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!

 

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!

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!

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!

Why Air Canada Failed Customer Service Training

Thanks so much for sticking with me for 8 straight weeks, can’t believe we are so far into 2013 already.  Hope you are enjoying my blog posts, I certainly enjoy your comments and for those that have signed up to receive No Fluff Social Media via email or share my blog on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn please allow me to return the favor.  What can I do to help you?

Just got back from a super fun trip to Dominican Republic so feeling nice and refreshed.  Prior to that I was visiting Radian6 in Canada and currently I’m in New York meeting new teammates at Buddy Media.  Been a bit of a whirlwind with 9 flights in the last 16 days and it got me thinking.

About 10 years ago I spent almost 2 years living in Europe and working with British Airways, Aer Lingus and Finn Air.  As a customer service advocate I couldn’t wait to dive in.

If you love a challenge, obviously airlines are at the bottom of the barrel when comes to deliver a memorable consumer experience. I should share that although I blog mostly about social media, this post is about my first and only true love, customer service.  I’ll understand if you want to skip out now and I’ll see you right back here next week.

Caught in my customer service cross hairs on a recent flight was Air Canada.  Here is why.

I’m sitting down reading my Kindle waiting to board my flight.  The gate check in agent makes an announcement over the loud-speaker.

With an aggressive tone she states, “We are in an oversold situation this afternoon.  Three of you must rebook on a later flight or this plane is not taking off.  I repeat, this flight is oversold, unless three volunteers come up to the desk to book a later flight, no one will get to their final destination. We are offering a $500 flight voucher to any passenger who will rebook.”

Did her name tag say Customer Service Agent or Drill Sargent? You may be thinking, just relax Chad, $500 is a lot of money and I’m sure a herd of people sprinted up to the counter tripping each other on the way.

Not exactly the case! I was already 2 days late in getting home thanks to the winter storm Nemo.  I’m sure many of my fellow travelers were in the same situation.  Some probably had it a lot worse and weren’t able to get a hotel room and literally were sleeping in the airport.

And let’s not forget the poor crabby check in agent. It’s very likely because of the storm and hundreds of cancellations she was working overtime and had been yelled at by obnoxious passengers all day.

But all this is not the point is it.  Regardless of circumstances, is this how you speak to customers? Is this the best way to motivate people to rebook?  I’m pretty sure it was not the passengers fault Air Canada overbooked the flight.

Here is what I would have said if I was working behind the check in counter with that microphone in my hand.

“I have an announcement that a few lucky people are going to be very excited about.  First, thank you for being so patient and friendly here in the gate today. No question it has been a long weekend for some of you, I especially feel for those that are either traveling with children or have not been able to get home to see their kids.  If you wouldn’t mind giving me your attention for just a few moments I have an important announcement you will certainly want to hear.

Although its freezing and there is lots of snow outside right now, it’s a sunny beautiful 80 degrees in the Caribbean.  Imagine the sand between your toes and fruity drink in your hand on the beaches of Mexico.  Perhaps there is a loved one some where that you haven’t been able to see in so long it hurts.

Well for the first 3 people who would give me the pleasure of rebooking you on the very next flight will receive a $500 flight voucher to swap those snow boots for flip-flops. Or perhaps you would rather warm your heart with a hug only a special friend or family member can give.

Truthfully, I’m a bit embarrassed to have to inconvenience 3 of you.  This overbooking situation is Air Canada’s fault, not yours, and I understand you just want to get home. Please accept my heart-felt apology.

I know some, maybe many of you will want to work with me to rebook your flight but I can only accommodate the first 3 customers. Thank you for considering my offer.”

If my style and customer focused voice seems aligned with how you would like to speak to your customers but you are struggling with the words please contact me, I love to share my passion and help others.

I hope you crush it this week, thank you for reaching my blog. Next week I’ll be writing from San Francisco where I’ll be in new hire boot camp with Salesforce.com.  Delta better have a friendly check in agent!