Two Lessons In Customer Satisfaction I Learned From Entrecard and CMF Ads
Posted by
eli
on 1/29/10• Categorized as Consulting
I stumbled a blog post in which the blogger applied to be a user-publisher of Entrecard. To his dismay, his application was not approved despite 8 hours of waiting. 
That blogger also applied to be a publisher in CMF Ads and his application was approved in no time at all, as he posted on its Forums.
My Own Experience with Entrecard and CMF Ads
Reading the post of that blogger made me recall my own experiences with Entrecard and CMF Ads a few months back.
When I applied as a member (user) of Entrecard it took five (5) days for my blog to be approved.
With CMF Ads my blog was accepted in just four (4) hours.
The Customers Are Kings and Queens
As a business and management consultant I always advice my clients who are business men and women to put their customers as their first priority, and be close to the clients.
I would tell them that customers are their businesses’ reason for existence. Indeed, the heart of business is the customers. Others would even say that a customer is king or queen.
The Two Lessons In Customers Satisfaction That I Learned
My personal experience as a member of Entrecard and CMF Ads have enhanced my learning in customers satisfaction which is very important to any business.
I recognize the fact, as many others do, that in business your success and profit depend on the sales of your products or services. In turn, sales of products and services are dependent on your customers and their needs and wants, and not on what you want.
Here’s the two important lessons that I’ve learned in Entrecard and CMF Ads.
1. Be close and Listen to the Customers
Since a business exists to provide goods and services to the customers to meet their needs and wants, it is important for a business to be close to the customers. What do the customers need? What are their feedback?
How can a company improve customer relations to expand its market base and thus generate more sales revenue and profit?
I’ve found out that CMF Ads admins are very close to the members who are publishers and advertisers. Problems and concerns are addressed within 10 hours, or even in an hour.
For example, when I bought a network ads three (days) ago, my ad was approved, up and running within two (2) hours!
In Entrecard the owner seems not to listen to its member-users. EC Admin closed the Forum and comments to its blog are disabled. There is no interaction at all between the management and the users.
For instance, when I purchased a Sponsor Ads last month, my application was approved in four (4) days.
2. Solicit Feedback and Consult Your Customers
In Entrecard the users, whom its Admins call as the strength of the Entrecard network, are at the receiving end of the Admins policy changes since their inputs and recommendations are not welcome.
In CMF Ads, proposed policy changes are discussed and the members inputs are solicited. And all members are encouraged to be active in the Forums where the issues and queries of the members are answered right away.
Indeed, if you are not close to the customers and don’t listen to their concerns, how do you know what your customers want? You will just drive them away, as evidenced by the many users who have left Entrecard.
Conclusion
Any business is a service business. Service is part of every contact between your business and a prospect or customer. Ultimately, it affects not only how purchasers feel about your business but also their perception of the value and quality of the product or service you deliver.
Therefore, to be successful in business – in any business for that matter, what is important is you are close to the customers, for they are the people who give you your revenue and profit which are vital to your survival and growth.
16 Comments
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Good customer service is essential. At CMF Ads we like to listen to every idea and discuss it internally. We spend a lot of time trying to pinpoint the needs of our customers, Even when we read a bad idea in the forums, we try to humor the person and suggest why it might not work as expected. Perhaps we already have plans for unannounced projects that would make the suggestion obsolete.
Ben only has so many coding hours in the day. Sometimes he has a breakthrough that allows us to release a totally new feature in a remarkably short time. Network ads were one such case. Looking back, it would have been smarter to avoid changing ads into campaigns. Except it was the code from campaigns that allowed us to launch network ads.
You hope that on the road to a great network there will be as few bumps as possible. We will always apologize for any inconvenience along the way. For those who can’t enjoy the destination, but keep harping on the bumpy ride, what can you do?
We appreciate having you as a member of CMF Ads, Eli. thanks for the great article.
Entrecard’s days are numbered.Forget about them.
The way Entrecard treated it’s members in the forum was awful. It’s probably for the best they got closed. Member who politely suggested why a change wouldn’t work or a more practical alternative would have posts deleted, suffer abuse or even be banned.
CMF is completely different. Everything receives a considerate reply from one of the admins even if it’s a daft idea or a rogue member trying to stir up a bit of controversy!
You nailed it Atty. Eli! Exactly, customers need to be prioritized first. How pathetic it is that Entrecard has shut off their forums and blog. It is difficult for a company to stay long if they are not willing to listen to the pleas of their clients. Will they continue exist if not because of us? Hopefully one day they’ll wake up and come to a realization that customers should always be placed first!
P.S. I can’t believe that it took 5 days for your blog to be approved in Entrecard. Ohh my.. how said it was.
CMF and Adgitize have great customer service. EC is beyond frustrating – even more so because you know that if it had great customer service it could be a great site.
This is out-of-topic and I beg the indulgence of Eli and his readers.
I have a question for all EC members. Are you getting comments from supposedly owners of static commercial websites? Are you allowing to be published in your blogs? In my case, I am holding all of them in my spam box. I am not yet giving them one-way backlinks. I believe this is a result of Entrecard.s decision to accept commercial websites as owners.
You’ve once again hit the nail right on the head, Atty! I used to blog about Entrecard in the past but due to reasons explained by bloggers above, I refused to talk about EC anymore. There’s simply no point.
I believe Turnip has learned a great deal from his experiences with Entrecard in the past, thus he has managed CMF a lot better than EC.
Shutting up customers in business is a big No! No! The customers are the lifeblood of any business. EC is obviously paying a high prize for keeping their customers mummed as the business is almost buried from 6-feet down under. I grieve for its impending death.
The thing both CMF and Adgitize are missing is a firefox toolbar to browse the sites. This is huge for me with EC.
Hi Eli,
I was directed to your blog post so I figured I should address it here. I don’t have any disagreement with your statement about businesses should focus on customer service. I agree with you 100%. Based on your blog post, I did some investigation about your experiences with us.
You mentioned that it took Entrecard 4 days to approve your sponsor ad. Our paypal records showed that you first placed your sponsor ad on 11/21/2009 ( I can forward you the paypal receipt if you like). If you look at your advertising stats, it showed that your ad went live the same day. Please visit entrecard.com/advertiser and scroll to the bottom of the page. You also purchased 2 more times and I believe it went uninterrupted. If there was another time it took 4 days, please let me know.
Entrecard customer department usually takes place between the hours of 9-5pm (PST). Our customer service department handles trouble tickets and approving new
sites before entering our network. So, when a new user joins Entrecard for the first time, if it’s within our working hours, they usually receive an approval/rejection email within hours. However, if they join after hours, it can take until the following morning before we can get to them. This is why some sites can take 8 hours or longer (but not longer than 24 hours). I’m sorry, but we are not setup to have the customer service department be open 24 hours a day.
Despite the forums being closed, we have receive many feedbacks from our users via support. They are discussed within management and we do include their feedbacks in our future developments. I also checked our support queue for the last 3 months. I have not seen any emails from you regarding feedback on our services.
I know many of you have animosity against Entrecard and I’m not here to start trouble. Should you have any, feel free to contact me at cindy@entrecard.com.
I thank you for being a top Entrecard user.
Regards,
Cindy
Entrecard Inc.
Hi Cindy,
I celebrate this day because I’ve received your comment, and I thank you. I know that it’s not always that an EC user like me can receive a comment from you.
But may I correct your impression that I am one of those who have animosity against Entrecard. I have no animosity against Entrecard whatsoever.
In fact, if you read my previous blog posts about Entrecard you will notice that I’ve proposed a lot of doable suggestions and recommendations meant to help improve Entrecard’s credit-based economy, help contain inflation, put a ceiling on ad prices, give recognition to EC sponsors who pay % 5/month, etc.
There maybe some users who have animosity against Entrecard, but I’m not one of them.
In fact, as you also mentioned I bought 3 sponsor ads from Entrecard and I continue to pay $ 5.00 a month as Entrecard sponsor — proof that I’m helping Entrecard. The fact that I continue to use EC and my blog has been in the Top Ten of the most popular blogs in all categories of the campaign is another proof that I like Entrecard and have no animosity against it.
But I maintain that when I applied it took 5 days for my blog to get approved, and my sponsor ads were not approved in due time.
Be that as it may, I’m really feel honored to have received a comment from you, and it makes me think now that EC management is also sensitive and responsive to users’ feedback and comments.
Congratulations, eli. Just want to add that I also received a reply from Ms. Cindy when I published a post about unsolicited advice which they readily rejected without even asking me about the mechanics of a money-making venture for Entrecard. She did reply when I made a follow email after you and Martin posted in my blog that EC management will not listen on my unsolicited advice. At least, I got the rejection by way of an email after my blog post, a request ticket through my dashboard and the follow email.
By the way, I celebrated the rejection I got (mind you, it was rejected without them ever knowing what my unsolicited advice was all about) by posting another blog entitled “Entrecard Replies To Unsolicited Advice”. Maybe, I was lucky that I was not banned from EC network for asking them to listen to an unsolicited advice which they do not want the EC members to do.
I have been waiting for a week to have my web site approved at EC. It’s a content site, not some money-making scheme like some that are approved. I wonder if they are THAT overwhelmed. Despite Cindy’s attempts to interact, EC just doesn’t hold up their end of the deal.
I have been using EC on and off for over a year now and so far I have nothing to complain about. They provide my site with much needed traffic and a inexpensive way to advertise which what they are suppose to do. In this way they are just like any other traffic exchange site. Past that I don’t expect them to do much else, and that is where some people may have a problem. If you want or think that the service should do more than it does, then you may have to live with the disappointment. At this point I believe that EC is providing the service that it says it will and for this we should be happy. Anything else it does in my opinion should be thought of as gravy.
Interesting insight. In my business, we responded to business leads within 24 hours. This was also the policy at the previous company I worked with for a couple years.
Thanks for being one of my top droppers for January!