The days of an 800 number and email address being the sole communication tools for customer service departments are over. Today, social media has entered the scene, and as the early returns indicate, it’s a win-win situation for both customers and businesses.

If you think social media hasn’t provided a breath of fresh air in the world of customer service, check out what’s happening in the hospitality and telecommunications. Here are some pertinent examples of how businesses are dazzling customers and turning complaints into a golden marketing opportunity:

• A sales representative staying at the Orlando Marriott World Center had a room that overlooked some air conditioning units. He tweeted, “I have the crappiest room in the hotel.” A front-desk employee saw the tweet, and immediately upgraded the client to a room with a view of the pool.

• AT&T is ramping up its “social media customer care” division to respond to the over 10,000 mentions per day about AT&T and its products and services and “shape the online conversation”.

• A guest who moderates and edits a website about Blackberry news tweeted that he wanted “a cold beer.” A hotel employee picked up the tweet, and replied “Can I buy you a beer? Stop by the front desk.” When the guest visited the front desk, a bucket with 10 beers for the client and his friends was waiting.

• A hotel guest staying in the Bahamas was becoming frustrated by a lack of towels and the absence of a rollaway bed in his room. With no response forthcoming from the front desk, he posted a note about it on the company’s Facebook page. Within the hour, his towels and rollaway bed were delivered.

These examples clearly indicate that not only do businesses react to social media, but many customer have quickly placed a premium on their response.

But why? Isn’t it enough to simply pass the complaint to your staff and put them in the queue with other customer service issues? The answer is an emphatic “NO”, and for a reason that may surprise you.

Social media customer service is a marketing opportunity

When you consider that any complaint voiced in social media isn’t just a one-on-one conversation between you and your customer but rather a part of the entire online conversation about a brand, the stakes for organizations are much higher.

In the case of the influential Blackberry guest listed above, his extensive list of Twitter followers could see exactly how the hotel handled the comment. It was a tangible example of the hotel’s customer service staff in action.

Using social media for your customer service can effectively help you on a number of fronts. Here are the three reasons why you should make it part of your program:

1. Address customers where they’re at. Social media is within easy reach for most people and they expect you to respond. According to blogger MG Siegler who applauded Comcast’s efforts to reach customers in social media, "A lot of people complain about Comcast, but when they get someone person-to-person reaching out, a lot of people feel better, even if it doesn’t actually serve long-term problems."

1. Generate positive exposure with a vast audience. Simply showing that you’re quick to respond to issues and resolve customer concerns in social media can be worth more than any corresponding effort spend on advertising or marketing.

1. Use it for invaluable market research. The comments you receive can also give you a real-time indication of where you’re falling short. If you respond to those tweets and posts, you gain valuable insight to what’s really irritating and motivating customers.

Skeptics may shy away from the no-holds barred world of social media, but for the business truly focused on customer satisfaction, this is a golden opportunity.

You can prove yourself, market yourself, and better yourself all at once. It’s why social media has quickly become the norm among companies intent on providing innovative customer service solutions.

Related posts:

1. Got Social Media? Ask Your Customers!
2. What’s your customer retention strategy
3. Failure #2: Not creating a powerful guiding coalition for social media

Creating a sense of urgency requires robust leadership. Notice, I did not say ‘management’. We’re not looking for people to shepherd the existing systems – we need bold leaders to create the social business system that will take the place of the existing business system.

So, how do we go about creating a sense of urgency?  There are many tools that a leader can employ, here are just a few:

1. Facilitate a frank discussion on the realities of the market. Perhaps 90% of your customers are already on Facebook. Maybe all of your competitors have a blog but you. Maybe your entire organization is going to become unsustainable unless you build a loyal community to drastically reduce new business development costs.  You get the picture.
2. Bring in someone else to kick your company in the pants. Lest you be branded a heretic or put out to pasture for bringing all this bad news upon the company (and…we all know the quote about a prophet in his own town). Outside consultants (full disclosure: I am one) can bring a ‘global’ perspective on social media and be a credible ally to help create the sense of urgency you’re seeking.  I can think of several engagements over the past few years where we played this exact role.
3. Ask your customers. Customer feedback, especially if you’re not gathering regularly or if you’ve never explored the social media question, will give you some great insights to share and can really move a company off it’s perch when they hear that their customers say that ‘they’re out of touch and not reaching them in their channels of choice’.  That hurts…and motivates!

According to Kotter, you need upwards of 75% of the management team of a company on board with any change program in order to achieve success.  In the social media projects that we’ve seen, that’s pretty accurate.  Having all of the departments or lines of business on board, at least with the concept of social media, is key to long term success, especially if you endeavor to bring social media to their part of the organization (such as in customer service or HR or operations).

Related posts:

1. Three Reasons Why You Should use Social Media for Customer Service
2. Change Management for Social Media Success
3. Failure #3 – Lacking a Vision for Social Media

"We know that leadership is very much related to change. As the pace of change accelerates, there is naturally a greater need for effective leadership."
– John P. Kotter, Author, Leading Change

Marketers require all kinds of skills to be effective. We need to understand project management, art and graphic design, be able to run a brainstorming meeting and talk ROI at the end of the day to measure what we did last month. The one set of skills that we will need going forward is a master’s level understanding of change management.

What was once a discipline for people on large-scale corporate re-engineering teams, change management and the transformation process are skills that every marketer now needs to have in their hip pocket, ready to deploy at the next turn.

You can’t learn change management in a day, but there are some guidelines that can help you get through your next project. In Leading Change, John P. Kotter outlined eight stages in the change management process. By understanding the process that human beings go through in order to achieve successful change, you’ll increase the chances that your next endeavor will end on target.

Q&A | QUESTIONS & ACTIONS

Think about your existing marketing projects that are brining change to the organization (especially social media…) and compare them to Kotter’s eight-stage process to see if you’re going through the right steps to succeed.

1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency
2. Creating the Guiding Coalition
3. Developing a Vision and Strategy
4. Communicating the Change Vision
5. Empowering Broad-Based Action
6. Generating Short-Term Wins
7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture

WHERE ELSE TO LOOK?

This week we’re doing something a bit different. Starting Tuesday July 20th and for the next eight workdays, we’ll be covering the “Eights Steps to Social Media Failure” using the Eight-Stage Change Management Process as a backdrop for the discussion. Stay tuned at www.marketingsavant.com.

Related posts:

1. Chaordic marketing for social media success
2. List of Top Tools for Social Media Management
3. Failure #3 – Lacking a Vision for Social Media

It’s no surprise then that I follow Sbux and notice many of the subtle changes in their environment. One of them from a couple of years ago got me thinking again this week. This story comes from an old Businessweek article.

As part of Schultz’s efforts to improve the quality of the millions of lattes and cappuccinos Starbucks serves, he forbade what had become the common practice of re-steaming milk. That meant the baristas were pouring millions of dollars of leftover milk down the drain. As store managers for the first time began thinking about how to operate more efficiently, an idea emerged. It was simple, obvious, and made everyone wonder why no one had thought of it before: They could put etched lines in the steaming pitchers so that the baristas would know exactly how much milk to use for each size drink. Before, they just guessed. "The celebration of that line in the halls of Starbucks has become a metaphor," says Schultz. "How many other lines can we find? We’ve found a lot because no one was ever looking. The people who have found those lines have become part of the folklore."

As I mentioned in a post a couple of days ago on the topic of complexity, and as I read more from the IBM Capitalizing on Complexity report this year, I’m noticing that I’m taking steps each week to “draw new lines” that reduce complexity in my business, reduce waste and try to make the operations run more smoothly, even if it’s only a little bit.  (in a way, it’s my own Kaizen…which we’ll cover in a future post).

Think about those “lines in the steaming pitchers” and look for you “damn, why didn’t I think of this before” moments.  Spend some time today looking at the little inefficiencies (how many phones, emails, applications, addresses, staplers, pens, whatever…) that keep you from performing at 100% today and make note of them, and then start drawing your own lines.

Related posts:

1. The growing complexity in school communications
2. Are customer preferences ‘baked in’?

Always bring the best version of yourself…

Two instances this week got me really thinking about personal branding. The first occurred during a social media presentation for chiropractors where the recommendation “do not, ever, become friends with your patients on Facebook!” was made. Interesting, I thought. Really? But what if they want to be my friend?

I get the point of the presenter and with a family member in that profession, the issues that could arise are not lost on me. That said part of what a chiropractor, or any professional brings to the table is their personal brand, their character, and everything about them. People choose you or your organization over your peers or competitors based somewhat on that personality. Doesn’t it make sense to make it as positive as possible and let the world see it and connect to it?

The other occurrence happened as I had just finished up a speaking engagement on social media for local businesses in a Milwaukee suburb this week when a woman approached me to compliment me on the presentation and to scold me on the poor job I did at marketing myself before, during and after the presentation. My explanation that I don’t market myself during paid speaking engagements didn’t pass muster for her. She went on to day something to this effect “You’re actually shortchanging us by not connecting the dots and making it easy to do business with you. Every time I see a presentation like this, you guys never really tell us how you can specifically help us and don’t market yourselves well.” Ouch…for a marketing guy!

I believe the lesson here is simple: No matter what way you connect with people, be it online or in line, it’s your job to bring your best personal brand to the table and let it shine. Every impression, every profile and every engagement is an opportunity for you to be a friend, help someone out or just be a good, useful human being. Never, ever shortchange someone on the opportunity to engage with you, wherever you’re at.

Q&A | QUESTIONS & ACTIONS

What does your personal brand look like today? How about online?
How do you present yourself to the world, wherever you are?
How could you do a better job at personal branding?

Related posts:

1. Three Reasons Why You Should use Social Media for Customer Service
2. April 23 – Linked & Facebook Workshop in De Pere
3. Fed up with ubiquity? Start a counter-brand

Have you thought about personalization recently? Perhaps you just recorded and watched only the shows you wanted on your DVR, or you’re reading this blog (thank you!) through an RSS reader that brings you just the right content or you just custom-ordered something online made just the way you like it.

I was going through some email this morning and came across one from Starbucks that got me thinking about personalization. A few years back, I had signed up for the Starbucks custom card program. I put my name, the drink I usually order and a smiley face one the card. I felt good about it and used it often. Then they came out with the Gold Card program, which I happily signed up for…and then had to carry two cards, or put all my money on the gold card…so I shelved the personalized card and went gold… So much for the smiley face and all. Since their rescinding of the 10% discount benefit of the gold card, there’s no reason to have it and just this AM I switched back to my personalized card. Yeah… but so what, right? Who really gives a crap about my Starbucks card. Hold on…this is going somewhere.

Just this morning, I also read an article in the WSJ about Bank of America’s updated policy on overdrafts for their debit card customers. Basically, they are eliminating overdraft fees and will deny your purchase at the register…unless you opt in to a program that allows you to go into a deficit situation on your account.  However, this statement from the article gave me pause.

New federal rules on overdraft fees that take effect later this year will permit banks to charge overdraft fees on such transactions if a customer opts into the program. But some banks are struggling to upgrade their computer systems to adapt to different customer preferences.

Wow!  Struggling to upgrade to adapt to customer preferences.  Now, in the grand scheme of things, so what…but this is real work.  Enterprise systems don’t move on a dime (nor do the enterprises that run them for that matter) and infusing the discipline of customer preference into the inner workings of the enterprise doesn’t come easily either.  That said, aren’t we past that point already?  I mean, Neville Hobson wrote about “The age of media personalization” half a decade ago…and we’ve been advancing ever since, or so we thought.

The point here is this.  What systems, processes, sites, tools, outlets, inlets, portals and protocols are you working on now that could use a bit of ‘customer preference adaptation’? Have you considered it? Have your customers adapted and you haven’t? What if someone else adapts faster?

The Starbucks card example earlier is perhaps a quick and pedestrian example, but it’s a critical touchpoint in that it gives a customer the opportunity to take further ownership of the brand experience. Knowing just that and having that damn card in my wallet every day (which is a small bill clip and only holds a few things…so I’m very choosy about what I carry around) keeps Starbucks top of mind.  In fact, knowing that a local ATM remembers my preferences keeps me coming back to that ATM because it saves me something like 17 seconds every visit.

Take a few minutes today to rethink what you’re working on in terms of the ‘customer preference adaptability’ of it all.  Ask a few customers if you need to. Whatever it takes…but be prepared – the age of nuanced customers preference is alive and well.

Related posts:

1. What’s your customer retention strategy
2. Three Reasons Why You Should use Social Media for Customer Service

I joined Warner Bros. Home Video in November of 2001 as the Sales Force Automation Mgr. Basically, I was responsible for the technology used by the salesforce and for the mid-sized Siebel implementation that we had. I recall working along happily for a while until we merged with AOL. Time-Warner had “gone Internet” in getting in bed with a hot (but already dying) Internet brand name and things were about to change.

I recall the tumultuous conversion from using Outlook to using AOL mail (Yes, that AOL mail…the child’s play stuff that they’ve always had) along with a number of other headaches that ensued as a result. I don’t recall coming into contact with anyone who was happy about the situation.

Fast forward nearly a decade later, and TW is now spinning off it’s “AOL unit” to divest itself of the cancer that is/was America Online. This has been considered by many as one of the most unsuccessful mergers in history and there’s actually not too much dispute on that. It was messy all around. And, from someone who was in the middle of it all, at least from the division head perspective, it was very hard to ‘tow the line’ that this was a good thing.

I bring up this tale of personal history because it’s relevant as organizations explore social media, thought leadership and other go-to-market vehicles that have the power to either make little impact and turn out for the best or to cause organizational upheaval at a high level. Granted, there’s nothing quite like a really bad merger to turn an organization on its ear, but some of the game-changing tools and technologies are slowly doing that every day to organizations around the country.

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