Part I of Social Media: A Customer Serivce Strategy, describes Millie Garfield’s, MyMomsBlog, unhappy experience with a major financial institution - Capital One. Not knowing if Capital One was in tune with monitoring the blog buzz I searched thru their corporate site and eventually found an email link to a person in the PR department. I kindly sent off an email explaining the the situation. I thought it was nice of me to go through the trouble. I mean if your company isn’t tracking the buzz about your brands and an influencer blog like MyMomsBlog was dishing a product wouldn’t you want to know?

Social media and customer care is addessed by Valeria Maltoni’s Fast Company Expert Blogger on her post, Chasing Customers Away. She asks a very interesting question:

In this new business context where social media is gaining in credibility and scope can you afford to ignore these inquiries?

Note: Valeria writes about customer communications. I found it amusing that that Fast Company is listing her blog under the category of Innovation. Sadly, Fast Company may be right. Excellent customer care might well be an innovative strategy.

Do companies understand the implications of consumer generated media? The extent that social media influences purchase decisions and the perception of the brand should not be taken lightly. The following comment from Valeria’s post is hard hitting:

The other lesson to be learned, now I see that this story is a couple years old, is that the history stays around and even if Chase has improved, its even more reason for everyone else to do something now, before all their old laundry comes out about how they chased their customers away.

However, people are postively, as well as, negatively talking about products, services, companies and their employees. Here are a couple of examples.

Unilever - Heard this from Charlene Li, Forrester Research, at New Communication Forum 2006. As the story goes .. Dan Entin couldn’t find his fav deodorant - Degree For Men. He did what many a blogger might do and posted about his quest on his blog Two Percent Nation. Unilever was listening and sent him a carton of Degree.

Kudos to Mike for seeing what I wrote and taking action to make a loyal customer even more devoted.

Radio Shack - Kristie’s, WebMomz, experience is about a Radio Shack sales clerk who spent 20 minutes hooking up all the assorted cords and parts and actually did some test recordings till we got everything working. Now that’s service! Here’s the comment from Radio Shack manager Tony Rosen

Thanks for the positive feedback Kristie. It appreciate the recognition you sent to my company. It always feels good to know i did something positive for a customer, we usually only get to hear about the negative. Hope everything worked out for you, and look forward to seeing you in my store in the future.

In this world that spins too fast, consistent customer delight is one of the most powerful branding strategies you can put into play. Using social media, honestly and transparently, to help get that message across makes good business sense.

However, there’s another element that reinforces the importance of using social media as a customer service tactic. The element of trust. Edelman conducts an annual a multi-country research study seeking to understand the state of trust in institutions. In Richard Edelman’s summary of the Edelman Trust Barometer 2007 he says -

The remarkable rise of the “Person Like Yourself” as credible spokesperson from 2003-6 (from 22% to 68% in the US in that period) saw a decline this year (in the US, trusted by 51%), but still ranks as the #1 trusted spokesperson in most of the countries surveyed.

There is a general decline in trust in all spokespeople and sources of information. That means a company must tell its story consistently and in multiple venues in order to achieve trust.

When it’s all said and done, customer delight has to do with letting people know - “You matter. I hear you. I’m paying attention to you.”

Once upon a time .. (all good stories start with once upon a time) .. A man was working in the PR Department of a Fortune 500 financial company. Oh .. call it Capital One. He probably thought his company was a pretty good place to work. In fact, maybe it was even named one of Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies To Work For. One day out of the blue he received an email from a stranger -

Dear Mr. S -

I wanted to bring to your attention a post written by one of your customers, Millie Garfield. Mrs. Garfield has experienced some exceptionally poor customer service, and if Capital One is not monitoring social media, I thought you might be interested in reading her post on MyMomsBlog.

In addition to the fact that I’m sure Capital One would not want an unhappy customer, what makes this even more important for the organization is the visibility the situation has been given on Mrs. Garfield’s highly popular blog. I would encourage you to read the comment sections as well. MyMomsBlog has been highlighted in main stream media publications like the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. The word-of-mouth influence, online and offline, could be significant and damaging.

Your organization might consider contacting Mrs. Garfield and posting a comment on her blog that offers a solution. My thoughts are that Mrs. Garfield’s situation with Capital One is one that many other people are experiencing.

In this new world of easy online publishing (blogs, podcasts, vlogs) that reach not a few, not a hundred, but thousands of people with a click and then spread virally, it is becoming critical to listen and join our customers in their discussions.

Very best,

Toby Bloomberg

I wonder what Mr. S did with the email from a stranger. I wonder if he hit delete. I wonder if he forwarded it to his boss. I wonder if the company who made the Fortune 100 Best Places To Work List will care about one customer. It just so happens that one customer is a blogger whose blog has the reach and influence of more than many main stream media vehicles.

A reminder: Not all consumer generated media casts a negative veiw of a product or service. That brings up another question. What do you do when something good happens to bring postive buzz to your brand? What would your mother tell you to do if someone said something nice about you? Why thank them kindly I’m sure!

What is important is social media is impacting how companies conduct business .. even if those companies don’t know it.

Which in turn influences how your brand is perceived. Which in turn develops customer loyalty. Which in turn makes the cash register ring. Which in turn keeps your share holders happy with increased ROI. Which in turn puts smiles on your employees since they have jobs. Which in turn might keep your company on the Fortune Magazine 100 Best Companies To Work For list.

Last week Jeremiah asked people to share their media consumption diet. There were a number of responses.

At the time that I responded,only Chris Saad and Brian Keith mentioned that they used the major social networks as a source of communication. Twitter did receive slightly more attention, but then again, exchanging answers to the question is what Twitter is about.

Brian noted my observation and asked a new question: How do you keep in touch with friends and family? He posed the question directly to Jeremiah, Martin McKeay, Chris Saad, Ian and Zac.

As of this moment, Zac has responded. He notes that he has a Facebook account that he uses to stay in touch with old and distant friends and that he uses Linkedin for professional networking. He also mentioned that he uses Facebook and Flickr to share photos with friends and family. His workhorses of staying in touch are his phone and Google talk.He makes a special point of mentioning his aversion to email..and please do not forward him anything!

My response to the question: I use email, Skype (chat) and mobile (voice) primarily. As I mentioned, I get an occasional Facebookand MySpace email, though I have never initiated email from either. My two sons (14 and 16) communicate primarily with text messages which occasionally forces me to respond in this manner.

I will also note that several of my non-blogging friends stay in touch with what I am doing by reading my blog and will mention that in emails or on a phone call.

OK, so that’s me…how about you?

Technorati Tags:  Brian Keith, Zac Echola, Chris Saad, Jeremiah Owyang, Martin McKeay, Ian Lurie, Facebook, Skype, Google Talk, MySpace, TMobile, Linkedin, Twitter

Well, here’s a sample…I guess I am live blogging this because it is on right now.

According to Variety, it is a half hour series derived from blogs. And indeed it is. They are covering blogs as if they are the news and interviewing the bloggers as if they are rock stars.

They tell us in a  breaking news tone, “Hillary Clinton has a Facebook account”…let’s see it live. Kirsten Powers ,a former Clinton strategists, is the other host

John Edwards is on Second Life; you can experience it yourself on Fox News.

“Next, our Mystery Blogger reveals who he is.” Yes, they have been giving clues and now they tell us: It is Mark Cuban.

And he is being interviewed about how the candidates are using the Internet. Cuban says, Offline is more important; the web doesn’t drive results it is off line that supports the on line effort. Mark also says that the fact that the campaigns are using the web makes sense to him because the web skews older…older people he contends have more time to be on line. Ok, then…that settles those demos!  Thanks Mark, we are out of time.

OK, so Cuban has a post on his blog about the difference between on line video and TV. He says, online video is a snack. It is short and anyone can put together a snack. TV he says is a sit down meal. TV programming he says are  a product like a meal at a favorite restaurant or a favorite recipe…it requires preparation and time. TV he says is what we have high expectations for.

I think this analogy is just about as off and out there as the Fox show..which in my opinion was down right silly.

Does Cuban watch TV? Did he watch Out There? If that was a sit down meal, the chef should be fired.

Greg Verdino mentions Cuban’s post and wrote about a Wired article about the trend toward miniaturization of entertainment in everyting from content choices to devices.

He then posts a poll that states, “We live in an age where media snacking (YouTube Videos) and traditional long form media consumption (Network TV) seem to be at odds.” His poll posed the question: snack, meal, both or chef. The results thus far indicate and approximate 33% were snackers, 33% were producing their own content to consume the content of others and 16% wanted a meal, 16% wanted a snack and a meal.

Jeremiah Owyang also asked about media consumption as I wrote yesterday. Although this is not meant to be  scientific, it appears as that  within the meme,  participants are consuming media online, and it is consumed as RSS appetizers.

Well, the Fox show is probably best described as lots of little junk food snacks tossed randomly together into a half hour meal. So, we  now have a TV show in an entertainment format, reporting about blogs.  Life immitating art immitating life? Old media’s interpretation of new media?  TV2.0-oh? Or perhaps Meet the Press 2007?

Now, that’s food for thought.

Technorati Tags: FoxNews, Michelle Malkin, Jeremiah Owyang, Media Consumption Diet, Mark Cuban, RSS, social media, Kirsten Powers, Hillary Clinton, Facebook, John Edwards, Second Life, Variety, Media 2.0, The Bad Guy,

Web: Primarily, I use RSS via Netvibes which has virtually replaced Bloglines. I also run Touchstone which keeps me alerted to the feeds and keywords that I am most interested in paying attention to. Although I get the feeds from  memeorandum and Megite on Netvibes and feeds from Techmeme on my own blog, I check the sites several times a day to see who is talking about what.

Also, news from email alerts from Simply  Headlines which sends me to the site if interested.

Communication: Email access on my laptop or on my Blackberry Pearl. IM via Skype is mostly always on. Occasionally I will get email at MySpace or Facebook.
I am not quite climbing the Twitter adoption curve.

I found it interesting that of the Media Consumption posts that I have seen thus far, only Chris Saad (MySpace) and Brian Keith (Facebook) even mention those social networks as a source of communication…the only social network receiving much attention thus far has been Twitter.

TV: This part of the diet has direct influence on the one above…I keep the TV running (TV so no music) in the background with the computer in the foreground.
me
Jeremiah says this is a Gen Y thing….as a Boomer, I might have to say that it may characterize that demo,  but I think it also characterizes the media addicted, accross generations.

Fox News is on as background virtually all day when I am not on the phone. Old habits die hard. In the evenings, I switch around between MSNBC, Comedy Central,Leno, Conan and the like. If I remember to watch, I like Boston Legal and House.

Books: One of my former life’s pleasures, less so now regretably. Rarely read fiction since that was a bedtime activity when that had a more regular nightime schedule. I have an ADD reading style, with a number of books in various stages of being read.

Newspapers: Wall Street Journal, mostly online is about the only regular read.   Get email updates from the New York Times, Boston Globe and the Christian Science Monitor. Other MSM newspaper news comes from search on a topic or links.

Movies: Another evolving consumption habit which for the past two years has become glaringly obvious at Academy Awards time…I see most movies on cable on demand or DVD, not in theaters so I tend to be slightly behind.

Like Chris, I feel like I currently have a shorter attention span than sitting still for a two hour movie would allow, though I don’t attribute it to TV habits. I attribute it in my case more to continuous partial attention.
And at home, I can  better control this than in a theater, where the only things that needs attention is the movie and the popcorn

Music: I am totally old school here…CDs in the car or my kids’ IPod if they are with me.

OK, well no big deal you say? We do this all the time….yes, I know and isn’t that amazing. It made me think of one of my favorite movie scenes from Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, made in 1977.

A man is pontificating in a movie line about Marshall McLuhan to Woody Allen’s annoyance. Allen tells the man he doesn’t know what he is talking about, the man says that he teaches a class in Media and Culture and is an authority on McLuhan.

Allen says, “Oh that’s funny because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here.” McLuhan appears in the theater lobby and sets the man straight. Allen says to the screen, “Boy if life were only like this.”

Life is like this now…we can access ideas and people instanteously. We can find, organize, and access information and communicate directly and immediately with the source of the information. We provide each other with contact information that transcends physical proximity….Skype, Twitter, Facebook; Stowe Boyd says, “The Buddylist is the center of the universe.”

It was of course Marshall McLuhan who advanced the idea that the “medium is the message” and who used the term “global village” that describes electronic connectivity in his writing in the 1960s.

When McLuhan wrote the Medium is the Message, it was a misunderstood concept and believed to mean that he was forcasting a time when the channel would be more important than the content. Those closest to him explain that his “message” is “the change of the scale or pace or pattern” that innovation introduces into the way people interact, think and behave.

“‘The medium is the message’ is simply the environment created by any new innovation, any new technology, was the thing that changed people, not the technology.”

Much is written about access to information and personal connectivity in Web2.0. We have aggregators and are now using applications like Touchstone that use attention data to filter this more quitely into personal relevancy.

The part about being able to just pull someone into a conversation, regardless of time or place, to get an immediate answer to something is becoming one of those changes enabled by technology; in the global village, life is just like this.

Specifically, the need to say "thank you" and "good job’ and to return associate’s phone calls and not cancel their vacations. As Ben McConnell notes, "that weird common courtesy stuff." When Ben says, "its no joke" I presume he means the facts of the story are true but, C,’mon, do you seriously need to be told to say thank you? It makes you ask some other questions:

• Â What’s wrong with the partners in this law firm that they are so un-appreciative of their associates?
• How do they treat their clients?
• Do they kick their dogs?Â

The title of the article asks the question: Does Saying Thank You Help Keep Associates? Well, doesn’t "that weird common courtesy stuff" help" keep" everyone? And, the opposite, being discourteous and unappreciative keeps everyone away.

 Saying "thank you" and "good job" demonstrates attention and articulates appreciation. Paying attention and showing appreciation will improve morale and reduce turnover in all of our relationships, personal and professional….you can offer a money-back guarantee on that one.

 David Pollard at How to Save the World wrote, "What people seek from others more than anything else, is attention and appreciation. I’ve observed that to be true in boardrooms, bedrooms and barrooms. You want to win over your boss, give him or her your full attention, and acknowledge his or her successes, without being a suck-up about it. You want to win over your audience in a presentation, make lots of eye contact, show empathy for their situation (which means doing your homework in advance) and thank them more than once for their attention and their awesome questions."

A study by Mitchel Adler and NS Fagley (2005) provides some basis for the other side of the equation…why being appreciative is a good thing…they found that being appreciative and expressing appreciation to others enhances feelings of well being; it makes us feel connected to what we have and to our experiences. They find that expressing appreciation builds social bonds and in fact "appreciation was significantly related to life satisfaction and positive affect. Importantly, they believe that even though being appreciative is a disposition, it can be taught. The WSJ article said that Sullivan & Cromwell saw an improvement in turn over after the partners went to charm school.

Another recent article in the Wall Street Journal about the Dali Lama addressed the ability to change our brains through a change in thinking….to actually become more compassionate and empathetic. Â In a study done with monks during meditation, it was found that indeed meditation could change the function of the brain and importantly, "monks with the most hours of meditation showed the most dramatic brain changes. That was a strong hint that mental training makes it easier for the brain to turn on circuits that underlie compassion and empathy."

So, mother was right: Say thank you, write thank you notes; be appreciative and don’t scrimp on expressing appreciation and gratitude. Should appreciation not come naturally, it is possible to acquire the traits that make it possible….through mental training or meditation. If you do these things you will grow up to have successful personal relationships, loyal customers and clients …and be especially successful at generating positive word of mouth.

Jackie Huba writes about the $800 million dollar company that connects with customers through the "thank you" note written by a sales associate. Andy Sernovitz sent me a handwritten thank you note for blogging at the WOMMA Summit that demonstrated recognition and appreciation that stood apart …I really appreciated that he took the time in our electronic age to write a handwritten note!

The Lesson: Pay attention, listen, observe those around us…let them know that you appreciate them and what they do. Practice it until it comes naturally. You will improve your own sense of well being as well as contribute to theirs. This will become the environment in which you live and work.

Kathy Sierra, in her post Angry/ Negative People Can Be Bad for Your Brain talks about social contagion/emotional contagion…the spread of attitudes throughout populations. She quotes Memetics and Social Contagion"…social scientific research has largely confirmed the thesis that affect, attitudes, beliefs and behavior can indeed spread through populations as if they were somehow infectious.

She quotes the Dali Lama, The fact that there is always a positive side to life is the one thing that gives me a lot of happiness. This world is not perfect. There are problems. But things like happiness and unhappiness are relative. Realizing this gives you hope." Paying attention to the positive side and expressing this to others gives everyone hope.

One final thought. My cousin, Dr Leonard Berg passed away several weeks ago. He was an incredibly accomplished man who left behind a legacy that truly produced positive change in the lives of people all over the world. At his memorial service one of his children noted that because of his work, he really wasn’t home a lot but she always felt that he was there for her. He was paying attention and she knew that what she did was appreciated; his attitude was contagious.

Tags: Church of the Customer, Ben McConnell Jackie Huba, Andy Sernovitz, WOMMA, Kathy Sierra, David Pollard, Social Contagion, Attention, Dali Lama, Appreciation, Sullivan & Cromwell,Wall Street Journal, Dr. Leonard Berg

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The issue of online -predators lurking  for under age victims on MySpace and other social networking sites is obviously what is driving this…the question is whether or not this kind of surveillance addresses the problem it is being implemented to address. And it does feel a bit icky from many respects.

MySpace and the other online social networks have been apparently unable to find an age verification solution for the underage users. Other sites employ various means to address some of the peripheral issues of protecting kinds on the internet. Yahoo for instance has a parental control for content feature.There does not seem to be a solution on the horizon to keeping the predators off the site or really controlling determined offenders, adult or child; so MySpace according to Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for Fox Interactive Media, the unit that oversees MySpace, is positioning Zephyr as a way to "give parents a tool to force a discussion with their kid."

 Forced discussions are of course always so productive…in reality it is probably safe to say that with most similar issues, the parents who are involved and have positive relationships with their children won’t need to be "forced" and those whose relationships and involvement with their kids put their kids most at risk, cannot be "forced."

And then you have situations such as the kidnapping of Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby in Missouri where there were Missouri; there were no neglectful parents, no online social networks; just victims and predator. 2 teenage sons. I have IÂ I live in the town next to Kirkwood Missouri with my two teenage sons. I have replayed in my ain the thought that mind the fact that Michael Devlin was employed in a pizza place that I have been in;Â that I have actually encouraged by kids to walk places in our neighborhood (fortunately, it seems now, they prefer to be driven everywhere).

Danah Boyd has a visual on a post about the fact that for all the talk about on-line predators, there isn’t enough attention being paid to the fact that greatest number of sexual predators are in the most intimate relationships with the children that they abuse…..parents, relatives, household members: 95% of abusers are family members, 79% are parents and 5% are not those other than family members.

This is one frightening pie chart.

 She references an article by Pete Reilly that provides some interesting data regarding an unfortunate outcome of concerns about online sexual abuse of children, restrictions of the use of educational technology tools and online resources.

So….back to my original question: Does Zephyr, or any parental surveillance tool, address the problem of on line sexual predators? Well, just off the top of my head, there are many activities that parents should monitor, both online and off. In my experience as a child and as a parent, monitoring is most effective as part of an involved, attentive relationship; trust is the currency of a positive relationship. In my opinion, surveillance tools violate trust.

Online sexual predators are but one risk online; sexual predators in terms of sheer numbers are lurking off line rather than on; ironically it seems based upon the data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems that parents themselves are frequently the predators.Â

The code name for the software is Zephyr although not sure of the relationship between the god of the west wind and protecting kids from online predators. Perhaps parental surveillance tools as it relates to online sexual predators is much like shouting into the {west} wind; less shouting more listening, better outcome.

From a marketing perspective, for MySpace this seems like a lose-lose; alienate your core audience with an empty gesture.

Tags: MySpace, Zephyr, sexual predators, online sexual predators, Pete Reilly, Danah Boyd, Marianne Richmond, Shawn Hornbeck, Ben Ownby

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I wonder if he will be going to Walt Disney World after the game?

Tags: NFL, Superbowl, Gino Bono, Adrants, Walt Disney World, Marianne Richmond

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