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

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

How do I measure the value of social care?

What metrics and KPI’s should I track?

What is the ROI of social care?

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

Enjoy.

#1 – Inbound Volume by Day

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

#2 – Inbound Volume by Hour

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

#3 – Response Time

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

#4 – Case Close Time

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

#5 – Customer Satisfaction or Net Promoter Score

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

#6 – Total Volume Trended Over Time

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

#7 – Likes, Shares, Favorites, Retweets

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

#8 – Top Issues, Questions, Praise

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

#9 – Open Case Visibility

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

#10 – Volume by Social Site

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

#11 – Reporting by Tags/Labels

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

#12 – Reporting by Influencers

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

#13 – Cross Channel Reporting

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

#14 – Engagement Rate

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

#15 – Social Profiles Captured

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

#16 – Social Resolution Rate

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

#17 – Productivity

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

 

Stop Losing Customers By Doing This One Simple Thing

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

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

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

It usually goes something like this:

Please say your name and press pound.

Me: Chad Schaeffer

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

Me: Chad Schaeffer

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

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

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

No wonder social care is growing so quickly!

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Complain on Facebook and Twitter

What’s fun and exciting this week? My last post on “How Kroger Ruined, Then Saved My Daughter’s Birthday” was the third most popular post of all time here on No Fluff Social Media. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read it.

I often write about how big companies can improve their customer care in social media and I got to thinking perhaps some of you would be interested to know how to complain or ask a question of those brands on Facebook or Twitter.

For example, what if you get really bad service at Kroger or your frustrated with your AT&T cell phone bill always being wrong. Today, you may dial the 1-800 customer service number and may not find a good experience.

It’s possible you have to fumble through one of those dreaded IVR’s, you might wait on hold for a while or be limited to only calling from 9-5pm EST Monday through Friday.

Maybe you’ve tried email and had to fill out one of those pain in the butt contact us forms then had to wait 2-3 days for a simple response.

The emergence of Facebook and Twitter has given consumers like you and I a new convenient channel to interact with the companies we do business with like grocery stores, airlines and restaurants.

Interested? Below I’ve provided directions on how to interact with brands and a few examples so you can see what other consumers post.

The first example is Kroger on Facebook.

1. First, navigate to the Kroger Facebook page.

2. Locate the comment box on the top left side just under their cover photo.

3. Write your question, complaint or praise and click post. Simple as that. (keep it professional, swearing and being disrespectful may get your comment deleted or ignored)

Below is an example of a typical complaint a customer may have on a brand page like Kroger.

Here is an example from the AT&T Facebook page. Sometimes other customers will comment on your post.

Ideally, a brand will respond to your post very quickly like in this Lowe’s example below. Reminder, you can post questions and even give a positive shout out, Facebook comments aren’t just for complaining. Within the hour, Lowe’s responded with helpful follow-up information.

Let’s move from Facebook to Twitter.

A few days ago I posted a comment on the Delta Airlines Twitter account. I flew from Detroit to Chicago last week and they announced that due to the short nature of the flight, there was no time for drink service.

That seemed strange since my Southwest and American Airlines flights from Detroit to Chicago in the past month both served drinks. Obviously not a huge deal but I thought I would send Delta a tweet. I think you’ll find it interesting what happened from there.

First I wanted to find the Delta Airlines Twitter handle so I did a Google search. (Some companies have created a specific customer service Twitter handle like @DeltaAssist)

Second, I clicked the blue post button in the top right corner of the Delta Twitter Bio. Next I typed my comment in the comment box. Last I just hit Tweet. (Notice on the left Delta has posted the first names and Twitter initials of their Twitter customer service team)

First, Delta did not take the time to respond to my tweet. But guess who did? Since I mentioned American Airlines in my tweet they responded almost immediately which led to a back and forth engagement. Pretty cool!

Here is an example from Best Buy, it appears they are monitoring closely since they responded 2 minutes after the post with an offer to help.

This guy is not happy with Volkswagen!

A few keys to remember

1. Not all brands are good at monitoring and responding to questions and complaints on Facebook and Twitter. Your comment might be ignored.

2. Sometimes brands won’t answer your complaint or question in social media but will just respond with “call or email us” which can be really frustrating.

3. The above example screen shots were done from my laptop, however, it works the exact same way from the Facebook and Twitter mobile apps which is why it’s so convenient!

4. If you post a complaint later at night or on the weekends, expect a potential delay in response. Some brands are monitoring just during normal business hours, the good news, more and more companies are expanding their coverage.

Social Customer Care has given us as consumers a more powerful voice to fight back against bad customer service. Brands understand the viral nature of social media and are scared that just one bad experience can explode into a gigantic public relations nightmare.

Not to mention companies understand that what other consumers post on Facebook, Twitter and review sites help us determine whether we are going to buy a product or not.

In the past you’ve heard the word of mouth saying, “If a customer has a bad experience, they may tell 10 friends.” Well in the world of social media, “If a customer has a bad experience they may tell 10,000 friends!”

If you thought this post was helpful and your family or friends may be interested in how to post a comment on a brand’s Facebook or Twitter account please share this post, thanks so much again for reading my blog.

Photo Blog From Switzerland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My New Favorite Social Ad of All-Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Keeps Me Up At Night

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

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

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

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

Part 5 – Worst Social Media Advice (Listening)

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

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

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

Let’s get to it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

..

.

Listening!

Before you disagree, let me explain.

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

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

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

1. Create brand awareness and more effective marketing

2. Provide social customer care

3. Social lead generation and sales

4. Public relations and brand protection

5. Social research & development

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

Here is the problem with Listening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part 4 – Worst Social Media Advice (Big Data)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is your head hurting yet? Mine is!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now that is some social media advice worth listening too!

Part 3 – Worst Social Media Advice – (Insights)

What a week gang! I owe you an apology!

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

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

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

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

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

Friday I actually slept in late, 6.30am!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me expand on why that is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what SHOULD happen next?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part 2 – Worst Social Media Advice (Competitors)

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

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

Others are flat-out bozos!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. They struggle with creating compelling content that consumers enjoy

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

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

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

I say get your own house in order first!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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