Correcting product defects in real-time

An interesting customer service application – ATT monitors Twitter to sense where and when customers are having trouble connecting, and then uses this information to zero in on the specific network requiring attention. See Using Twitter to Track Dropped Calls.

 

It is well recognized that social media provides intelligence to the marketing function. But, ATT is working to extend the model and employ social conversation to create a direct information feed from customers to service providers to correct product defects in real time.

 

 

We are a Social CRM application

When we first developed Engage121, we belonged to no identifiable business segment. There were lots of Twitter clients, social media monitors, social media consultants, PR firms, and others. But, we were none of those.

 

Our objective was to build a business application that would allow our clients to efficiently manage both their social media presence as well as the social media presence of their distributed outlets. Such an application would include the ability to monitor the social media, start and participate in conversations, as well as analyze and measure the achievement of defined business objectives. We were, and remain guided, by the following:

1. Platform independence. It never made sense for us to focus on Twitter, Facebook, blogs or any other. To the extent possible, we would commit to integrating the social media platforms that were relevant to our clients.
2. Focus on business solutions. Our clients never had an interest in social media just for the sake of being involved. Our clients were business people and as such were focused on accomplishing defined objectives.
3. Engagement. It never made sense to us, or our clients, to listen to the social media without having an integrated ability to engage. And, when we learned the many benefits of actually engaging with a prospect or customer – including a significantly increased propensity to do business – we were sold on ensuring that Engage121 would always promote interaction.

The marketplace of ideas and applications has evolved and developed over the past year and it now seems that Engage121 is a participant in a segment called “Social CRM.” I must say it is nice to have a home – and an identity.

For a terrific overview of our new Social CRM home, I recommend What is Social CRM? And the graphics, thanks to Chess Media Group, are very helpful.

JordanEdmiston’s review of “Harnessing New Methods of Consumer Engagement”

Jordan Edmiston Group (JEGI), a leading investment banker to media and information technology companies, recently published a must-read review on a panel discussion held earlier this month at the MITX FutureM conference. The panel discussion was titled “Harnessing New Methods of Consumer Engagement,” which evaluated new approaches to an age-old and fundamental business problem: 

 

Acquiring audiences and consumers is expensive, and it is even more expensive to lose them.

 You almost don’t have to read further.

 But, there are fundamental changes occurring that are worth considering:

Media is shifting from a rental model to an ownership model – from leasing billboards to building equity in marketing via brand-owned communities. This is creating a treasure trove of data on consumers [Note: this is a land mine that we avoid!] and brands are using social CRM (data from the communities) to drive business. Companies are building relationships with customers by creating fan pages on Facebook. The key is to find the right customers with whom to build these relationships, and this is where data and analytics come into the mix. Brands/companies need to provide their customers with choices across various channels – Facebook, Twitter, blogs, e-newsletters, etc. – so the customers can stay connected by their choice.

The key here is that brands are necessarily becoming media companies, publishing content as a means to engage customers directly. And the real value of traditional media (and traditional advertising) is now to drive customers online where direct interaction with companies/brands becomes possible. To paraphrase an old saying, this may not change everything, but it changes a lot. And, it especially changes the way companies and brands will be allocating marketing budgets.

Also, it is becoming very clear that customers choose the point of engagement with a brand. Yes, as the panel suggested, that point might be and often is Facebook, as well as Twitter and blogs. But, the points of engagement are rapidly migrating beyond these well-regarded platforms – and companies need to continually expand their view and consider where the most relevant, brand specific conversations are occurring. Companies will often find that those conversations are occurring on sites other than Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Worth considering.

There is a lot more of value in this panel review. The full article is available in JEGI’s October, 2010 “Client Briefing” starting on page 2 and available here.

Building a Facebook fanbase – according to ExactTarget and CoTweet

Building a Facebook fanbase is all about discounts and freebies. So says ExactTarget and CoTweet:  http://bit.ly/a8qRYA

 

Makes sense to me.

 

Now – for an interesting idea on discounts and freebies . . . how about viral couponing? My ideas about (an alternative to) Groupon.

My ideas about (an alternative to) Groupon

Thanks to our marketing guru for showing me Social Coupons: Good for Business?, summarizing recent research on the use of Groupon. Not surprising – the results are mixed. Some companies reported success – others not so much. Especially revealing was a comment by Bob Phibbs, The Retail Doctor, who reported on a small retailer whose Groupon experience quickly went from bad to worse.

 

Many of the problems Groupon users are reporting appear manageable through better planning and more realistic expectations.  Groupon does delivers on its basic promise – “social media can spread the word about a deal very efficiently.” Continued, but careful, experimentation by retailers should eventually produce winning formulas that work for them.

 

What about . . . distributing viral coupons – localized to individual store locations – through Facebook?

 

A client recently asked us to develop a Facebook FANlet that would allow their fans to “poke” their friends. The objective, of course, was to spread the word about the brand and build a fan base. We’re implementing the FANlet by allowing fans to start a pillow fight. One fan hits another fan, or friend, with a pillow, and that fan either hits back, or hits someone else.

 

This same FANlet can be used to virally distribute coupons. So, a coupon – which, for multiple store systems can be localized to each individual store location – can be offered to a company’s fans. And each fan can re-offer (poke) the coupon to their friends, continually passing along the coupon from one friend to another. An interesting wrinkle – as each fan or friend continues to pass along the coupon, the value of the original coupon can be increased. So, it becomes possible to provide an economic incentive for each fan or friend to pass the coupon along.

 

Make sense?

Delta’s customer service raises the bar

Social media has taken customer service “real time” – at least in the air travel industry. Today’s article in the WSJ reports that airlines are dealing with consumer issues now. Now, as in don’t make me call, don’t make me explain, just fix it. I’ll tweet the problem while I’m in the air and I expect the airline will monitor what I say and resolve my concerns before I land.

 

Think of the change in customer expectations that has been created. Since when do companies monitor what each individual consumer needs? And since when do customer service staff proactively contact and resolve complaints?

 

How many companies are consistently delivering this level of customer service today? And more importantly, how many will be at this level a year from now?

Pre-release of a few version 1.5 features live today

From day one, our clients have driven the development of Engage121. We started the application design process over a year ago by asking our clients, “what do you need?”  As they spoke, we listened. 

And we continue our process of continuous client-directed development later today when we again (pre-release) some version 1.5 functionality. Many of the updates we will be publishing this afternoon are direct responses to just one client’s input! But, we think, this client had a number of terrific suggestions, including:

Ning

We are and will remain “platform agnostic” meaning that we will integrate all social networks and conversations where we can reasonably access the data. Our thinking is that each client will find different constellations of networks relevant. One of our clients has developed a vibrant community on Ning, so… we have now fully integrated Ning. Our client will now be able to post rich content across their Ning community just as they currently do with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, their blog, and more.

Understanding Your “True Reach”

One of the greatest values of social media is that the reach of any given communication is potentially limitless.  We’re now analyzing how far your reach on Twitter is extending, which we call “true Reach.” Direct Reach is the number of people who follow you. True Reach captures the number of individuals exposed to your messages as the result of a retweets by any of your followers.  For example if you have 5 followers, and 1 of your followers has 10 followers, when he retweets your message, your direct reach will be 5 but your true reach will be 15. We plan to continue development here to include Twitter lists that you redistribute your tweets, as well as content that extends virally out across other platforms. But, our analysis of True Reach here is a start.

Flexibility, With Drag & Drop Charts

Clients seem to really like our Evaluate module and now we’re making it more flexible and easy to use.  Two changes will be taking place….

• Multiple views. Clients will have the ability to create multiple “views” with different collections of charts. So, for example, create a Weekly Report in one view, and maybe an analysis of your competitors in another. The flexibility allows you to organize measurement and analysis according as you prefer.
• Drag and drop charts. Moving and copying charts and table is easy. And, if you have the same chart in two different views, and you delete one of them, the other one stays.  This makes creating a layout of charts quick and easy.  And, of course, all charts are exportable in a number of formats.

More Twitter Analytics . . .

• Track Competitor Twitter Handles.  The Fans & Followers chart is a standard social media metric, quickly answering the question “where do we stand today?”  Our client wanted to ask the same question of their competitors …  “Where do they stand today?” In response we’ve built a chart that tracks the twitter following of your competitors – or others.  Now you can compare followings and dial in your own activity as needed.
• Twitter Rank. Understanding your level of influence is important – that’s why we include Klout scores and blog rank in all of our monitoring efforts.  Now we’re adding a chart capturing your twitter rank, by incorporating data from TwitterCounter.com, the number one twitter ranking service out there.
• Track Your ReTweets.  The last update coming out later today is a chart telling you exactly how many times you have retweeted.  This helps you monitor the how much of your twitter content is original.

In my mind, more important than any individual feature is our approach to listening, and responding.

Engage121 is software – as a service. We mean it.

At E & P, Reporters are out and Experts are in

Yesterday I was discussing the failure of companies supporting PR professionals to contemplate the changes underway in the media, and consequently, in the way PR is practiced. As I read Dave Armon‘s review of the new products introduced at PRSA, many seem to be just same old, same old. And that’s not helping either PR or the media – who need new ideas, new technology, and new ways to achieve success.

 

Then today, the news that Editor & Publish has replaced their editorial staff. Here’s the key:

 

“‘Editor & Publisher’ magazine will be utilizing more individuals for the print edition who are experts in their individual fields as opposed to reporters who track down experts and put the expert’s story into the writer’s words.”

 

Now, let’s ignore for the moment that some kind of “editor” has to organize and manage the information that is generated by these experts. (Is there software that can do that (yet)?)

 

I think the real news is – at E & P – “reporters” are out and “experts” are in.

 

Dave Armon’s PRSA recap

No doubt Dave Armon knows the PR industry – and its solutions providers – very well. So, I was interested to read Dave’s recent review of the goings-on at the PRSA conference in Washington: Food, drinks serve as booth flypaper for PRSA International

 

My reaction to Dave’s excellent recap is that solution providers seem most focused on copying each other and there is very little real innovation going on – even though the media is now undergoing change not seen since the invention of the printing press. Am I being too harsh?

• Dow Jones Insight and Meltwater have been hell bent on trying to copy our MatchPoint application,
• Cision(wire), NASDAQ GlobeNewswire and ThomsonOne are copying PR Newswire, Business Wire and Marketwire,
• Everyone is copying everyone in social media monitoring, which isn’t too hard since the primary platforms have done a good job of developing an API that puts you in business instantly,
• HARO is copying ProfNet, who is developing functionality that will soon be copied by HARO,

and the list goes on.

But, it seems to me that all this commitment of time, money and effort only makes sense if the 2 constituencies that matter – newsmakers and news publishers – are doing business as usual. And they are not.

Newsmakers are spending increasing time and money to reach consumers directly – disintermediating the mainstream media. That’s what all the hoopla in social media is about. And, news publishers are manic about finding business models that work in an industry that has been stripped of classifieds, job postings and other sources of steady revenue – so, who is going to read all these press releases? And everyone is looking over their shoulder at Google.

What I don’t see in Dave’s recap is new thinking, new models and new ideas that address these very fundamental changes.

Maybe at PRSA next year.

The #1 way to build a Facebook fanbase

So how do companies build their Facebook fanbase?

 

eMarketer points to research that says companies need to reach out and ask. It may seem straightforward, but the #1 method of building a fanbase is to solicit “likes” in advertisements and other promotions.

 

And, once a fanbase begins to grow, the key is keeping fans happy. The key there is regular posting of interesting content – especially including offers and discounts.

 

Sound easy? It’s not. But the benefits of building a loyal customer group are clearly worth the effort.