17 Social Customer Service Reports You Can’t Live Without!

I have the best job in the world. I get to do what I truly love which is help clients improve their social customer service programs. I’ve been fortunate to be in this small but growing niche for almost 5 years now after spending 9 years helping some of the largest global contact centers provide a world-class customer experience to their consumers. After all these years the questions I get asked most is very similar across all the industries I’m fortunate to work in.

How do I measure the value of social care?

What metrics and KPI’s should I track?

What is the ROI of social care?

These questions of course are answered by the reporting you have in place to analyze and optimize social customer service performance. I thought you might find it helpful if I shared a quick list based on my experience on the reports I found most valuable. I’m sure I’ve missed many that you are using today, please share them in the comments section so others can learn from what is working for you!

Enjoy.

#1 – Inbound Volume by Day

Response time is a critical metric and the best way to reduce it is to make sure you are staffed when your consumers are posting to social networks. I had a client whose volume only went down 20% on the weekend but was only staffing Monday through Friday. They used an inbound volume report by day to secure investment for weekend resources.

#2 – Inbound Volume by Hour

Similar to the report above, it’s also important to know when during the day consumers are posting. Again, to optimize response time, agents should be staffed to mimic the highest volume periods of the day. A previous client staffed 8-5pm EST but after analyzing inbound volume by hour realized 5-10pm EST was the highest volume posting time. This actionable data gave them the proof they needed to create a second shift of agents and stagger them across the day to reduce response time.

#3 – Response Time

At first glance this metric seems straight forward. Simply, how long does it take to respond to consumers posting in social media? However, most clients don’t want the time they aren’t monitoring social sites to count against them. (i.e. If consumer posts on 5pm on Friday and response is sent 10am Monday, the response time is only a few hours, not a few days since there is no weekend coverage). There is only one metric for response time, that is customer time, the customer doesn’t care when you monitor or not, it does not improve your service to play games with the numbers. Second complexity is many social posts require multiple back and forth engagements before the case is closed, so is response time from the first engagement or when the case is closed? I’d argue its important to report on both so see #4.

#4 – Case Close Time

With Response Time we learned its critical to track how long it takes to provide that initial response to a consumer’s social media post. Case Close Time tracks the total time it takes to close a post or case. It’s ok to follow-up and have some back and forth with a consumer to resolve their issue, but it doesn’t do any good to respond quickly on the first engagement only to frustrate the consumer because it takes a day or two to ultimately close out their case.

#5 – Customer Satisfaction or Net Promoter Score

In Twitter I recommend sending a follow-up tweet immediately after closing out a social post that says, “On a scale of 0-10, 10 being very likely, how likely are you to recommend our social customer service?” If you have cell numbers for your consumers and have the ability to send short text/SMS surveys, that is a good option as well. (i.e. Rate your social customer service experience 1-5 by texting 1-5 to 12345. AT&T is using this method.

#6 – Total Volume Trended Over Time

It’s not atypical to see social care volume growth rates increasing 50% a year as more and more consumers adopt social as a support channel. With growth rates that significant it requires contact center managers to constantly evaluate their staffing and hiring approach. Perhaps traditional channels like email and phone are decreasing over time and that pool of agents can be allocated to the social channel.

#7 – Likes, Shares, Favorites, Retweets

These metrics are typically used by social marketers to measure the success of social content published on Facebook and Twitter. However, they are also great service metrics to show the value of responses coming directly from social customer service agents. If consumers appreciate your responses and see them as helpful they will positively share it with a like or RT.

#8 – Top Issues, Questions, Praise

The most successful contact centers have always taken the goldmine of feedback from the voice of the customer and shared that actionable data back across the enterprise so products and services can be improved. Social is no different and is probably even more critical because social word of mouth is so much more powerful than the phone, email and chat channels.  For example, every month product management should be receiving reports on the top 10 complaints, questions and praise consumers have posted on social networks. Trending these metrics over time, comparing them to previous time periods and percent change are also elements to be considered for these type of reports.

#9 – Open Case Visibility

When cases are open, that means a customer is waiting. It’s critical to have a report view into how many open cases, case age, agent assigned and type of case to make sure open case volume is proactively managed.

#10 – Volume by Social Site

It’s important to break down inbound volume by Twitter, Facebook, Google +, etc. Typically agents are assigned to queues or sites so understanding the volume can help align the right coverage for each social channel.

#11 – Reporting by Tags/Labels

Especially with Twitter and its 140 characters, it can be tough to get enough actionable data from a tweet to share with the rest of the organization. However, most social listening and contact tools provide the ability to add tags or additional labels to social interactions which you can then report on. For example, adding specific product or brand names, location info if you are a retailer or restaurant, perhaps adding severity level to a post to understand the frequency of high priority issues.

#12 – Reporting by Influencers

All consumers deserve your best service, however, we can’t ignore the impact of influencers in social media. Because of that, its important to be able to filter almost all of the above reports by posts from influencers. Top complaints from influencers, response time for influencers, open cases by influencers, NPS/CSAT by influencers are all valuable in looking at how your social care is impacted by Klout scores and follower counts.

#13 – Cross Channel Reporting

Social is just one piece of the overall consumer support experience. Although rapidly growing, for most companies social is still less than 5% of overall support volume compared to phone and email. However, leading contact centers are integrating social into their CRM tool so they can report on not just social metrics but also cross-channel key performance indicators. For example, top issues by channel, cost per contact per channel, CSAT by channel and agent productivity by channel. To be clear, by channel I mean phone, email, chat, self service, communities and social.

#14 – Engagement Rate

In my experience clients can get too wrapped up in reviewing social posts and deciding if its technically a support post or if a post requires action. The bottom line is the consumer took the time to post something on one of your social properties, don’t they deserve a response? Isn’t friendly engagement one of the ways you build better community and a stronger presence on Facebook and Twitter? I think so and that is why I think its important to measure the total amount of posts you receive and divide it by the total number of engagements or responses to get your engagement rate. This is especially important for Twitter handles dedicated to support.

#15 – Social Profiles Captured

One of the single toughest challenges facing the social customer service community is understanding if @ChadSchaeffer on Twitter is the Chad Schaeffer in Plymouth, MI with a phone number and email address in a CRM database. Linking social id’s with traditional customer info is required for the 360 view of the customer so many marketers and service professionals aspire to. Consequently, measuring how many social profiles are being added and combined in your CRM system is a new metric I think leading professionals will begin to track and communicate.

#16 – Social Resolution Rate

A new personal favorite of mine is measuring the rate you are able to resolve a consumer’s issue within the social media channel. Too many times I’m seeing brands respond with “call us at 1-800 or email us by clicking this link”. If consumers wanted to use the phone or email to contact you they would have chosen those channels in the first place. I also don’t buy the all too convenient response of ‘we don’t want to discuss issues over social’, private messaging is available in both Twitter and Facebook to conveniently resolve consumer issues more discretely. Fundamentally, consumers are choosing social support channels because they require less effort than filling out a long email form or waiting on hold and fumbling through an IVR.

#17 – Productivity

The reason I saved productivity for last is because it’s the least important social care metric. I think the industry is learning over time that quality is always better than speed when it comes to measuring customer satisfaction. Zappos has publicly stated they don’t even measure handle time anymore for any service channel. Average time on case and average cases closed per day by agent should only be used as a coaching tool or directional guide. You might even find the agents with higher handle times also have higher CSAT or NPS scores!

 

Stop Losing Customers By Doing This One Simple Thing

As they say, there is a reason you have two ears and one mouth. This is especially true for those of us in social customer care, where listening is so critical. As customers are migrating away from phone and email channels when they need help, social channels like Facebook and Twitter seem to be the new channels of choice.

Let’s examine why. With the phone, I may have to fumble through a challenging IVR or wait on hold while hearing that “Your call is very important to us” message over and over. If it’s so important, why am I on hold for 39 minutes?

Once I get on the phone I have to repeat my name, phone number, and account number even though I already told the automated system.

It usually goes something like this:

Please say your name and press pound.

Me: Chad Schaeffer

IVR: Chet Schaeffer press 1 if this is correct, 2 if not.

Me: Chad Schaeffer

IVR: Jack Schaeffer, press 1 if this is correct, 2 if not.

Me: Jack Bauer, am I on an episode of 24, because this IVR is torture

Email isn’t much better, have you ever tried to find a company’s customer service email address? It’s like trying to find matching socks in the dark. Then you wait 24 hours to get a response that really just asks for more information, even though you filled out an email form with 76 fields on it.

No wonder social care is growing so quickly!

I can simply take out my mobile device (which is glued to my hand to save time), open my Twitter app, type up to 140 characters, and have the confidence of knowing the brand needs to bring their A game in social media. Thanks to the power of word of mouth in social, the consumer really does have your brand’s reputation in the palm of their hand.

Back to listening and why it’s so important for brands trying to improve their social customer service.

We have two ears which is good because there are two main types of listening in social customer care. “Managed listening” and “proactive listening”—another kind of listening that can help you retain even more customers.

Let’s look at priority number one—managed listening. Managed listening is when a consumer complains, praises, or asks a question of your brand on your owned social media accounts like Facebook or Twitter. As you can see in this example below, the consumer has mentioned the @BofA_Help Twitter handle directly engaging the brand. Make no mistake, consumers are expecting a response, and expecting it quickly (if you haven’t noticed!).

 

If you really want to start retaining more consumers, then you might be interested in proactive listening. That’s when a consumer names your brand or product in a tweet but does not directly @mention your Twitter account like in the example below. Notice this customer is clearly upset at Bank of America but isn’t directly asking @BofA_Help for assistance. Fortunately, Bank of America is doing an awesome job of proactive listening and they engaged this consumer.

How many more consumers could you retain if you started proactively listening in social media?

One important thing to keep in mind: If you were walking to your car late at night, you wouldn’t want the police—even though they’re super helpful—to jump out of a dark alley to ask if you need anything would you?

Well proactive listening is a little like that. The consumer probably isn’t expecting you to be listening to their social conversation with their followers, so be careful how you engage, make sure right up front they know you are there to help. Proactive listening is a great opportunity to surprise and delight when paired with friendly responsive engagement.

So let’s do a quick review on listening in social customer service.

Priority 1
Listen and engage on your owned social media channels where your consumers have directly asked you for help or taken the time to praise your brand. Your customers are expecting a timely response, that might mean in under 60 minutes!

Priority 2
Listen and engage proactively with consumers clearly needing assistance on Twitter but not directly mentioning your brand’s Twitter account. You may find this can double or even triple your support volume so plan accordingly with staffing before you dive in!

Good luck with your social customer service listening efforts! For more insight on establishing transformative social customer service within your organization, download our e-book, 8 Steps to Transformative Social Customer Service.

Dreamforce Spotlight: Social Customer Care

Throughout the Dreamforce conference Nov. 18-21st in San Francisco there will be certain themes commanding a lot of attention. One of those themes is Social Customer Care. I’m fortunate enough to be helping facilitate a session on that very topic Monday, November 18th at 12pm PST at the Westin St. Francis called Social Customer Service – The Basic Building Blocks.

I’ll be presenting along with Matt Staub (https://twitter.com/staubio) an expert in the field of social care. He formerly ran social customer care at H&R Block and recently joined social media agency Graphicmachine (https://twitter.com/graphicmachine).

During our practice sessions he really impressed me with how he can tell the story of social care in how to launch a program for beginners while leading up to creating a center of excellence for those brands that are more advanced. Needless to say, you won’t want to miss it!

Here are some of the discussion topics we plan to cover.

1. Why is social customer care important? Let’s start with the basics and a simple example. Below is an existing BMW customer, wanting to buy a new one, that chose Twitter as his preferred channel to express his frustration over poor customer service.

By the way, nothing against BMW, I could have gone to any Global 1000 brand Twitter or Facebook page and found a complaint very similar to this one. The more important take away? This example shows why social customer service is so important.

2. Why is it critical to be transparent and resolve social customer care issues in the social channel? Resist the urge to take the conversation offline! Nothing is more frustrating than tweeting a brand only to get a response that says “Call or Email Us”.

3. How do I measure social care and how is it different from traditional social metrics? Here are a few examples;

Social Media Marketing Metrics	Social Service Metrics
Sentiment & Share of Conversation	How Many Customers Thanked Today
Friends, Followers, Views, Likes, ReTweets	How Many Customers Helped Today
Word Clouds & Hot Topics	Volume of Service Issues by Source (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Forums, Blogs)
Influencer Analysis	Top 10 Complaints & Inquiries in Social
Geo-Location Insights	Response Time & Escalations By Source

 

4. How do I link social customers to ‘real’ customers in your CRM system? For the answer, remember back 12 years ago when you started interacting with customers over email.

Apply for a store credit card (enter email address), call customer service (can I have your email address), join a loyalty program (email address), buy something online (create a username aka email address), want to receive coupons and special offers (email address), etc.

Fast forward and what do most Fortune 500 companies have? Giant CRM systems filled with customer information linked with an email address. At every consumer touch point its time to start collecting social profile information and linking to their customer record. (Social sign-in with Facebook is a great way to start)

5. How quickly should I respond in social? In industries like retail, restaurants and travel most social care issues are posted from a mobile device at the point of incident. Waiting 24 hours to respond, or only offering assistance 8am-5pm EST Monday-Friday, and the customer is long gone, literally and figuratively. 

6. Should I hire brand new agents or leverage agents from the call center team? That’s not a black and white, yes or no answer. Rather look at the profile of a successful social agent. Their character likely portrays a great sense of humor, good writing skills, creative, lover of social media, helpful person offline, pride in your products and brand. Check those boxes and I think you have your answer.

7. Marketing owns social media so how do I team with them on social care? One idea is to consider creating social media ‘swim lanes’ so marketing can focus on what they do best and customer care and focus on retaining consumers and driving loyalty. Here is a simple swim lane example;

Marketing/PR	Customer Service
Future Product Questions	Product Complaints
Campaign Complaints/Inquiries	Product Suggestions
Crisis Communications	Existing Ownership Product Inquiries
Blogger/Influencer Interactions	Warranty & Rebate Questions
Upcoming Events	Service & Policy Issues
Charity/Environmental Concerns	Thanking Customers For Compliments

 

8. How do I integrate my social media listening tool with my CRM system?  We’ll be discussing how social hub is helping clients monitor MORE social conversation with LESS people by automatically routing ‘actionable’ social interactions to the right resource. Who couldn’t use a little productivity bump?

9. It’s a surprise! I can’t tell you everything from our session! See you Monday at noon in San Francisco.

How Do I Find Chad at Dreamforce?

Next week November 18th-21st, Dreamforce, the largest software conference in the world, along with our amazing customers and partners take over the city of San Francisco. And I’m excited to be a part of it!

Marissa Mayer from Yahoo and Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook are both keynoting this year’s conference. I can’t wait to use their insights on women leading technology companies and share them with my little Sophia Rose.

Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce.com never disappoints in his keynote presentation and I hear this year he has a huge surprise up his sleeve. For an entrepreneur that has been a fountain of innovation the last 10 years, what could possibly be next?

One of things I appreciate most about the Salesforce.com culture is the holistic connected nature of my teammates. The understanding that being a happy person, giving back to your community, a great father, a great husband, a great friend, having fun, living a healthy lifestyle is all connected to being a successful productive member of the Salesforce.com team.

So in that regard, Deepak Chopra is the final keynote, if you see me break out in full meditation or yoga poses, you’ve been warned!

To top it all off Green Day at AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants will make sure it’s not all work and no play.

But make no mistake, Dreamforce is not just about the keynotes. This year there are over 1,200 break out sessions. I know exactly what you are thinking.  “Chad, with over 100k people at the conference, how am I going to find you?” Well look no further, here is my agenda for the week.

Monday, Nov 18th

12pm PST Westin St. Francis, Social Customer Care – The Basic Building Blocks

(Leading session with Matt Staub https://twitter.com/staubio, formerly led the social care program for H&R Block and now leading a social care practice at agency Graphicmachine http://www.graphicmachine.com/)

1.30pm PST Westin St. Francis, Social Media Measurement – Strategies for Measuring Social Media

(Moderating panel with Thomas Gallagher of Rally Software https://twitter.com/thomas_mktg, Margot Savell of RDI https://twitter.com/margotsavell and Dane Hartzell of Honeywell https://twitter.com/ItsDane)

Tuesday, Nov 19th

12pm-3pm PST Hilton Union Square, Circles of Success – Integrating Social Media & Customer Service

(I’ll be facilitating three 1 hour sessions with small groups of customers white boarding new innovative ideas on executing improved customer care in social media)

4pm-6pm PST Moscone South, Social Media Command Center at Executive Briefing Center

(Leading sessions for our client’s top executives on how social media command centers can drive social into the fabric of their company culture)

6pm-8pm PST Participating in a One on One Execute Briefing with Nestle and Salesforce.com on deploying a global social customer care program

8pm-11pm PST – Green Day and Blondie at AT&T Park

Wednesday, Nov 20th

9am-10am PST participating in a One on One Executive Briefing with Brown Forman (beverage company that makes Jack Daniels!) on creating a social media command center

10am-11am PST Participating in a One on One Executive Briefing with Grainger on creating a social media command center

12pm-4pm PST Moscone South, Social Media Command Center at Executive Briefing Center

5pm-6pm PST Participating in  a One on One Executive Briefing with Hill + Knowlton Strategies, a global public relations agency on how social media command centers can help them win more clients

8pm -11pm PST St. Regis Hotel, Marketing Cloud Speakeasy Party with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

Thursday, Nov 21st

9am-10am PST Westin St. Francis,  B2B Social Media – Not As Different As You Think

(Moderating a panel with Tristan Bishop of Symantec https://twitter.com/KnowledgeBishop, Kevin Espinosa of John Deere https://twitter.com/kevingespinosa and Thomas Gallagher of Rally Software https://twitter.com/thomas_mktg)

Friday, Nov 22nd

7am – Catch a flight back to Detroit in time to see Drew play his basketball game and then……SLEEP!

I love to meet new people, connect with old friends and see existing clients so I hope we have a chance to hang out at Dreamforce!

Photo Blog From Switzerland

Good morning everyone, how was your week? Hope everyone learned something new and feels good about their contribution at home and at work. You have my sincere thanks for deciding to click on this blog post!

Do me a favor, stop and think about the most beautiful place you have ever laid eyes on.  I’ve been extremely fortunate to travel to some nice places in my life. Places like Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park in Northern Michigan, hiking the rain forest in Hawaii, views of the Golden Gate Bridge with the San Francisco skyline in the background and gorgeous Lake Tahoe in the mountains.

I’ve also seen the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, rode the London Eye, strolled the streets of Savannah Georgia, drove thru the desert from San Diego to Las Vegas, visited the amazing wineries in Napa, stood amazed at the view from the top of the World Trade Center and swam in the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean.

But I have never seen something so beautiful as Lake Geneva and the Swiss Alps where I was lucky enough to spend the past week. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Here is what this beautiful mountain and lake scene looks like in the rain

This is the actual view from the Salesforce.com office in Switzerland (notice the white caps in the background)

European city have so much character with their cobble stone store and cafe lined streets

Since I started this blog to advocate for social media I thought I would just close with how social ties into these incredible photos.

First, without choosing a career in social media this trip to Switzerland would have never been possible.

Second, it has taken a lot of hard work in some not so amazing places to earn the spectacular views of the Swiss Alps. Places like my dark basement office at 6am trying to read and study how I can help my clients execute better in social. Places like late night conference rooms with no windows and cold pizza fine tuning important presentations with my colleagues. And last but not least dealing with the crazy airports, delays, cancelled flights and lack of sleep as the necessity of a life on the road on my social media journey takes its toll.

I hope all of you who have a career in social media or contemplating starting one realize the phenomenal opportunity we all have to make a difference.  It can be challenging and requires lots of hard work to make it to the mountain top, but as you can see the views are second to none up there.

Can’t wait to see where social media will take me next! Where is social taking you?

Part 5 – Worst Social Media Advice (Listening)

I hope everyone’s morning was as good as the one I had! I turn 37 today and woke up to lots of extra hugs and kisses from the kids.

Before I dive in, thank you! I know life is crazy hectic but if you are reading this you decided to spend a few minutes with me and for that I’m very gracious.

I have a question for you. When it comes to social media, what’s that itch you can’t seem to scratch? That one thing you just can’t figure out? I’m always looking for new inspiration for a future blog.

Let’s get to it!

Like many of you, I consider myself a student of social media and therefore I read lots of blogs, online articles and follow industry leaders on social networks. I’m also lucky enough to work for Salesforce.com on the Marketing Cloud team with some of the most innovative social minds and technologies on the planet. Finally I get to spend time with our amazing clients discussing current challenges and where social is headed next.

Through all this experience unfortunately I come across a lot of really bad social media advice. So a few weeks ago I started a five-week blog series highlighting the dark side of social media consulting and how you can spot the boneheads from the real experts.

I started the series with pointers on getting the most out of Sentiment and how to turn a basic metric into an actionable insight.

Next I wrote about how to avoid wasting time on measuring Competitors and putting your limited time, resources and budget towards competitive research that will actually provide a return.

Third, I covered the buzzword social media Insights. As we all know, insights alone don’t get us promoted, drive sales or a better customer experience. Most consultants don’t take the time to take an insight and turn it into an input into another part of the organization to really drive positive change.

Last week, I covered the 2nd biggest black eye in social media and that’s ‘Big Data’. Like Stephen Covey, the key here is begin with the end in mind. What do you want to know and if you knew it, how would it help your business.  For example, is there a relationship between how active a customer is in social media to buying more of your products?

Drum roll, ready for in my humble opinion the single worst piece of advice in social media? It’s going to shock you!

…

..

.

Listening!

Before you disagree, let me explain.

You might be thinking Listening is where all great social media programs start. Listening is the most important part of a successful social program. Without Listening first, just diving into social media is like a sailboat with a rudder.

We are in 100% agreement on all those statements. Here is where I hope to give you something to think about.

Most experts would agree there are about five business cases for social media, in other words, 5 reasons to spend time, money and resources on social media in the first place.

1. Create brand awareness and more effective marketing

2. Provide social customer care

3. Social lead generation and sales

4. Public relations and brand protection

5. Social research & development

I realize there are many other reasons to do social media but most if not all probably roll up to one of these five higher level objectives.

Here is the problem with Listening.

1. Listening alone will not create brand awareness or improve marketing. You have to create compelling content based on your listening efforts.

2. If your customer has a problem or question, just listening and not responding is actually just going to make the problem worse.

3. When consumers in social show interest in your products and you listen but don’t engage or provide a call to action, there is no social revenue potential.

4. If you your brand is unfortunate and has a crisis, listening to the negative conversation about your brand and not reacting with a well thought out PR plan can cause significant long-term damage.

5. When listening in social across an entire industry like cell phones or tablets as a Samsung might do for R&D, none of the insights, trends or product improvements are going to happen from listening alone. It takes analysis, sharing the insights internally with product management and building new or better products to turn an ROI on social listening.

The moral of the story is, I think Listening because it’s so critical is where all social software and service professionals concentrate.  But we have let down our customers if we don’t drive beyond listening as an important first step in the process to actually producing results from that effort.

This is where I see brands really needing a lot of help. By now most companies get that you should have a Facebook page and Twitter account to connect with customers.  The roadblock to get to the next level of social maturity for a lot of major brands is being stuck on Listening only.

This is why I think Listening is the source of the worst social media advice in the industry. Did I change your mind?

I really enjoyed blogging for you with the five-part series on bad social media advice, hope you learned at least one small thing that can help make you and your brand a social media rock star.

Talk to you again next week, I’ll be blowing out a few candles today!

Part 4 – Worst Social Media Advice (Big Data)

Good afternoon everyone! Enjoying your weekend? After another long week on the road I sure am. I can’t believe it snowed today at my daughter’s soccer game! That’s Michigan in April. I’m ready for spring, the golf course, playing outside with the kids and our outdoor fire pit. What are you looking most forward to?

Thanks for joining me again this week although I have to admit the Saturday blog routine has got to end, can’t wait for a week at home and getting back to my normal schedule.  I hope you enjoy this week’s post and you’ve had at least one take away from my 5 week blog series on bad social media advice.

This week the countdown reaches the second worst social media advice and that’s all the talk and no action around ‘Big Data’.

You may be familiar with the term ‘Big Data’ but until I started studying it a few months ago I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. So let’s start from the same page, this definition should help.

Big Data is a data set so large and complex that it makes capturing, storing, searching, analyzing and reporting the data virtually impossible for almost all traditional technologies in place today.  Big data is simply too much data to store in existing databases, it’s too much data to analyze, report or even capture.

So why is this a problem, why should we even care? Well the fundamental goal of data is to help companies and people make smarter decisions.

Here is a more plain English example with a company like Best Buy.

I bought a TV a few months ago. Let’s look at all the data involved in my decision before, during and after the purchase.

I go to Best Buy’s website and do some research.  Best Buy is going to store data on what did I search on, what I clicked, how long I spent on each page, what’s in my cart, what info they know about me, what special deals were offered and certainly all the product reviews available.

Then I went to Twitter and Facebook and asked my followers/friends what TV’s they like. Imagine the millions of conversations online about TV’s. And it’s not just the kind of data you are thinking about, its video and photos too.

I check my email and received a coupon from Best Buy. They will certainly store how many emails were sent, how many email addresses they have, how many people opened the email, and how many people clicked on the website after the email.

I go to the store and buy a TV and have the Geek Squad hang it on my wall.  There is point of sale data like what product I bought, how much did I spend, how many items did I buy, was the TV in stock, am I a loyalty member, and did I choose financing.

Finally I fill out a survey on the Geek Squad on my experience. Were they on time, was I happy with the service, would I recommend them.

Is your head hurting yet? Mine is!

Let’s quickly review. We have website data, product data, marketing and loyalty data, social media data, customer data, survey data, supply chain data, point of sale data, financial data and this is all for one customer and one transaction. I’ve been a customer for 15 years and Best Buy has millions of customers.

Consolidating all this data, then reporting on it to understand their customers better and the TV buying experience is an example of a ‘Big Data’ project.

What are some other social media and Big Data projects discovering?

Currently there are Big Data projects under way to analyze social data, consumer reviews, customer satisfaction data and economic data to predict stock price and financial performance of large companies.

Wouldn’t it be cool to understand how online activity through your website and social media actually drove offline sales into your retail environment? Now overlay that with historical weather data. When a big snowstorm is predicted should you turn up your online incentives because people don’t leave the house and buy more online? Following the storm, offer more in store incentives because people are eager to get out of the house.

I thought I would end with my favorite story about how Big Data can make a Big Difference.

Following the horrible earthquake in Haiti, 6,500 people died of Cholera (infection caused by bacteria in the small intestine causing severe diarrhea, vomiting and dehydration) because when patients seeking medical attention including hydration medicine, intravenous fluids and anti-bacterial fluids they were already out of stock and shipments were slow to arrive because of the earth quake.

A recent case study was published analyzing the social media data from Haiti, hospital check in data, medication inventory and medication orders and had a ‘Big Data’ project been in place more medicine would have been ordered and it would have arrived on average 11 days sooner, actually saving thousands of lives.

Wow! Talk about a rewarding project. Of course no one ever wishes for a natural disaster like the devastating earthquake in Haiti but hopefully ‘Big Data’ can save future lives.

Now that is some social media advice worth listening too!

Part 3 – Worst Social Media Advice – (Insights)

What a week gang! I owe you an apology!

I let you down missing my normal weekly blog entry on Thursdays.

Worked all day Monday and flew out to the west coast getting to my hotel about 3am EST.

Tuesday and Wednesday I was up at 5.30am for 6am calls to support teammates on the east coast.

Both nights after a full day of meetings, there were networking happy hours until 10pm.

Thursday up for early calls again and then an all day intense case study competition that lasted until late in the evening.

Friday I actually slept in late, 6.30am!

My team was fortunate enough to win the prestigious case study competition Friday morning (more on that in a future blog post) before rushing off to the airport for the long flight home to Detroit.

Did I mention I think I also won husband of the year as the designated driver for my wife and her friend as they enjoyed themselves at opening day for the Detroit Tigers?

Needless to say hopping off a plane at 8.30pm, picking up my bride and getting home at 10pm I didn’t have a spare minute to blog.  If you can forgive me, hopefully you will enjoy your Saturday evening glass of wine with me and learn a thing or two about social media.

2 weeks ago I thought it may be helpful for my blog readers to share a few thoughts on poor social media consulting practices. So I created a 5 Part Series on the topic counting down the worst social media advice.

What did you think about Topic 5 – Sentiment and Topic 4 – Competitors?

This week let’s have a conversation about Topic 3 – Social Media Insights!  Insights may be the biggest buzzword in social media.  It’s also probably the single biggest frustration point among executives with their social media teams.

Let me expand on why that is.

A few years ago when social media efforts were just launching, new insights like measuring positive/negative sentiment, share of conversation vs competitors and number of twitter mentions were a great start.

But let’s fast forward to the aggravated executive of today demanding a hard ROI on skyrocketing social media budgets. The simple fact is ‘insights’ alone don’t drive increased sales, improved customer experience or more effective marketing.

This past week in San Francisco I heard Radian6 Co-Founder Chris Ramsey speak on this exact topic and he provided a brilliant summary.

“Insights are an OUTPUT of social listening, but more importantly, they are an INPUT into some other part of the organization to make them actionable. Only then can you start having a social ROI conversation.”

So let’s talk about how to turn insights to action.

This is a purely hypothetical situation.  Assume the Nissan social media team is listening and they notice a spike in negative sentiment.  As discussed in my blog on measuring sentiment, it only becomes valuable when you do things like the following;

1. Break the negative sentiment down by brand and notice the Nissan Leaf generating the bulk of negative sentiment.

2. Break the negative sentiment down for the Leaf and notice its the Quick Charge Port driving negative sentiment.

3. Dig one layer further and the sentiment data shows the Quick Charge Port is supposed to charge the Leaf in 30 minutes, but consumers are claiming it takes 60 minutes.

However, we still haven’t turned insight to action.

So what SHOULD happen next?

1. A meeting with product management and product quality to communicate consumer feedback and validate the battery charge issue and understand root cause.

2. Involve engineering to fix and/or improve battery so issue does not impact future customers.

3. Communicate with existing Leaf owners on how the battery situation will be rectified.

4. Create a model to communicate the impact of social insights to action.

• Recall cost savings
• Lost sales due to bad quality reviews
• Bad PR and negative word of mouth
• Lost customers as loyalty decreases

Hopefully its clear the difference between just delivering ‘insights’ like negative sentiment and turning insights into actionable behavior that can impact sales, customer experience and cost savings.

You can make this blog actionable by working with your social media consultant Monday morning on turning some of your social listening OUTPUTS into actionable INPUTS to other parts of the organization!

Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll be back with you again on Thursday, April 11th.

Part 2 – Worst Social Media Advice (Competitors)

Welcome back this week to my growing army of ‘No Fluff’ social media friends.  First timers, glad you are here and please let me know what you think of the blog.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of people and companies touting themselves as social media experts, gurus and ninjas. Some are amazing professionals that I enjoy following, learn from, and really appreciate their contribution to furthering social media.

Others are flat-out bozos!

They aren’t driving real value for customers and certainly aren’t focused on the challenges that social professionals face in the trenches.  The worst part? They give really bad guidance that costs companies money and utilize short-handed resources ineffectively.

I thought I would give you the No Fluff guide on how to spot the BS! Last week I started a blog series highlighting the 5 worst crimes committed in social media.

Did you enjoy my point of view on Sentiment? Part 1 – Worst Social Media Advice Agree or disagree? Please share your social media horror stories in the comments below so everyone can learn how to spot a bozo!

#4 piece of social media advice to ignore is focusing too much on competitors.

If you are interviewing for a new job, is it a more valuable use of your time to focus on preparing and practicing for the interview or worrying about what the other candidates are going to do and what their qualifications are?

I use that analogy because a lot of brands I’ve worked with are struggling with some of the social media basics such as;

1. Responding to customers on their own Facebook or Twitter platforms

2. They struggle with creating compelling content that consumers enjoy

3. They are short-staffed, with small budgets and no overall social media strategy

4. They aren’t measuring how the social media resources and budget they do have is driving any real business value

Yet for some reason everyone loves to discuss their share of conversation reports against competitors and the insights they pull from competitor content and engagement.

I say get your own house in order first!

Here is a challenge I’ll leave you with.  Think about your most successful product launch in social, your best social campaign ever or recall the best month of content and customer engagement.  What was the major role that competitor insight played? Still waiting…………

If you are advanced in your social media maturity and have the resources and budget to take action on competitor brand monitoring here are a few ideas you might find helpful.

Events – Monitoring competitors at major media events like the recent South by Southwest show can prove a compelling actionable business case to compare brand awareness, brand association, and attendee feedback on important topics. The key is to dig deeper then share of conversation.

At SXSW one of Salesforce.com’s (the company I work for) competitors had more total mentions, but the vast majority of the mentions about this competitor were about a bus they were promoting for free transportation.  Salesforce.com mentions were dominated by discussion about the product, service and overall experience with our company.

Executives – There are a lot of stats coming out about the importance of a social C-suite to the overall health of the company. Tracking specific executives of your company vs competitors may create much needed urgency to get your CEO on twitter!

Social Campaigns – Insurance giants State Farm ‘Magic Jingle spots’ vs Allstate ‘Mayhem spots’ vs Progressive’s ‘Flo’s spots’ would certainly provide some actionable insights around the ROI of those campaigns and its impact on new customer acquisition and website visitors.

Customer Conquests – Some brands are aggressive in their engagement with consumers who complain about a competitor, especially on Twitter.  For example, a Hilton customer might tweet, “I hate @hilton, long flight from NYC to Paris, exhausted and no early check in again!” For Marriott this is a slippery slope so…

DO THIS “Sorry to hear your trip is off to a rough start, we are delighted you’ve chosen to visit Paris, enjoy the rest of your trip!”

NOT THIS “We always have early check in available, come check in right now!

Maybe I’m a lover not a fighter but in social taking the high road over the long-term is always going to help you come out on top.

Product Feedback – It would certainly be valuable for the Toyota Prius brand to monitor the Nissan Leaf brand. Again not for total mentions or share of conversation but segmenting the data to make it actionable.  For example, what is the specific comparison on price, warranty, battery, dealer and other purchase drivers.

So now you know how to dig deeper on sentiment and competitive an

Part 1 – Worst Social Media Advice (Sentiment)

I created this blog almost 2 years ago because I wanted to help people improve their social media efforts in the trenches.

I often find myself scratching my head in front of a white board with clients, valuable and talented, but a long way from the CEO’s desk, brainstorming solutions to real world every day problems.

The other reason for this blog is I thought there was way too much buzzword bingo, jive talkin’, full of sh*t consultants out there giving terrible advice. Hence the ‘No Fluff’ blog.

For the next month I’m going to write a 5 part blog series exposing the 5 worst offenses of social media consultants.  If you hear your current vendor discussing anyone of these concepts without going into the proper depth, RUN! And by all means keep me honest too!

#5 – Sentiment

Here are 10 “No Fluff” tricks in increasing positive Sentiment and turning it into a valuable action oriented indicator.

1. First, know your positive/negative sentiment score. You wouldn’t diet without stepping on a scale once a week to track your progress.
2. Track sentiment over time, is the trend going up or down over long periods.
3. Slice and dice sentiment across smaller sets of social posts.  For example, what is the sentiment of social posts tagged with your latest model/product, just the first day of a new campaign or product launch to get a first impression, what is the sentiment by topic such as community service posts, coupon posts, posts that include pictures, etc. The more granular you track sentiment, the more valuable it becomes.
4. Track sentiment for customers tagged as influencers.
5. Track sentiment for specific customer communities as in a technical support forum or your CEO’s blog.
6. Track sentiment by demographic data, men vs women, age brackets, geography to understand how men vs women view your content, if a 20-year-old likes your new campaign as much as a 50-year-old or if tweets irritate people in the south but are humorous in the north.
7. Compare sentiment 30 days before and 30 days after a crisis/PR issue to understand how long the negative sentiment stuck in social.
8. Compare sentiment of best selling or most mentioned products to understand if you have potential quality issues with popular products.
9. Swear words don’t always mean negative sentiment. “F*ck Yeah! New iPhone 5 comes out tomorrow!”
10. Beware the impact sarcasm has on sentiment accuracy. “Awesome job American Airlines, delayed again and missed my connection!”
11. Bonus – Don’t ignore neutral sentiment like most consultants. “Love my VW Passat, I’ve had two, affordable, drives great and good gas mileage.  But, every time I take it to the dealer they’re rude and I don’t trust them.” Valuable positive and negative insights to take action on.

If your sentiment is low, try these ideas for a little boost.

1. Most important, focus on relationships and satisfaction not the sentiment metric. When you get a negative comment, respond and repair the relationship so the customer’s satisfaction increases.
2. To increase positive sentiment, post helpful content proactively, not just sales and marketing content. Ask your Contact Center Manager for the top 10 questions people ask and then post the answers in your social channels. Think social FAQ’s.
3. If your response time is longer then 3-4 hours on social channels, cut it in half. Many consumers expect a response in less than an hour. That includes weekends.
4. Acknowledge the positive comments, social consumers like to share positive recognition with their peers. I see too many brands labeling positive comments as statements that aren’t actionable.  When a customer takes the time to say something nice on Facebook or Twitter, say thank you with a nice personalized comment.  Most likely it will be shared or retweeted.
5. The #1 thing you can do to boost settlement is to use the 11 ‘No Fluff’ tricks above and TAKE ACTION!  An insight is worth nothing if there is no action, AND THAT IS THE WORST FAULT OF BAD SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANTS!

See you next week for my thoughts on the 4th worst piece of social media advice!