Blog Posts By: Dave Raffaele

I recently started to look for a new set of golf clubs. As I traversed through all of the manufacturer websites, golf magazines, golf club reviews, golfing blogs, Twitter, and numerous Google searches, I realized that shopping for something has become more and more difficult. In fact, the complexity of making a purchase decision has by far surpassed the actual act of paying for and receiving the golf clubs. 

Unlike in 1985, when shopping and buying where one in the same and most often happened in one store with one sales person, 2010 is much different. Shopping and Buying are 2 very distinct processes that a consumer goes through, both of which need to be supported and nurtured. 

Buzz, Google's first true venture into the social media ecosystem has the feel of something familiar but also brings something very new that is loaded with potential. Though I am not going to walk through the in's and out's of what Buzz is (others have that covered), I will share something that happened to me while using it the other day that ultimately was my Google Buzz Aha! Moment. What happened was not planned. I didn't have to figure out how to do it. I just did it...without thinking....like a real, seamless, on-line conversation should be. 

Customer feedback is critical to the growth and success of any company. Surprisingly, many companies make it difficult, if not impossible, for customers to offer feedback on products and services or offer recommendations on how to improve a company's offering.

As a consulting organization, Quaero has the pleasure of building partnerships with our clients which in turn enable natural communication and feedback channels. We leverage these relationships at the end of each engagement to have open discussions with our clients regarding our services. These discussions allow our team to understand not only what is working but more importantly, what we need to be doing better. The feedback we receive is invaluable and is critical factor in how we continue to improve the level of service that we offer to our clients.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading an article on Buzz Marketing for Technology that highlighted the results of a survey they had asked the members of the Marketing Executive Networking Group to fill out. One of the sections of the survey asked the marketers to indentify which Web 2.0 buzz words they were sick of hearing.