Conversocial, to discuss the benefits and challenges of adopting social media messaging as a primary method of communication, both internally and with customers. “You really need to be treating messaging as a semi-real-time channel.” @joshuamarch Josh not only explains why social messaging is important and here to stay, but he shares great examples of companies using social media messaging in ways that provide faster, more efficient customer service while saving big money on communications. For example, one company has moved up to 60% of their customer service communications to social messaging. You can do this too! You can handle customer service more efficiently and consistently via social media messaging than any other. As a result, you will save money, bolster public perception, CSAT, NPS and more. Listen in! Interview Highlights If apps have made so many things easier, then why is customer service is still not where it needs to be? [4:50] What is a "conversational relationship," and more importantly, how can brands create and maintain that type of relationship? [9:05] Messaging is all over the place these days, so what kinds of apps should we be focusing on for today’s customers? [11:32] What are the short-term and long-term pros and cons of making messaging a core method of business communication? [13:15] Having a quick customer service response time has helped many brands with public perception, so Joshua shared his favorite examples of brands who have done this well. [16:31] About our guest Joshua March founded Conversocial in 2009 based on his vision that online communication and customer service were undergoing fundamental shifts, requiring businesses to invest in new processes and technologies to manage the rapidly shifting social landscape. A leading proponent of social media, Joshua previously founded leading social application company iPlatform, one of the world's first Facebook Preferred Developers, which was acquired in 2012.  Having started his career in London, Joshua is now based in New York where he leads the US operations of Conversocial, as well as global strategy. And he is now the author of the new book Message Me, a book on the future of customer service. Connect with Joshua Twitter Conversocial Website Joshua’s book, Message Me, on Amazon Related Content 360Connext® post, 3 Ways the Best Brands Do Omnichannel Right Customers That Stick® post, How Employee Empowerment Really Works Episode 229: Dan Gingiss, Social Customer Care Episode 150: Phil Gerbyshak, Social Connections We’re on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts   Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joshua March is the founder and CEO of Conversocial, a leading social customer service solution used by hundreds of the world's biggest brands to deliver enterprise-scale customer service through social media and mobile messaging platforms Featured in this episode, Joshua discusses how they scaled their business as an early adopter of social media as a customer service channel, why he's excited about messaging apps like WhatsAPP and Apple Business Chat in regards to their role in business communications, and much more! This episode is brought to you by Social Media Week London! (www.socialmediaweek.org/london/attend code: Leads2Scale) Follow Toby and Social Media Week! @tobyd & @socialmediaweek on Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter.

Joshua March, Founder and CEO of Conversocial, joins host Americus Reed to discuss his new book "Message Me," about the future of customer service in this world of social media messaging and AI on Marketing Matters. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Joshua March, CEO/co-founder of Conversocial, and author of the recent release "Message Me," gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the creative processes, challenges and rewards of writing your first book, along with what it means to position yourself as a thought leader in your field of expertise.

A Tech Tuesday Episode. All things Technology related to providing digital customer service. Brought to you by: The Social Pack: Get on the inside to stay on the topside. Join today! ParknFly: Save 10% off Posted Rate Reserve Now bluehost: The Best Web Hosting for just $3.95/month, bluehost is the #1 recommended web hosting service by WordPress.org. Every account features 1-click WordPress…

How will AI and bots transform customer service in the near future? Shep Hyken discusses the next phase of customer service, automated messaging, with Joshua March, Co-founder and CEO of Conversocial. (https://www.conversocial.com/) Top Takeaways: - March shares his Six Pillars of Customer Service: 1) be prepared for crises in social era; 2) lean into the power of messaging; 3) make effective use of bot technology; 4) deploy AI effectively; 5) adopt a messaging approach to all digital channels; and 6) use social agents as the model of future customer service teams - March gives the history of clients using Twitter or Facebook pages as customer service platforms despite other channels; recent trend is private messaging, which significantly reduces email and chat volumes. - The next evolution in social customer service is artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automation, which enable humans and bots to exist in the same conversation in a way that isn't really possible on other service channels. - According to March, private messaging is the first service channel to potentially replace phone-based customer service. Although phone AI misunderstandings can lead to awkward transitions to human representatives, messaging AI can make seamless transitions. - Hyken and March both see a trend in consumers very rapidly starting to expect a messaging option. - March urges entrepreneurs to take baby steps – don’t build a massive chat-bot; instead use machine learning to recognize and respond to the most common questions you currently receive. Automating just 25% creates a huge efficiency gain, speeds up resolution for your customers, and saves your agents a lot of hassle. Small changes can yield big returns. - March sees a future in which AI will handle routine questions, while humans will be top-tier agents who can handle complex issues that require greater access and ability to resolve them, so make sure your human messaging agents have good typing skills. About: Joshua March is Co-founder and CEO at Conversocial, provider of social customer service software for Fortune 500 companies. Marsh is also author of the forthcoming book, “Message Me, The Future of Customer Service in the Era of Social Messaging.” Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Tech Tuesday Episode. All things Technology related to providing digital customer service. Brought to you by: The Social Pack: Get on the inside to stay on the topside. Join today! ParknFly: Save 10% off Posted Rate Reserve Now  bluehost: The Best Web Hosting for just $3.95/month, bluehost is the #1 recommended web hosting service by WordPress.org. Every account features…

Joshua March is the founder and CEO of Conversocial a cloud solution that enables businesses to deliver customer service over Social Media at a large-scale. Conversocial is used in the contact centers of hundreds of major retailers, banks, telcos and other brands to enable them to manage the high volumes of complaints and questions they're receiving through social networks like Facebook and Twitter, including Google, Hertz, Tesco, Barclaycard, Hyatt hotels and many more.  Questions Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey Your company caters more to organizations that are serving customers on a large scale, can the service also be provided to persons who are not serving customers on a large scale? What are some of the things based on the line of business that you are in that you see coming into play in the near future in terms of customer service and what do you see coming as things that we need to prepare ourselves for more as businesses? Is there a formula that exits out there to measure effort? How do you stay motivated every day? What is one online resource, website, tool or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you? What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people? Where can our listeners find you online? What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity? Highlights Joshua stated that he has been working in the social media space for many years. His previous company was called iPlatform and they were one of the first ever companies building applications on top of Facebook for brands back in 2007/2008, the early days and while he was really excited about the use of the app platforms which you may remember back then like Farmville and stuff like that. He was really excited about how those platforms could be used by brands to engage with their customers. What he pretty quickly realized was that the really, really big change that was happening wasn’t in just how people were communicating and that there was this big shift going on which pretty much happened now but it's continuing to happen away from other types of digital communication and into Social Media and mobile messaging primarily on And the he included mobile messaging within the Social Media, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM, now What’s App, coming up We Chat, so it's not just the public, it's the private side as well. He really saw that as the future of how everyone individually would be communicating with each other and he really believed that as these channels became the dominant communication channels then that would change how businesses had to communicate with their customers too and it would be really important to customer service and that suddenly happened. The start of that was really people turning to the public side of Social Media to kind of escalate complaints about a business and get a response. And while that still goes on it's actually transitioned now to be much more about businesses just investing into the private side, private messaging with these channels. The preferred customer service channels and that's all the reasons for that. A - It's much better from a consumer side, it's so effortless and easy for someone to pull out their phone and message your brand, it means that you get really high customer satisfaction if you promote it as a service channel and from a business perspective it's great to get that customer satisfaction but it's also a great efficient channel, you can manage these digital messaging channels and in an asynchronous way that’s highly efficient from an agent workflow perspective. And with the launch of the bot platform is much easier to automate and so it's just become this channel that is really much better than anything else out there from a cost perspective and customer satisfaction perspective.   Joshua stated that the background to that was that they’ve been going 5/6 years now and their (Conversocial) software is from real customer service software, they spend a lot of time building a real case management system into the ability to have automated routing and workflows dashboards where you can see exactly what your agents are doing. Now all of those kinds of functionality become really useful as soon as you have a team of agents. Now if you go back 3, 4, 5 years ago, the volume of people who were coming through and complaining through Social Media and mobile messaging was only really a couple of percent of all of your inbound volume. And what that meant was that for a small, medium sized businesses, it was it really wasn't a lot of volume and it was something that probably just some agents or have a couple of agents maybe they're just doing that on the side. But if you're a big business even 2% it's still a lot. And so, the big businesses even in those early days were still setting up 10, 20, 30 full time agents to do customer service through Social Media and mobile messaging. And they are really kind of catering to that audience. Now today it's actually starting to shift a bit because as you start really promoting, if you stop promoting like message us as your main customer service channel or if you're using the new Facebook Messenger customer champ plugin which allows you to actually paddle Web chat on your site using Facebook Messenger. They have customers who are doing that and Facebook Messenger is now responsible for 44% of all of that service volume including phone Nino and so once the volume start getting that high which they do if you're promoting it, even if you have a much smaller team of agents you're still going to need multiple agents just handling social messaging. And then a platform like Conversocial becomes extremely valuable. So, you still need to have a team but the companies that need a team of that size for social messaging becoming smaller and smaller as the volumes keep getting bigger and bigger. Yanique mentioned that his business caters to the type of customer that needs the information now. Gone are the days when you'd write a letter and submit it to the organization through the mail and a couple of weeks or months later you get back our response plans. The clients that we're dealing with nowadays there’re in the now age. Joshua agreed and stated that we live in an in the moment world where people are expecting almost real-time response to everything. And if you're going to take days to respond, they're probably just going to phone you at that point, people need an answer or they'll just go to a competitor, that's the reality. But on the flip side, one of the great things about digital messaging and asynchronous messaging as opposed to traditional web chat is that it's more like texting a friend and texting a friend it's pretty much real time that they're responding in 5 minutes. And if there is occasionally a message it takes a little bit longer and some are shorter and that's fine. And the traditional web chat world that doesn't work because the web chat world is like sitting there with the chat box open when waiting for a response and so you have to have current agents online responding within seconds. But with an asynchronous messaging you can even out those bums most a lot more easily and you can have a smaller number of agents handling a much larger number of customers as a result. Because as soon as you respond that pops up as a notification on their phone, they don't have to be sitting there paying attention all the time. So, it's very convenient for both the customers and for customer service agents.  Joshua stated that messaging is really what's growing, it’s going to dominate the industry and depending where you are, there are different messaging platforms. Now the one that's very exciting from people in many areas of the world especially Europe, U.K, South America is WhatsApp. WhatsApp is just such a dominant messaging platform that has completely replaced SMS in many parts of the world via internet. They're just starting to experiment with business accounts and the word on the street is that some point this year probably early this year. They're going to be releasing business tools and releasing an API which allows platforms like theirs to help their customers manage them. And he thinks that as soon as that happens it's going to become a huge, huge business to consumer channel. He thinks a lot of businesses are desperate for it, a lot of clients, customers would love it, it’s super convenient. People are using all the time already, so, he thinks that's going to release load this year. There is one which is very interesting, probably not going to explode in the same way because they're going to be much more careful and constrained about how they release it is Apple Business Chat, so this is Apple's business chat solution built on top of IMessages. Apple's nesting system is completely integrated with text messaging, so it’s used on iPhone and it goes blue and that's with IMessaging and getting more capabilities so that they're enabling brands to have business accounts. And what's exciting about this, there are two main exciting things. One is security, they're very well-known for privacy and security similar to WhatsApp in that regard. The other thing is discoverability and this is where they're going to really have a very interesting advantage over other messaging platforms. And there are two parts to it, one is in maps. So, if you are in apple maps looking at a local restaurant or a coffee shop there will be a button that says message them and you'll be able to just message them straight away and be like, “Hey, I want to order this or I want to order that” tightly integrated with Apple Pay, you could pay seamlessly and then go pick it up or they deliver it. And that could actually act as a kind of intermediary problem like the kind of post mates and stuff like, where at the moment of sitting in between and potentially this can make it super easy to go straight to a restaurant. And that's one area of discoverability and the maps the other area is with Siri the voice system. And this is where it gets really cool especially for big brands. We will acquire hotels, if you want to like message them saying you want to extend your stay for the night, how do you do that today, you have to look them up. You could message them on Facebook if you know about that and you have the app, you could DM them on Twitter there is always things that they're promoting in interesting ways but with business chat you’ll just be able to say, “Hey Siri, message Hyatt tell them I want to stay another night.” It's done, no app needed. Nothing else. It just like sends that message and Hyatt can respond over text, you can even pay using Apple Pay on your phone if you wanted. That's a pretty cool and like seamlessly integrated experience and will potentially bring voice assistance into like how people are into engaging with businesses for the first time. Apple is going to be very careful in how they roll that out and the brands they work with, they want to make sure they create really nice experiences. He thinks there's some really exciting stuff with that and could be pretty meaningful. Yanique mentioned that a big part of what she heard in a lot of what Joshua said was convenience. She thinks convenience is definitely one of the key differentiators that businesses who are disrupting the whole customer experience platform, they're really killing it in that area and making life more convenient for their customers because that to her is just a very convenient. Joshua stated that there is a huge amount of data which talks about the benefits for this, his favorite book on this subject is The Effortless Experience : Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty by Matthew Dixon, Nicholas Toman and Rick Delisi of CEB, who is now part of Gartner and it's a book that’s given to lot of a lot of his clients and Effortless Experience costly had a huge amount of data from years like large studies and it shows that the most important thing that affects customer loyalty after a service interaction is the effort that they have to put in to getting their true result. When someone has a problem or a complaint or an issue, they just want that issue to be solved as soon as possible, as easily as possible and it's very hard to increase their loyalty following any service interaction even if you really go crazy go above and beyond. They had an issue and you solved it great, they're not going to be ecstatic, maybe they'll be a little bit happier, what happens in the majority of cases, is that their loyalty is reduced and the data shows that if you do anything that makes it harder for them to get their issue solved; it has a massive negative impact on loyalty. If you make them jump through any hoops to speaks with an agent that they have to repeat themselves, they have to tell one person one thing and then they have to speak to someone else and tell them the same thing again. Anything like that which is just annoying and hassle or puts a delay, puts them on hold has a really, really negative impact. And so, if you can just reduce that effort, then you could have a massive impact on Customer Loyalty. He thinks this is the core of what makes social messaging so powerful is that it’s just so effortless. He spent the last year writing a book as well which is going to be coming out this quarter which he’s excited about and it's going to be called “Message Me”, it's all about the future of customer service and looks at the impact of messaging and he talks a lot about effortless experience in that book because he thinks that in many ways they kind of figured out the foundation and they could have asked this question, “How do you make it effortless?” And he doesn’t think that technology was really there at the time when they wrote book to actually implement it. But he thinks that with messaging, we finally do have the technology to implement a service channel which really can be completely effortless for consumers and that's super exciting. Yanique stated that one of the things that she’s most amazed about as it relates to customer experience as well is regardless of where you are from in the world or however you are socialized, whether you're from Europe, North America, South America or the Caribbean, at the end of the day because we're all human beings, we're all yearning for that connection we're all yearning for some basic needs to be met. As Joshua said, she agreed that if you have to put in less effort you are more likely to go along with that particular service provider because they make life much easier for you. You have so many hurdles to jump over on a daily basis, whereas, if you're running a business, you're a family maker, you have a husband to take care of or a wife, kids up and down, just so many things pulling in all different directions. So, if you can do business with an organization that is looking out for you in that aspect and they're pulling you in less directions and they make it super easy kind of like Amazon, you can sit down in the convenience of your own home and basically order whatever you'd like to order and it's delivered to you, you don't have to go into the store and stress yourself out walking up and do figuring out which aisle it is in. Everything can be purchased with the click of a button, it really does definitely drive you to be loyal to that organization because you look back on those experiences and that's what would make you continue doing business with them. Joshua agreed and stated that it’s important and he thinks not enough businesses really pay attention to it today. People are used to the point of looking at measuring customer satisfaction and empty apps. I actually love to see more and more businesses measuring customer satisfaction and NPS but he would actually love to see more and more businesses people measuring effort and measure how convenient, how effortless was it for them to get help, he thinks that would be really impactful for a lot of businesses.   Joshua stated that in measuring effort, there isn't a standard kind of well-known way in the same way that you have NPS for example. There's a great case study from one of their customers British Telecom, telecoms company in the UK where they took this pretty seriously and they created what they call a Net Easy Score and very simple, they just asked people after service interaction, “How do you find that experience? How hard or easy was it to resolve the experience?” and it was just three answers. It was easy to resolve, it was it was difficult or it was kind of mutual. So, super simple question and they rolled that out across all of their service channels and they started tracking customer retention and the retention of the customers who'd reported that they had an easy service experience versus the customers that said they had a hard service experience and they found a huge difference. They found the customers who'd had a hard service experience were difficult to resolve their issue was 40% more likely to churn over the next three months, 40% more likely which is a huge number. So, they made a massive impact on whether those customers would stay as customers or not and when they actually looked at the different kind of Net Easy Score as they call it for different channels they found that social media and messaging and webchat that were the easiest channels by a long way, they were easier than phone by 4 to 1 and they were easier than email and cell service by 2 to 1. So, a huge impact for online business from understanding that and these are pretty simple way of asking a question. Yanique asked if this question is asked after every interaction with their business or is it a question that they ask maybe on a yearly basis based on the customers who are their clients.  Joshua stated that they did the actual, so, before they started working with them so he doesn’t know exactly how they do it. The way that they help their clients do surveys today through social and messaging is that your after-service interaction has been closed and resolved, then they send out an automatic survey inside the messaging thread from the Facebook Messenger or Twitter that ask them whatever question they want to have set up. So, it's after every service interaction, he thinks that's the best way to get that kind of data. Yanique agreed and mentioned that people do remember the experience that they have had within the first 24 hours and then after that if it's not super great or really bad, they really don't remember the details. So, that question should be asked after each interaction. Joshua mention that they see that the faster you get out after the issue has been resolved, the higher the response rate.   Joshua stated that he is a pretty highly motivated person in general. His overall motivation is really about the stuff that they want to achieve as a business. And when he set out starting the business, he had this kind of very clear vision, he was like, “There's a reason that everyone is switching to these channels from a consumer perspective.” That's because it's a better channel, it's more efficient, it's easier, it's more convenient, it’s on everyone's phone, the way the messaging organizes communication which is by people instead of subjects is more natural, this is just a better way of communicating. And he really believed and still believe that if companies switch to these forms of communication then it's better for them and better for the customers. And they kind of set out their vision and they set out this clear mission of saying, “Yes, we want to really build the next generation of customer service software.” It's all focused around these new channels which they really believe are better. He gets a huge amount of motivation from seeing them and make that vision become a reality. Every company that they sign up has a customer who then starts more actively promoting these channels and increasing the volume of service issues that’s dealing with messaging instead of phone and email. All of that really gets him excited. He loves to see that continuing success and performance and the things that they’re achieving as a business. He’s kind of prepared to do whatever it takes to help them make that vision become a reality, he doesn’t really think too much about specifically what he enjoys doing during the day or not, it's really just about what he needs to do in order to help them be successful and that's what really gets him excited.   Joshua stated that the app that we cannot live without would have to be Twitter. They have to use lots of different technology in the business, they love of using different technology. Twitter has this incredible network and he uses it a lot personally, tied to it for the news these days. But they use it huge amount for business as well, they connect with a lot of their customers on there, we connect to a lot of influences, a lot of thought leaders, they do a lot of thought leadership and share a lot of thought leadership through it. So, it's just added such value to his life and to the business.   Joshua mentioned that The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty by Matthew Dixon, Nicholas Toman and Rick Delisi certainly from an approach to customer service perspective. From a management perspective, The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz is one of his favorite and has been the most impactful book from a management perspective, kind of entrepreneur’s journey, how to really scale a business and manage a management team and very raw and very real, a lot of really valuable insight. So, that has been one of his favorite books. The other than that, he loves reading Sci-Fi, he’s a huge fan of Sci-Fi which he thinks actually gives him tons of business ideas and ideas about the future. So, he thinks it’s actually super valuable for anyone especially entrepreneurs working in technology should absolutely read a lot of Sci-Fi. Yanique mentioned that reading Sci-Fi is a very unusual genre of books to read but she can see where Joshua is coming from with it because it kind of opens your mind to the impossible and that's where we're heading. Joshua agreed and stated that if you're interested in customer service, the future of customer service, you should read his book “Message Me” which is going to be coming out pretty soon which he mentioned earlier as well.   Joshua stated that something that he’s excited about right now, the book Message Me was the kind of his main passion project over the last year. He really wanted to kind of get down on paper two things, both his thoughts as to what businesses need to be doing today to really benefit from messaging, benefit from automation, how they really need to structure customer service teams, how to train agents how to promote these things in the right way. But then also, his vision for how messaging and automation intelligence are really going to change customer service in the years ahead. So that's been a big labor of love actually he just went to the printers a few days ago. So, he’s pretty excited about that, so that's a really big one. Outside of that, he’s also a big fan of personal development, he’s been getting more and more into meditation over the last year and in a few weeks, he’s actually about to go do his first Meditation Retreat where he’ll be on a silent meditation retreat for 10 days. So, he’s excited about that and slightly nervous.   Joshua shared listeners can find him at – Twitter - @joshuamarch www.conversocial.com Twitter - @conversocial LinkedIn - Joshua March     Joshua shared that a quote that comes to mind is the quote from Winston Churchill, “When going through hell, keep going” he really loves that quote, the key for any entrepreneur but is really true for anyone trying to achieve anything big in life is really persistence and grit, whatever you do and whatever you try to do and the bigger the thing you trying to do, the more ambitious it is, the harder it’s going to be. The more road blocks you’re going to face, the more mistakes you’re going to make and failures you’re going to have, every single person no matter how successful has those failures, in fact, the more successful you are, the more failures you’ve had and the key throughout all of it is to never give up and to keep going, pick yourself up, learn from your mistakes, keep evolving and that’s really the only thing that will get you anywhere in life. Links   The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty by Matthew Dixon The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz

A Tech Tuesday Episode. All things Technology related to providing digital customer service. Brought to you by: The Social Pack: Get on the inside to stay on the topside. Join today! Telligent, a Verint Company: A leader in community software for digital marketing and support communities. Its social software solutions help bring together modern collaboration technologies into a single…

A Tech Tuesday Episode. All things Technology related to providing digital customer service. Brought to you by: The Social Pack: Get on the inside to stay on the topside. Join today! Telligent, a Verint Company: A leader in community software for digital marketing and support communities. Its social software solutions help bring together modern collaboration technologies into a single…

Josh March. He’s the founder and CEO of Conversocial, a customer engagement solution that helps businesses increase their customer loyalty by enabling effortless, in-the-moment, customer service to social and mobile channels. The largest global firms including Google, Sprint, Hertz and Hyatt Hotels turn to his platform to deliver an amazing, social, first, customer service experience at a large scale. He previously founded the leading social application platform, iPlatform, one of the world’s first Facebook preferred developer which was acquired in 2012. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Four Steps to the Epiphany What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz Favorite online tool? — Twitter How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Be more self-aware and your own thinking can become your bias   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Josh to the show 02:51 – iPlatform was sold to Betapond in 2012 03:28 – The acquisition was a mix of cash and equity 03:53 – Conversocial is an enterprise SaaS product 04:20 – Conversocial follows up on customers through social media sites 04:38 – Conversocial collects messages from different social media channels and analyzes them 05:04 – Conversocial has raised $20M of venture capital 05:33 – Conversocial started from iPlatform 06:00 – Josh saw that they needed to move quickly with Conversocial, so they raised funds 06:29 – The first round was $2.5M and was a priced equity round 07:24 – Some of Conversocial’s customers were an upsell from iPlatform 07:34 – Team size is around 100 08:00 – Josh was initially involved with the product development of Conversocial and as they grew and hired great people, he began shifting more of his time to customer acquisition 09:33 – Their biggest customer pays around a million dollars annually 09:50 – Conversocial also has customers who pay from $25K to $200K 11:00 – Conversocial focuses on customer care 12:00 – The need for a customer contact center is greatly increasing 12:28 – Conversocial currently has 200 clients 13:30 – Conversocial has passed their $10M ARR mark 14:12 – Conversocial has a higher logo churn with small companies 14:47 – Conversocial’s net churn is around 120% 16:21 – Josh flies a lot just to meet customers 17:48 – Fully weighted CAC varies dramatically depending on the deals 18:24 – Payback period is around 18 months 18:43 – Josh won’t sell to Sprinklr 19:10 – Josh thinks Sprinklr’s vision is far off of Conversocial’s vision 20:30 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Focus on the needs of the customers and figure out how you can solve their problems. Social media is being used not only for marketing, but for customer service as well. An entrepreneur should go the “extra mile” just to get a client.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Today’s Cash Flow Diary podcast guest Joshua March is the founder and CEO of Conversocial, a leading provider of cloud-based social customer service solutions. He founded this cool company in 2009 based on his vision that online communication and customer service are undergoing a fundamental shift, requiring businesses to invest in new processes and technologies to manage the rapidly shifting social landscape. A leading proponent of social media, Joshua previously founded leading social application company iPlatform, one of the world’s first Facebook-Preferred Developers, which was acquired in 2012. But as you might guess, this wasn’t always the path Joshua was on. Growing up in England, Joshua actually wanted to be a Barrister, which is a lawyer in America. He attended classes, but as he moved forward he started looking at different opportunities and decided to become an entrepreneur instead. Eventually he stopped attending lectures and did the bare minimum in university to attain his degree, which he wouldn’t end up using. For Joshua this happened to be a very good choice. He didn’t wait for anyone’s permission and moved forward at the speed of sound. Joshua says one of the reasons he took this path is because he isn’t afraid of taking risks. He is not afraid of failure events either. Joshua says entrepreneurs can’t be afraid of risks and failure. You’ll have to listen to this episode to learn the very romantic reasons behind his mindset of moving forward as an entrepreneur no matter what challenges he would encounter. Starting boldly, Joshua started out with homemade flyers and then business cards. He had an idea and didn’t want to wait to take action. My kind of guy! Joshua does say that now he the value of planning and being prepared a bit better so he can achieve his objectives in a less chaotic way. If you want to learn more about Joshua’s path and everything he’s done as an entrepreneur, including how he funded his first venture at the tender age of 20, you’re going to have to put your ears on right now! Learn more. LISTEN NOW. ew York where he leads the US operations of Conversocial, as well as global strategy.

When Joshua March built an app for the new Facebook Application Platform in 2007, “social customer service was not a phrase,” he says. But March, now CEO & Co-Founder of Conversocial, saw an early opportunity. “I thought this was a really exciting opportunity for brands to engage with customers in a way they never had before.” Conversocial, a digital customer care platform, aims at “bridging the gap between the rapidly shifting worlds of social media and… the discipline of a large-scale customer service platform,” according to March. As someone who lives and breathes social customer service every day, March prides himself on being an early adopter of new technology. And while many companies are just starting to pay attention to messaging apps, March has been working for months with brands like Hyatt, Sprint, and Alaska Air to pilot customer service for Facebook Messenger. He calls messaging apps “the future of customer service... they’re really exciting in lots of ways.” Advantages of Messaging Apps for Brands March cites two big advantages that messaging apps bring to brands that “traditional” social media channels do not: 1) Private vs. Public: “One of the big hesitations that a lot of companies have had in promoting social as a primary customer service channel has been the very public aspect of it… The great thing about [messaging apps] is that you can have a ‘Message Us’ button and really promote this as a one-on-one, private channel.” 2) Persistency: “Messaging is a persistent conversation between you and a brand. You can have a real-time chat with an agent, then you can go away and come back a day later and see the history… That’s really exciting because that starts to have an impact on consumer behavior.” In their beta testing with Conversocial, Sprint saw a decrease in public complaints on Facebook as messages on Messenger increased. As a result, Sprint now lists its social customer care options – including the “Message Us” button – above the phone number on its website. March is expecting 50+ more clients to launch live chat via Messenger this year and “thousands” overall. Are the Bots Really Going to Take Over? March also had a lot to say about Facebook’s recent introduction of the “Bots for Messenger” Platform. He says that bots will be useful for certain types of transactions and “can help contact centers become more efficient by making things easier for agents.” But, he cautions, “we are not at the stage yet where you could have a really comprehensive chat bot for customer service.” One challenge that bots will face, he says, is that messaging is already less expensive and a better customer experience than on the phone, so moving to a bot runs the risk of worsening that experience and creating additional phone calls. “A lot of people turn to social because they’re fed up with the ‘computer says no’ attitude or big, complex IVRs [Interactive Voice Response systems on the telephone], or the bad experience they’re getting through these other channels and they want to connect with brands in a more human, engaging way,” March says. “And that’s really, really important that brands don’t forget that.” Here are some key moments in Episode 35 of the Focus on Customer Service Podcast and where to find them: 1:45 A background on Conversocial 3:00 Conversocial’s (very) early entry into social customer service 7:00 The intersection of Marketing and Customer Service 11:23 The emergence of messaging platforms for service 15:21 What does the rise in messaging apps mean for companies? 22:57 Are messaging bots going to take over customer service? 30:55 Public vs. private customer service 34:43 What’s the future of peer-to-peer support? 40:00 What will be different in social customer service in one year? To hear more Focus on Customer Service, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud.

Scott Sage, Expert in Residence at Seedcamp, sits down with Carlos Espinal in the first of a three part series. In this episode, Scott and Carlos discuss Internationalisation. Scott begins by explaining his move from wanting to study music into majoring in finance and building a career in investment. He talks about his keen interest in SaaS, marketplace and enterprise companies and what makes a business stand out to him as an Investor before providing some key lessons learnt from his first few investments made at Draper Esprit (previously DFJ Esprit). He then discusses Internationalisation and why this is important for young companies, before looking at some best in class examples, when European startups should look at opening international offices, and advice based on the experiences he went through working with Conversocial, Datahug and Trustpilot.

Cuando llevamos a cabo una Estrategia Empresarial en Redes Sociales, es importante poder gestionar toda la información que recibimos por parte de los usuarios de una manera efectiva con el fin de poder atender a todos los clientes y gestionar adecuadamente el feedback que recibimos. Para ello existen los llamados Social CRM o herramientas de atención al cliente en Redes Sociales, y hoy quiero hablaros de Conversocial, una herramienta que te ayudará a gestionar todos los comentarios que recibas a través de Facebook y Twitter.

Cuando llevamos a cabo una Estrategia Empresarial en Redes Sociales, es importante poder gestionar toda la información que recibimos por parte de los usuarios de una manera efectiva con el fin de poder atender a todos los clientes y gestionar adecuadamente el feedback que recibimos. Para ello existen los llamados Social CRM o herramientas de atención al cliente en Redes Sociales, y hoy quiero hablaros de Conversocial, una herramienta que te ayudará a gestionar todos los comentarios que recibas a través de Facebook y Twitter.