Switzerland: Chocolate, Cheese, Watches and Social Media?

Good Morning ‘No Fluff’ Social Media readers. Last week’s post on social ad’s was a hit, I’m thankful so many of you took the time to reach out and let me know you enjoyed the videos. I’ll understand if people take a break from my blog this week with the holiday weekend but if you chose to be here you have my gratitude.

Duty calls so it’s no holiday in the Schaeffer household. Especially for my unselfish, patient and understanding wife. I’ll be hopping on a plane for Switzerland today while she manages three kids by herself for a week. I don’t think my amazing wife reads my boring blogs but if you do, I love you honey! Did I mention your beautiful, stunning and gorgeous?

I’m going to be speaking at a workshop on Social Customer Service. A topic I love. I’m still finalizing the presentation but here is the outline. What do you think?

1. The History of Customer Service

• From the general store when the owner knew every customer by name thru phone, email and now Facebook and Twitter.

2. How the Customer Has Evolved

• The most important word in Customer Service is Customer, not Service. It’s always about the customer and the customer has changed. We are much more knowledgeable today, we buy what our family/friends recommend and want to do business with companies that align with our personal values.

3. The Customer Service Department is Dead

• Brands can’t afford to have customer service as a standalone department. It simply has to be weaved into the fabric of everything the organization does. It’s like culture, there is no culture department, it’s the way people behave and make decisions. Customer service is the same.

4. Marketing Will You Marry Me? Love, Customer Service

• Customer Service IS the new marketing. As consumers we don’t care about TV commercials, newspaper ad’s and big billboards. We get online and read reviews and ask our peers before purchasing a product or service. Customer service and marketing have to work in concert because customer acquisition and retention are no longer mutually exclusive, they are one in the same. Happy customers buy more, happy customers get new customers to buy. Dissatisfied customers leave, and take potential consumers with them.

5. Listening Strategies for Social Customer Service

• Traditional social listening is focused on brand/product mentions, competitors and campaign measurement. Listening for social care is proactively looking for consumers that need help, have a question, communicated a negative experience, took the time to share a positive experience or perhaps just in pre-purchase mode doing a little online research.

6. Social Customer Care Metrics and KPI’s

• As discussed in the previous point, because listening strategies are different between marketing and customer service so are the metrics. For example, social care metrics measure how many customers helped each day, top complaints and products issues. However, although different on the surface, service can learn from marketing because shouldn’t we be measuring likes, shares and reach of our service recovery engagements?

Well that’s an appetizer, there will be much more to the presentation including;

• Operational models on creating a Center of Excellence vs Localized support vs Centralized program structures
• Technology requirements and the ecosystem of tools required to deliver outstanding social customer service
• Social Customer Care Playbook. The process, training, certification, reports, and roles/responsibilities involved in launching a program.
• Social Customer Care Maturity Curve. Excited to be delivering a brand new creation to help brands with a crawl, walk, run, fly approach. Social care is a journey, not a project with a start and end date.

I’ll let you know next week how it goes hopefully with some really cool pictures of Switzerland, I’ve heard its beautiful.  Have a fun safe holiday weekend and thanks again to all of you who comment, share and like my blog.

My New Favorite Social Ad of All-Time

Happy Saturday ‘No Fluff’ readers! I have to warn you, there is a high amount of ‘Fluff’ in this week’s post. In fact you might even need a tissue there is so much ‘Fluff’.

I was reading a daddy blog and came across a social ad on YouTube for a juice company in the UK called Robinson’s. It’s only 60 seconds long but literally had me in puddles. There is a huge surprise at the end that will likely catch you off guard as it did me. I tell you this because the ad is so much better the second time you watch it once you know how it ends. Trust me, watch it twice. And have tissues on hand.

So what does this ad have to do with social media?

First, in the 2 weeks since its launch it has been viewed almost 700k times.

Second, Robinson’s has been posting the video on their Facebook page and it has driven a significant increase in engagement with their customers compared to their typical posts.

Third, they say the best marketing and advertising content has to either make you ‘laugh’ or ‘cry’, big check mark on the latter. Fortunately in social when you do one of those two things your customers love to share that content with all their friends and family because we all love to make the people we care about laugh and/or cry.

Fourth, it proves once again the value of a story. Social media has changed us as human beings. We love to connect, we love to share, we love to buy products from companies that stand for something that matches our personal values. In this case, I’m a dad, I love my 2 little boys (and my daughter) and I strive to be not just a dad but a friend to my sons. Compare this to a stereotypical juice drink ad, “We have 10% more real fruit juice than our leading competitor, check your local Sunday paper for a $.50 cent off coupon.” Which juice are you buying?

By the way, in case you were wondering. Here was the reigning champ on my all time favorite social ad’s of all time list. Yes, it’s another tear jerker, what can I say, I can try to act tough with a blog called “No Fluff Social Media” but at the end of the day I’m a big softie!

So with that intro, bet you’ll never guess what it’s about. A daddy and his little girl (happens to even have the same name as my daughter). Please enjoy, and as always thanks for tuning in to my weekly blog. Make a dad’s day and share these two videos with a virtual box of tissues.

What Keeps Me Up At Night

Good morning everyone! Happy Friday.  More importantly Happy Mother’s Day Weekend to all of you fortunate enough to have children, what a blessing they are thanks to you Mom. I’m very lucky, my mom Donna is an amazing mother and I love that I moved back to Detroit to spend more time with her. As lucky as I am, my 3 children have really hit the jackpot with Staci. One day is nowhere near enough to celebrate all she does for our children.

Mom’s….and Dad’s for that matter in social media I haven’t been getting much sleep lately. There are so many exciting opportunities and challenges in social that I thought I’d put a list together of the things I’ve been working on with clients that keep me up and night.

1. Social Sales – Everybody wants to know how do I make money with social, how do I show a hard ROI.
2. Social Customer Care – Executing the use case for customer retention and customer service in social media and showing the impact on retention/loyalty.
3. Social Marketing – Optimizing the most effective and efficient use of marketing investment across the social internet, social marketing is the last unaccountable spend but not for much longer.
4. Competitive Analysis – There is such a hyper focus on competitors in social media, wish more resources were focused on improving internally first.
5. Social Technology – Integrating social media listening, publishing, advertising and search strategies to optimize social investment, resources and results.
6. Social Partner Management – Define, document and present a preferred social media ecosystem including digital and creative agencies, media buyers, solution partners and system integrators.
7. Customer Experience – Present a coordinated Web/Mobile/Social customer experience every single time.
8. Employee Engagement – Educate, create and harness the power of a brand’s greatest social media advocates? Think about the power of employee advocates for a brand like Lowe’s with all those customer touch points.
9. Social Culture – Drive the same cultural revolution inside a brand at a faster speed than consumer behavior is changing on the outside in social.
10. Social Decision Making – Driving adoption to the point to where a brand routinely leverages social data and customer feedback to make improved business decisions.
11. Social Center of Excellence – Create a social media nerve center centralizing key functions including PR, Communications, Agency, Customer Service, IT and Marketing into one physical location all centered around the customer.
12. Big Data – Measure the impact of online to offline transactions on new customer acquisition, conquests and retention.
13. Social Media Playbook – Building a social media playbook outlining the key goals, metrics, roles/responsibilities, process, policies, content and engagement guidelines, education and adoption strategies.
14. Sponsorships & Events – Maximize the positive impact of social media on sponsorship opportunities and live events.
15. PR & Crisis Management – Protect the brand and mitigate risk from the tidal wave of negative sentiment.

I think it’s going to be a long night! See you next week. Thanks for visiting my blog.