It’s an odd dynamic I see in play today–in today’s ever connected environment marketers tell me they feel even more removed from direct customer interaction.
As a former sale person, I used to schedule “ride-along” time with my sales team just to get out on sales calls and hear how we position ourselves in front of the customer, how that message lands on the customer and more importantly what the customer is saying in reaction to how we are positioned.
Today I would argue that is still important (and few marketers actually do it) but with the tools we have at our disposal you don’t even need to get out of the office to talk with customer. In fact, I talk to customers EVERYDAY, even several times a day. How? With Twitter!
Every week my virtual social media team and I are listening to 1000-2500 mentions of our company plus a bunch of “conversations” we are tracking (see Forget Audience Segmentation …. Segment by Conversation!)
We are engaging with customers and solving their issues in record time providing excellent service to them around issues such as: customer support, product end of life, highly technical questions, finance and billing questions, and partner relations. In fact we even won our first engagement over Twitter–so watch out DellOutlet we are gaining on you fast!
Our goal as a social media marketing team is to engage in more conversations this week than we did last week and have better relations as every week goes by! With today’s tools there is no excuse for not engaging with customer in real time–what’s stopping you?
Tags: customer, Sales, Social Media
Paul:
Would love to see a follow-up post someday as to how Twitter is helping you get underneath “what the customer is saying in reaction to how we are positioned.” (with an emphasis on the last four words)
Solving things quickly like tech problems and billing issues is of course important, but that doesn’t seem to have much to do with (differentiated) positioning.
Thanks.
Thanks for the timely post, Paul.
Although we are living in a digital age where most of our present communication tools were sci-fi material 50 years ago, I keep hearing people saying they “are not communicating enough.”
With the proliferation of mobile phones, email and numerous high-tech Internet tools, I wonder why there are still individuals who feel left out.
Please do post a follow-up article just like Kevin suggested. I would really love to know how you do it via Twitter.
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@Kevin – Funny you should ask – I am looking into that type of longer term tracking of the ’sentiment of the conversation’ right now – there are a few players who have some good solutions in that space.
That would make a great post on how marketers are single-handedly changing the perception of their business!
@Strategic – will do – see my last comment too
@Long Beach – there are some many resources on the web – here is an internview I did with Douglas Karr on creating a successful blog – http://buzzmarketingfortech.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-to-build-successful-blog-quickly_24.html
also consider – Blogging for Dummies – those books really go in depth into everything you need to know about a technical topic – I should know with Facebook Marketing for Dummies coming out soon!
@Fresno – how very flattering that you would ask me in such a public way.
I am fully employed at Avaya but I am sure you can find a local resource who can help you.
Paul -
Great post and sage advice! I love that you maintain engagement in marketing is still a face-to-face effort – even in this age of social media. Sales and marketing need to keep the lines of engagement open and the conversations flowing both ways. Otherwise all you have is a deluge of information overwhelming the consumers trying to swim upstream. Throw-’em a life line from time-t-time.
Keep Cooking!
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef