Comments on: Businesses Will Take Social Media to the Bank

By: Lewis Green

Lewis Green — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:01:22 +0000

Mary,
Yes! People need to feel like they’re actually speaking with an actual person… Brilliant! Wish I had said that.

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:44:10 +0000

I think the reason ‘81 percent of consumers would prefer traditional ways to interact’ is largely because social media still isn’t as ’social’ as we’d like to think it is…Social networks, blogs, twitter, etc. all seem like easier, more convenient ways to interact with consumers, but they take just as much a time and energy commitment as answering phones or meeting customers face to face. People need to feel like they’re actually speaking with an actual person via these social media avenues. Until that happens – until we really use these tools as ways to genuinely interact with others – we can’t take full advantage of the business-enhancing and customer-engaging benefits of social media.

By: Lewis Green

Lewis Green — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:24:21 +0000

Linda,
Once integrated within Marketing, social media can be used to gather information–good and bad–to improve products, services and customer service. The upside remains that when that data is properly analyzed, it can result in cross sells and upsells, turning Marketing and Customer Service Centers into revenue creators.

By: Lewis Green

Lewis Green — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:21:32 +0000

Trevor,
Good analysis. I completely agree that social media is a tool still looking for critical mass. The important strategy is that it become integrated with other communications tools and not seen as something requiring a new functional area.

By: Egitisim Kariyer Enstitusu

Egitisim Kariyer Enstitusu — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 11:03:28 +0000

We need extra advice for Turkey. Thank you.

By: Linda Brandt

Linda Brandt — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:39:08 +0000

I agree with you. My biggest challenge with clients is that they are afraid a disgrunted customer will dominate the social networks with negative comments and the client wants to avoid that at all costs. Guaranteed 2% of customers no matter what you do will be unhappy but i think they are missing a true opportunity to engage customers. How does a marketing expert help the client overcome these fears?

By: Trevor Long

Trevor Long — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 12:53:01 +0000

Social media is a great tool for segmentation and conversation (feedback, monitoring, selling). In my opinion social media is only a part of the marketing function and a larger part of the online marketing strategy. However, we must remember that only a fraction of our possible customer are online (facebook has 10% of general US population and 9% of Spain's population), so social media is a "tool" for communication at this point. Yet, a tool that requires knowledge and know-how to utilize properly. What is great is that these new online tools are cutting the cost of communication for many marketing budgets and creating new effeciencies in the marketing spectrum, which is really cool stuff! http://trevorlandia.blogspot.com

By: Matthew T. Grant

Matthew T. Grant — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:07:13 +0000

That makes sense, LG.
On re-reading your post, I was particularly struck by your emphasis that by incorporating new technologies into specific functions, an organization can better collect and share critical customer at precisely those points where it gets generated.

By: Lewis Green

Lewis Green — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:38:38 +0000

Matt,
I’m sorry. I forgot to respond to your point about employee engagement, which has little to do with alignment. I wrote an book based on the fact that great companies succeed from the inside out. Meaning, employees determine brand image, marketing and sales success, and the quality of the customer experience. I couldn’t agree with you more about its importance, and I often write about it here and on my own blog.

By: Lewis Green

Lewis Green — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:29:34 +0000

Matt,
Actually, we agree. I place the focus directly on alignment (which means eliminating silos in business speak)by writing the following: “Within today’s business structure, those are the areas that experience most of the customer touches. By aligning those functional areas and sharing the incoming data delivered in the customer’s own voice….”
However, the technology needs to be in place as well, or the alignment makes no sense to CEOs, COOs, and CFOs. This is not about changing an entire culture, which is going to happen. This is about aligning several functional areas to create a new way to listen and communicate with customers, while also creating a new revenue center.
Having spent and consulted with large businesses, and that’s who we are talking about here, change comes slowly, it must be practical, and it must deliver ROI. Otherwise, the company will simply do what today’s businesses are doing: Hiring a social media person and creating another silo. That is a horrible idea and makes alignment even more difficult.

By: Matthew T. Grant

Matthew T. Grant — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:34:28 +0000

Sounds like the focus here is on technology (data collection, IT infrastructure, etc.) but I believe that any technical integration or innovation needs to take place within the context of an organizational shift that removes the silos separating customer service, call centers, sales, and marketing from one another.
Michael Lowenstein of Harris Interactive (there’s a good interview with him here: http://www.customerthink.com/interview/insight_into_how_customers_think) has demonstrated that customer loyalty is most intensely influenced by interactions with the employees of your company (big surprise, right?). Yet how many marketing departments have a direct, operational connection to customer service folk or even people on the sales floor? How many loyalty programs consider management of these personal interactions as central to their mission?
Long story short, organizations need to make sure that their people (all of them) are focused on creating great and memorable experiences for customers before investing in the tools that will help them do just that. This often calls for an organizational realignment prior to or in conjunction with any sort of technical implementation

By: Lewis Green

Lewis Green — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:17:34 +0000

Jason,
Yes! Although I am talking about Inbound Marketing here, that process can not deliver monetary results unless it first delivers customer service value. I continue to believe that marketing and sales future is in aligning with the customer service touchpoints to deliver only those products and services that customers want, when they want them. Customer data is key to achieving that level of service.

By: Lewis Green

Lewis Green — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:15:04 +0000

Ted,
You are exactly correct. If a business isn’t currently creating a process for data collection, analyzation of that data and predictabilty arising out of the analysis, they are not ready for social media in my opionion.
Currently, social media seems to be used primarily as an Outbound resource for communications, PR and brand building, and I don’t believe that those uses are either cost-effective or a tool likely to have monetization results. Smart people can argue my point here and raise other values and I respect their opinions. But since a business’s first goal is to make money, we need to present ideas as to how we can make that happen. That is my purpose here and it is how I see the future of SM evolving.

By: Jason Baer

Jason Baer — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:05:08 +0000

Outstanding post. I agree entirely. We’ll look back in a few years and wonder why we ever thought about social media as a marketing tool, when it’s really the evolution of customer service.

By: Ted Mininni

Ted Mininni — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:52:47 +0000

This is an excellent post, Lewis. Well thought out and articulated. Here’s my take: if companies haven’t done the necessary work (and many haven’t) to centrally manage all of the input gleaned from inbound customer communications yet, they had better focus on doing so as quickly as possible. How can they react to customer problems and input to offer products or services in alignment with customers’ needs otherwise? Especially now, in a tough business environment, companies need to look for every advantage they can find. Customer relations are the key to riding out the storm and having a future. While social media can be a valuable tool in the marketing arsenal, why add it if the information from that too, isn’t managed well? Or if companies aren’t committed to engaging the customer in dialogue? Wouldn’t that just lead to more frustration and negative perception by consumers? Better not to waste capital and human resources on any new initiatives until every other customer touch point is fully aligned, analyzed and used to deepen customer relationships, in my view.