This Window Cleaners Strategy

Tyler Engle, owner of Wichita Window Cleaning, recently added high-rise clients. “It’s recommended you have training, but I did rock climbing for years,” he said.

Window cleaner’s business strategy takes a broad view (Wichita, Kansas); Ask Tyler Engle what the latest video he has posted has to do with his small business, and he’ll tell you: Nothing. Nevertheless, Engle said engaging people on social media has been key to growing Wichita Window Cleaning, which washes windows for residential and business clients. “It’s an odd strategy,” he said. “I put out stuff that’s funny or entertaining. Somebody will say, ‘Hey, this guy’s funny, I see he’s got a window cleaning business, and I need my windows cleaned.’”

Engle, 24, started washing windows in high school for his father, Rusty, who owns Pro Cleaning Glass. Their businesses are separate entities, although they often work together or cover for one another on jobs.

Engle earned a computer engineering degree from Wichita State University and worked at data storage company NetApp for almost three years but said it “wasn’t really captivating for me. I like being the boss.”

He is now the boss, along with being the chief window washer, accountant and marketer. He has two part-time employees and hopes to add a full-time employee this summer. Engle said he thinks he has the largest window cleaning operation in Wichita. “For example, we have McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s,” he said. “Pretty much any fast-food restaurant you go through, we clean it.”

Recently, he added high-rise clients such as the Hyatt Regency Wichita, although he admits he doesn’t have any “formal training” to hang from a harness more than a hundred feet in the air. “It’s recommended you have training, but I did rock climbing for years,” he said. “It was terrifying at first, but I’m getting a little more used to it.”

Posting video of that work garnered him some additional clients, but other videos Engle posts have nothing to with windows. Most recently, he and a friend used a drone to film scenes of the Arkansas River and Keeper of the Plains. It has garnered some 162,000 views on Facebook.

Engle doesn’t discount the importance of old-fashioned legwork, saying he spent a lot of time making personal contact with the people who “pull the trigger” on decisions like who’s going to clean a business’ windows.

Engle doubts he will wash windows forever – he’s thinking about launching a digital media marketing company – but says the lessons he has learned should work in any field. “I had always thought that growing a business just kind of happened, word-of-mouth-wise,” he said. “When I started really taking it seriously, you discover the correlation between how much effort you put in and the result. “I’m still dealing with that. I’m only 24.”

• Business growth attributed to social media engagement
• Owner thinks his window cleaning service if biggest in Wichita
• Old-fashioned leg work is important, too, he says

Next Door To Referral Key

Nextdoor, the social network that promises to introduce you to the people on your block.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Nextdoor, the social network that promises to introduce you to the people on your block (By Seth Stevenson). According to some recent survey results, Americans have become rather unneighborly. A mere 30 percent of us socialize with our neighbors more than once a month (down from 44 percent in the mid-1970s). And a shocking 28 percent of us know none of our neighbors by name. We may keep in touch with faraway friends on Facebook, but when it comes to hanging out in our own communities we are bowling alone.

Tech entrepreneur Nirav Tolia noticed that we increasingly seem to prefer rubbing elbows online—instead of in real places where real elbows might really rub—and saw a business opportunity. In late 2010, he created a service called Nextdoor. It's a social network that attempts to webify the original social network: the neighborhood. There are now Nextdoor sites in more than 6,500 communities in 49 states (not clear what's up with those anti-communitarian South Dakotans). All of them were launched by regular folks who sought a way to connect with their neighbors, but didn't want to ring doorbells or make small talk in the elevator.

To start a Nextdoor site for your own 'hood, you first define the physical boundaries of neighbordom. Who do you consider your fellow villagers? They could be spread out over a vast open realm if you live in a rural area where the houses are far apart; or might mingle around a few leafy blocks if you inhabit an inner-ring suburb; or could be smooshed together within a single high-rise building if you're a city dweller. Nextdoor prefers that each of its neighborhoods contain at least 75 households. So far the median number hovers somewhere around 200 to 300.

Join the free private social network for your neighborhood. Click here.

Once you've targeted your territory, you recruit your neighbors to sign up. Nextdoor provides postcards to put in mailboxes and flyers to post on telephone poles or in apartment building lobbies. No one is required to join, of course. If neighbors do hop on board, they must register using their real names and physical addresses (which Nextdoor then verifies before admitting them). Any posts on the site will be made under those real names—not made-up screen names—with real addresses visible for all other neighbors to see.

What happens on a Nextdoor neighborhood site once it's up and running? I spoke with Nextdoor users in San Francisco; Lafayette, Col.; and Hamilton, N.Y., and poked around on a couple of sites. Turns out there are lots of requests for recommendations: Anybody know a good nanny/auto mechanic/plumber? Also some spirited discussions regarding the relative merits of local restaurants and grocery stores. Much selling of or giving away of old patio furniture, outgrown baby strollers, and unwanted sporting equipment. Announcements about upcoming block parties and holiday gatherings. The occasional safety alert, when someone's car gets broken into while it’s sitting in a driveway.

You might wonder whether you could achieve similar ends simply by creating a Facebook group and asking neighbors to join. But Tolia points out that many have made the same argument about LinkedIn—that it’s useless because you could do the same stuff on Facebook—and yet lots of people find that site more useful than Facebook for professional networking. Nextdoor has dedicated tabs built in for things like events, recommendations, and safety. It eventually plans to make money by selling targeted ads of some sort to local dentists and window washers and such.

Perhaps more important, Nextdoor is private: Only verified neighbors can see each other's posts, and Nextdoor neighborhoods' pages are not indexed on any search engines. Some other community sites allow anonymity, which has encouraged incidents of nasty small-town gossip. Tolia says that using real names and addresses has kept Nextdoor free of vicious name-calling and rumor-spreading. The Nextdoor users I spoke to agreed that this is the case.

All in all, it seems like Nextdoor may offer most of the benefits of neighborliness with few of the icky downsides. You can establish online ties with your neighbors, thereby eliminating the need to ever interact with them in person. Or—in a best-case scenario—the online connection might manage to surface some cool nearby folks you actually do want to have a beer with. I'm thinking I might go ahead and start a Nextdoor site for my building.

'Thanks for the referral. Here's your steak.' - In August of 2007, Lewis Weinstein launched the beta version of ReferralKey, a site intended to help digitize the process of sending referrals from one professional to another. If a real estate agent sent one of his clients to a mortgage broker, the site would track that - and also keep tabs on whether the mortgage broker ever returned the favor. Weinstein envisioned building a new kind of social network for small businesses that would provide continual streams of leads to its members, in a way that sites like LinkedIn and Facebook do not. But the site didn't immediately take off. Weinstein, a serial entrepreneur and third-generation tax accountant in Needham, found that professionals using the site felt it just wasn't helping them generate enough new business. "The common response was, 'I thought you were gonna send me referrals,'" he says.

That's where the steaks come in.

When Weinstein relaunched the site this past April, he decided to create a new system of incentives. Professionals can now offer a cash bounty to spur others in their online network (or anyone who views their profile on ReferralKey) to send them a new prospect. (Some professionals, such lawyers, real estate agents, and accountants, have codes of conduct that prohibit them from taking such a payment.) If the prospect turns into a paying client, the recipient of the lead instructs ReferralKey to cough up the money via PayPal.

Users of the site can also upload their databases of clients and send out a message encouraging them to refer their friends and relatives to their trusty financial planner, for instance. "The site will track what happens as a result, and offer them an Omaha Steaks gift certificate, one from Callaway Golf, or one from L.L. Bean, for the new business that gets generated," says Weinstein. As an accountant, he says, he would typically send his clients a letter once a year that offered them a $75 gift certificate to Legal Sea Foods for any new business they sent his way, but the program was a pain to administer.

Weinstein says that ReferralKey attracted about 5000 members during its beta period. Since then, it has grown to just over 32,000 members. Premium memberships, offering an unlimited stream of referrals, cost $19.95 a month. Weinstein raised a first round of about $1 million from individual investors to launch the site, and says he's now hoping to raise a $3 million second round from venture capital firms. He still operates his accounting practice, with offices in Boston and Needham, noting, "Accountants work their a--es off three months of the year, but that gives me time to do entrepreneurial stuff the other months." ReferralKey, with four employees, is co-located in the Boston office of his firm, GenerationTax.

What Is Referral Key? (My Referral Key Review. Free Steak Aplenty) - Referral Key is one weird force to be reckoned with. Three times in the past week I have received email invitations from someone in my address book that state, “If you’re taking on new clients, I’d like to include you in my private referral network to send you business leads through Referral Key.” All three times these invitations came from a person I sort of know on varying degrees, and all three times these invitations have confused me immensely. So I decided to investigate what new, hot thing I was missing. On the surface, Referral Key seems to be a way to get and give referrals on stuff. Although the concept of “cash rewards” sounds a bit spammy, to say the least, I’ll go in with an open mind and think that maybe that’s just bad website copy. I click forward, to presumably confirm my dear friend’s referral.

Here’s where things got confusing. In accepting the “referral invitation” from one person, I had to enter in some data in order to “accept” the invite — never mind that I’m not entirely sure what that means. Most importantly, though, I encountered the following drop down menu, where it became blindingly clear to me that I didn’t (seem) to fit in. Read more...

When Customers Get Angry

What to Do When Customers Get Mean on Social Media: There's a growing army of unhappy, sometimes bitter and angry customers who take to social media to vent their frustrations about a brand's products or services. Sometimes they can get so mean that their feedback is more an attack than a request for customer service. No matter the size of your company, angry customer tirades can damage your reputation online. In my experience, you can encounter at least two types of unsatisfied customers communicating with you over social media:

• A person who was genuinely hoping for a good experience with your product or service, had a bad experience and simply wants to vent and seek acknowledgment or a solution. 
• Someone who actively uses social media to dissuade people from doing business with your company, and probably doesn't care about your reply to his or her claims. This person hopes you do reply so he or she can drag you into a public fight.

Either way, dealing with these types of angry customers should be an opportunity to show the world how your company cares about customer service and that you stand behind your brand. With the right strategy, you can turn foes into fans and win new customers at the same time. Here are five tips for responding to angry customers over social media:

1. Respond quickly. The longer someone waits for a reply the more steamed that person can become. Let the individual know publicly that you have heard his or her frustration or problem and that you're on it.

2. Never show anger or engage in negative banter. Don't stoop to an angry commentor's level, as it can quickly escalate. Taking the high road and not replying with negativity sets you up for the win in the eyes of anyone who's following along.

3. Be personal. The employees who manage your social media should sign their tweets or posts with their names or at least their initials to make the engagement more personable and real. Also be sure to address the customer by his or her name.

4. Work toward a resolution. Let the customer know that you're going to do everything within your power to make the situation right. Don't simply attempt to calm someone down and walk away.

5. Talk offline when necessary. Use direct messages on Twitter or email if the discussion is detailed. At least the initial response should be public, though, to let everyone know that you're on the issue and that you care.

When you do come to a resolution, be sure to post about it. If you don't share the results, no one will know how you resolved the situation. This is your opportunity to show that you deliver top-notch customer service over social media.

If the negative comments persist, the person is most likely pushing you in hopes of seeing you falter publicly. All you can do is be polite, offer assistance and let the person -- as well as everyone else watching -- know that you're doing everything you can. Try offering a free gift as a token of appreciation. Whatever you do, don't engage in a public argument.

To help you cope with difficult shoppers this holiday season, consider these five tips from customer-service experts:

1. Remember: The customer is always right.

 The old "customer is always right" philosophy may still be the best approach for dealing with obnoxious shoppers. Customer service experts have long said that a happy customer tells one or two friends, while an unhappy customer tells several--or in the age of social media, hundreds of his closest strangers. And these statistics can be magnified by the emotions related to holiday shopping.

"Businesses spend so much of their money acquiring customers, yet can lose them over one complaint," says Ken Varga, a marketing strategist in Spring Lake, N.J. After all, he adds, 99 percent of customers will obey the rules, so it's about appeasing that difficult 1 percent. So when someone returns a product beyond the 30-day money back window, for example, you're probably better off giving a refund with a smile. Otherwise, "they can hurt you badly," Varga says, especially by badmouthing you on Facebook and Twitter.

2. Train employees to cope with problem customers.

 Donna Fluss advises her small-business clients to hold staff meetings between the end of October and Thanksgiving to do scenario training and discuss best practices for dealing with nightmare customers. "Give [employees] as many options as possible, especially in a season when people are short on time and short on money," says the founder of DMG Consulting in West Orange, N.J.

Staff members should be trained to be sensitive and make a reasonable effort to solve a customer's problem, Fluss says. "If a customer is over their credit limit, see if you can get them a one-time credit increase. Or if you know you can't get them a gift item in time for Christmas, suggest where else they may be able to find it, even if it's through a competitor."

3. Hire enough holiday help to minimize customer frustration.

 Staffing up adequately during the holidays can prevent a lot of aggravation for both customers and employees. If someone is already upset and then has to wait a long time on line or on hold, this will only add fuel to the fire.

Overworked employees also may mishandle customers. If there aren't enough employees to deal with the increased holiday demand, Varga says, "the individual handling the disgruntled customer will try to rush, and as a result, the outcome won't be good."

4. Don't promise what you can't deliver.

 You may want to appease an angry customer by promising to get a package delivered by Christmas Eve, but resist the temptation if the chances are slim. The last thing you want to do with a disgruntled shopper is make empty promises, says Esteban Kolsky, founder of thinkJar, a Kansas City, Kansas-based firm that focuses on customer service strategies.

"If you say you're going to try to do it and you don't do it, their problem becomes your problem," he says. "They don't use common sense, and then they expect the store or company to perform miracles. You always try to please your customer, but don't give them a reason to heap blame on you."

5. As a last resort, be willing to lose the customer and the sale.

 If you offer your best plan for resolving a problem and the customer is still being difficult, it's okay to part company and refund the purchase price.

Your generosity of spirit should have limits, says Varga, whose rule is: Only one chance to break the rules per customer. "Times are going to get very tough and people will begin to make demands that are unrealistic just to see what they can get away with," he says.

Paying Homage To The High Rise Window Cleaner

KFC delivered lunch to window washers 40 stories above the Chicago River. Click to enlarge.

Last week, KFC delivered lunch to window washers 40 stories above the Chicago River. Strapped to a harness a climber dressed in the Colonel’s white suit hand delivered lunch to window washers at Chicago’s River Bend building. Obviously the whole thing was a choreographed stunt but still, pretty cool. KFC made a rather radical marketing push in support of their $5 Everyday Meal. The promotion came as a result of the fried chicken brand pulsing their social media networks to nominate particular folks they felt were in need of an extreme lunch delivery.

After sorting through more than 100 “out-of-the-bucket” occupations, the consensus was that high-rise window washers were the most deserving of a mid-work meal delivery. With a photographer and KFC Colonel stunt double in hand, the Colonel demonstrated KFC’s commitment to “taking lunchtime meals to new heights.” Strapped in and donning the iconic white suit, the KFC Colonel strapped on a harness and ascended 38 floors up Chicago’s River Bend Building. The picture’s have a definite unrivaled swagger, paying homage to the often overlooked task of sky scrapin’ window cleaning and all similarly extreme jobs.

Kentucky Fried Window Cleaners

He’s No Chicken: KFC Colonel to Make an “Extreme” Lunch Delivery 38 Stories above the Chicago River - After Soliciting Suggestions via Social Media, KFC® Colonel to Deliver $5 Everyday Meals to Skyscraper Window Washers at “High” Noon Today in the Windy City. 

Chicago: Bringing new meaning to “haute cuisine,” KFC will give lunch an extreme makeover by dispatching its KFC Colonel to personally deliver new $5 Everyday Meals to window washers working nearly 40 stories up at Chicago’s “River Bend” building. At noon today, the KFC Colonel will strap on a harness and descend 38 floors with food in tow, demonstrating KFC’s commitment to taking lunchtime meals to all new heights. “And, what better way to highlight the tremendous value of these $5 box meals than with an extreme lunch delivery to a location nominated by our fans?”

To launch the everyday lunch value, Kentucky Fried Chicken asked America via its social media channels to name folks in need of a “So Good” extreme lunch delivery. After sorting through more than 100 “out-of-the-bucket” occupations (including working at Area 51, changing the lights that top water towers and skyscrapers and trimming trees), the chain decided to literally send its KFC Colonel up in the air to bring lunch to one of America’s most extreme occupations – high rise window washers.

“With the introduction of our $5 Everyday Meals, we’re encouraging America to go above and beyond a simple sub for $5 and reward themselves with a real meal deal everyday of the week,” said Barry Westrum, chief marketing officer for KFC. “And, what better way to highlight the tremendous value of these $5 box meals than with an extreme lunch delivery to a location nominated by our fans?”

Residents of Chicago’s River Bend building, employees of neighboring skyscrapers and passersby will be able to view the KFC Colonel in his iconic white suit on scaffolding high above the city streets as the world’s most popular chicken restaurant chain demonstrates once again it is willing to go to any length to serve its customers.

Today - Two window washers rescued after pulley fails to work in ... Kentucky. Firefighters from the Lyndon Fire Department rescued two window washers Tuesday afternoon. Apparently their pulley was not working and they were stuck in the 9200 block of Shelbyville Road off Whittington Parkway. No one was injured.

FaceBook & Social Media For Window Cleaners

Facebook helps to win new business: A commercial window cleaning company is expanding by using Facebook to win customers. Glassmatic has been in business since November, gaining more than 100 customers in its first three months. It is confident of increasing that number five-fold by the end of June. The business, based in Howdon- le-Wear, County Durham, and run by Johnny Harrison and business partner David Stewart, attributes social networking as a significant influence in its rapid expansion. Mr Harrison, who started the business after he was made redundant from his job in the construction industry last summer, said: “Facebook is proving to be important for us. We have got our own page and have well over 100 fans.

“It is a way for customers to get in touch with us and for potential customers to find out about us. “If someone sends us a message they would like their windows cleaned, we will come round. It is a very good marketing tool and one we hope will help us to grow.” Glassmatic has commercial and private customers in and around Bishop Auckland and Crook, and hopes to expand to other areas of the county. Former construction manager Mr Harrison said that although window cleaning was not an area he or Mr Stewart – a former plasterer – have a background in, their investment in equipment, helped by a Business Link grant, and commitment to giving the best service were paying off. He said: “When I was made redundant last summer, I had a few months to think about what I wanted to do next. I found I was turned down for a lot of jobs, mainly because I was too experienced, and it was really frustrating.

“Window cleaning is something David and I fell into really, but it is going very well. We are both new to running our own business and set ourselves realistic targets, which we are confident of achieving. Even though the weather stopped us from working for five weeks, we have still built up our customer base during that time. “We both know the value and importance of professional service from our previous jobs, and I think that is definitely proving important in running Glassmatic. “If you do it right, you get a good reputation, and with the start we have got off to, we are confident about the future.”

30 Tips for Using Social Media in Your Business: Wading into the fast-moving flow of social media can be daunting to a small business owner with very little time on his hands. Here's Inc.'s comprehensive social media cheat sheet for the time-strapped entrepreneur.

1. Offer a peek behind the scenes. Offering a sneak preview of new products, services, or features online can help build demand and provide critical feedback to help smooth the launch. For instance, John Doyle, founder of chocolate company John and Kira's in Philadelphia, posts photos of new products on Flickr and invites comments from customers.

2. Harness your expertise. Chances are your company's white paper won't go viral. But sharing knowledge you've gathered through your trade can go a long way toward boosting your brand. Ford Models, for instance, became a YouTube sensation through a series of videos that featured its models giving beauty and fashion tips.

3. Demonstrate what your company does. Because multimedia is so integral to social media, getting connected allows you to express your company's value proposition beyond words. To show just how powerful his company's blenders were, Blendtec's head of marketing, George Wright, created a series of videos showing the appliances churning up such diverse items as a rotisserie chicken, a Rubik's Cube, and an iPhone. The series' 100 million combined views helped boost Blendtec's sales by 700 percent.

4. Put your website's content to work. Want to draw more traffic to your website? Help spread the word by encouraging visitors to share content they enjoy. GotCast, a website that connects television casting directors with aspiring actors, draws new visitors by posting audition videos on Digg and allowing others to share video links on the site. One way to promote the sharing of your site's content is to install a widget, such as AddThis, that automates linking to popular sites.

5. Be candid. In unsure economic times, transparency goes a long way toward retaining and attracting customers. Giving readers the scoop on your company blog is an easy way to keep the lines of communication open. Giacomo Guilizzoni, the founder of San Francisco software company Balsamiq, even posts sales and profit figures to show that his company is on solid financial footing.

6. But be careful what you say about others. When Leslie Richard, owner of a North Carolina clothing company, described Vision Media Television as a "scam," she was slapped with a $20 million lawsuit. While recounting negative experiences with others won't necessarily lead to a court battle, it's best to steer clear of name-calling.

7. Interact with visitors—really. Just putting up a blog or a Facebook fan page won't do much good if visitors sense the flow of conversation only goes one way. In fact, Matt Mullenweg, founder of blogging platform Wordpress, lists not participating in comments as a surefire way to kill a community. Mullenweg and his team field the many suggestions users have for Wordpress through his blog.

8. Don't try to create a stand-in for yourself. With all the other tasks required within your company, it's tempting to outsource managing your social media or even to try automating the process. That can easily backfire, as Joe Pulizzi, founder of Cleveland marketing firm Junta42, learned when he tried sending automated welcome messages to new followers on Twitter. His online contacts quickly called him out for sending out what they perceived to be spam.

9. Don't pretend to be someone else. Thanks to IP address tracking, observers can also quickly tell when company figureheads adopt fake identities for the sake of fluffing up their reputation. Not only can the practice hurt your company's reputation, it could also land you in legal trouble. The plastic surgery Lifestyle Lift had to pay $300,000 in settlement costs to the state of New York for having its employees post flattering reviews of the company without disclosing their affiliation.

10. Help employees bond. Corporations such as IBM have built in-house networks—even virtual worlds reminiscent of Second Life—to link employees working in different locations. Small and medium-sized businesses can take advantage of readily available tools to facilitate collaboration. The Hoffman Agency, a public relations firm, uses Ning, which enables users to build custom social networks, to connect its U.S. staff with employees in Europe and Asia.

The other 20 tips....