CRM Update – May 18 : 3:03 pm

It wasn’t enough that a woman lost her apartment in a fire set by an arsonist– including most of her belongings, but then Comcast had to make it all worse by demanding she pay up for the two cable boxes and a router she failed to save in the fire.

Jamie was sleeping when the fire was set to the apartment building she lives in. She had a few seconds to get out, reports KDKA in Pittsburgh, so she grabbed her cat, her lock box and her purse. You know, the important stuff.

“We made it out with our lives,” she said…

While most of Facebook’s employees are celebrating today’s initial public offering, at least a few members of its legal department are likely hard at work preparing to fight a $15 billion class action lawsuit filed on Friday in connection with the social network’s tracking of users’ online activity.
The lawsuit — filed in a San Jose, Calif. federal court — combines more than 20 similar cases from around the United States, according to Bloomberg.
The suit’s organizers are accusing Facebook of invading users’ privacy by tracking their movements online, which the site does via “like” buttons embedded on sites across the web…

Facebook is now a public company. After months of speculation, Mark Zuckerberg rang the opening bell for Nasdaq from the companies headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.
The company will open trading this morning on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “FB.” The company will offer 421,233,615 shares at $38 a share, with a valuation somewhere around $100 billion.
Trading isn’t expected to begin until approximately 11:00 EDT, but before then Mashable editors will be available to answer any questions you have about the Facebook IPO…

When management issues arise, it may be because the people on your team are playing the wrong roles.In sports, when people “play out of position,” the opposing team quickly calculates the gap and then takes advantage of it.It’s similar at work. If you are not playing the right role at the right time, you create gaps that open up risks.When discussing positions in the workplace, it’s important to understand the key elements of the different roles: leaders, managers and supervisors.Leader: Focused on goals, resources, direction, logjamsManager: Focused on priorities, planning, options, claritySupervisor: Focused on compliance, accuracy, day-to-day implementationOn many occasions, as someone explains a management challenge, I ask what role he or she was playing in the situation…

In the case of an Arkansas town situated near the Bentonville headquarters of Walmart, proximity has not made many hearts grow fonder. Citizens packed a recent meeting in Bella Vista to make themselves heard on the issue of rezoning a spot so a Walmart Neighborhood Market could ostensibly move in.

News station 4029TV.com says the proposed location for the new Walmart is not only a spot zoned for residential use, but it’s located at a dangerous highway intersection. There’s also already a local grocery store at that corner, Allen’s Foods…

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What happens in the wee hours of the morning outside of Facebook headquarters as the world prepares for its IPO? Not much — unless you’re media. In that case, then you are busy setting up in the parking lot to help document history.
A host of local media outlets came out to stake their place early in the morning to document the event. With Facebook HQ ringing the bell to celebrate the opening of the stock market, East coast time, for West coast media that means waking up extra early…

Call center Advanced Communications Group has moved from West Palm Beach to Boynton Beach and plans to add 200 workers, the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County said today.

Dave Kerpen is the CEO of Likeable, a social media agency that has worked with more than 200 leading brands, including Verizon and Neutrogena. He is author of The New York Times best seller Likeable Social Media. Dave also launched Likeable Community College and Likeable Local.
Facebook expects to raise as much as $16 billion through its IPO, securing its title as the largest tech IPO in history. Naturally, consumers are questioning whether they should buy shares and financial analysts are in a tizzy evaluating the company’s worth — likely valued at more than $100 billion…

Apply-by-Phone Option Offers Added Convenience

Dr. David Dockterman is chief architect, learning sciences at Scholastic Education and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is an educational software pioneer and has designed dozens of award-winning instructional technology programs.
A recent Joan Ganz Cooney Center survey of 500 educators found that half of all kindergarten through eighth grade teachers are now regularly using digital games in the classroom. Nearly one in five are using them every day. It’s clear that in the age of the iPad, digital games are opening up a world of new possibilities for teaching and learning, and for increasing engagement in the classroom…

What would happen to your business if you were called away on an emergency? Here are three tips to ensure it doesn’t miss a beat.I was recently called away from the office for a family emergency. While sitting in the hospital waiting for news on my relative I began to wonder about the importance of having an orderly plan in place when people are unexpectedly called away from the office. When people go on vacation you have the opportunity to plan for their leave. But is your business really prepared for the unexpected?My first mentor attorney was a great instructor…

These boneheaded moves practically guarantee you’ll become an irritant. Try a few better approaches.Want your prospects and customers to think you’re obnoxious? Want to make yourself persona non grata?Here are the most common ways sellers make themselves into nuisances–plus a few thoughts about better ways to work with customers.1. Ask Scripted QuestionsFor decades, most sales training seminars have been built around “sales scripts” intended to uncover customer needs. Unfortunately, scripted questions are irritating–because it’s clear from the start that the questions reflect not true curiosity but just curiosity about whether the prospect is likely to buy…

In today’s environment, a presence is not enough?engagement is needed too.

A client and I were Skyping this week and the topic inevitably turned to Google Penguin and the impending doom of link building *tactics*.
This particular client has been having issues with rogue affiliates setting up fake link networks in order to boost their sales for my client’s products. Despite repeated warnings and/or promises to clean up their act, some of these affiliates have continued using dodgy practices for years, managing somehow to avoid Panda, Panda II and even Panda III…

Here are twelve of the best photos that readers added to The Consumerist Flickr Pool this week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or just plain neatness.

(#2 – a.r. briggs)

(#3 – PepOmint)

(#4 – kenfagerdotcom)

(#5 – SCHMEGGA)

(#6 – Fujoshi)

(#7 – athrog)

(#8 – gavinzac)

(#9 – ktorster)

(#10 – Scott D. Rogers)

(#11 – Carlos del Vaca)

(#12 – Fujoshi)

Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts…

Plain, ordinary text files aren’t normally the most interesting ways to convey information, but if you’d like to change that then Toolwiz FlipBook may be able to help.
Just point the program at a particular TXT file, and in a click it’ll be converted into an executable file. And launching this on any Windows PC will display your file’s contents in a 3D book. Readers can navigate the book via keyboard or mouse, and will see an animated flipping effect as the pages turn.
Exactly how useful this might be is open to question…

Here’s the thing with sending gifts, particularly gifts of flowers. You generally don’t call up the recipient ahead of time and say, “hey, expect some flowers on Saturday.” A big part of the gift is the delight and element of surprise. Aaron ordered some Mother’s Day flowers for his mom from 1800Flowers.com, and only learned that his order hadn’t showed up later in the week when he noticed she hadn’t mentioned them. Okay, they hadn’t delivered the flowers, but why didn’t they notify him, and why did they keep the money?

He blogged about this misadventure:

I ordered flowers for my mother from 1-800-FLOWERS on May 2, scheduled to be delivered May 12 or 13 — May 13 being Mothers’ Day — and they processed my order, taking the money from my account as expected…

Achieve big results for your small business on a minimal budget.

Ongoing education is a core part of every great business. The investment is small, but the return can be a game changer.Education is easy to make part of any business. That does not have to mean bringing in outside experts or sending employees away to expensive courses. Drawing on in-house resources can be just as rich. At Metal Mafia, we used to have sales seminars on a regular basis, at which different staffers would present on everything from the pros and cons of new products, to techniques for communicating better with customers…

All eyes are on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Zynga. Clearly it’s the right time to start a website. The Internet publishing industry is expected to hit $72 billion in five years.Why it’s hot:More people than ever before go online for information and entertainment. Every day, almost half of all adult Internet users read web publications, and nearly a third watch Web videos, says Pew Research. Advertisers have taken notice. A recent study by eMarketer, which tracks the industry, projects that online ad spending will hit close to $40 billion this year, surpassing print ad dollars for the first time…

Instagram‘s volatile value will take another turn on Friday as Facebook goes public.
When Facebook agreed to acquire the photo-sharing service in April, it did so at a $1 billion valuation. Under the terms of the deal, Facebook will pay Instagram $300 million in cash in addition to 23 million shares.
Facebook has set its opening share price at $38, higher than initially expected. At that share price, the total purchase price of Instagram would actually be worth $1.17 billion — a 17% increase in the value of the deal…

Carrier earlier announced plans to close some call centers

Software and Services Industry Veteran Rodger Weismann Joins the SoundBite Communications Board of Directors

SaskEnergy is warning its customers of a telemarketing scam occurring in various areas of the province, the Crown corporation said in a press release this week.

It’s finally here. Facebook‘s stock will trade Friday morning on Nasdaq and this afternoon, the longest-awaited tech IPO since Google will be one for the history books.
But before that history is written, we want you to weigh in. Get out your crystal ball and stock charts and hazard a guess in our very own Mashable poll. For some guidance, here’s a list of the opening day performances of some recent social media IPOs:

Zynga: Opened at $10, closed at $9.50 (down 5%.)
Groupon: Opened at $20, closed at $26…

Your customers get 99% of their information from search engines, social media referrals, online news sites and targeted content.If your business is NOT there among the solutions when your customers are looking, you’re lost.And even if they do find you some other way, you will still lose if you don’t have compelling content to keep them engaged with your brand.And so you must publish, you must tell stories and you must become interesting to your customers so that they find, like and trust you…

Prospect IQ delivers individualized consumer insight at the point of contact.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the opening bell for the Nasdaq from Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Friday morning.
If you missed it, you can watch the recording above.
SEE ALSO: The Early Hours of Facebook HQ on IPO Day

Zuckerberg rang the bell from within Facebook headquarters, surrounded by Facebook executives and employees, many of whom have been within the walls of Facebook HQ since Thursday participating in a company-wide hackathon.
Facebook stock is expected to go on sale Friday under the ticker symbol “FB”…