Social customer care: From novelty to necessity Technology for Marketing & Advertising/ MyCustomer.com, The Social Customer Theatre Guy Stephens 01.03.2011.

Social customer care: From novelty to necessity

Technology for Marketing & Advertising/ MyCustomer.com, The Social Customer Theatre

Guy Stephens01.03.2011

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"A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.”

Quote from The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

Shifting paradigms

Touchpoint

Value creation and differentiation happens here

CUSTOMER

Framework• Network etiquette

• Social economy

Environmental• Fragmented

• Open

Expectations• Immediate

• Shared

Technology• Smartphones

• Broadband

COMPANY

Framework• Social media policy• ROI

Environmental• Homogenous• Closed

Expectations• SLA• Hoarded

Technology• Legacy systems• Firewalls Creating ‘wow’ experiences becomes of

paramount importance

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Communication has changed

“Your service is the worst!!!”

How would you react?

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From siege mentality to open engagement

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We’re ‘norming’!

•Everything is the same!

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•Nothing is the same!•What’s ‘same’?

…a world of numbers and information…

•500 million Facebook users

•50 million tweets sent per day, 600 TPS•22% of GB adults own a smartphone

•Facebook accounts for 20% of all time spent online in the UK

•Facebook is the most popular social network in the

UK, accounting for 55% of all visits to social networks

•Average session time for a visitor to Facebook is 27 minutes and 12 seconds

•Four million LinkedIn members in the UK

•Monthly reach for YouTube has reached 17.7 million adults in the UK

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Corporate me

•Corporate profile: LinkedIn profile: in/guy1067

•Senior Consultant, Foviance•Customer Knowledge Manager, The Carphone Warehouse/BestBuy UK

•Global Online Marketing Manager, Mars, Inc (Drinks)

– Worked in the digital space for 12+ years– Thought leader within social customer care– Member of the Founding Council of BestServiceOne.com– Instructor for WOMMA-SOCAP (US) and Econsultancy’s (UK)

Digital Marketing Master’s programme– Blogger and contributor to various publications– Conference speaker

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LinkedIn

Twitter

Facebook

YouTube

Brightkite

FourSquare

Where social media meets customer service

Gowalla

Friendfeed

Posterous

Delicious

Digg

Stumbleupon

Listorious

Gist

Pownum

TripAdvisor

Vark

Cofacio

Focus

SocialCRM Pioneeers

CustomerThink.com

Quora

Squidoo

Econsultancy.com

Best ServiceOne.com

MyCustomer.com

CustomerStrategy.com

My web shadow

2005Global Online Marketing ManagerMars, Inc

19th May 2008

@guy1067 started

26th Dec 2008

Beingguy1067 blog started

I am not a photographer

Google profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/guy1067

06/02/09

@GuyAtCarphone

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Senior Consultant

Foviance

Social, personal, business, interest…graphs

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http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/

We’re all voyeurs!

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Behaviour is changing

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•50% of people login to social networking sites regularly throughout the day

•43% of people check social networking sites before going to bed, 1 in 5 check when they wake up

•28% of people have uploaded a picture of a meal they were eating to a social site, this increases to 47% for 18 – 34 year olds

•27% of respondents expected a response within 3 days when complaining via a company web site, 1 in 5 expected a response within an hour on Twitter or on Facebook

We record the minutiae of our lives from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed

Source: Social Media, IAB UK December 2010

Technology has changed…

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Who remembers when?

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How do we complain now?

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I hate this company! No one ever listens

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“I resorted to social media because as a consumer I am tired of being placed on hold for interminable periods on the phone which historically has been a brand's mode of choice for engaging with customers - and I wind up building up my phone bill in the process. I was also tired of sending emails which, if they are acknowledged at all, get nothing more than an automated reply - something that is extremely impersonal and gives no indication of whether anything will be done at all.”

Quote from a customer of The Carphone Warehouse about why they used social media to complain

What’s a warranty?

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This is a world that is increasingly…

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Jo(e) Bloggs has a voice

•Rise of people networks, emergence of self-branded ecosystems where information is exchanged, knowledge shared and help provided

•Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube are our first port of call

•Increasing ubiquity of smartphones

•Impulse behaviour becomes the norm

•Text supported by IRL activities

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And what about Mr Company?

“You have to go where your customers

choose to go. It is hard but you can’t stop the

journey.”

Quote from Warren Buckley, MD, Customer Services, BT

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Companies no longer in charge: Fish where the fish are*

•Democratisation of the tools of self expression•Tension between past and future, carrying the weight of industrialisation, while looking at the possibility of the future

•New ways of working: Connecting, sharing, participation, engaging, listening, enabling, interrupting, influencing, collaborating

•Generational resistance to ‘traditional’ methods of communication

•One-to-many & Many-to-many conversations•Customer engagement takes place in public spaces 24/7

•‘Now’ touchpoints •PR/brand opportunities

*Jeremiah Owyang, Social Media Marketing Storyboard #1: Fish where the fish are

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Impact on customer service

•Customer service has been pushed to the frontline•24/7 PR opportunity•The time between the touchpoint and the complaint has condensed

•‘Closed one-to-one’ to ‘public one-to-anyone-who-is-willing-to-listen-or-participate’

•Underpinned by empathy and trust, transactional interaction to emotional and experiential engagement

•Emergence of independent sites•Resolution to experience, where experience is the service

•Technology and process with emotion and empathy wrapped around it

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Impact on customer service continued

•Call centre moving from cost saving to customer engagement, tactical to strategic business unit

•Customer service is decentralising, moving outwards into the hands of people

•Multichannel/multiplatform world•Customer service ‘at source’•Compete against/work with your own customers/people

Do we need to redefine what customer service is, what the call centre is, what a complaint is?

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Roles are changing

Creator

Participant

Prisoner

Promoter

Bystander

Voyeur

Passenger

Listener

Passerby

Pundit

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Explorer

New help channels are emerging

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Customer service has gone from …

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…disjointed, fragmented, asynchronous, disrupted…

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Customer service is?

•Multichannel: Telephone, email, letter, in store, smartphone

•Multiplatform: Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps, FourSquare, YouTube, blogs

•Between friends, customers, people and companies

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Lines are blurring

Customer service Centralised

Synchronous Closed

TransactionalCorporate

OwnedPrivate

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CrowdserviceDecentralisedAsynchronous

OpenExperiential

PersonalSharedPublic

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From folklore to #socialobjects

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#UnitedBreaksGuitars

#Dell

#BTCare

#

#FrankEliason

#

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Maturity models and organisation structures

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Courtesy of The Altimeter Group

Knowing where

your brick wall is

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Where’s your brick wall?

•‘I’m sorry, we’ve got it wrong, how can I help?’

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– Integrating traditional, social and mobile channels–Ownership and accountability–Metrics–HR implications–Resourcing & skillset–Definition of a complaint–Where customer service is now provided and who

provides it–Definition of customer service–Definition of the contact centre–All too often the barrier is a personal one: I don’t get it!

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Understand your brick wall

•What does ‘openness’ mean for your company?•Do you know how open you want to be? •Do you know how open you can be? Should be? Could be?

•Do you know what your brick walls are?•Do you know where they are?•Where do you put them? •Are your brick walls real, perceived or convenient?

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“With an open strategy, decision shifts from if you should be open ... To how open you need to be to accomplish your overall strategic goals.”

Quote from Charlene Li, Being open without giving away the store: The secret is a sandbox covenant, Altimeter Group

How would you respond?

“Your service is the worst!!!”

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Understanding your culture so you know how you would react before you are forced to react

Final thought

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You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

From the Cluetrain Manifesto, thesis 73

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Thank you for your time today

Guy StephensTwitter: @guy1067Mobile: 07795 387 366Email: [email protected]

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