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Customer service now! (the convergence of social media and customer service 3 short case studies good and bad)

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:12:54 +0000

In my last column, I cautioned readers about social media and the negative effect it can have on online reputation management. Here’s a quick recap: The key to a positive reputation is to look at every possible customer and prospect touchpoint and make sure it’s buttoned up tight. Every interaction, every touchpoint needs to be quality-driven, otherwise your brand is going to take a social media beating.

There’s just too much prime opportunity online — e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. — for brands to get dinged when they screw up. In the few weeks I’ve been back from vacation, I’ve been thinking about this as I go about my day-to-day dealings with companies.

Twice in the last few weeks I’ve gotten dinged: once by a salesman and once by a so-called customer service rep (CSR). But helping to restore my faith in our industry, I also recently had a fantastic customer service experience as well.

But first the negative:

I have a TV that for the last year has had sound problems. The sound intermittently stops working. With the TV under warranty, I called CompUSA’s warranty company to remedy the problem. It sent someone out who couldn’t find the problem. After another unsuccessful attempt to fix the problem, I again called the warranty company to get a new TV. The CSR told me there was nothing she could do except send out a third company to look at my TV. I calmly explained to her the facts of the case. She calmly explained that there’s nothing she can do. So I asked for her supervisor. The supervisor gave me the same speech — same language, same dull, disinterested, flat demeanor. Like robots, only less interesting. By then I realized that the company is just going to run out the clock on the warranty instead of giving me a new TV. The moral of this story: Some companies teach their frontline people to hold the line, not help customers.
I recently paid a visit to my local Honda dealership to trade in my son’s car. This will be my third lease with this dealership. The salesman I normally use is busy, so he puts me in the capable hands of “Bill.” I tell Bill that I want the special that was advertised on the dealership’s website because it’s the lowest-priced car it sells. Let the games begin. I know how it works, but I never let car salespeople play. Bill makes three attempts to get me into a more expensive car by asking if I want this or want that on the car. I remind him for the third time that I only want the least expensive car the dealership sells of that model. You know, the one listed on its website. Bill responds to me with the following: “You want the lowest price in that model, OK, but don’t you want a car with air conditioning?” (F.Y.I., I live in Florida.) He says this with actual contempt. One minute later, he’s back waiting for another customer to annoy. The moral of this story: I’d have fired this salesman on the spot if it was my dealership. You cannot risk offending any customers, much less repeat customers.

And the positive:

One word: Apple! I had to call its customer service department multiple times in the last few weeks with questions before installing its latest operating system. Each time I was greeted by a helpful human who worked with me patiently in a relaxed manner to get my issue resolved. Apple even offered to send me (for free, no less) operating system disks. (Mine were lost, hence the call.) I swear, it was like talking to the Apple guy from the TV commercials. Great job, Apple! You “get” customer service.

I don’t know about you, but every time I have to call a company’s customer service department I get a bit nervous in advance. Most of the time I know I’m going to be treated poorly by poorly trained, poorly managed people who are totally indifferent to me and my plight.

This message is for all of the C-suite people who read my column: Go to your call center now! Listen to your CSRs’ interactions; then do something about them. People are talking about you whether you like it or not. Positive or negative — it’s your choice.

Social Media rules of engagement to live by

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:54:41 +0000

Over in the linkedin group I manage, (Direct Marketing Questions & Answers), we’ve been having a discussion on the zig vs. zag nature of direct marketing and social media.

In essence, the theory is this: with everybody zigging towards social media these days, does that leave a giant hole (translation: opportunity) for traditional direct marketing to be used to engage customers and prospects? It’s been a spirited discussion so far. And I firmly believe that traditional direct marketing (integrated with the web) presents such an opportunity in a zigzag market.

My personal bottom line is that social media marketing is just one of the tools in my kit bag, and should be used (tested and rolled out) as part of the direct marketing mix. So I use it all.

But no discussion of social media these days should be done without a basic understanding of it’s strategic vs. tactical use.

I see many companies using social media tactically, without thinking through the strategy. The truth is, anyone can post a video, start tweeting or blogging, etc., and many companies have jumped on this bandwagon as a tactic. However, much like direct mail or any other direct marketing discipline, the tactical use of social media can have little or no results at all, thus giving the marketer the erroneous impression that social media doesn’t work.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard someone say, we tried direct mail (or insert medium here) and it doesn’t work. Some of these people when further queried will admit to not following the rules… the first of which is define the strategy, the list, the offer, etc. And with some of these business owners if they are willing to learn how to do direct mail right, their next attempt will have better, if not profitable results.

There are many places in which to find the rules of direct mail, or traditional direct marketing. But when it comes to social media, the rules of engagement are a bit vague.

Beyond strategy – the common sense rules of engagement:

So I have been studying social media marketing for the last year. Practicing it strategically, and analyzing my results. And I have also been looking for a good quality set of rules to live by. Today thanks to Twitter I found some published by Intel for their employees and their contractors. These are a good place to start.

http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm

Note from Jim: Article originally written by me for eMarketing & Commerce Magazine (eM+C): http://www.emarketingandcommerce.com/story/eview-social-media-rules-engagement-live

Welcome to 2009 – the year of engagement and social media (an early recap)

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:43:22 +0000

Editors note: I wrote this last January. It still holds very true now and is “suggested reading” for anyone considering or already in the social media space.

As I mentioned in my most recent column — a recap of the National Center for Database Marketing conference last month — it’s not good enough to merely serve your customers anymore. You must cement them emotionally to your brand, your products and your customer service.

With social media strongly in play (whether you like it or not), you don’t get to choose what’s said about your brand. Control of your brand image has been passed, torch-style, from the marketing department to your customers.

Your customers are becoming more and more voracious in their pursuit of information that’s not simply put forth by brands, but spread by their peers as brand advocates. Actually, it’s more like brand advocates and brand detractors. Your customers, much like plus/minus statistics in a hockey game, keep score — a plus point for a positive customer experience, a minus for a negative one.

Why the social media explosion? It’s simple: When you add the current overload of marketing messaging sent and received in a given day, coupled with a growing distrust of said messaging and a more jaded customer base, the result is an environment primed and ready for customer-induced growth.

The plus/minus as it relates to your marketing efforts. Your present and future direct marketing efforts only get you part of the way there. Customers and prospects alike search for information on your company to help with their buying decisions. The people who interact with your brand and the way they interact are the deciding factors in your success and/or failure. You don’t have to look into a crystal ball to envision a future where companies have less and less impact on buying decisions.

In the concept of the outward-facing, customer-focused business, there are two business models in the multichannel world:

1. Merchants: The first type is brand/product-centric. These are merchants who’ve built their companies from the ground up with an intuitive feel for what their customers want and need. Culturally, these companies are focused on merchandising, product development and brand building. They have a sort of “if you build it they will come” feel internally.

2. Marketers: The other type is the sales and marketing culture. Here, the focus is less on product/branding and more on the process of direct marketing. Marketers are more numbers-focused, and the feel you get when you visit is that it’s about list building and what gets sold to that list.

If I had to guess which of these cultures will better adapt to Web 2.0, I’d have to say the marketing culture. But the truth is, it’s anyone’s guess.

Check back next week for part two, where I’ll look at the role social media occupies for catalog/multichannel marketers, as well as how it can be a good thing to hear the negative things customers have to say about you.

HERE’s PART 2:

Adapt or Die!
Clearly, the way to adapt to changes in the marketplace is to get out in front of the wave. It’s not too late, so don’t fret if you’re not. As a direct marketing consultant, I’m in the same boat. With a background steeped in the more traditional direct marketing principles, I need to be more on the cutting edge, too. In the last year, I’ve become enamored with social media as a marketing tool and its potential to engage.

What Are You Waiting For?
I conducted an informal survey over the past few days on how catalog/multichannel marketers have integrated social media into their overall marketing mixes. Here’s what I found:

Half of the catalog/multichannel companies I surveyed had MySpace pages and/or Facebook groups.
Only one was tweeting away on Twitter.
I didn’t see much blogging or message board adoption.
Usage of Flickr and YouTube didn’t even register a hit.

These results dovetail with a recent poll we ran on CatalogSuccess.com. For the poll results, click here.

Compared to another group I looked at, pure-play Internet retailers (let’s call this the control group), catalogers’ social marketing adoption was minimal.

So why is that? The biggest concern I hear from catalog/multichannel marketers is negative publicity around their brands, which brings us back full circle to our control issues and the whole concept of customer centricity.

Learning Opportunity
Ask yourself the following questions about what kind of role social media plays in your business:

Are you afraid of negative publicity? If you are, why? Do you not want to find out what your customers are talking about? Or what you can do to fix or improve your company? If you bury your head in the sand, the ruthless truth is your customers will bury you. Like the proverbial Chinese alphabet character for “danger” having the same meaning as “opportunity,” now is your chance to become truly customer-centric — to finally understand by listening to the Internet chatter about your company.
If you’re using social marketing within your business, is it just a tactic? Are you using it strategically to understand your customers? I’d guess the big question here is this: Does the data/information the marketing team obtains from its social outlets trickle up to the C-level executives?

Maybe the new paradigm shift should be, “If you listen, they will come!”

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll begin to share what I’ve learned about social media. I’ll talk about Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn (mostly for B-to-B), Facebook (groups vs. pages), YouTube, Flickr, blogs, message boards, on-page ratings and reviews, and more — the strategies and tactics you need to know to build a customer-centric multichannel company.

And I want this to be a dialogue, because I’m not a social marketing expert by any means. It’s very much a trial and error process, and I hope to learn from you, too!

Four quick tips for networking success on Linkedin

Jim Gilbert — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:28:00 +0000

These days, I’m always networking. I’m on Facebook, and have just started to play around with Twitter and other less known networking sites like Plaxo and Biznik.

But by far, the best networking tool to use in my opinion is LinkedIn. Most LinkedIn users already know how to link to other people in and out of their networks, but…

There are LinkedIn users and then there are LinkedIn players!

Let’s talk more about how to go from being merely listed on LinkedIn to being a networking “player,” which has helped me get job inquiries, plus writing and consulting gigs.

Follow these steps to help grow your career:

1. Update your profile often. Every time you update your profile, that info gets sent to your connections. Also, update your “status” often, as this gets transmitted as well. You always want to be visible to other people in your network. Updates keep you in front of them.

2. Ask questions. Use the question function of LinkedIn — it’s a great tool to get your name in front of LinkedIn users. Some quick tips: Always try to ask thoughtful and relevant questions. Ask questions that’ll generate a lot of response, and give plenty of background info for why you’re asking the question. When people respond to your question, always send a thank-you e-mail to them. And, if appropriate, you may want to send them a connection request. When your question closes, go back and use the site’s rating system to pick the best answers. When you “best” someone, they earn expertise (which shows up on their profile and adds credibility, too).

3. Answer questions. Same as above. You can earn expert status and your answers help other LinkedIn users solve their problems. And don’t forget to add a URL to your answer to help support your position.

4. Join groups. LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups. Once you join a group, announce to it who you are, what you do and provide a link to your profile, blog or Web site. You can also post and answer discussions within groups. Get involved and watch your network and sphere of influence grow.

Stay tuned for part three next week, where I’ll provide some cool power-user tips. I’ll also reveal how to build a “super-profile.”

Disney Marketing – Know me, be relevant and engage me!

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:09:22 +0000

Disney Keynote: Know me and be relevant is just a starting point!

From its earliest days, relevance has been the goal for most direct and database marketers. Today however, relevance is not nearly enough. Today, we are closer than ever in actually realizing the power of 1:1 level relevant communications. Some might argue that the capability for 1:1 has been around for some time and that many companies are already successfully practicing it, but to some extent I have to disagree.

When you do the breakdown, it comes down to four competencies; the technology, the vehicles, the smarts and the “missing link”.

We have the technology!

On one hand we have plenty of data processing capability to produce direct marketing campaigns with 1:1 granularity. The complexity with which we can massage data is readily available, becoming simpler to use (even for a non technical person) and relatively inexpensive.

We have the vehicles!

We have also made major inroads in being able to turn that data into actionable campaigns through triggered mailings, print on demand (POD), variable data printing, Personal URL’s (PURLS) and landing pages to name a few.

We have the smarts!

In my career, I have met thousands of super-smart direct marketers. Strategists, number crunchers, creative’s alike, all with the singular focus of driving ROI for their companies.

But is this enough?

The question is this: Does the ability to crunch the numbers and personalize a marketing vehicle really qualify as relevant? This whole concept of relevance is flawed to begin with. We assume that since we have the data, the smarts, and the methods for connecting the data to a vehicle that we are doing 1:1 marketing.

For example, just because we have date of birth in the database, and a great birthday offer to give away, is it relevant? Is past purchase behavior relevant? Sure, maybe to 1%, 2% or maybe even 10% of our database it is? Let’s even go so far as to say that the perfectly executed birthday offer can get as high as 20% response. But wait, doesn’t that means that 80% to 99% of our most relevant marketing is still being seen as irrelevant?

So what does all this mean for database marketing, and how does that tie into NCDM?

I have to say that as a direct marketer, from the first day I heard the sacred words “relevant” and “1:1 communication”, I’ve always been a little suspect. To presume that we know exactly what our customers want, need and desire may be even a trifle arrogant, don’t you think?

To further muddy the waters, the level of message overload our society receives, combined with all of this semi-relevant communication, has in part created a suspicious, jaded consumer who is quick to dismiss any marketing vehicle it deems as disingenuous.

And therein lies the challenge: a new context is needed for consumers to feel good about the offers they are receiving again.

So from that context, I believe that we are entering the age of implementing true 1:1 relevancy. And this is where NCDM comes into the picture.

At NCDM 2008, the missing link was discovered!

As I attended session after session at NCDM, the concept that popped up, the central thesis this year was engagement. Truly it was this year’s buzzword. During his keynote address, Tom Boyles, SVP of CRM for Disney, put forth the notion that you can use your database to create an emotional link between what you sell and your customers.

In a keynote that was equal parts inspiration and case study, Boyles spoke of how Disney’s “customer focused journey” uses data and personalization to engage their customers (called guests) by capturing data at any point and time in all channels, including: online, agents, room and check in. From the data they collect they can provide detailed recommendations on parks and attractions (more on that later). In order to accomplish this they use analytic models, and “automated decision engines” to ensure a seamless customer experience that connects on their guests terms. This has been their number one challenge; how to understand and connect the customer experience on all channels, and do so in a genuine way.

Their view of their guests is that no one or department in their organization owns the customer, but it is the customer who owns the moment using what they call their “real time engagement model”.

According to Disney’s Boyles, each step/contact with each guest is seen as a hurdle to get past in order to optimize their consumer promise.

On a tactical level, some but not all of the programs they implement are a free DVD available from their website that converts in the 10% range and offers custom park maps and experience based personal to-do items. They also send out a completely personalized welcome mailer 24 hours after an online visit or call center interaction, with the mailer being customized to the guest’s life stage and past history with appropriate messaging and photos.

Beyond marketing campaigns, extending the 1:1 experience:

Other user experience benefits Disney offers their guests, and this one really hits home if you are a seasoned traveler, is the Disney Express. Disney Express among other things Boyles described has the ability to drop off ones luggage at an airport, and find it in their room waiting for them at the resort hotel when they arrive. This also holds true in reverse, that guests can leave their luggage in their room and find it (magically!) at the airport baggage claim when they arrive home.

In conclusion, Boyles recapped that at the end of the day Disney strives and meets it’s 1:1 goals of connecting on an emotional level, data accuracy, real time, through all channels and having a true relationship with their customer.

To me, that’s as close to relevant, 1:1 communication that I have seen.

Editors note: This article originally written by Jim Gilbert for All About ROI Magazine (formerly Catalog Success). Jim is a weekly columnist there.

Social Media Lecture at Florida International University

admin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:09:53 +0000

On November 10th Jim Gilbert gave a presentation on Social Media Marketing, entitled, Welcome to the Customer-Centric World at Florida International University.

Welcome to Start Social Now’s Blog

admin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:46:17 +0000

We’re about to start adding content. Look for articles, how to guides, news and opinions relating to the social media universe. In the mean time, we are here to help you get started. Our mission is to help you start and manage your social media presence.

Social media has become the number one tool to engage customers and prospects and cement your relationship to your brand. We are experts at developing engaging, provocative and powerful social media sites, and campaigns. Contact us at: info@StartSocialNow.com