Social Media and Missed Opportunities

by Rob Wolfe – Connected Places Global

I believe that social media is critical for actively developing evangelists for my business’s brand & services, and for my own personal brand. No matter what business you are in – large or small, product or service, public or private – you should be doing everything possible to establish social media relationships and develop these kinds of evangelists.

Business and personal success can’t occur without establishing connections and fostering relationships, and I feel strongly that social media is the most effective way to initiate and sustain that. I am blown away any time I meet someone at a business or networking event and they tell me they don’t use LinkedIn or Twitter or any of “that social media stuff.” That’s simply a missed opportunity in my opinion.

In addition, social media, social review sites, and interactive online communities are changing the game of how businesses need to respond to client needs. I feel businesses today must acknowledge and embrace connected buyers’ growing use of social network streams to talk about brands, as peer-to-peer feedback increasingly has more influence on purchase habits than ever before.

Businesses must develop effective approaches to mining and analyzing this data to derive valuable insights, actionable intelligence, and an overall deeper understanding of what drives the success of the brand in the social world. None of that can occur if you deny the power and influence of social media platforms.

What are your thoughts on the power of and benefits of using social media as part of your integrated marketing–both for business and personally/professionally?

[Note: This is an excerpt from an interview series article originally published by ForwardMetrics, which reached out to their community of contributors and asked their expert thought leaders to take part in an author interview series. This excerpt is my contribution to Part VI of the interview series, covering responses on “the importance of social media for your business and your personal brand .” Check out the article for more valuable insights from other interviewees.]

Social Marketing: 7 Things Your Business Might Not be Doing Right [Infographic]

Co-creating Your Brand Story With Clients

by Rob Wolfe – Connected Places Global

“Engaging your customers in your story can be just as valuable as engaging them with your product.”
~ Vanessa Merit Nornberg, Inc.com author & business owner

Among the brand elements that must be present to establish a brand’s personality and deliver the brand’s promise are stories that help define the brand. As social media marketing becomes more relevant each day, who is telling these brand stories and why they matter to buyers also becomes more relevant. There seems to be a growing trend of collaboration between brands and client advocates who help companies build stories for and on behalf of the brand.

According to Mark Lightowler, site author of Storytelling To Create Impact Brands, the best way of creating relevance for your brand is to ensure your brand plays a part in your target audience’s personal story. It is not just about you creating a great story for your brand, but about knowing your audience and their story and how your brand fits into that story. He suggests that you engage with your clients to create a new story together. This new co-created story is the one that gets told by the client to their network, getting your brand closer to more people.

While there are many articles and sites on the brand-storytelling trend, I suggest you check out the article, “The Human Side of Brand Storytelling” by Gunther Sonnenfeld, which provides examples of two companies— Whole Foods Market and Procter & Gamble – working with customers to create social media content and build brands through storytelling.

Do you have other inspiring examples of companies using client storytelling to build their brands? Have you or your company had personal experience in this area with your own story to share to spark discussion on this topic?

A Great Brand Taps Into Emotions

by Rob Wolfe – Connected Places Global

“Emotions drive most, if not all, of our decisions. A brand reaches out with a powerful connecting experience. It’s an emotional connecting point that transcends the product.”
~ Scott Bedbury, builder of the Starbucks & Nike brands and author of A New Brand World

In her 1to1 Media article, “Stand By Your Brand: Cultivating Experience to Foster Brand Advocacy,” Anna Papachristos touches on this idea:
With numerous opportunities to make emotional connections with customers—a characteristic central to building advocacy… One way to connect more effectively with advocates is by extracting and analyzing social sentiment that’s shared by customers and influencers. These insights can help decision-makers to better understand advocates and then act on this information to help strengthen relationships with them. According to Katherine Wintsch, founder of The Mom Complex, “If everyone in the marketing department has a clear understanding of what the consumer wants, everyone can focus on fulfilling their needs in different ways. The marketing department can deploy lots of different tactics, but the key is having one North Star.”

However, as the late David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard pointed out, “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department,” supporting the idea that the “North Star” is the loyal brand advocate. As social media marketing evolves and remains unavoidable, these brand evangelists are vital to a brand’s marketing efforts. Marketers must continually engage social advocates, collaborate closely with them, and integrate their voice as part of the marketing strategy.

Can you think of any successful brands that offer a “promise” without tapping into buyers’ emotions? Do you agree that social advocates are key to a brand’s marketing efforts and should be considered an extension of, or even a core component of, a company’s marketing department? Are there any stories you can share of brands failing because they failed to connect emotionally with their target market?

Be Prepared to Manage Social Media Risks

by Rob Wolfe – Connected Places Global

The basic difference between an ordinary person and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary person takes everything as a blessing or a curse. (Carlos Castenada) To be an effective leader, you need to look at risk as a challenge, while making sure to manage it like you do any other opportunity. Torben Rick, international executive with a strong track record in developing, driving and managing business improvement and development, change management and turn-around reminds us, “There is no brand immune to a negative event … it happens, that’s life and most companies plan for this to happen by developing action plans and the like.” Such should be the case when engaging in social media marketing.

Social media marketing affords the opportunity to create a community of fans and customers alike. According to Jim Goldstein (“Social Media + You – Brand and Reputation Management = Disaster”), “Reinforcing the positive sentiment of this audience is key to creating a long lasting positive (brand) perception. In addition a passionate following will ensure that as negative sentiment arises that the community behind you supports you. A supportive community of followers expands the number of eye and ears looking and listening on your behalf. It’s not uncommon for passionate supporters to actually take on negative sentiment directly on your behalf.”

The problem is that incidents move faster in social media, so you need to create a crisis response plan, suggests Jeremiah Owyang (“When It Comes To Social Media, Many Marketers Jump The Gun”). “For instance, how would your company react if some of its products turned up in an unflattering YouTube video on a Friday evening before a three-day weekend?” He says many companies jump into social marketing before they are ready. “The opportunities to connect with customers, learn from them and benefit from word-of-mouth marketing are irresistible. But CMOs must first establish the internal resources and processes that are necessary for their companies to be successful in social marketing.”

You don’t need to look far to find examples of business who were not prepared to handle an unforeseen crisis, manage the risks, or harness the power of social media:

• According to Owyang: Greenpeace’s organized brandjacking of Nestle SA’s Facebook page a few years ago is an example of what makes CMOs afraid of social media. There is good reason for this: The power has clearly turned to those that participate, and now detractors are starting to organize using the same organized marketing campaigns that companies create. Greenpeace takes issue with Nestle’s purchase of palm oil from farmers who are destroying forests. The organization prepared a frontal assault with prepared assets such as off-brand logos, detrimental videos, and called for their Twitter followers to attack Nestle’s Facebook page. Nestle, the giant food company, was unprepared. It apparently lacked qualified community managers, a community policy and an advocacy program. Proof of the power of online communities: Today the Swiss company said it will work with a nonprofit organization to probe the firm’s palm oil suppliers.
• In his article, “Better have a social media risk management plan”, Rick points out that in terms of bad online sentiment, it doesn’t get much worse than BP’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. He said in May 2010, “a search for “BP oil spill” on YouTube returned over 900 videos about the disaster and in April 2010 BP was one of brands that was generating the most buzz on Twitter. BP seemed to have a poor micro-blogging strategy at the time and each twit was drowned by a deluge of hostile Tweets. This is partly just a question of quantity, which could be balanced if BP had a larger presence on these sites and more followers to begin with – but since it was too late to do anything about that, the company might have benefitted by at least putting a more human (and humane) face on its social media communications. Let’s see the CEO make some personal twits – a symbolic gesture which might help temper the maelstrom of negative PR currently engulfing the company. Or even better – lets see the CEO apologize in a video broadcast.”

Should you be concerned about bad sentiment circulating online about you or your business? Certainly, says Goldstein, but not to the degree that it paralyzes you from doing business. Bad things will always be said about an individual or business. We can’t please everyone all of the time, but it is possible to keep bad situations (and unpredictable events) from getting ugly in the social media world…Strategically speaking turning lemons into lemonade is a critical online business strategy. You just need to plan ahead and be prepared.

Does your organization have a formal social media risk management or crisis response plan?

5 Companies Using Social Voice to Enhance Client Experience and Drive Innovation

by Rob Wolfe – Connected Places Global

A recent Pitney Bowes study, “The Customer Dance: When to Lead, When to Follow,” investigates the level of engagement consumers seek from today’s brands and the types of interactions that are most likely to increase brand loyalty and encourage repeat patronage. Polling consumers in the U.S. and Europe, the study reveals when companies should lead customer interactions and when they should cede control to customers—and as a result, identify where marketing spend may be best allocated. (This information was provided by 1to1 Media in their article, “Communication: The Key to Any Successful (Customer) Relationship.”)

Consumers noted a distinct appreciation for being included in decisions concerning the range of products and services offered, with about half citing this as an effective customer engagement technique. This aligns with a recent report by Alterian, which states that more than 80 percent of consumers say involvement in product and service development with a brand would make them more likely to promote the company to others.

In their “Shaping Social Engagement for Results” whitepaper, 1to1 Media also suggested that companies can further strengthen relationships with social customers by sharing the actions taken based on customer feedback with them, including ideas for new products, suggestions for improving the customer experience, and comments on other aspects of the company-customer relationship.

“Disruptive Innovation”?

Holly Green, CEO of THE HUMAN FACTOR, Inc., asserts that this sort of “disruptive innovation” approach solves problems that customers didn’t even know they had or were unable to clearly articulate to themselves or their vendors. Green notes that in a recent study published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management, researchers measured the benefits of user involvement in the product innovation process for future mobile phone services, rating three distinct user groups—ordinary users (customers), advanced users (technology and/or computer trained users) and professional product developers (from a leading European telephone company) – to determine their ability to generate ideas for innovative products. Researchers found that customers not only produced more original new ideas, but their ideas were also rated as significantly more valuable. In contrast, professional developers and advanced users produced the greatest number of realizable (better chance of making it to market) ideas, but they were perceived as having less value to customers.

Co-creating Products With Customers

Here, I provide examples of five companies that engage customers by inviting them to actively participate in the innovation process by suggesting product/service ideas to help drive innovation and improve the overall customer experience (with links to their sites and excerpts from the promotional information provided there).

Starbucks

What would make your Starbucks experience perfect? We know you’ve got ideas – big ideas, little ideas, maybe even totally revolutionary ideas – and we want to hear them all. That’s why we created My Starbucks Idea. So you can share the ideas that matter to you and you can find out how we’re putting those ideas to work. Together, we will shape the future of Starbucks.

Any visitor can look at the ideas that have been posted. Everyone helps decide by voting. Ideas posted to the Popular Ideas section of the website (determined by using an algorithm based on number of points, number of comments and recency of post) will be considered, but our Idea Partners may also choose ideas simply because they think they’re promising.

We’ve got a dedicated team of Idea Partners – Starbucks employees who are experts in their respective fields – who will read all ideas and comments. They’ll take a combination of the most popular and most innovative ideas that are the best fit for Starbucks and present them to key decision makers within the company to recommend how we put those ideas to work.

Salesforce.com    

The IdeaExchange is a forum where salesforce.com customers can suggest new concepts for our product and services, promote favorite enhancements, interact with product managers and other customers, and preview what we are planning to deliver. In salesforce.com’s ongoing efforts to continually create a dialogue with the community, the IdeaExchange provides an open and direct channel of communication for customers.

The IdeaExchange is one of the simplest and most direct ways to communicate your requirements to us. Our product management team monitors the IdeaExchange to understand which Ideas are most important and most relevant to you. We take your Ideas seriously when planning future releases. On occasion, our product managers will appear on the IdeaExchange to chime in on an ongoing discussion or ask for input on an idea of their own.

Procter & Gamble   

P&G Connect + Develop:  Times have changed, and the world is more connected. In the areas in which we do business, there are millions of scientists, engineers and other companies globally. Why not collaborate with them? We now embrace open innovation… more than 50 percent of product initiatives at Procter & Gamble involve significant collaboration with outside innovators.

We are aggressively looking for solutions for our needs, but we also will consider any innovation — packaging, design, marketing models, research methods, engineering, technology, etc. — that would improve our products and services and the lives of the world’s consumers.

Verizon   

Idea Exchange is a new part of the Verizon Residential Community where community members can share ideas about new or existing Verizon products and services. This is your chance to tell us what you want to see here at Verizon, share your thoughts with others, and comment/vote on ideas and suggestions others have submitted as well.  Ideas with high vote totals are more likely to be recognized and accepted by the teams at Verizon who develop our products and services.

One of the great things about Idea Exchange is that you can track the status of your ideas- as your ideas are sent to the people here at Verizon who can make them happen, you’ll see the status of your idea is updated. We’ll be telling you if the idea is something we are working on now or would like to do in the future, or if it’s something that is not feasible for us at this time. Rest assured- we’re listening to you!

Ford

Ford Social: Your Ideas.     A very good idea someone once had.  It could happen in the shower. It could happen at the grocery store while deciding between one- or two-ply napkins. Most likely, it’ll happen when you’re driving. A great idea pops into your head about how to make your Ford even better. Don’t keep it to yourself. Post and read ideas here. You never know, your idea could become the next big thing at Ford!

The Your Ideas site allows you to post your ideas in the following categories: Technologies, Convenience, Green, Infotainment, Performance, Personalization, and Safety. It allows you to read, comment on, and vote for ideas submitted by others (and there are thousands of ideas), and also allows you to share any of the ideas submitted with your connections on various social media platforms.

The Google Factor:  Balancing Protection of the Brand With Customer “Betas” of Product Innovations

In his Business Insider article, “Talking, and LISTENING, to Your Customers,” Larry Kramer recalls 2006 negotiations to put CBS TV shows on Google. (Google hadn’t yet launched Google Video, nor had they bought YouTube.) CBS was nervous about how their shows would look on Google TV, and pushed Google on making sure that the viewing experience would be as close to perfect as possible.

The Google folks basically told CBS not to worry. “We just call it Beta and let our viewers test for us and tell us how it’s going.  We’ll just keep the “Beta” on the site as long as we want so people will understand if the video freezes or refuses to start.”  Ultimately, the CBS people pushed hard for guarantees that the video would be perfect before the launch.  But those guarantees never came.

The clash of those two cultures was symbolic, says Kramer.  While the CBS’s of the world are right to protect their brands because those brands had built multi-billion dollar businesses, the Google’s of the world are also right to engage their audiences in the process of product development, because they recognize that so much is changing so fast, and public beta testing by consumers helps Google see changes in consumer behavior as they are happening.

The New York Times is currently using a similar “beta” product customer engagement approach on their Beta620 site.

Join the Discussion:  Share Your Thoughts & Stories

It’s not news that companies need to interact with and engage customers in ways that create brand loyalty. I’ve included examples of 5 companies that involve customers in product innovation, but there are many others, such as Virgin and Symantec (which even allows contributors to earn rewards that can be redeemed for gift certificates).  Also, many companies aggressively seek and monitor feedback from their customers, and many companies effectively use that information to improve the customer experience.  But there’s much to be considered about the benefits of engaging customers by actively involving them in product innovation.

What are your thoughts on actively including customers in product and service innovation?  Are there certain types of businesses for which this approach wouldn’t work?  Do you have knowledge of legal restrictions that prevent some companies from soliciting or using product ideas from customers?  Are you aware of any other companies or brands using interesting approaches to including customers in driving product or service innovation?  What are your thoughts on companies using customers to beta test new product ideas? 

5 Tales of Client Engagement: Brands Connecting With Buyers

by Rob Wolfe – Connected Places Global

You need customer touch points that enable conversation and relationship building. You need touch points that demonstrate how much you value customers by the careful thought and planning you put into those programs and processes, according to Customer Engagement Strategies. You need customers who are shouting your praises to their friends and colleagues because you truly have their interests at heart.

I did a little research recently and identified 5 companies that seem to understand the importance of customer touch points and have included some of the unique approaches taken by these companies to truly engage their customers, as well as some insights from some of their leaders. You’ll notice that much of the focus among these companies is on social media marketing.

Zales

Customers on Zales.com share real-life stories about the celebrations in their lives and the role Zales played in making them memorable. Zales added stories to create an online destination (lovestories.zales.com) that features customers’ own narratives about the celebrations in their lives, and the role that Zales played in making these days special.

“The jewelry business is one that’s built on people’s personal stories, since fine jewelry is often given to celebrate joyous occasions like weddings, birthdays, the birth of a child and special holidays,” says Steve Larkin, executive VP and chief marketing and e-commerce officer of Zale Corporation. “Bazaarvoice Stories gives Zales customers a place to share their own love stories—whether humorous or heartfelt. This user-generated content is a great resource to connect shoppers with each other—and to build brand involvement and loyalty in an authentic and organic manner.”

Zales—a part of Zale Corporation’s $2 billion company with 2,100 retail jewelry stores across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico—promotes the Love Stories initiative, powered by Bazaarvoice Stories, on its homepage and via a targeted e-mail campaign, encouraging the thousands of people who have reviewed products on the Zales site to share their own personal stories. The company also promotes Love Stories through sweepstakes and contests that drive participation.

“Zales has been a pioneer in listening and responding to their customers via ratings and reviews, and their launch of our Stories product is just another milestone on their path to complete customer engagement,” says Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “Studies prove that when customers engage with one another by sharing their real-life stories about certain brands or products, they become more loyal to the brand, purchase more products and become brand evangelists to their friends and community.”

(Source: http://www.salesandmarketing.com/article/zale-corporation-deepens-customer-engagement-and-loyalty )

Cirque Du Soleil

The Cirque du Soleil shows in Las Vegas are truly something to behold. Full of spectacle and amazing visual experiences, fans of the shows know that Cirque experiences are special indeed. Over the last 25 years, Cirque du Soleil’s brand has been built largely on the power of word of mouth and the enthusiastic recommendations of their audiences. So when Cirque got started in social media, in many ways, it was like returning to their roots.

“Our fans are an extension of our brand,” says Jessica Berlin, Cirque du Soleil’s social media manager. “The great part about social media is that we can now participate in conversations directly with our fans, in the communities and on the sites where they’re gathering.” Cirque empowers their online community to be brand ambassadors by giving them access to insider information, special promotions and discounts, and tickets to the shows. They recently hosted a Cirque-n-Blog where Berlin invited a dozen Las Vegas bloggers to attend their Zumanity show and post reviews of the performance. To them, it was proof that social media – and the community around it – matters a great deal to their brand. “When we tracked the coverage of the show in Radian6 across social media, Zumanity emerged as our most talked-about show overall. And as a result of the blogger event, our coverage and reach on microblogs like Twitter was much higher than usual, bringing us awareness and interest from new audiences and creating conversation among our existing fans.”

In May 2009, Cirque du Soleil announced their “Summer of Cirque” promotion to celebrate their 25th anniversary. As part of the promotion, they offered ticket specials, and they launched a contest to win a trip to Las Vegas and tickets to all seven of the Cirque shows. In the first two weeks of the promotion, all of their communication was done through social media, and they could directly track the conversation – and sales – that resulted. Over the course of the next several months, Cirque used what they learned about their community through listening to build excitement for future shows. Instead of traditional audience outreach, Berlin and her team used and is using social media as the primary means to distribute insider, sneak-peek information to their audience members. By following Cirque on Twitter or joining them on Facebook, fans will get exclusive content and special discounts that they can’t get elsewhere.

“Building our brand in social media has been rewarding and successful for us at Cirque,” says Berlin. “Our fans are our greatest brand ambassadors and it’s now become a priority for us to closely monitor what is being said. By listening and engaging in these conversations, we can only improve the Cirque du Soleil experience.”

“We’ve always believed that our fans are what make the Cirque du Soleil experience fantastic, and what keeps our brand vibrant and healthy. By not only participating in social media but tangibly measuring and communicating our success, we can harness the power of our online community to keep Cirque du Soleil shows in demand for another 25 years.”

(Source: http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/cirque-du-soleil/)

Carphone Warehouse

Creating a successful viral marketing campaign is something of a dark art – “The things that generally work really well are something that puts a smile on your face, has a good story to it… don’t necessarily be too preoccupied with the time, but keep it tight… the consumer has to feel that there is a payoff,” says YouTube’s Bruce Daisley – and in some cases it appears there is more luck than judgement involved. However, there are other ways that organisations can create videos that notch up major YouTube views for minimum spend. And firms should think about how YouTube can in some way embody what they want the brand to be about. As an example, Daisley highlights the work Carphone Warhouse, among Europe’s largest independent mobile phone retailers.

“The Carphone Warehouse brand wants to be remembered for expertise – that their sales people know more than the sales people in any other shop. So it noticed the phenomenon of ‘unboxing”, where people queue over night to buy a new gadget, then they take it home and video themselves opening the product and unpacking it. So watching it you’re vicariously experiencing that through them, and the amount of views these videos get is remarkable.

“So to create a tease for the shops, Carphone Warehouse made these low-fi videos of people opening products and uploaded them. It received loads of comments, and people started to go straight to the Carphone Warehouse channel to check out new phones. It was a very simple way of bringing their brand qualities to YouTube. And more and more brands are realising that video is a massive phenomenon, and it can affect small businesses as well as your Nikes and Sonys.”

Absolutely, social media isn’t an exclusive one size fits all solution, says Guy Stevens, former Customer Knowledge Manager at Carphone Warehouse. There are many different platforms to choose from, and they can all be used individually or in combination in any number of different ways.

What’s key is that in taking part you are offering something relevant and meaningful to your customers, [such as] The Carphone Warehouse employees publishing helpful tips and hints about mobile phones via their Eyeopeners channel on YouTube.

If I think back to my time at The Carphone Warehouse, reflects Stevens, the reason we could try things out was simply because of our approach. Part of this is having people who ‘get social’. And this touches on an important issue. From a resourcing perspective, it’s apparent from talking to those who are going down this route that their approach is very much around hiring people who understand social media, and then training them in terms of the customer service skills they will need.

If we move onto the practical issues surrounding the use of social media for customer service the key issues for me are communication and integration. For me, says Stevens, it comes back to looking to, working with and trusting your customers to help you find the answers to these questions. Companies no longer hold the dominant position they once did, and we are in a period where companies are being forced to re-evaluate, and in some instances re-engineer, the way in which they engage with their customers.

(Sources:
http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/customer-experience/more-just-marketing-using-youtube-customer-engagement/104489

http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy-alerts/online-customer-service )

UPS

Understand from Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, UPS’s marketing and advertising partner,” after a decade of work and the investment of billions of dollars to successfully transform the company, UPS on Sept13,2010 launched a communications program to demonstrate how it has vaulted past competitors to offer the broadest range of logistics services in the industry. The creative elements of the platform will focus on the theme “We Love Logistics” to reflect UPS’s passion for delivering transportation and supply chain solutions that can bring competitive power to its customers, UPS also will support the campaign through various social media channels.

“Logistics became the focus as a way to articulate everything we do,” said Betsy Wilson, director of global advertising at UPS, which has acquired more than 40 companies in the past decade to bolster its services. In addition to package delivery, UPS offers trucking and air freight, retail shipping and business services, customs brokerage, finance and international trade services.

The shipping company created a dedicated microsite, www.thenewlogistics.com, which contains downloadable case studies of some clients, including electronics company Toshiba and plumbing product company Toto USA, said Maureen Healy, VP of customer communications at UPS. There is also a corresponding Facebook fan page, Twitter feed and YouTube channel, she said.

Wilson said the company will measure customer engagement and business impact. “[We want to emphasize] UPS has a way to partner with clients and bring value to your business through our integrated network,” said Healy.

UPS’s  facebook fan page “shows off” their outstanding “hardwares” and “software” by using lots of nice photos and videos, and they provide regular wall postings.

UPS’s blog  is where members of UPS family worldwide contribute stories to the online community–everyone “writer” use his/her own name. Featured writers have the chance to show up on the home page together with his/her picture. No doubt it’s great for staff self branding and encouraging participation.

On its blog, you can click “Follow UPS on Twitter” and on their Twitter page immediately notice that they respond to their customers promptly.

The new UPS logistics campaign is also easily found on YouTube. One ad proclaims “Everybody loves something. We love logistics. We love its precision, its epic scale, its ability to make life better for billions of people. Each day, our customers count on us to choreograph a ballet of infinite complexity played across skies, oceans and borders. And we do. What’s not to love?” – UPS

At end of the day, what matters to customers are still cost and service–service for logistics comes from transit time, on-time delivery and the ability to deal with emergencies, regardless of how good the commercial advertising is.

But UPS have proven that a well integrated marketing campaign goes a long way to building customer engagement.

Adobe

Engagement is the new business mandate. As I talk to customers, partners, and employees, it becomes increasingly clear to me that the health of a company relies on the extent to which it creates meaningful and sustainable interactions, says Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO, Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Adobe knows that engaged customers are a company’s best assets. You can’t compete successfully in the marketplace only by creating a better product or holding down costs. Quality products and competitive pricing are required just to stay in business, but customer engagement provides a long-term competitive advantage. Without engagement, you can’t expect to build a successful company or organization.

A lot of research validates that engaged customers are less price sensitive, buy more frequently, are more loyal, are more likely to recommend products, and are more apt to provide useful feedback. It pays to retain these engaged customers and, interestingly enough, it typically costs less to service them.

Adobe enables engaging experiences by developing the technologies that help companies create, manage, and deliver information more powerfully, so they can connect with their customers. Adobe products help construct the touch points where companies interact with customers, from media-rich websites to mobile phone displays to collaboration software and web conferencing. Adobe has spent the past 25 years driving innovation that delivers engaging experiences and continues to build on that legacy. Of course, staying focused on engagement—how to do it most effectively, how to measure it—is challenging for all companies, Adobe included. I try to keep it a top priority, says Narayen.

Technology—and innovation—are keys to customer engagement. Today, customers expect dynamic, more engaging experiences than ever before, and companies must constantly innovate to meet and exceed these expectations. Technology has heightened customer expectations, and it’s also through technology that businesses will meet their customers’ increasingly higher demands.

Adobe is especially well-poised to provide the technology needed to engage consumers. Through our software applications, platforms and services, our customers can create and deliver compelling content and powerful applications across all devices and media. The opportunities to bridge media and give people access to exactly the information they want, anywhere, anytime, connected or not, are virtually unlimited.

(Source: http://www.adobe.com/engagement/q_and_a.html )

Do you have a customer engagement tale to share?

 

Customer Loyalty Tied to Engagement

by Rob Wolfe – Connected Places Global

“2011 may well be called the year of customer loyalty,” says Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty 360 – The Loyalty Marketer’s Association.  “In today’s crowded marketplace, creating loyal, engaged customers is more important —- and more challenging — than ever.  That is why we are going to see a number of key trends unfold over the next year.”

Johnson predicts 11 key trends will dominate the Loyalty Marketing Industry in 2011 . I’ve highlighted three that focus specifically on customer engagement:

Companies will increasingly look at how customer engagement and employee engagement work together to drive bottom line results.  A 2009 Gallup quantified the impact of customer and employee engagement.  They found that those in the upper half on customer engagement and the lower half on employee engagement, or vice versa, get a 70% boost in bottom-line results; those in the upper half on both customer and employee engagement get a 240% boost.

Relevancy will be a key driving force of customer loyalty, engagement. Today’s customers want loyalty programs to be “about me” — individual, relevant, meaningful, etc. Personally relevant deals are the second most frequently chosen reason for spending more with a company, mentioned by 48% of people, according to new research by Ipsos Mori and The Logic Group. Data collection and usage is extremely important in building relevancy.  Brands need to use the information they collect strategically to show customers they’re listening and give them what they’re asking for.

Goal of customer loyalty initiatives will be to engage customers. Marketers now realize that although spend and number of transactions are important, customer engagement is the holy grail for loyalty initiatives. Because with engagement comes loyalty, advocacy, trust, passion —- the soft side of the customer relationships that directly impacts the bottom line.

Knowing why your audience cares is as important as knowing what they care about, feels Erica Friedman, President of Yurikon LLC in New York, creator of “Microniche Marketing” (TM), a process that harnesses social media by finding your audience – engaging your audience – rewarding your market , and author of SocialOptimized. “Be the resource for info and perspective in your field,” she says.

In another recent article, Mike Cholak, consulting practice executive at Convergys, provides his Top Ten Customer Engagement Tips for 2011.

“What we’ve learned about delivering a superior customer experience in the past year is well worth building upon in the coming year,” says Cholak.  “Here are ten tips gleaned from our proprietary research on the customer experience, and our customer management work with Fortune 500 companies in the communications, technology, banking and financial services, retail and e-commerce, and health care industries.”

#1:  Focus on the quality of your customer service and the quality of your product or offering.  Don’t let price be your key/only differentiator.
Despite recessionary financial constraints, consumer emphasis on price has decreased since 2008 and 2009. Consumers indicate an increased desire for value: they want the best possible combination of product and service at the “right” price.

#2:  Listen to the voice of the customer and amplify it throughout your organization. Your employees need to be as sensitive to the current state of service as are your customers.
77% of customers say that in the past year the quality of customer service provided by companies has stayed the same or gotten worse, while 50% of employees at those companies providing the experience think service has improved.

#3:  Communicate the ease and accessibility of reaching live agents in channels of the customer’s choosing, and prepare and empower your employees to provide first-contact resolution.
62% of customers who said it was “hard” to deal with a company said it was because their issue was not resolved the first time they contacted them for service. 43% also said they found it difficult to reach a service representative.

#4:   If great service is a focus don’t give in to temptations to cut, cut and cut costs. Service is an investment in your company and customers.
Customer service employees reported an 8% decline in their preparedness to deliver the right customer service experience. Most notably, employees were 11% less likely to say they had the necessary tools to solve customer’s issues, compared to results captured in 2009.

In response to the recession, most organizations have reduced their investment in their customer care operations, as reported both by executives and employees. Customers express a correlated sense of decline in service in the form of:  more bad experiences, fewer resolutions, and registering greater defection rates.  The adage of “penny wise, but pound foolish” is very relevant here – customers are placing significantly more emphasis on customer care.  If care erodes so too does a company’s customer base; the two are more linked now than ever before.  Companies looking to strategically cut costs should think twice before making across-the-board investment reductions in their customer care operations, along with their service representatives and the tools and systems that support them.

#5:  Make sure you are listening to all the contact channels you’ve deployed or “intended” to support.
Two-thirds (66%) of customers are taking the initiative to contact a company after a bad experience, effectively seeking a resolution before they decide whether or not to take their business elsewhere. Today’s consumer has become more vocal (58% reported their bad experience in 2009) as they feel greater empowerment and duress from the economy. The vast majority (71%) are contacting live agents on the phone or in-person, but a meaningful 23% are using email and text messaging to vent. And, customers using indirect channels expect a response as much as those who call, and are just as likely to defect if they don’t get a response and/or resolution of their issue. This is no small issue, as 20% of the customers who reported their bad experience said they did not even get a response from the company. Ultimately, 57% of them decided to take their business elsewhere.  Not responding, or slowly responding to these channels can be especially disruptive.  Every channel matters and needs tightly defined resolution processes; the customers who use these channels have high expectations on the offered channels being useful, effective, and closed looped.

#6:  Aggressively promote the fact that you want feedback. You want to know when you get it wrong. And, make it easy for customers to contact you and get immediate access to empowered and empathetic agents.
41% of customers who did not bother to report their bad experience (34% defected without saying a word) said they did not bother because there was no convenient way to report it to the offending company.

#7:  Listen to and engage customers on social media.
80% of customers who had a bad experience took their story to the court of public opinion, and 12% used social media to amplify their voice. On average, an individual using social media reached 45 people with their individual tweets or postings. And, for those customers who could recall reading about a friend or colleague’s bad experience, 62% said they avoided doing business with or stopped doing business with that company.  Social media will play a greater role in customer care as the Millennial generation and those who follow it increasingly gravitate to this communication medium to create communities, share their experiences, and express their opinions.

#8:  Avoid the temptation to put too many eggs in the self-service basket.
Self-service certainly has its time and place, but when issues are complex or frustrating, customers want (and demand) access to live agents. In fact, preference for live web chat has grown 33% in the last year, and preference for email by 50%.

#9:  Use proactive communication to get the conversation started with (transferred to) an agent.
100% of customers said it is appropriate for a company they do business with to proactively contact them. However, companies must be sensitive to the reasons and channels they employ, as the vast majority of customers are not open to anything and everything. Companies can manage both the customer experience and call volumes by controlling what types of messages go out to whom, and when, and prompting customers to call.

#10:  Invest in the experience and don’t lose customers, because you likely won’t ever get them back.
Only 16% of customers who left a company after a bad experience said they would be willing to do business with that company again if some effort were made to win them back. Don’t burn the bridge by not providing the best agent-based experiences, and don’t focus so much on diverting your customers from agents that you damage the relationship.  Millennials are the most forgiving (40% willing to reconsider), while Gen-Xers (16%) present some opportunity and offended Boomers (4%) and Seniors (2%) are nearly impossible to sway and incentivize.

In a recent LinkedIn discussion on the issue of engagement in 2011, I received some insightful responses. “I’m with Mike Cholak…on the need to communicate,” commented Sharon Bailly, Owner at TWP Marketing and Technical Communications in New Hampshire. “The methods–a printed brochure or a Facebook game, a cold call or a Tweet–will change with the times but the goal is always the same: to listen for and respond to the customer’s need. Communciation with customers is what I stress in my own blog about marketing and technical writing. Too many companies think they are communicating with the client when they are merely knee deep in a monologue about how wonderful their company is.” Margie Clayman, Director of Client Development at Clayman Advertising Inc.  in Akron, Ohio says, “I think a lot of companies are going to confuse being ‘present’ with being engaged and interactive, and that is going to be a potential nightmare. Having a Twitter account and saying “I hear you” is not the same as having a Twitter account and saying, “Let’s fix this now.” That’s what customers are going to be expecting more and more.”

Which of Mike’s customer engagement tips do you feel is the most relevant as we enter 2011?

Measuring the Quality of the Client Experience

by Rob Wolfe – Connected Places Global

Peter Drucker’s maxim that “what gets measured gets managed” is still true today. Yet most organizations focus exclusively on end-results measures. Market share, profitability and EPS growth are all vital measures of business performance but they are all lagging indicators—the result of differentiation, customer loyalty and brand preference. The answer is to move up-stream and measure and manage those activities that deliver the required customer experience and drive customer advocacy. [Excerpt from Customer Think article, Customer Experience Management: 10 Best Practices to Create Real Business Value.]

Back in February I posted an article on Creating Meaningful Customer Interaction via Social Media Marketing with some ideas for using social media marketing to create engaging customer experiences for propelling business. I said that rather than focusing on the content you want to deliver, you should focus on the experience you’re creating for the customer. This time around, in considering measures of business success, I’d like to say that rather than focusing solely on KPIs such as market share and profits, you should (again) focus on the experience you’re creating for the customer.  According to Andy Blackstone, Owner of Blackstone Associates Sales Training and Consulting and author of “Small Changes That Help Small Companies Make BIG Increases in Sales“, Portland, Oregon: “It depends somewhat on what you are selling, but generally I think you can make a compelling case that quality of customer experience is the most important underlying key to market share and profits.”

Customer engagement is key for Sir Richard Branson.  He strives to set a culture of being fearless in engaging customers. “I’ve always enjoyed calling randomly selected newly arrived Virgin passengers in one of our limos to say ‘Hi, This is Richard Branson, I wanted to say thanks for flying with us and see how you’ve enjoyed the flight.’ On more than a few occasions this has been met by derisive comments like ‘Yeah, right. I’m sure the real Richard Branson has nothing better to do. Who the hell are you?'”  Also, says Branson, “At Virgin we look for opportunities where we can offer something better, fresher and more valuable, and we seize them.” Creating a breakthrough customer experience and combining brand with the physical customer experience is what the vision should embody!

Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Professor at The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business and author of “Marketing as an engine of business growth,” Journal of Business Research) says these types of interactive relationships are the first step to changing the role of the customer.  Instead of passive ‘‘consumers,’’ these customers become active stakeholders and advocates.  Instead of passively monitoring customer satisfaction, companies are looking at active customer ‘‘reference-ability,’’ the likelihood that customers will refer another person to the company. Recent studies have found that it is not customer satisfaction that drives loyalty and repeat purchases, but rather this reference-ability. It does not take much commitment to circle a ‘‘highly satisfied’’ choice on a customer satisfaction form, but it takes a lot more to put your reputation on the line in making a recommendation to others… Building these interactive relationships with customers requires changes throughout the organization, he says. Any employee who has contact with the customer is involved in the interaction. Systems need to be in place to facilitate the knowledge-sharing needed to effectively interact with customers when and where they choose. And there need to be effective financial systems and revenue models to ensure that these increased interactions continue to be profitable for the company while delivering value to the customer.

According to the Customer Think article, CEO Andy Taylor and his team at US-based Enterprise Rent-A-Car only focus on one thing; the number of customers who give the highest rating for satisfaction and are willing to recommend the company to others. Frederick F. Reichheld, director emeritus of Bain & Company and author of Loyalty Rules! calls these enthusiasts “Promoters” and by deducting the percentage of customers who say that they are unlikely to recommend he calculates a “net-promoter score.” Enterprise enjoys both the highest rate of growth and, at near 35 percent, the highest net-promoter percentage in the car-rental industry according to Reichheld.

Do You Really Listen to Customers?

According to MyCustomer.com, one of the Five Barriers to Measuring Customer Experience is that we don’t really listen. They suggest that many companies don’t ask the right questions to truly get at the customer experience, or ask questions in a way to get the answers they’re looking for.

Do you ask customers about the details of their emotions about your brand, about the basic proposition, about service levels? Do you listen to their tales and stories? Stories quickly convey complex thoughts and difficult emotions. How do customers feel beyond satisfied and not satisfied on a 1-10 scale? Stories give us a way of locating the desires, perceptions and attitudes of our customers.

Companies like Zara and Red Bull listen to customer stories and then use them in their brand building – always monitoring the outcome, according to the article.  Norwich Union uses emotional feedback measures they have found to be important, such as “do you feel appreciated as an individual” and “do you genuinely feel that NU cared about meeting your needs” and use the result back in ‘customer innovation’ sessions with staff.

In his book, Andy Blackstone also touches on the importance of listening to customers: Probe deeply for the real reasons they bought, and be sure you understand the nuances and details of the problem they solved with your product.  To get at the important real reasons for their purchase, you might try to understand what your customers were trying to accomplish, rather than focusing on the problem they were solving.  Pay particular attention to how they are using your product.  Ask yourself if it is the way you intended it would be used.  Are they creatively making a different use of the product than you thought they would?  What product features are important to them?

“Managing a consequent customer experience is very important these days and it will become more important,” says Eric Jan van Putten, Regional Marketing Manager at Sitecore, Netherlands. “Social media will play a roll in this. For example: You manage all your channels perfectly and the customer has a good experience. Then he sees one bad Tweet and it could be over. KPI’s are important also on sales and market share, but I think it will shift more and more to the customer experience.”

What are your thoughts on monitoring and measuring the quality of customer experience vs. other KPIs such as market share and profits? Can you share a success story?

Your Clients Own Your Brand

You might control your brand, but you don’t own it. It’s the (prospective) clients’/customers’ perception of the core values, personality, and positioning of your product/service/company that defines the brand. In integrated marketing, brand consistency and focus are critical to the brand’s success. But the people own your brand.