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.

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 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!

Salesforce New Hire Boot Camp Diary – Part 2

Welcome to No Fluff Social Media! You are awesome for spending a few minutes reading my blog and it means a lot to me. Thanks!

If you were with me last week I shared some thoughts and pictures on my first week at Salesforce.com New Hire Boot Camp in San Francisco.  I was away for almost 2 full weeks and if you liked last week’s post, below is part 2.

Day 6 – Wife’s Birthday/Weed/BoomBoom After an incredible week one of boot camp I have to admit I woke up a little depressed Saturday morning.  My gorgeous wife Staci was turning 29 again and I was thousands of miles away.  As you can see below she was distraught???

I was also exhausted….six presentations a day, evening social events, early 7am calls 5 days in a row I needed the day to recharge the battery.  I love music so I threw on the Beats by Dre headphones and headed down to the beach. There are two major food groups in San Francisco, bread bowls and weed.  I’m convinced I was the only one out of hundreds of people not smoking a little mary jane right on the beach.

It was an overcast day about 60 degrees and maybe it was my inner hippie coming out but something about the acoustic version of the Eagles “Hotel California”, staring off at the golden gate bridge, thinking about my family, my new dream job, so many happy smiling people around, everything seemed to be ‘just right’ in that moment in time.

With my wife celebrating in Detroit I wasn’t going to let her have all the fun. So I picked one of San Francisco’s many fabulous restaurants, 1300 Fillmore and checked out the local live music scene and met up with my new crew of international friends for some blues at John Lee Hooker’s famous Boom Boom Room.

Day 7 – Golf. I didn’t have clubs or shoes or balls or tees or even a golf shirt but when you have the opportunity to play Presidio, the second oldest golf course west of the Mississippi built in 1895 you can’t pass it up.  As you can see from these views, I wasn’t disappointed, even if the fog, mist and cold did roll in on the back 9.

Day 8 – V2MOM. Enough of hanging out at the beach with my tree hugger friends, jamming on my air guitar and playing golf. Monday morning it was back to boot camp.

My most memorable moment from day 8 was the overview of the Salesforce.com career planning tool called V2MOM which stands for Vision Values Methods Obstacles and Metrics.  I received an email from CEO Marc Benioff with his V2MOM attached and a note about the importance to our culture and performance, it was clear this is a religion for Salesforce.

In case you were wondering, my areas of focus this year are going to include;

Day 9 – Happy Hour. Salesforce.com has a remarkable culture and two things specifically stood out. First, they love to celebrate success, and because they have so much, let’s just say its a fun place to work.  Second, even though Salesforce is a three billion dollar company with almost 11,000 employees their most senior executives are extremely accessible, visible, approachable and engaging.

So Tuesday night to celebrate 2012 success under the stars at an ocean side lounge by the bay bridge Maria Martinez, one of the top executives in the company, personally thanked the remarkable customer’s for life team for their contribution.

By the way is there a better team name then Customers For Life? Love it!

Day 10 – Test Day. One of the key unique differentiators no one can replicate is the Salesforce.com ‘Customer Success Journey’.  It’s a staggering list of resources, people and process invested in our customer’s success all AFTER becoming a client.  It’s impressive to say the least.

After 10 days, well over 50 presentations, team building activities, social events and a fun weekend prior to getting on a plane for home each person had to successfully deliver in person a 20 minute presentation demonstrating our knowledge of the customer success journey.  And yes I passed.

Finally, thank you to the incredible staff including Monica, Daryl and Nicole for your tireless work and effort to manage a 10 day event for 250 people.

Thank you to all the inspiring speakers who shared their time with all the newbies, everyone is fired up and ready to rock’n’roll.

Final thoughts on Salesforce.com boot camp.

55 employees went to Nicaragua to build bridges so kids can go to school during flood season.

Salesforce had 30,000 internal job referrals last year. Happy people want to share with their friends.

If you think vision, mission statements and culture are just foo foo. Don’t waste your time applying.

Salesforce has a lot of women in management, I bet that is why they have such high employee and client satisfaction. Generally, I’ve found women to be better listeners and more relationship focused. Needless to say I’ve worked with almost all dudes throughout my career and I love the diversity.

Salesforce is laser focused on social media and mobile. And they get it. Look out. $3B today…first cloud company to $10B sooner than you think.

If you aren’t using an internal social tool for employee collaboration you are going to get your ass kicked.

It’s hard to imagine another company having this much fun.

You don’t own your brand. Your customers do! So what is more important than trust?

The bottom line…… Fortune 500 companies partnering with Salesforce are growing 48% faster than fortune 500 companies not partnering with Salesforce.

Actually, here is the real bottom line. 1+1+1. Salesforce donates 1% of employee time, revenue and software to charities and the highlight of the trip was making a little girl’s day at the Boys & Girls Club.

My Salesforce Boot Camp Diary – Part I

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, I am so grateful you share a few minutes of your time reading my blog. It’s a privilege to blog for you, enjoy this week’s post.

Starting my new job at Salesforce.com has been a whirlwind. Radian6 training in Canada, Buddy Media training in NYC, a quick vacation to Dominican Republic but the grand daddy of all trips is the famous 10 day Salesforce.com boot camp at headquarters.

It’s a shame I had to go all the way to San Francisco, poor me! Is there a more picturesque city in the world than San Francisco? Check out my view from the hotel (Alcatraz).

Boot camp was an unbelievable experience. If your interested in what its like to work for one of the most innovative, respected and fastest growing companies in the world, keep reading!

Day 1 – 250. That’s the number of sales and professional services consultants starting within the last month at Salesforce.com. The first thing I noticed, everyone was wearing a smile. Already it was different. The room was bursting at the seams with energy.

Salesforce.com could have chosen to focus on a number of areas the first day. Sales, growth, technology, company history, honestly I was expecting customer success.

Instead, the day’s focus was TRUST. Earning and keeping our client’s trust. Wow! Pretty strong first impression.

I would love to share details about the amazing speakers but I honestly can’t wait to tell you about my favorite part of the day.

This little girl!

One core value of Salesforce.com is their philanthropy program called 1-1-1. 1% of time, revenue and products donated to charity every year.

The expectation is every employee spends 6 days a year volunteering. Upon completion, Salesforce will write a check for $1,000 to a charity of your choice. If you give out of your own pocket, they match dollar for dollar up to $5,000 for every single employee. All 10,000!

Salesforce gave us the opportunity on our very first day to give back to the San Francisco community and I chose to spend a few hours at the Boys & Girls Club.

I have to admit a tear crawled down my cheek when my new little friend gave me a hug goodbye and asked if I was coming back to play with her again tomorrow.

Day 2 – Chatter. The highlight of day 2 was the incredible collaboration on our internal social media tool called Chatter. Think of it as a professional Facebook. You can follow people, like and comment on posts. The participation, knowledge sharing, learning, teamwork and networking going on among the 250 new hires was astounding.

Day 3 – Video. After a full 9 hour day, we had 3 hours to create and film a 5 minute video illustrating our knowledge of the products we have been learning about. Divided into teams of 7, we were given a business case of a struggling company and our mission was to ‘fix’ the fake company by aligning our solutions to their business challenges. Although nobody was confused for Robert Deniro, how cool of a project is that?

I titled this day ‘Video’ for one other reason. If its one thing the world needs, it’s another ‘Harlem Shake’ video and our boot camp delivered with almost 2,700 views in less than a week.

Day 4 – Mr. Twitter. Content wise day 4 was my favorite. We learned about Customer Service and Social Media products.

Prior to boot camp I created and shared a Twitter #hashtag (#feb13bc). Surprisingly it was not a very social group on Twitter so I held a few ‘Getting Started on Twitter’ classes after the boot camp sessions.

I thoroughly enjoy helping people create an account, follow a few people and send their first tweets. It was icing on the cake to be recognized as the social media star by a marketing executive and the nickname Mr. Twitter.

Afterwards, it was a thrill to get up in front of everyone and talk about the value of social media.

(If you are reading this and you aren’t on Twitter but want to be, email me at chadmschaeffer@gmail.com. In 20 minutes you will be tweeting like a teenager.)

Day 5- Hate/Love. This petite pregnant innocent looking women literally jumps on stage and says, “Everybody raise your right hand and repeat after me. I want to beat our competition. I will not lose to them. I’m here so I can make a shitload of money, retire early and dig my toes in the sand somewhere warm.”

That from the head of our competitive analysis team. She dropped a swear word, getting rich and the beach. If I wasn’t married and she wasn’t pregnant I think it would have been love at first sight. Needless to say after 29 training sessions, right before lunch on a Friday, I was reminded that great content with powerful charisma is an unstoppable combination for any presenter.

At one point I literally wanted to jump in a UFC ring with someone from Oracle she had me so fired up.

Ironically when we came back to lunch the 31st session of the week was about showing gratitude and appreciation for your teammates. We did a neat exercise where you had to tape a sheet of paper on your back and then go right something kind on other people’s sheets.

The moral of the story, it feels better to give then receive and give even if you don’t know if you’ll get.

That’s a wrap on week 1. Stay tuned for part II next week when I share how I spent the weekend and week two of boot camp. Below is the title for Day 6 so you won’t want to miss it!

Day 6 – Wife’s Birthday/BoomBoom.

Knocked Off Work/Life Balance…..

Wow! Over 100 of you read my blog last week, thank you so much for making me a part of your week. I really appreciate all the interesting comments. I can tell you are passionate about customer service and promise to blog more about it in the future.

As an active father in my three children’s lives I knew starting a new job at Salesforce.com was going to require some sacrifice.  I am eager to learn and work hard and prove Salesforce.com made the right decision in hiring me.

So when I had the opportunity to spend a week in Fredericton, Canada at Radian6 headquarters, meet my new teammates and get some product training it was a no brainer (even if the #nemo blizzard trapped me there for 2 extra days).

The day after I returned Staci and I headed to the Dominican Republic for a vacation planned months in advance. Our return flight landed around midnight, well after the kids were in bed.

The alarm went off at 5.45am the very next morning, before the kids woke up, and I was headed to NYC for training on Buddy Media. I was fortunate to return last Friday night at 8pm just before bedtime. Finally spending time with the kids, I swear it was the fastest weekend in history.

This past Sunday night I boarded a plane for San Francisco.  This time it will be 12 days before I see the kids. The longest I have ever gone without giving them a hug, feeling those little hands in mine or kissing them on the forehead good night.

In total I will have seen Drew, Sophia Rose and Isaac 3 out of 31 days.  For some dads that may not be that big a deal but I feel like I’m trading in my heart and soul. Not overshadowed is the amazing patience, understanding and sacrifice my wife Staci also has to make when I’m out of town.

Since the day my first child Drew was born more than 7 years ago, the single biggest challenge in my life has been balancing work and fatherhood.  In talking with a lot of other professional mom’s and dad’s I know I’m not alone.

The challenge is simple to describe, but not easy to solve. I want to make enough money that I can provide them with opportunities to travel, play sports and other freedoms that come with financial security.  More importantly, I want them to see thru my actions that to be successful in life, not just work, it takes a strong work ethic, ambition and sacrifice.

Easy right? But my kids have no idea what I do and they don’t care how much money I make. They do know when I take the time to read to their class, coach their soccer teams or have breakfast with them before school.

So yes it’s a big sacrifice to attend almost 2 straight weeks of new hire boot camp.  Fortunately there are 250 new family members here in San Francisco.  In just 3 days I’ve already volunteered at the Boys & Girls Club, done the Harlem Shake, shot a 5 minute video on how to sell Salesforce.com all with a team made up of Californians, Australians, Europeans, New Yorker and someone all the way from Singapore. I’m keeping a daily diary of my new hire boot camp experience and I can’t wait to share it with you next week.

So Drew, Sophia Rose and Isaac….Daddy misses you very much. I look at your pictures on my phone all the time and everyone here at boot camp wonders where you get that beautiful blond hair.

Staci I love you, thanks for sacrificing for me so I can thrive in my new career adventure, Salesforce.com is so worth it! I appreciate you sneaking these cards into my suitcase, your stud muffin will be home soon!

How to Solve the #1 Challenge in Social!

For those of you who have joined me every week in 2013 here on the no fluff social media blog I really appreciate you. If its your first time checking it out, Welcome!

Working for the Salesforce.com Marketing Cloud I get to discuss social media with the world’s largest brands everyday and there is almost always one common challenge.

How do I know if my customer Chad Schaeffer, who lives in Plymouth, Michigan, and has an email of chadmschaeffer@gmail.com and the new 313 area code cell phone is the same guy on Twitter @ChadSchaeffer.

BTW…..Did you realize there are three Chad Schaeffer’s in South Dakota alone? This can be a tricky problem!

In the world of marketing and customer service everything starts with knowing who your customers are and this challenge in social media has companies pulling their hair out. Some of the systems being used to store customer data can’t even capture twitter handle.

I think the reasons are obvious why marketers want to know who you are in social media, things like;

1. They want to target you based on demographic data

2. They want to target you based on what you do and where you go online

3. They want to target you based on what you have bought in the past

Likewise in customer service

1. They want to personalize their service, maybe give you the white glove treatment if you are an influencer

2. They want to know if you have called, emailed or chatted with them before about your issue/question

3. They want to build a customer history for you, understanding what your experience has been like with their brand

So how do you match twitter handles with your existing customer data?  Don’t do what I’ve seen some companies trying to do. Building complex search algorithms that match Twitter profile data with customer data in a CRM database and try to merge the two together automatically.

The solution is far easier and we only have to go back 13 years in history to find it.

It’s called email.

When I first started working in CRM in 2000, brands began preparing for consumer email.  Personal email starting becoming popular around 1995 but it always takes a few years for companies to catch up to consumers.

In 2000 it was the same question, people are sending me emails from bigbooty@aol.com and slimshady@hotmail.com, how do I know who they are?

Remember what happened next?

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), want to stop junk mail and join or email list (email address).

Fast forward and what do most Fortune 500 consumer base companies have? Giant CRM systems filled with consumer information linked with an email address.

I’m just not smart enough to think of the really advanced brilliant technological solutions so I have to do the best I can with my average smarts and find the simple no fluff common sense approaches like start asking your consumers for their twitter handle every time they interact with you!

Here is the last point, again similar to email. Your customers data privacy should be a high priority, same with only using that twitter handle for things your consumer has agreed to.  Let’s learn from the credibility many companies have lost by spamming consumers.

Heading to Punta Cana for a few days, I hope wherever you are the sun is shining on you as well! Until next week.