www.gettrustworthy.com

The Founders of Trustworthy are proud to present our brand spankin’ new website. Like everything we do here, this was truly a team effort with Holly designing, Rob developing, Travis programming the blog feed and me writing all the copy.

This is our first swing at getting our message out in a full, version 1.0 presentation, and we welcome all comments and constructive criticisms. We’re still tweaking and nitpicking away at it. And I’m sure we’ll continue to do so until we launch version 2.0.

Our goal with the site is to provide a clear and concise value proposition to companies who need help connecting with their customers in social media.

All too often, we see websites that offer platitudes and catch phrases without actually telling you what they do. Our aim is to cut through the BS and arm the busy executive with the information necessary to act and act fast. The social media landscape can be confusing enough to navigate, without being further confounded by the company ostensibly providing the solution. So, we built this website from the ground-up to give a plain and simple explanation of what we deliver.

Oh, and while we were at it, we gave our blog a nice facelift too! Let us know what you think in the comments.

#youFAIL: Respond Or Die In Social Media

I wouldn’t be pimping for votes this hard if I didn’t believe this would truly be an exceptional panel. It’s called #youFAIL: Respond Or Die In Social Media, and I’m promising “No lofty platitudes, just in-the-trenches advice and actionable tips from people who do it every day.” Please vote now if you think this sounds interesting. Click here to vote.

Need more convincing? Just take a look at this line-up of panelists that have graciously agreed to be part of this discussion if we’re picked for the 2010 South By Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin.

Scott Monty, Head of social media at Ford Motor Company AKA @ScottMonty

Frank Eliason, Senior Director, Comcast National Customer Service AKA @comcastcares

Brandie Feuer, Director of Interactive Marketing at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino AKA @phVegas

Andrew Lin, Marketing Consultant at Miramax Films AKA @MiramaxFilms

I’m reaching out to others to round out the panel with a variety of perspectives, but the number one requirement is keeping a daily connection with customers using social media tools and networks.

The Corporate Consumer

One of the core principles – perhaps, second only to the caveman analogy – behind Trustworthy is the concept of The Corporate Consumer.

Nearly everyone in civilized society provides some service to other people, for which they are paid or otherwise rewarded. This defines the “Corporate” idenity. All these same people simultaneously consume goods provided by everybody else. This is the “Consumer” identity.

So in the quest to repair consumer relationships, we have examined this strange duality that seems to further support our argument that this mutually beneficial relationship – that got off on the wrong foot at some point – is intrinsically symbiotic and therefore can be, must be, restored.

Whether you clock in at your IBM cubicle, or you volunteer at the local library, you might turn around the next day and require service as a customer. So why do we repeatedly find customer service so horribly lacking? Doesn’t the wireless service provider on the other end of the 800 number know what it’s like to get shitty service? On the flip side, as consumers, can we ever cut companies a little slack by realizing they’re in it for profit, and they might need to cut costs in order to keep the employees they have?

Sure it’s pie in the sky idealism, right? Shoe on the other foot, golden rule, etc. But that’s why we’re in it. Social media now affords us the tools to tear down the walls between corporate and consumer, so we might realize someday we’re all just Corporate Consumers.

Winner of our iPod Touch giveaway.

As a way to spread the word about Trustworthy during SXSW and to give back for all the love we felt there, we invited everyone who stopped by our booth to enter to win an iPod Touch. All we asked was that people tweet @trustworthy and #sxsw to enter. We had a great number of entries helping us become the third most-tweeted about company at SXSW.

Christine Young

With all the bloggerati and Twitterati there in Austin, it’s no surprise that the winner was Christine Young AKA @YoungMommy and author of From Dates To Diapers. She’s also one of WalMart’s “Eleven Moms”, the retailer’s latest social media strategy to aggressively recruit mommy bloggers.

Congratulations, Christine! And thanks again for stopping by to see us.

Rob and Holly listen and respond while Travis tracks the tweets.

We’re back from an amazing weekend at SXSW and we couldn’t be happier with the response from everyone who dropped by to visit us. The overwhelming consensus is that companies are now keenly aware that they need to develop an open and transparent line of communication with their customers in social media – and that the service Trustworthy provides is a welcome solution for them.

The people we talked to are in the social media trenches at their respective organizations. They fight for budgets and legal approval on a daily basis. The persuasive ones get to execute the new mandate, and quickly find it’s a full-time job for what is often times an army of one.

Everyone we talked to immediately recognized that social media response is an idea whose time has come. We made lots of friends and hopefully, a few new customers of our own.

Along the way, we discussed repairing consumer relationships with Ben McConnell (Church of the Customer), CC Chapman (Managing the Gray), Julien Smith (In Over Your Head) and many others we’d only met via Twitter before. It was great meeting you all in the flesh.

We’re already thinking about panels for next year!

Focused Groups - Click to Enlarge

Wouldn’t be awesome if every company could be run like Zappos? A Twittering CEO. An open and authentic culture. I would teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I would buy the world a Coke and keep it company.

But CEOs can’t all be Tony Hsieh. There’s a brazillion reasons for this, but I would argue – they shouldn’t all be Tony Hsieh. In most cases, the best way to serve your customers is to be the best damn CEO, CMO, CIO, etc., that you can be 100% of the time. Same goes for your staff. Transparency is critical now, but it can’t ever come at the expense of delivering value in the product or service you offer.

If transparency and authenticity becomes a distraction, nobody wins. If your output suffers, no one will care that you blog, or Twitter, or that the CEO sits in a cubicle with the rank and file.

So ask yourself: How do I serve my customers best?

Customers demand satisfaction. Brands answer with whatever makes sense to the bottom line. We’re saying the two do not have to be mutually exclusive. Authenticity. Transparency. Both are personal and corporate traits that should be embraced instead of feared. It’s natural to avoid vulnerability, but the healing starts when we all drop our guards and get real with one another.

Trustworthy wants to lead by example, so we’ll be blogging everything from our latest business challenges, to random insights about customer service in the digital space. We hope you participate in the comments. We are listening and more importantly, we’re responding.

So what went wrong? Why is it that consumers assume they’ll receive little or no customer service? Why is it that brands look at their customers as fickle demographics they can deceive for a quick sale? Both parties stand to gain by reconciling this relationship. But decade after decade, the problem gets worse and never better.

That’s where Trustworthy comes in. We’re here to repair these relationships, one by one.

Trustworthy knows that while the Internet is our utility truck, simply monitoring from the street isn’t enough anymore. We have to get out and respond, human to human.

As economies evolved from cavemen and hairdryers, something else was intrinsic to success and sustainability: Trust. Tribes had to trust that on trade expeditions, they wouldn’t be slaughtered by the other tribe for their goods. In a more modern analogy, you trust that your iPod will work when you get it home, and Apple trusts that you’ll pay your credit card bills. Without trust, the whole thing crumbles and we all go home without pizza.

It’s no surprise the first step in reconciliation and rebuilding trust, is communication. Dialogue. A two-way conversation initiated by willing parties. Trustworthy delivers this by responding to issues as a helpful, proactive mediator. The first conversation we’d like to have is with you, right here on this blog. In the days and weeks ahead, I and a few of my partners will try and spark some lively discussion here and in the comments. I hope you’ll participate. It’s the first step on the road to recovery!