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This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.

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Meet Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, Customer Service & Social Media Consultant

Congress has cut federal funding for public media — a $3.4 million loss for LAist. We count on readers like you to protect our nonprofit newsroom. Become a monthly member and sustain local journalism.

Up at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco last week, we met Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, a Los Angeles based Senior Analyst at Forrester Research. She has a lot of good ideas regarding how social media is changing the world of customer service, and for good, too. After all, a customer can ruin your brand in seconds these days.

"Customer service is the new sales," she said in the interview. "If you don't get treated well, you're not going to come back and buy. And you're going to tweet, you're going to tell the whole freaking world how you feel about that company. So what a great opportunitie for companies to do something different, to do right by their customers."

Find Petouhoff on Twitter at @drnatalie.

Other Interviews at the Web 2.0:
- William Marc Salsberry, Tech Photographer
- Alexia Tsotsis of LA Weekly
- Mike Prasad of Kogi BBQ and Girl Gamer
- Sean Percival of lalawag

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By Mark Dienger, Special to LAist

As Editor-in-Chief of our newsroom, I’m extremely proud of the work our top-notch journalists are doing here at LAist. We’re doing more hard-hitting watchdog journalism than ever before — powerful reporting on the economy, elections, climate and the homelessness crisis that is making a difference in your lives. At the same time, it’s never been more difficult to maintain a paywall-free, independent news source that informs, inspires, and engages everyone.

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