Podcast appearances and mentions of joshua march

It wasn't long ago that lab-grown meat was booming. Startups raised billions of dollars. Investors boldly predicted the large scale slaughter of cows, chickens and fish would soon end. Then it all went pear-shaped. This week Joshua March and Kasia Gora come on to talk about how their startup, SciFi Foods, failed after raising more than $40 million on how the market turned against their company and the industry broadly (3:30), being affected by the downturn in plant-based meat (7:30), the Gamechangers documentary (10:30), being transparent with staff (15:10), the importance of failing well (19:30), the progress they made (27:30), Big Meat's lobbying efforts (30:45), whether they would do it again (32:45), the Silicon Valley machine (37:00), venture debt (40:30), and the next thing (42:30). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's episode, we delve into the future of food production, exploring the cutting-edge innovations transforming agriculture, technology, and consumer behavior. Join us and our guests Kasia Gora, Co-Founder and CTO of SCiFi Foods, and Joshua March, Co-Founder and CEO of SCiFi Foods, as we navigate the ethical and environmental implications of cultivated meat, a solution that aims to address global food sustainability challenges. Guests: Kasia, Gora, Co-Founder and CTO of SCiFi Foods, Joshua March, Co-Founder and CEO of SCiFi Foods Co-Hosts:  Vikram Shyam, PhD, Futurist, Convergent Aeronautics Solutions Project, NASA Marco Annunziata, Co-Founder, Annunziata + Desai Partners  Series Hosts:  Vikram Shyam, Lead Futurist, NASA Glenn Research Center Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works

Could artificial meat be the new normal? In this episode of the Next Stage, we learn from three entrepreneurs working to create meat alternatives using plants, fungi, and cell cultivation.  They discuss the products and technologies that enable them to replicate the taste, texture and nutrition of conventional meat, as well as the challenges involved in scaling up production. The founders share their visions for making alt meat ubiquitous, affordable, and enthusiastically adopted by meat-eaters – all in order to significantly reduce the climate and health impacts of our meat consumption. With several companies poised to launch artificial meat products commercially in the next year, we may soon witness these meatless options become the default choice for consumers. SciFi Foods co-founder and CEO Joshua March, Prime Roots co-founder and CEO Kimberlie Le, and New School Foods founder and CEO Chris Bryson were in conversation with Toby Heaps, co-founder and CEO of Corporate Knights, on planet:tech at Collision 2023 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/websummit/message

Christian Hernandez tells Richard Delevan what it takes to be a successful climate tech founder and what's surprised him in climate tech investing since setting up 2150; why interest rates matter; where he sees opportunities going forward; and who from the “Facebook mafia” and old-skool VC he's seen make the pivot to climate tech.Christian's Catalysts: The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells - and do check out his NY Times guest hosting on Ezra Klein's show.How to Avoid a Climate Disaster; The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, by Bill Gates - which gave Christian “techno-optimism” about solutions after having the “living daylights” scared out of him by Wallace-Wells.Speed and Scale; An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now, by John Doerr.Blue Frontier, a 2150 portco rethinking air conditioning, which recently was named one of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch by MIT Tech Review.Christian also gave shoutouts to people from his old tech days that have made the pivot to climate tech like Joshua March, co-founder of Sci-Fi Foods, and Michelle You, co-founder of Supercritical. And some VCs who also made the pivot: Daniel Waterhouse at Balderton; Albert Wenger at Union Square Ventures Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent brings on Joshua March, co-founder and chief executive of SciFi Foods, to talk about the first approvals for lab-grown meat in America (4:45), building their pilot plant (6:45), using Crispr to engineer cells (7:50), the industry's dominant technology approach (12:30), why most of the 150 cultivated meat startups will fail (16:10), why clean meat will ultimately supplant slaughterhouses and industrial agriculture (17:50), the Biden administration's support of the industry (21:00), leaning into the science fiction aspect of lab-grown meat (24:00), and the coming shake-out (25:10), Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you build a better burger? At SciFi Foods, they do it in the laboratory, using cutting-edge biology and bioengineering technology, like CRISPR, to cultivate beef cells, then add them to plant-based ingredients. On this episode of Tech Bites, host Jennifer Leuzzi talks with Dr. Kasia Gora, PhD, co-founder ,and CTO of SCiFi Foods about the race to be first to market in cultivated beef with the launch of the SCiFi burger.Photo Courtesy of Jen Garcia.Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support Tech Bites by becoming a member!Tech Bites is Powered by Simplecast.

HAPPY MARCH CAPRICE!! On todays episode we are joined by A SAGE OF THE LODGE - Orpheus Joshua to discuss the future outlook of the Kingdom Hearts Series. Follow March Caprice Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarchCaprice Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarchCapriceKH Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/marchcaprice Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marchcapricekh/ Website: www.marchcaprice.com Follow Orpheus Joshua Twitter: https://twitter.com/OrpheusJoshua ▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂ BECOME A SAGE OF THE LODGE: https://anchor.fm/the-landi-lodge/support Follow On Twitch - https://twitch.tv/the_landi_lodge​​​ Follow on Twitter - https://twitter.com/LandiLodge​​​ Follow On Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/the.landi.lodge Follow On Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/3cwYtaThE4pE2rjDnF1go4?si=77f7838c66c94552 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-landi-lodge/support

I had a chat with Joshua Lee, host of the Shitshooting101 podcast, for a show titled No More Heroes. Along the way we discuss the possibility of an Elvis twin; the two Paul McCartneys; MK-ULTRA in music; Roger Waters; Noel Gallagher; Woodstock, and a whole lot more! The podcast's main website is here: https://www.shitshooting101.com/mark-devlin-no-more-heroes/ And Joshua's YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/@sh1tsh0ot1ng9

Notes: Anthropic's Claude improves on ChatGPT but still suffers from limitations | TechCrunch (01:10) A startup co-founded by ex-OpenAI employees called Anthropic has raised over $700 million in funding to date, and has developed an AI system similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.System is called Claude and is accessible through a Slack integration as part of a closed beta Developed with a technique call constitutional AI The company explains:This learning is a principle based approach  to aligning AI systems with human intentions, letting AI similar to ChatGPT respond to questions using a simple set of principles as a guide. Anthropic started with a list of around ten private principles that formed the constitution in the AI.   The company says the principles are grounded in the concepts of beneficence (maximizing positive impact), nonmaleficence (avoiding giving harmful advice) and autonomy (respecting freedom of choice). Claude is fed an enormous number of examples of text from the web, and learns how likely words are to occur based on patterns such as the semantic context of surrounding text.Therefore it can hold an open-ended conversation, tell jokes and be philosophical, etc.  Yann Dubois, a Ph.D. student at Stanford's AI Lab, also did a comparison of Claude and ChatGPT, writing that Claude “generally follows closer [to] what it's asked for” but is “less concise,” as it tends to explain what it said and ask how it can further help. Claude isn't perfect, however. It's susceptible to some of the same flaws as ChatGPT, including giving answers that aren't in keeping with its programmed constraints.Flaw example: asking the system in Base64, an encoding scheme that represents binary data in ASCII format, bypasses its built-in filters for harmful content. Anthropic says that it plans to refine Claude and potentially open the beta to more people down the line. The first CRISPR gene-edited meat is coming—and this is the CEO making sci-fi a reality | FastCompany (11:09) Joshua March is the CEO of SciFi Foods who are using CRISPR to hasten its advances.The gene-editing technology According to the Good Food Institute, there are 152 cultivated meat companies as of the end of 2022, operating in 29 countries.SciFi Foods is different because of the fact they are using CRISPR March got into the cultivated meats a reality because of these companies:“​​I honestly became pretty disenchanted with the companies in the space and all the arm waving about how the costs would be solved.” For their meat creation they have a simple process that sounds like natural selection:The key is engineering cycles that enable rapid prototyping.  The best cell lines will go on to create the next round of modifications. Cost parity with traditional meat is every lab grown meat founder's goal, one that sets a seemingly unattainable target. 2022 - the average price of ground beef was $4.81/lb SciFi is betting that the only way to economically scale cultivated meat is with CRISPR, and that by making iterative tweaks they can create dependable cell lines with rich, meat-y flavor. CEO March stated, “We have an eventual target of $1 per burger at commercial scale.” Once harvested, beef cells will be formulated into a blended burger that is mostly like the plant-based burgers you may already know—soy protein and coconut oil.Adding a small percentage of SciFi cells (5% to 20%, according to March) to give “beefy” notes. According to the Good Food Institute, $2.6 billion has been invested in these alternative proteins since 2010.  ISS astronauts are building objects not possible on Earth | Popular Science (20:49) Aboard the International Space Station (ISS) right now is a metal box, the size of a desktop PC tower.Inside, a nozzle is helping build little test parts that aren't possible to make on Earth.  Fail under Earth's gravity. The Box is scheduled to spend 45 days aboard the ISS The MIT group behind this process explains it'll be the “first results for a really novel process in microgravity.” It involves taking a flexible silicone skin, shaped like the part it will eventually create, and filling it with a liquid resin.  Like how you fill a balloon with air, this will just be resin The resin is sensitive to ultraviolet light. Once UV light reaches the resin it'll cure and stiffen, hardening into a solid structure. Remove the skin and you have your part If everything is successful, the ISS will ship some experimental parts back to Earth for the MIT researchers to test. Ensuring that the parts they've made are structurally sound. The benefit of building parts like this in orbit is that Earth's single most fundamental stressor—the planet's gravity—is no longer a limiting factor. If the experiment is successful, you would be able to produce test parts that are too long to make on Earth. Long-term thinking, if astronauts can make very long parts in space, those pieces could  speed up large construction projects, such as the structures of space habitats. used to form the structural frames for solar panels or radiators Another benefit if you can make stuff in space means less things you need to pack into your rocket Every pound of cargo can still cost over $1,000 to put into space. Ultimately the MIT group wants to “make this manufacturing process available and accessible to other researchers.”   3D printing reaches new heights with two-story home | Nasdaq (25:39) A 3D printer weighing more than 12 tons is creating what is believed to be the first 3D-printed, two-story home in the United States.Producing layers of concrete to build the 4,000-square-foot home in Houston. Construction will take a total of 330 hours of printing The project is a two-year collaboration by Hannah, Peri 3D Construction and Cive, a construction engineering company. Hikmat Zerbe, Cive's head of structural engineering, hopes the innovative technique can one day help more quickly and cheaply build multi-family homes. Zerbe talks on the newest for the construction industry:“Traditional construction, you know the rules, you know the game, you know the material properties, the material behavior. In here, everything is new … The material is new, although concrete is an old material in general, but 3D printing concrete is something new.” Since the printer does all the heavy lifting, less workers are needed at the construction site. Gut Bacteria Affect Brain Health | Neuroscience News (31:39) A growing pile of evidence indicates that the tens of trillions of microbes that normally live in our gut microbiome have far-reaching effects on how our bodies function. Produce vitamins,  Help digest food, Prevent the overgrowth of harmful bacteria  Regulate the immune system According to researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, findings from a new study suggests that the gut microbiome also plays a key role in the health of our brains. To determine whether the gut microbiome may be playing a causal role, the researchers altered the gut microbiomes of mice.Mice were genetically modified to more likely develop Alzheimer's-like brain damage and cognitive impairment. The mice were given a course of antibiotics at 2 weeks of age, permanently changing the composition of bacteria in their microbiomes. For male mice, it reduced the amount of brain damage evident at 40 weeks of age. No significant effect on neurodegeneration in female mice. From other studies we know that male and female brains respond differently to different stimuli.For instance visual stimuli. The composition of our brains are different as well. Further experiments linked three specific short-chain fatty acids — compounds produced by certain types of gut bacteria as products of their metabolism — to neurodegeneration.Were scarce in mice with gut microbiomes altered by antibiotic treatment They appeared to trigger neurodegeneration by activating immune cells in the bloodstream, which in turn activated immune cells in the brain to damage brain tissue.  The findings suggest a new approach to preventing and treating neurodegenerative diseases by modifying the gut microbiome with antibiotics, probiotics, specialized diets or other means.

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

Today's Look Back Podcast Guest is Joshua March, the 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. Bring your entrepreneurial appetite and curiosity to our latest episode!

From initial inspiration in a sci-fi novel to the current state of “designing biology” in cultivated meat, SCiFi Foods cofounder and CEO Joshua March chats with Bio + Health general partner Vijay Pande and editorial lead Olivia Webb about company building, developing and iterating in biology, and what the future of cultivated meat could be.

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Joshua March, founder of SciFi Foods to talk about why he is trying to brew burgers (3:30), mixing meat and plants (6:00), the cost challenge (8:00), growing up in small town England and his first startup (11:50), launching a social media software company (15:00), finding a technical co-founder and starting a meat company (17:20), leaning into the science with its branding (25:20), the cost challenge (30:30), the road to regulatory approval (37:40), winning hearts and minds (40:15), and the vegan mafia (41:10). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

Joshua March is the co-founder and CEO of SciFi Foods. They are developing cultivated beef and starting with hybrid products to bring the price down to comparable prices with conventional beef.In this episode we discuss:CRISPR in cultivated meatRaising investment from Coldplay and A16ZThe regulatory landscape in the USBuilding their first facility in the USMentioned in the episode -Food Dive Article: SciFi Foods reduces the cost of cell-based beef 1,000-foldRaise from A16Z: $22M Series A

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.

 This week we walk through the story of Joshua and the crossing of the Jordan. https://archive.org/download/by-faith-march-20th/By%20Faith%20March%2020th.mp3

Bob Reccord // Joshua - Message

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

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.

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.

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.

Joshua March is the Founder of the Digital customer care platform, Conversocial and Author of Message Me. Joshua is a seasoned Messenger expert, and his company's platform uses the Messenger platform as a customer service delivery point that has been used by leading ecommerce brands such as Gymshark, Google, Tesco, Audi and the BBC, We talk about how and why customer services is moving to the Messenger platform and how to leverage this new opportunity of serving your customers better.   ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: KLAVIYO  Klaviyo is THE game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. BEYOND BLACK FRIDAY Check out Klaviyo's new Video Docu-Series, Beyond Black Friday. Where they follow three unique ecommerce brands keeping the momentum going year round. It is a 12-part series that will premiere a new webisode each week. They'll start with Cyber Weekend preparations, cover the holidays and beyond. They promise to share marketing strategies that'll take your business to the next level.

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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)

Adam and Jeannie explore the decline of people using the phone for customer service and how to know if chat is better for you and your customers. Why is chat better than phone for some customers? We all know calling a company for customer service is typically time-consuming and frustrating. So with text-based service options like chat becoming more available, many of us are opting not to pick up the phone. “We all have been trained to not pick up the phone…” -Jeannie Walters But is this really better? While chat offers convenience and a better sense of control for the customer, phone conversations capture more of the emotion and urgency of the situation. So even though we save on resources by sending customers through this channel, we miss out on valuable insights that can only be communicated through the spoken word. Perhaps we should not be looking at this as one channel being better than the other. Instead, maybe we should be thinking about what actually serves the customer in the moment. For instance, is chat only preferred because the customer gave up while waiting for a service agent on the phone? “That’s not a problem of the channel. That’s a problem of the execution.” -Adam Toporek This is a hot issue to which there’s no one right answer. In fact, the Washington Post recently published an article encouraging customer NOT to call for customer service. While this idea may sound great for companies hoping to save on resources, it signals a public perception of failure around phone support. So what can you do about this, and what does it mean for customer service in your company? More importantly, what does it mean for the way customers perceive your brand and how you collect those insights? We talk about this and a lot more on the podcast. Listen in! Related Content Washington Post Article, Want better customer service? Don’t call. Text. 360Connext® post, 3 Ways the Best Brands Do Omnichannel Right Customers That Stick® post, Remove the Weak Links in Your Customer Experience: Part 1 Episode 336: Joshua March, Social Media Messaging Episode 235: Customer Experience Touchpoint Tips We're on C-Suite Radio! Check it out for more great podcasts Sponsor message Give your team the customer service training they deserve Want to bring game-changing customer service training to your team? CTS Service Solutions offers a half-day in-person workshop designed to motivate and educate your customer-facing team members. Using energy, excitement, and interaction, our workshop helps frontline teams embrace a customer-centric outlook, then — using the principles from our book Be Your Customer’s Hero — gives them the skills and confidence they need to handle any service interaction. Don’t leave your frontline team hanging… Give them the training they deserve. Learn more at customerheroworkshop.com, that is customerheroworkshop.com.   Take care of yourself and take care of your customers.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.

 Wisdom Wednesday Episode. On Wisdom Wednesday I bring wisdom from the best books, articles, videos etc. and share the highlights with you! 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…

A Wisdom Wednesday Episode. On Wisdom Wednesday I bring wisdom from the best books, articles, videos etc. and share the highlights with you! 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…

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

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 Wisdom Wednesday Episode. On Wisdom Wednesday I bring wisdom from the best events, books, articles, videos etc. and share the highlights with you! Brought to you by: The Social Pack: Get on the inside to stay on the topside. Join today! Telligent: A leader in community software for digital marketing and support communities. Its social software solutions…

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.

As social customer care is still in its nascent period, it’s not easy to find someone who’s been doing it for even five years. Well, after interviewing Joshua March on the technology side for the last Focus on Customer Service podcast episode, we’ve found a second person, Delfin Vassallo, on the brand side. Delfin (pronounced Del-feen), a 20-year marketing veteran, started in social media seven years ago and in social care five years ago. He helped build the successful social care programs in Europe at Barclays Bank, Nokia, and Microsoft. Delfin recalls spending an incredible amount of time trying to convince management that social customer service was a thing five years ago. “Our customers are on Facebook, [they] are on Twitter,” he would say. “We have to be there. We must be there.” And Delfin has been there, working with three major companies to start and grow their social customer care practice. At Nokia, he ended up managing 67 Facebook pages and more than 40 Twitter handles. A major focus has been on proving the ROI of delivering customer service via social media. At first he convinced executives that despite a plethora of early complaints, the company was “going to save some money by broadcasting all this information” because “there are many other customers watching.” But in time he developed calculations to determine the “cost per issue” as a measure of comparison to a traditional call center. At one company, he found that Twitter’s cost per issue, in Euros, was half the cost of the telephone. Online customer communities delivered even better cost savings – a fraction of the cost of Twitter. What’s changed in the 5 years since “social customer service” entered the lexicon? “Understanding at the executive level has increased so it’s easier to sell in,” says Delfin. “The awareness of social care is even bigger [and] the technology has advanced a lot.” Delfin joined me and Dan Moriarty from his current home in Finland to discuss his vast knowledge of all things social media. Here are some key points in Episode 36 and where to find them: 1:03 Delfin’s professional background 2:32 Delfin discusses launching a social care program in regulated industry 6:16 Convincing management that social care is a good idea even with many complaints 9:37 Calculating an ROI on social customer service 12:37 How to handle agent workload before a program gets to scale 17:15 What has changed in the 5 years that Delfin has been involved in social customer service 19:33 Delfin discusses balancing the many technology options available today 23:38 Integrating social customer service with a company’s CRM system 27:10 Delfin recalls a memorable customer interaction In the next Focus on Customer Service episode, we will return to highlighting a single brand with an award-winning financial services company. If you’ve had a great experience with a brand on social media, we want to hear about it! Please use the comments or tweet using #FOCS and we will try to get that brand on a future episode. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and Soundhound.