Just Flitter is a Customer Advocate and BDM for Zendesk, a SaaS Helpdesk solution. He is passionate about customer service and the experience people have when engaging with brands online. He says “opening the doors to conversations with your customers is the best marketing tool. Stronger relationships retain customers and increase earnings.”
Justin grew up in Wellington listening to the lions roaring at the Zoo and cycling around the blustery south coast. In 2000 Justin founded the NRG Charitable Trust, a Business incubator that helped a dozen or so new businesses get up in running. Then after 4 years running a distribution business he spent 18 months at Student Job Search as the Wellington Regional Manager. In 2008 he moved to Auckland with his partner, Jen, and spent 6 months as the Customer Service Manager at Fishpond.
Then thanks to a connection through Linkedin.com Justin started working for Zendesk.com, a software as a service Helpdesk application used by companies large and small. Justin is now the Asia Pacific Manager for Zendesk, helping companies in India, Asia, Australia and New Zealand solve their customer support problems. Justin also manages Zendesk’s social media sites, tweeting and facebooking all the latest news and info and answering customer questions.
What are you working on right now?
Right now I’m helping Zendesk grow in Asia Pacific and in doing so helping many companies solve their customer support problems. I’ve also just returned from Sydney and the Connect Now conference. Spending time with some of the worlds best social media minds has been liberating, inspiring and motivating. It’s now my job to share this knowledge and help more companies realize the power of conversations.
3 Trends that excite you?
1. Location based applications and implications for marketing your business.
2. Virtual currency and how the worlds governments will handle the shift, how will they tax it?
3. The ability to fail quickly and fail cheaply means more people feel free to create and develop ideas without fear of failure.
How do you bring ideas to life?
The ideas that flourish easily are the ones to focus on. The ideas that you have to battle and fight with usually fail anyway.
Develop the idea by sharing it with friends and colleagues, buy the related IP and look to ways to monetize as fast as possible. Prepare to fail fast and fail cheaply.
What is one mistake that you made, and what did you learn from it?
I tried to do everything in my business, I failed at it. I learned to hire people who are good at stuff I am not.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Authenticity, honesty and trust are the three most valuable characteristics of a successful business in today’s digital world.
When you’re helping businesses get started with Social Media what are your top 3 tips?”
1. Listen to whats being said about you and where?
2. Find our who are the key people influencing the conversations about your brand and industry.
3. Social media is not about selling its about building mutually beneficial relationships.
What the single most important piece of advice you would like to share?
Top of my mind throughout the last 10 years has been to “do what you love to do all the time and everything else will fall into place”. If you’re not totally loving everything you do for a job then you should stop doing that and do something else. Seems idealistic but in reality you’ll be far far more successful doing something you totally love to do.
Connect
Justin Flitter on Skype: justinflitter
Justin Flitter on Twitter: @justinflitter
Mario Schulzke is the Founder of ideamensch, which he started a decade ago to learn from entrepreneurs and give them a platform for their ideas.