This spring, an employee intending to order a special CD-DVD edition of R.E.M.'s latest release "Accelerate" inadvertently entered the "LP" code instead. Soon boxes of the big, vinyl discs showed up at several stores.

Some sent them back. But a handful put them on the shelves, and 20 LPs sold the first day.

The Portland-based company, owned by The Kroger Co., realized the error might not be so bad after all. Fred Meyer is now testing vinyl sales at 60 of its stores in Oregon, Washington and Alaska. The company says, based on the response so far, it plans to roll out vinyl in July in all its stores that sell music.

Other mainstream retailers are giving vinyl a spin too. Best Buy is testing sales at some stores. And online music giant Amazon.com, which has sold vinyl for most of the 13 years it has been in business online, created a special vinyl-only section last fall.

The best-seller so far at Fred Meyer is The Beatles album "Abbey Road." But musicians from the White Stripes and the Foo Fighters to Metallica and Pink Floyd are selling well, the company says.

"It's not just a nostalgia thing," said Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman for Fred Meyer. "The response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has a better sound."

click here to continue reading the article.

Social media as customer service

Some stats from a recent survey conducted about Americans who use social media sites and their interaction with business:

• 60% interact with companies using social media
• 93% say a company should have a presence in social media
• 85% say a company should not only be present but also interact with its customers via social media
• 56% say they feel a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment
• 43% say companies should use social networks to solve customers' problems
• 41% say companies should use social media to solicit feedback about products and services

Source: 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study

Click here to continue reading Ben McConnell's article.

Ben McConnell of Creating Customer Evangelists

Editor's Corner

We want to thank all of you who have sent in suggestions for the content here at the Experience Monitor.

To contribute to this publication or make suggestions, please email us at mail@solutionstalk.com as we are always looking for stories and examples from our audience.