BofA is part of a growing number of companies who are already utilizing the wildly popular Twitter tool – becoming the largest financial institution in the world using a social media tool for customer service.

What makes BofA’s use of Twitter so remarkable is that they are using a real person with a real name and an actual photo (not a logo or other avatar). Using the twitter handle @BofA_help, David Knapp is Bank of America’s Twitter Representative. I was amazed and impressed to discover that he is not just a CSR appointed to be the “face of Bank of America” on twitter, but David is actually the senior vice president and market manager for middle market commercial banking. I was also delighted by how genuine and immediate his responses were.

Out of frustration about a recent snafu with my finances, I posted this message to the twittersphere,

“BofA is charging me (long time customer) $350 in NSF fees, for a simple mistake. Maybe it’s time to switch banks.”

to which, within an hour, I received this response,

“BofA_help@kzarecki I work for Bank of America, anything I can do to help?”

The idea that BofA’s Twitter rep proactively goes out to find customers who need help threw me for a loop. This is something we’re not used to any more – Actual “Customer Service”.

I have to admit I was skeptical about any type of a resolution, as I had already attempted to work something out by calling BofA customer service line 3 times. But David Knapp asked me to follow up with my contact info and a description of the circumstances. I figured that it couldn’t hurt to give it one more shot, so I did. The very next morning, I received a phone call – not an email… not a form letter in the mail box… and actual live person, and not a CSR, mind you (I didn’t catch the guy’s name, but I think it was Mr. Knapp’s boss!) called me to say, “I think the right thing to do is credit you back [all but one of the ten $35 overdraft fees].”

Honestly, it almost brought a tear to my eye. Not just because I got most of my money back, but because I didn’t feel like just another no-name customer – all the personal attention made me feel like I was integral to the success of the company and my happiness is important. Seth Godin says in his post about in-bound customer service, “…the goal of every single interaction should be to upgrade the brand’s value in the eye of the caller and to learn something about how to do better, not to get the caller to just go away.” I applaud BofA for putting an actual face and person behind the twitter account and having a real person follow up with a phone call. While I may not be their most profitable customer, the treatment I received made me feel like I was worth a million bucks. Now, THAT is what I call “customer service”.

I was reading an article published on www.AIGA.org recently called Ever Notice? – A dialogue between Steve Portigal and Dan Soltzberg about the importance of being aware and the advantages of tapping into your “super-noticing power” in practicing design and specifically in user research. It reminded me of my days as a student of graphic design and the noticing exercises we practiced. I still employ the same noticing tactics today but I had forgotten how important this fundamental principal is to marketing and visual communications.

In the field of online marketing the act of noticing goes into hyperdrive. Information across the World Wide Web is experienced differently than driving down a road, walking through a museum or reading the morning newspaper. A loading web page is an onslaught of text and images battling for attention. Web surfers consume hundreds of lines of source code and decide which data they like/dislike or need/don’t need in a split second. Quantitative and qualitative analytics gives us insight to surfing habits, tracks our goal conversions and referring links but the power of noticing contributes to our ability to respond, adapt and deliver.

It all begins with the fundamental art of noticing that Portigal and Soltzberg discuss. Soltzberg says “There’s another classic Zen concept that everything you need to know and experience is already happening and present, but you need to get your old ways of thinking out of the way so you can experience it. Doing contextual research is like using “super-noticing power” to peel back those layers of preconception, culture and habit. When you do that you get to something fundamental and then you’ve got a really solid platform for developing new concepts.”

Maybe you have never really consciously exercised “noticing power” or maybe you have forgotten how important it is. Try some of the noticing exercises mentioned in Portigal and Soltzberg’s discussion. You will be surprised to realize how many things you are actually experiencing but not really noticing.

A company blog is an important piece of your internet marketing strategy.  Engaging your customers in real conversations allows you to become a valuable resource that can fill a need, instead of focusing solely on the hard-sell.

Here’s a list of 29 benefits you should consider for using a blog on your business’ website:

1. Build an active community around your company & products (subscribers, comments, etc.)
2. Easily generate new content, quickly
3. Search Engine (SEO) benefits from the additional content
4. Humanize your business
5. Create more inbound links to your fresh content
6. Promote your brand
7. Direct communication to your clients & potential customers
8. Reputation Management tool allowing you to respond to any negative comments and address criticism directly
9. Inspire others to use your product/service through real stories of helping your clients succeed
10. Great public relations tool that the media can reference in their articles & reports
11. Become an industry expert & resource
12. Supports & integrates with all of your company’s marketing initiatives
13. Gives your visitors a reason to return to your site
14. Introduce clients & potential customers to your new products and/or services
15. Encourage ‘Word of mouth’ advertising in the online world
16. Network with others in your industry
17. Educate your customer about you, your company and your products / services
18. Evaluate your customers’ opinion of your company / product
19. Earn credibility by sharing your challenges & solutions
20. Increase Search Engine visibility easily by creating a wider variety of content
21. Allow your colleagues to contribute content without technical limitations
22. Blogging is fun
23. Communicate in a more casual/candid way
24. A great recruiting tool
25. A crisis management tool
26. Encourage interactivity within your organization
27. Respond quickly to current events
28. Another excuse to fill your meetings with buzzwords… “Blog”
29. Impress your neighbors