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Public relations, you gotta love it… I get releases and general communications from PR people on a daily basis. Some good, some not so good and some just plain bizarre. I thought I’d review my thoughts over the year about PR…

In April I posted about the some bad experiences:

A PR person (who is a lovely lady and with whom I have no beef) asked for times when I would be free to meet a couple of her companies. I studiously left a session early in order to make up midday appointment on the expo floor. – only to arrive and wait for ten minutes while the show staff tried to find the guy. I ended up just walking away – my time is limited here and I really didn’t want to wait in the hope he’d show up.

In October I attempted to avoid the same PR fiascos that had plagued me at other events and posted the four easy ways to ensure your brand gets attention (or at least my attention);

1. Please make it relevant. I’m a Cloud computing and SaaS guy with an interest in business process software and the culture shift needed to ease adoption of “Enterprise 2.0”. Sorry but there’s a bunch of things that simply aren’t in my sphere of interest. Please do some research and read my stuff to get a feel for what will interest and be relevant to me
2. I live in New Zealand, that’s a long way from SF and is in an entirely different timezone – if you want to engage me in a pre event briefing (something I’m not at all against), please take the time to work out when might be a suitable time for me. While I’m a very early riser who partly works in Pacific time, 3am is not a good time to be showing me the latest micro-blogging service for enterprise
3. Find out ways to engage me when you’ll get good attention. I’m a fitness fan and jog most mornings, especially when attending high-stress events like Enterprise 2.0. If someone comes to me and suggests a chat over a leisurely 5 mile run they’re likely to capture my undivided attention – it’s a good opportunity!
4. Work out what pushes my buttons – we all get jaded from lots and lots of calls and a million and one “me too” offerings. Find some way to reach out to me (and Cocktails are definitely NOT my thing) and your chances go up exponentially. I’ve written fairly extensively about a couple of companies lately precisely because their PR people connected with me in all the right ways – this is in no way a “pay for play” situation, merely a way to ensure you’re heard above the hubbub

And the result? I posted a shout out to five great people who ticked all the boxes. So here, at the start of 2010, is some more exposure for them:

• Kate Hobbie – MediaBrew consulting and Aria Systems. Kate is kind of a token offering here. We were already friends from previous connections when she’d spent time talking to me about SaaS billing in her communication role with Aria so there was some context there. However Kate went out of her way, even picking me up from the airport and playing taxi service for me.
• Rachel Peterson – Nectar communications. Rachel I’d also met previously when talking to Zuora and Sliderocket, two companies she works with. Despite not actually meeting up with Rachel this trip, she went out of her way to facilitate things for me, even arranging for me to meet Sliderocket CEO, Chuck Dietrich for a great run on the Presidio
• Alison Mickey – Schwartz communications. Alison saw my post and REALLY went out of her way to understand what I’m about. She sent me an email that referenced my area of interest in blogging, and even showed that she’d done some research about my outside interests and hobbies. The briefings she arranged were well resourced and I had enough information before them to make the briefing time valuable.
• Julia Mak – Community manager at LeapFILE. Julia also reached out to talk with me. Her company were originally going to demo at Enterprise 2.0 but for various reasons did not. We still met up and had a good chat about where her company is going, and the chat was tailored to my particular areas of interest.
• Christie Denniston at Catapult PR. Christie works with ThoughtWorks studios who were demo-ing their GoogleWave integration at Enterprise 2.0. Despite being remote from the conference, Christie went out of her way to ensure I had everything I needed, as an aside it was pretty disappointing that despite her staunch efforts, the team from ThoughtWorks never delivered the resource they had promised for my post – you can’t pick your clients huh?

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I’m a proponent of social media, not because it’s the “latest greatest” bandwagon to jump on but rather because it really has the ability to shorten the customer to supplier distance and drive quicker and better response times. It’s always nice to be able to write about real world examples of that process, and recently an interesting one came across my desk, especially because it involves two companies that I’ve written about in the past.

Zuora (see coverage here) is a SaaS subscription vendor while Syncplicity (see coverage here) is online synchronization and central file management provider. They had an exchange which is well worth looking at….

Syncplicity signed on as a Zuora customer in in March 2009 for a new offering it wanted to launch later in the year. Being a tech company, they decided to self-implement Z-Billing with little direct help from Zuora. Syncplicity then went live with basic functionality in April. In July, Syncplicity was experiencing a bunch issues with Zuora, some technical and some not – but most attributable to sub-optimal communications and customer support.

In frustration, Syncplicity CEO Leonard Chung posted a scathing comment on LinkedIn. Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo saw the comment and, after a reportedly sleepless night, contacted Leonard wanting to repair a very public falling out. He assigned his top engineering exec to the problem. In turn, Chung assigned his key person to work with Zuora on the issues.

The process to fix Syncplicity’s issues took 3 months but at the end of it all there was a successful roll out of the new Syncplicity product in November and, in a happy ending to a sad story, Chung is now a reference customer for Zuora and is pretty positive given the history, as he says, “we had a rocky start, but they really pulled through for us”.

After speaking to Chung about the incident I was really keen to hear Tien’s perspective. Bear in mind that Tien is a salesforce.com alumnus – his career developed watching the great marketer and visionary Marc Benioff sell the world on his vision. It’s not surprising that Tien is widely acknowledged, by both friends and competitors, as a master marketing mind.

However the Syncplicity affair shows that perhaps Tien overstated what Zuora was capable of back in early 2009. Perhaps a degree of hype got in the way of a clear description of what Zuora could, and could not, do. I put this to him and his reply was refreshingly honest for such a showman:

There is a fine line between hype and vision – articulating an exciting vision can galvanize people to achieve. Zuora has been running fast since its inception, the Syncplicity event was a wakeup call to focus on the core tents of creating tools that make business more successful

The event spurred Tien to embark upon what he’s internally labeling “Zuora 2.0” – a transformation of the business into a more reflective place that is focused on customer success. Of course sometimes that means exerting control over customer sign on and deployment. It’s indicative that Elizabeth Tse, who in a previous role ran eBay, has joined the Zuora management team as Vice President of Customer Operations. It indicates much more of a focus on internal customer advocacy.

Sometimes then, a failure is a positive thing. For Zuora the affair, although unfortunate, has led them to a mantra simple articulated as “deliver 100% customer success”. 2010 will show what that actually means for customers.

Overall, social media has shortened the feedback loop for both companies and made a big difference in the customer service process – people can easily find the CEO and other key staff easily, and contact them directly – it’s exceptionally empowering and, used wisely, can bring immense value to an organization.

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

I’m a proponent of social media, not because it’s the “latest greatest” bandwagon to jump on but rather because it really has the ability to shorten the customer to supplier distance and drive quicker and better response times. It’s always nice to be able to write about real world examples of that process, and recently an interesting one came across my desk, especially because it involves two companies that I’ve written about in the past.

Zuora (see coverage here) is a SaaS subscription vendor while Syncplicity (see coverage here) is online synchronization and central file management provider. They had an exchange which is well worth looking at….

Syncplicity signed on as a Zuora customer in in March 2009 for a new offering it wanted to launch later in the year. Being a tech company, they decided to self-implement Z-Billing with little direct help from Zuora. Syncplicity then went live with basic functionality in April. In July, Syncplicity was experiencing a bunch issues with Zuora, some technical and some not – but most attributable to sub-optimal communications and customer support.

In frustration, Syncplicity CEO Leonard Chung posted a scathing comment on LinkedIn. Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo saw the comment and, after a reportedly sleepless night, contacted Leonard wanting to repair a very public falling out. He assigned his top engineering exec to the problem. In turn, Chung assigned his key person to work with Zuora on the issues.

The process to fix Syncplicity’s issues took 3 months but at the end of it all there was a successful roll out of the new Syncplicity product in November and, in a happy ending to a sad story, Chung is now a reference customer for Zuora and is pretty positive given the history, as he says, “we had a rocky start, but they really pulled through for us”.

After speaking to Chung about the incident I was really keen to hear Tien’s perspective. Bear in mind that Tien is a salesforce.com alumnus – his career developed watching the great marketer and visionary Marc Benioff sell the world on his vision. It’s not surprising that Tien is widely acknowledged, by both friends and competitors, as a master marketing mind.

However the Syncplicity affair shows that perhaps Tien overstated what Zuora was capable of back in early 2009. Perhaps a degree of hype got in the way of a clear description of what Zuora could, and could not, do. I put this to him and his reply was refreshingly honest for such a showman:

There is a fine line between hype and vision – articulating an exciting vision can galvanize people to achieve. Zuora has been running fast since its inception, the Syncplicity event was a wakeup call to focus on the core tents of creating tools that make business more successful

The event spurred Tien to embark upon what he’s internally labeling “Zuora 2.0” – a transformation of the business into a more reflective place that is focused on customer success. Of course sometimes that means exerting control over customer sign on and deployment. It’s indicative that Elizabeth Tse, who in a previous role ran eBay, has joined the Zuora management team as Vice President of Customer Operations. It indicates much more of a focus on internal customer advocacy.

Sometimes then, a failure is a positive thing. For Zuora the affair, although unfortunate, has led them to a mantra simple articulated as “deliver 100% customer success”. 2010 will show what that actually means for customers.

Overall, social media has shortened the feedback loop for both companies and made a big difference in the customer service process – people can easily find the CEO and other key staff easily, and contact them directly – it’s exceptionally empowering and, used wisely, can bring immense value to an organization.

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

I’ve posted many times before about traditional PR and how it falls dismally short. This post is an opportunity to celebrate some success stories and tell a few sorry tales.

Before the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco, and in an attempt to make my time as efficient as possible, I posted an invitation to PR staffers with some guidelines about how best to connect with me.

So here’s some bouquets out to some stellar performers;

Kate Hobbie – MediaBrew consulting and Aria Systems. Kate is kind of a token offering here. We were already friends from previous connections when she’d spent time talking to me about SaaS billing in her communication role with Aria so there was some context there. However Kate went out of her way, even picking me up from the airport and playing taxi service for me.

Rachel Peterson – Nectar communications. Rachel I’d also met previously when talking to Zuora and Sliderocket, two companies she works with. Despite not actually meeting up with Rachel this trip, she went out of her way to facilitate things for me, even arranging for me to meet Sliderocket CEO, Chuck Dietrich for a great run on the Presidio

Alison Mickey – Schwartz communications. Alison saw my post and REALLY went out of her way to understand what I’m about. She sent me an email that referenced my area of interest in blogging, and even showed that she’d done some research about my outside interests and hobbies. The briefings she arranged were well resourced and I had enough information before them to make the briefing time valuable.

Julia Mak – Community manager at LeapFILE. Julia also reached out to talk with me. Her company were originally going to demo at Enterprise 2.0 but for various reasons did not. We still met up and had a good chat about where her company is going, and the chat was tailored to my particular areas of interest.

Christie Denniston at Catapult PR. Christie works with ThoughtWorks studios who were demo-ing their Google Wave integration at Enterprise 2.0. Despite being remote from the conference, Christie went out of her way to ensure I had everything I needed, as an aside it was pretty disappointing that despite her staunch efforts, the team from ThoughtWorks never delivered the resource they had promised for my post – you can’t pick your clients huh?

So there you go – anyone needing some awesome PR/communications people would do well to talk to Kate, Rachel, Alison, Julia or Christie – if you’re interested just drop me a line and I’ll make the connections.

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