theIdeaStudio (Customer Crossroads)

Winning at Customer Support: The Future

I was delighted to be Dell's guest at their recent Customer Support Think Tank held in Austin in June 2012. This is the fourth of four posts on the event and themes.

Another amazing graphic from Allison Crow

See the graphic on Flikr

Video of Brent Leary talking about how support is not a cost center.

Jackie Huba gave us a fun challenge to bring our ideas about the future of support to life using objects and pipe-cleaners. The diagram my group came up with is below.

Here's the essence of what was said:

• Technology will be used in smarter ways to help people find what they want more easily. Google does this now of course, offering you improved search based on where you are and what you've done before. These tools will come to your support site, and not a moment too soon for most of us.

• There will be less need for support, because stuff will work better and integrate better. HTML 5 is supposed to help with this. (Way over my head, what do you think?)

• Cloud data will help the company know who you are and how best to help you. Their CRM systems will be able to pull in other useful information about you

• Internal company systems will route information in smarter ways, helping employees integrate across silos more effectively, and reducing the frustration associated with hand-offs

• Smarter diagnostics will help to identify issues -- not just what element is broken, but who you need help from (Was it the router? Was it the mouse in the wiring? Or do you have a software conflict?)

• Social media tools will be used to proactively advise customers what is going on when there is a larger problem. (Yes, our servers are down, but we expect them to be back up by 5 pm EST)

 

If you are a customer, the support future looks bright. (At least we hope so.)

If you are on the company side of things, you need to be thinking about how to get to this future. (Please, we're begging you, make it better.)

HUGE KUDOS to the Dell team for a) hosting the event and treating us all like rock stars and b) sharing so much of the information and learning. Incredibly cool thing to do!

Winning at Customer Support: Social Service

I was delighted to be Dell's guest at their recent Customer Support Think Tank held in Austin in June 2012. Let me tell you about it.

There are days it is seriously fun to be me, and this was one of them -- with no responsibilities to plan, facilitate or manage the event, I was free to just engage in some thought-busting conversations with a lot of seriously smart folks in a gorgeous setting. My definition of fun!

Being passionate about customer experience

What the Think Tank was all about

If you've ever bought anything from Dell, you know that their front-end experience is impressive. They want their support efforts to be world beaters, too, and have felt for some time that they are not there yet.

Remember, of course, that Dell is massive, and serving consumers, small businesses, and global behemoths. And within that diversity, there are vast differences in customer knowledge and ability to solve their own problems, and of course their actual situation. Consider a trading floor with a server down or my Mom trying to get wi-fi to work -- vastly different support scenarios.

So their challenges are not simple. Same thing with the challenges faced by some of the other corporate participants at the event, such as Wells Fargo, Threadless, Nationwide Insurance, Intuit Demandforce, Salesforce Radian6, Citrix and Symantec.

Multiple communication media have made this even more challenging. There were four big chunks of the day, beautifully captured by Allison Crow, graphic facilitator, and led by Jackie Huba.

Social Service - how to integrate social media in a scalable way

 

One of the biggest challenges I see to social media use by corporations in a operating setting is that access to social media is often shut down in the corporate network. While this might make some sense for some people, managers are not going to become social-media savvy without using it themselves.

Seriously folks -- you want a social media strategy from people who are only supposed to use it in their free time? And the person they are working for has read a few reports on social media, but doesn't even have a Facebook account. Total fail in my view.

It seems that the reason some customers are turning to places like Twitter is because they are unwilling to navigate the complexities of finding someone to help, whether it's the IVR or the website. Future support needs to be a lot more intuitive.

I think most of the people encountering support have already tried self-help. They have looked at the FAQ, they may have phoned a friend. If their problem was that simple, they wouldn't be calling you, or desperately shouting out on Twitter.

There are a lot of things working today, however, and we talked about a few of these.

Among the things that are working well today, IMHO -- a lot of companies are making good use of video, especially YouTube ("Here's how to install a widget").

Support communities are also working, when they are well managed. It's not fair to expect your customers to do the job for you, though. You need to pay attention to the community and USE the information. Buff up your FAQs as a minimum, improve your installation instrucftions, and fix things that are just not working. Then tell the community, "hey, we listened."

Next post: managing the internal challenges.

 

Full disclosure: yes, Dell did pay for my airfare and put me up in the lovely W Hotel, but my opinions came free of charge.

 

Which social network can get you business? LinkedIn is for B2B

I'm a big fan of the work of CB Whittemore (@CBWhittemore), who I have previously interviewed on this blog. When I was building my presentation "Hate Selling? Build Profile Instead", she kindly provided me with some compelling examples, and this wonderful quote:

LinkedIn is for your professional network; Facebook is for your personal network; Twitter is where you find kindred spirits"

Obviously, this is not the whole story, and she would be the first to tell you that Facebook can be a fantastic marketing resource for consumer-oriented businesses. Today, I'm talking B2B however, and just found proof for this.

HubSpot has data to back this up, which I discovered via David Meerman Scott's excellent blog, WebInkNow.

The chart shows how many visits were converted to leads based on a 2011 study of more than 3,000 B2B companies.

My take: if you are selling to business people (even if the service you are selling is only quasi-business, like personal training, for example), you absolutely must be on LinkedIn. And be there in a thoughtful way.

Resources

A Social Media Case Study: Using social media in a traditional industry: Flooring the Consumer Blog
January 2009

Using social media: focus on the message, and bridge new and old January 2009

LinkedIn 4x better for B2B leads than Facebook or Twitter says HubSpot study April 2012

Something new for QR codes: social condoms

 

Yes, you did read that correctly.

The phrase "social condom" sounds to me like something that gets you through an unpleasant party without becoming infected with boredom. Apparently not.

Planned Parenthood has created a condom that will let you check in on a social site as a way of promoting safe sex.The site is called Where did you wear it. And you can check in with the code and add too-much-information details.

The condom is not actually printed with the QR code -- the code is printed on the package.

Social marketing is something we're going to see more and more of.

What's the point here -- well, it's an innovative idea. And if you haven't done anything yet with a QR code, you might want to look into them a bit more.

Resources:

Time wrote about it here: http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/01/qr-coded-condom-check-ins-let-you-share-your-safe-sex/

Mashable has a video: (no models wearing the product) http://mashable.com/2012/03/02/qr-code-condoms/

 

Social media analysis simplified

 

Despite what you may hear, there are really only three types of social media "listening" you can do.

Better Social Media: take your game up a notch

I'm preparing a presentation for a fall conference about how to take your social media presence to the next level. In this case, the audience will be consultants who specialize in qualitative research and ideation, but I think the principles will be broadly applicable.

The thing is, a lot of speakers on this topic today -- and I saw one another one recently who just published a book on the topic, supposedly a major expert -- are still at the point of telling people who to accept as a friend on Facebook, and why you need a LinkedIn profile. Well, the colleagues I'm addressing are doing all of that -- they've got a blog, they've got a Slideshare account, they're on Twitter.

(If you're thinking -- hey Susan, it's not like you're some kind of guru on this topic... you're right. I have a few months to obtain sufficient guru knowledge to help my colleagues. And help myself in the process. And help you too, right? There's nothing like a presentation deadline to help you get focused about learning something!)

Long story short: I'm going to start posting links here to articles and resources that make sense to me.   You can contribute, and if you do, you'll get full credit, including a link to your blog, website, LinkedIn profile or Twitter feed (whatever you want).  Just add resources by adding a comment below, and if I like the resource, I'll add it to the list.

When the list gets long enough, I'll shift it over to it's own page.

Content, Tone and Personality

"Building Online Trust: 7 Tips for Being Authentic Online", Alice Hansen, Inc. Magazine. (http://www.inc.com/guides/201104/how-to-build-online-trust-by-being-authentic.html)

Great advice on how to show authenticity and build credibility through how you talk (e.g. selective disclosure), and what you do (use a real name). Great advice for major brands, but would apply to anyone building their personal brand. I started using my real name in most comments online a long time ago, and I wish more people would do that.

"Six Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation", by CB Whittemore, Content Marketing Institute Blog. (http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/05/how-to-manage-your-reputation-online/)

CB is always worth reading for her practical approach to the art of social media and customer engagement. In this article she shares ways to monitor your Google search results, develop digital profiles, set expectations for your content and responsiveness, and develop content ideas.

"Five Things to Avoid Doing On Your Business Blog", by THOMMA, Blue Volcano Media Blog. (http://www.bluevolcanomedia.com/2011/05/16/5-things-to-avoid-doing-on-your-business-blog/)

Five great tips, all rules I've broken, but try not to. My favorite to avoid: talking only to yourself. Sporadic posting is a problem many business blogs have -- if you can't post regularly, you should rethink the strategy. (Yes, I've been guilty!)

 "How to Build Your Reputation on Social Q&A Sites", by Aliza Sherman, Gigaom Collaboration. (http://gigaom.com/collaboration/how-to-build-your-reputation-on-social-qa-sites/)

Quora, Focus, and Namesake are all profile building tools that work on the principle of experts sharing answers to business questions. If you have seen LinkedIn Q+A, these sites are very similar. Aliza Sherman provides a good description of each of these sites, including the type of people and quality of conversation.

http://www.quora.com/

http://www.focus.com/

http://namesake.com/

I keep discovering more of these social Q+A sites -- I'm sure they exist in every category or vertical. 

http://technologymarketers.com/marketingAnswers/

Metrics and Measurement

Klout (http://klout.com)

Klout is a social media tool that measures your influence on others. Their algorithm is heavily associated with Twitter, and tracks how many people include you in a list, how many retweet your posts, comment on your content, and so forth. Very easy to use, and pretty interesting.

Useful tools

Paper.li (http://paper.li)

Paper.li will take a feed of your Twitter subscriptions and condense it into an easy-to-read newspaper, such as the Susanology Daily. The service is completely automated and catching on quickly. You can choose to automatically retweet your creation, as I do, or you can just use it to keep up. Note that this paper is about the people YOU follow, which is what makes it so cool.

Scoop.it (http://www.scoop.it/)

 

Scoop.it is another content curation tool - at the time of writing it is in beta mode. It requires some active curation on your part -- you select topics and give them key words, and then Scoopit delivers a set of content you can choose from. A downloadable bookmarklet lets you easily add content to your topics. You can subscribe to the content that others curate, as well as offering your own content. Here's a sample I created in a few minutes: http://www.scoop.it/t/building-profile-with-content-marketing

How To Articles

"How to Add YouTube Videos to Your Site or Blog", Karen Rubin, HubSpot Marketing Blog. (http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/13057/How-to-Add-YouTube-Videos-to-Your-Site-or-Blog.aspx)

Simple video on video.

 

  "How to maximize the value of SlideShare", KIT, SlideShare Blog. (http://blog.slideshare.net/2011/05/04/how-to-maximize-the-value-of-slideshare/ )

SlideShare is a great tool that should be part of anyone's content marketing strategy. You can easily repurpose content, and the medium has content in it's DNA -- it's not about finding a date, or posting a joke, it's about learning. The article has links to some good tips. One biggie: if you want more viewers, you probably need a longer slide-show.(But not a long boring show, a long useful show!)

Using Facebook to engage with consumers: keep it simple

New media channels are becoming as complex as the old media channels were. Actually, scratch that -- I think they are more complex, because they are interactive and dynamic.

So the things that work for blogging (or general content marketing strategies), let's say, don't necessarily work for Facebook marketing.

 
Buddy Media just released a study suggesting that successful FB marketing strategies in some cases are counter-intuitive.They looked at two weeks of FB activity for 200 of their clients to come up with the strategies discussed.

Here are a few of the things that caught my attention:

• Wall posts of 80 characters or less had 27% higher engagement rates (likes, etc.) than longer posts. 80 characters is not a lot -- a Twitter post is maximum 140 chars -- so keep it short.. A short post, almost by necessity, has to have something useful in it, like a new product launch, a sale, etc.

• Full-length URLs do better than shortened URLs -- 3 times better. The report suggests this is because readers know where the URL will take them. Note that URL shortening is virtually a necessity in Twitter, so this is also different.

• Posting outside business hours (referencing Eastern Time) creates higher engagement than posting during business hours. Considering how many businesses block access to social media sites, this isn't all that surprising. What IS surprising is how few of BuddyMedia's clients are posting outside business hours -- 60% of the posts in their study were between 10 am and 4 pm.

• Thursday and Friday are the best days to post, followed by Sunday (see graphic above). The report shows some differences by industry which are quite dramatic. For example, Sunday is when people pay attention to automotive. Food and beverage is highest on Tuesday. Fashion is highest on Thursday. Their advice: study your own patterns.

• Soft-sell key words seem to work best, but direct and simple calls to action get results. Do you want people to click "Like"? You need to ask them to do that.

You know that phrase, "conventional wisdom"? It doesn't have any relationship to new media. Test and learn should be your mantra.

Resources

Download the Buddy Media Facebook study here.

I learned of the Buddy Media report from Marko Saric's very good blog, How to Make My Blog

Social media use among largest public companies continues to grow

Nora Ganim Barnes at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Centre for Marketing Research has been doing annual studies of social media use among the Fortune 500 (largest public companies) and Inc. 500 (fastest growing private companies). The 2010 study results have just been released, and a summary is available here.

Quick snapshot? The 2008 study was about corporate blogging. The 2009 study added Twitter. The 2010 study added Facebook. This pretty much says it all.

The complexities of corporate structure have been a challenge for the study, which looks only at blogging at the corporate level, not the subsidiary level. This definition must of course seriously underestimate the activity occurring, because a meaningful marketing strategy would be targetting communications (at least one would hope so!)

With this in mind, the continued growth in social media adoption that the study reports is likely understated, in my view.

Private companies are more likely to be using any form of social media, which makes sense, as they are not subject to the potential wild swings in stock price that can result from a social media scandal (remember Domino's Pizza).

The study also has stats for Twitter and Facebook, available in the short summary.

Clearly, social media is now part of the media mix. But traditional media is becoming more social. So media strategy is frankly becoming a bigger challenge for marketers of all sorts.

From my limited vantage point, I don't think most agencies are providing tremendously strong support to their clients in this area -- they are still climbing the learning curve themselves, and still trying to figure out the revenue model. [Would welcome some with more expertise in this area to comment.]

Resources:

The Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging, Twitter and Facebook Usage by America’s Largest Companies, by Nora Ganim Barnes, PhD, U Mass. Centre for Marketing Research.

Social Media in the 2009 Inc. 500: New Tools & New Trends, by Nora Ganim Barnes, PhD, U Mass. Centre for Marketing Research.

 

 

Be interesting or be gone: reaching people in an age of communication overload

Ever get to the point with your e-mail where you're tempted to just Select All {Ctrl+A} and hit {DEL}?

I did today... but decided instead to spend a few minutes trying to clear things out.

I found a number of good intentions there --  someone I wanted to have coffee with back in 2008, and still haven't booked a meeting. [I'm sure W.S. has scheduling problems of his own to deal with... if he's even at the same company now. I have finally surrendered, and deleted this reminder to self.]

How the disciplined among us conquer e-mail

Then I came across this gem, a newsletter item about conquering e-mail.

The actual item, from Fast Company, dates back several months. I can certainly vouch for the veracity of the research, having currently got some 355 newsletter items in my newsletter folder [deleted at least weekly!]. Yes, I could unsubscribe to the stuff that I no longer want, but who's got the time for that?

There are a number of good tips in the article above... if you are the type who can use a disciplined system.

My purpose here, is not to discuss personal productivity. It is to remind you that your brand, your product, your incredible marketing communication, is in this giant morass.

Did you get my e-mail?

Do you, like me, get sales calls that start with: "did you receive my e-mail?" or even worse, "have you read the presentation I e-mailed you"?

Seriously, this is a ridiculous approach. No one has read your e-mail, okay?

Even the information I requested is quite often in limbo, in another folder marked "Must Read", that currently has 12 items in it. 

I can't get through the memory sticks, CDs and downloads that I brought back from the last few conferences.

So if you sent me a sales deck, and I opened it, I sure hope it had some useful information in it. Like pricing, for example. Like screen shots of your product, for example. If it was just circles and arrows, I can tell you now that we are all sorry we wasted our time.

E-mail is the proverbial tip of the iceberg...

I'm also behind on Facebook. People ask me if I saw their clever status update, or the link they posted to the video. [I only wish I had, it was probably really cool. And more interesting than most of the stuff that landed there.]

One smart fellow of my acquaintance has suggested that I would enjoy his book reviews posted on LinkedIn. I'm sure he's right, but I currently have a dozen interesting books sitting on what passes for a credenza, calling out to me.

Your communications have to totally rock

When I'm testing print communications, I often say something like "imagine you were flipping through this magazine". Because none of us have time to study anything that is not intensely interesting to us.

And we are all, the big and the small among us, subjected to astounding amounts of marketing communications. Political communications. And signs encouraging correct behavior. [Like smoking 25 feet from the door, and be sure to wash your hands properly. Don't stand too close to that door. Keep that bag away from babies...]

We can fast forward through your boring skip-intro. We have learned to blot out your boring banner. We are checking our smart phone while your trailer is playing. Heck, many people are checking their phones in the actual movie! I have recently seen people doing this in live performances -- so even messages we are paying to see are not sacrosanct.

This is your target -- skilled at filtering

This is the market you are trying to reach or trying to serve. Busy. Inundated. Unable to read it all. Wishing you were more succinct. Hoping your knowledge base has a good search tool. Skilled at filtering. And the young are even better than the old at filtering what is of interest and what is not. 

Social media certainly had a novelty factor initially. But it is quickly becoming a necessity, and bringing the same baggage. New channels are not displacing the old, they are adding to the load.

Yup, it's scary out there.

Using social media right - Tungle does brilliant video that made me look

Was just checking out my Twitter feed, and saw something interesting from @thealzel. I know that @thealzel only posts brainy, thought-provoking stuff, usually related to her VC work. So when I saw "Time waits for no one. I like the shot of the last poster of this video," I thought I would click through.

It's a lovely video. Watching it, at first I thought it was a video from Sunnybrook Hospital. It's not. Then I became so absorbed wondering where it would go next that I forgot to wonder what the message was.

At the end, I looked down at Tungle and thought: "I've never heard of this." And took a few minutes to click through.

Turns out Tungle is a linked calendar service; something I was looking into recently, but didn't find anything that seemed to meet my needs. This might.

OK, it's a hideous name. It sounds like the name-tag on a Beanie Baby.

But their video made me look.

It works because it doesn't address the issue directly. It comes up along side you and reminds you that your time is important. That you can do amazing things in small amounts of time. It feels like a connection to what's real and what's important. And reminding you of that earns the right to a click.

So simple. So complicated.

The battle for your attention in social media

Markets for interesting ideas

I liked the title of Michael Bungay Stanier's latest e-book, Stop the busywork!, so I went to the download site. Which turns out to be ChangeThis, another creation of marketing maestro Seth Godin.

I knew about ChangeThis, but was curious to see what they are up to, so I browsed around a bit. Not only have they got some impressive design work happening here, but some impressive stats as well.

We know that 30,000 of you subscribe via email and RSS feed, and that you download around 500,000 to 700,000 manifestos a month

The site publishes four to six manifestos each month, based on reader voting on proposals. Submit a good proposal, get it voted up, and then you will be invited to submit the 2,000 to 4,000 word document. Manifestos remain up indefinitely, so can reach very high download numbers if popular.

The ChangeThis site is now managed by 800-CEO-Read, a site that sells and reviews business books. Many of the manifestos posted on ChangeThis are actually extracts or themes related to business books, so there's a bit of a fit there.

Their submission criteria are interesting, too:

Passion. Conviction. Knowledge. Education.
Thought. Persuasion. Freedom. Appeal. Change.
Point of View. Self-Betterment. Inspiration.

I believe one reason their e-books are so successful is that they control the presentation, and the e-book format they use is gorgeous and highly readable.

A point of view is the price of admission

Although ChangeThis is about disseminating ideas, those in the idea business find it a useful place to support their brand building efforts. For example, Tom Peters has seven manifestos published.

You can only get your manifesto published when you can take a point of view in a highly engaging way, and offer thoughtful and useful information to readers. This is a tough thing for a larger organization to do, and there isn't a lot there published by a large organization. Notable exception: Amnesty International has something called Stop Child Executions. 

This kind of point of view is very difficult for corporations to take, but is pretty much essential if you are going to attract readers. And not just on this site, but in most social media. 

To win attention you must be interesting

In our information-laden world, if you want people to pay attention to your message, you must be interesting.

• You can be interesting by having a point of view on an important topic. e.g. ChangeThis
• You can be interesting by being funny. e.g.YouTube
• You can be interesting by being informative. e.g.Instructables

I personally believe corporate messaging -- aka advertising -- can be interesting. But most of it simply is not.

When you hear/see/read a lot of hand-wringing about the challenge of winning eyeballs, this is what it really comes down to. You win eyeballs by being interesting.

Boring only works in the interruption model

Last night I was watching 24 on tape. I confess, I fast-forwarded through most of the advertising. Not because I hate advertising. Just because nothing caught my attention. And boring only works if you are forced to watch.

Social media takes the attention stakes up -- way, way up. Even though a lot of social media is drivel, it is often funny drivel. Which beats boring.

Social media is just one big ad

Something terrible has happened -- people have been telling everyone to use social media for brand building and visibility and everyone's listened.

The result isn't pretty. My e-mail is filled with spam, and the rest of social media seems to be going the same way.

My Facebook status feeds, which used to be filled with witty quips from business buddies and personal friends, has now become overwhelmed with advertising. I really like some of these folks, and used to find them interesting, but now all they're doing is promoting their latest business venture, often itself a business promotion of sorts, such as a book. [Publishers are pretty much insisting on this now, from what I hear.]

I suspect I've been guilty of this stuff myself, which doesn't ease the annoyance at all.

I've had to take the drastic step of turning off status updates from a few people. Some of my actual real-world friends have disconnected, which I was sorry to see. Others never log in any more, and I can't blame them. I rarely log in myself.

Twitter is overwhelmed with self-promotional material.

All of us 'brand of one' people have been told we need to get out there posting links to interesting articles. So we are. And my feed is no better, sadly.

The thing is, you pretty much have to engage with some of these media, or I do anyway:

You simply can’t ignore a communication medium that has enjoyed a growth rate in users of more than 700 per cent over the past year and is used by people to talk about anything including your brand.

[This was actually Neville Hobson being quoted by Chris Abraham but I found it on Abraham's blog ... that's what things are like out there in social media content now.]

Now that I see people are getting their accounts hacked, so that I am getting tweets about Viagra and such, I'm having serious doubts.

Linked In itself is still useful, thank goodness.

It's OK to ruthlessly ignore people you've never met or heard of. And not that many people have figured out how to get their Twitter feeds to show up there.

But the e-mail bulletins advising me that "X is now connected to Y" have got to be the pinnacle of almost useless information.

The discussion groups are still useful, likely because they are all moderated. Not that people aren't trying to insert blatant calls to action, they just haven't been that successful.

Some really clever people invited me to participate in Wave, Google's new collaboration tool. Now there's Buzz, Google's new competitor in the FriendFeed battle for eyeballs. There are a gazillion other lesser players.

It's true, there are some bright lights on the horizon. Like people building truly useful applications on the Twitter platform. I don't personally need to know when my local bakery has something fresh -- several times a day I presume -- but this is a good start.

If you actually found time in your day to read this, I thank you. Please follow me @susanabbott.

[Should I keep posting these to Facebook? Or is that just so much more feed spam in your world? What to do, what to do...?]