An honest look at how digital and social media can be used to create tangible value for companies, customers and consumers. Authors: Magan Arthur & Rob Mallens With inputs from: Sumathi Venkitaraman, Head, Marketing at CustomerXPs Software www.customerxps.com
Are we missing the point? Digital channel hype versus good old customer value An honest look at how digital and social media can be used to create tangible value for companies, customers and consumers February 2012 A White Paper By Magan Arthur Rob Mallens With inputs from: Sumathi Venkitaraman, Head, Marketing at CustomerXPs Software Private Limited The Vice-President, Global Digital Services at a large life science company Gillis de Fouw, Front Office Manager, Ziggo Business Joost Augusteijn, Brand Strategist Rabobank The Senior Director of Marketing Operations at a large life science company and thanks also to: Prof. David Meader, Director, Center for Socially Responsible Business at the Mills College in California
Transcript
Are we missing the point?
Digital channel hype versus good old customer value
An honest look at how digital and social media can be used to create tangible value for companies, customers and
consumers
February 2012
A White Paper By
Magan ArthurRob Mallens
With inputs from:Sumathi Venkitaraman, Head, Marketing at CustomerXPs Software Private Limited The Vice-President, Global Digital Services at a large life science companyGillis de Fouw, Front Office Manager, Ziggo BusinessJoost Augusteijn, Brand Strategist RabobankThe Senior Director of Marketing Operations at a large life science companyand thanks also to: Prof. David Meader, Director, Center for Socially Responsible Business at the Mills College in California
INTRODUCTION In search of the digital media silver bullet we are losing the very thing we set out to improve: value. The three authors of this paper met on LinkedIn – with no prior connection – with the aim of taking an honest and realistic look what companies large and small could do to create tangible value through digital and social means of engaging employees, peers, investors, customers, and consumers. We would like to de-hype the social/digital channel discussion and focus on strategy through listening, authentic and meaningful messages and well thought through engagement experiences.
Razorfish, arguably the leading digital agency, published a six month study, Liminal, which is focused on customer engagement in this time of great transition. Here is a link to the research: http://liminal.razorfish.com
From the Razorfish LinkedIn Post: “We took a ground up, customer centric approach to understand things like -- how do marketers make sense not only of divergent touch points, but the disparate reasons why customers gravitate to them, and how this affects the continuing evolution of how consumers choose to engage with a brand.Here are few things that came as a surprise to many in the industry, specifically:> Though social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and the geo-location social service (such as Foursquare) are being quickly adopted, customers don’t always view them as an important way to engage with brands.> When we asked consumers to prioritize what was important to them when engaging with a brand, they ranked the following priorities in exactly this order, no matter how we looked at the data: feeling Valued, Trust, Efficiency, Consistency, Relevancy and Control (We call these six engagement qualities the Engagement Elements.) In other words, in a world full of engagement touch points, the most important things to everyone are to feel valued by the companies they do business with, to get their need addressed quickly, and to feel the companies they engage with can be trusted.> Even as “the consumer is in control” has become a mantra in the digital age, Control came in dead last. Apparently, the consumer doesn’t need to be in as much control as we thought, seeing other things, as far more important.”What stands out in this is that the six engagement qualities would also apply to most employees of any company, in terms of values we seek in our workplaces. We want to be valued and we want to work in an environment of trust in which we can get things done efficiently and consistently. In that sense digital channels and social networks can and should be viewed as tools for engagement in and outside the company. The goal has to be to strengthen the quality of any engagement.
The authors, who come from very different backgrounds and live in three different continents, have found that despite these differences our experiences have led us to very similar conclusions in how digital and social tools can help organizations improve engagement on all levels. We have grouped the paper in three sections:
• Strategy
• Message
• Experience
STRATEGY – Think and listen before you actWith the book Groundswell published in 2008 by Harvard Business Press we had a first comprehensive approach to strategic planning of digital and social approaches to engaging inside and outside of organizations with a goal of increasing the value of these engagements. Many lessons described in that book are still relevant but as the Razorfish study mentioned above shows we have learned a lot more about what works and does not work well in digital and social engagement. The time of just experimenting should be over. Organizations large and small can now approach digital and social channels with a clear strategy.
It is important to highlight that such a strategy should not be merely a marketing activity but is should be a business strategy. In general we can distinguish a few core areas that can be the focus of any such strategy.
• Social and digital marketing and communication (inbound and outbound)For established products that can range from basic presence to participation to influencingFor new products that can rage from product intro and trail sites to product research to product design
• Internal social networks From communication to knowledge sharing and collaboration
• Social and digital servicesFrom online support and account management to product communities and patient adherence programs
• Social and digital commerce and productsFrom traditional eCommerce to fully virtual products and services in media, travel, health, entertainment, b2b and more.
Each of these strategies has very different goals and measures and each can be broken down further into sub categories that often require a different set of skills, tools and approaches. Any organization should be very clear on the strategic direction down to the sub category and have established goals and measures based on the available best practices. Establishing a senior
executive led digital strategy board is a best practice and should be a first step. In almost all cases will it be helpful for this board to work across internal lines and jointly established strategies between sales, marketing and IT for external facing marketing strategies or between Support, R&D and IT for service related strategies etc. As the Vice-President, Global Digital Services at a large life science and consumer goods company puts it:
“We created a Global Digital Board, which brings together our brand, technology and operation teams to jointly discuss and decide on strategies related to our digital and social engagements. We seek to leverage our experiences, tools and processes globally. The shared services we can now offer our global marketing teams are providing a host of new capabilities at significantly reduced cost.”
A second step is listening and understanding. There exists a wealth of information that can inform the direction and approaches of any strategy defined. The two mistakes to avoid are:
1) Don't forget all the information you already have from your support team, sales team, and research groups and from your initial digital projects or programs – your teams likely learned a lot. Some call this holistic analysis or holistic listening as opposed to just social listening.
2) Don't get into an overwhelm and information overload state – ask simple questions. Avoid analysis paralysis.
Between the information you have and the breadth and depth of the virtual data sources out there, almost any questions could be analyzed. However most companies are not ready for the flood of data. Moving from basic social analysis to true business intelligence is a sign of high maturity but if overdone too early may cripple less mature organization.
The Senior Director of marketing operations at a large life science company put it this way:
”We began too aggressively with tagging and tracking our messaging. Metadata and insights were buried in tons of data and not providing actionable measures to marketers. We should have started more simply with tagging and tracking the top five things we wanted to know from our messaging providing strong insights and actionable measures”
Answering some simple questions that really impact the strategy can be a very effective start to any strategy. For example:
• What are the three predominant statements about our product or service that influence the perception of our brand and identity in the social communities?
• What is the overall sentiment about our product or service? • What are the three biggest complaints and what are the three biggest incentives to
work with us over our competitor?• Can we group our clients into a few simple digital persons that we can then serve
better because we understand their preferences or sentiments regarding our product or service?
• What messages we have sent in the past 3, 6, and 12 months have resonated the most and created the most virtual chatter?
• How many of our customers have smart phones? Do they access them as a personal or business tool or both?
• Where in our sales and service, production or quality teams could we make better use of Facebook and Twitter like tools to make collaboration and knowledge management easier and more fun?
The above are just some examples of simple questions to get started. Advanced holistic listening and social business intelligence can help with many aspects:
1. Understanding the consumer – profiling/targeting2. Understanding of your own workforce – knowledge/idea sharing, collaboration3. Understanding the need – new product and service design4. Understanding the markets and trends – product and service road-maps5.Understanding specific problems – internal and external peer communities – product
support – open source and joint development (this paper is one example)
It is simply not enough to just have a web site or “be where your clients are” and bombard the twitter followers with basic marketing blur. We need to think about value of every engagement. How can we make it easier for a person we engage with a product, tool, information or another person that could help him or her do whatever it is we now know they do?
What has to be understood is that digital and social are not low cost quick tools. They often represent significant strategic opportunities and risk with high costs for building, monitoring, responding, reviewing and approving the new content. Also technology even in the cloud is not cheap and there will be cost for failures, as not all approaches will work out.
Some companies may find that a simple presence through a web site will suffice but in all other cases digital and social should be taken up as an executive strategy exercise on par with establishing a new product line or an M&A activity as the right digital strategy very well may include both of these aspects.
MESSAGE – Meaning and authenticityOne of the most interesting aspects of social and networked marketing is that we now deal with communities and interlinked humans not with masses, as in mass media. Masses have been studied and we know that humans in large groups tend to act in very simplistic or animalistic patterns. However the new digital frontier has created a different phenomenon. Communities and networks are intelligent. Therefore the messages that we send into those channels have a very different impact. It is the authenticity and the actual news worthiness of the message that makes the difference. It is sure a “cool” factor to send it in a nice flash movie or via twitter or even think
of a multichannel approach but that effort drafts the need to actually have something to say.1
Through holistic listening and evaluating the many data sources available today companies can get better answers to questions like:
• Who are our customers?• What do they think of us and our products?• What kind of service do they expect?
Instead of trying to adapt to all possible outcomes of the questions above, organizations have the opportunity to use these insights to become more aware of their own identity and start acting and communicating accordingly. Becoming aware of one's identity means providing answers to questions like:
• Who are we? Are we like that to our employees?• Who do we want to be for our customers, partners, employees and investors?• What role can social engagement play in that identity?
The answers to the questions above give the ultimate frame of reference towards authentic communication in the digital channels. It also creates a clearer frame of the desired working environment for employees and more recognizable products and services.
Many companies have already engaged in a process to determine their identity and have been able to translate that exercise to clear company values both internal and external. Many of them have transformed those values to a branding strategy. Not many companies however have made a translation towards the branded customer experience especially when it comes to social channels. Very few have made the brand experience part of the internal company culture. The positive effects of doing so can be dramatic as Gillis de Fouw, Front Office Manager, Ziggo Business describes:
"By defining a "Ziggo Business experience" we have become more aware of our identity. This guides us in our customer service and has a positive impact on our employees. Our absenteeism rates have dropped to the lowest in customer service branch"
The engagement elements the Razorfish research points out are elements customers will be looking for with any company they do business with. It will be wise to take them seriously. However these engagement elements are generic. Following the Razorfish advice will deliver better, yet copyable customer experiences. The competitive advantage could be temporary for those organizations that have made them part of their strategy before the followers will fall in line. The branded customer experience is unique and answers the question: How will a customer experience a contact with us as a typical "our company" experience. It is so closely connected to
1In a survey of more than 700 marketing and PR professionals, 50% of respondents said the single most important action a person or brand can take to increase their influence online is to create, post, or share compelling content;(Vocus/Brian Solis ).
the organizations identity that it is by definition not copyable and efforts to do so will lead to not authentic experiences.
The two key questions now are:
How can we make social and digital channels have the same “our company” experience?
Will and should our identity change by leveraging social and digital channels? If so, can we include these changes into a new and improved branded experience?
We would like to answer these questions with how one of the largest Dutch banks, The Rabobank, dealt with these two challenges. The Rabobank is a co-operative bank, which from its start in 1896 has had a strong local presence. Being nearby, in a literal and figurative sense, has therefore always been a strong value, a part of the banks identity. However the modernization of this co-operative bank has reduced the number of co-operatives from 547 in 1996 to 139 in 2112 (but still with over 800 offices and 3000 cash points throughout the country) At the same time customers want to do more and more business with their bank outside the bank office, by phone, mail or otherwise. So reinforcing the core value “nearby” merely by the physical presence of employees and offices has lost most of its effect as a distinguishing competitive factor.
Rabobank has entered the arena of all Dutch banks that by utilization of a multichannel strategy want to meet the rapidly changing needs of customers. And like its competitors Rabobank is in a process to institutionalize the virtual service to customers into a virtual branch office. Interestingly it has chosen to set up decentralized virtual offices. This to at least be in line with the "nearby" value: being as local as possible.
This sounds paradoxical because one of the consequences of virtualization is that products and services can be delivered from anywhere. But when the employees that deliver the products and services through all virtual channels are from the same local environment of the specific branches' customers and are able to transfer this local flavor into every engagement, it might very well prove out to be a very clever strategy.
Right now a couple of branches are in the process of answering the question: What makes an engagement with us a typical Rabobank "local branch name" experience? The outcomes are not defined yet, but it might very well be that elements like local dialect, awareness of local news and developments will be a part of it. And that is hard to copy in a centralized, large virtual organization.
Therefore the answer to the questions, how can we make social and digital channels have the same “our company” experience, is: by involving employees in the determination of the "our company" experience and very important, by enabling employees to create experiences accordingly. This means a major rethinking of leadership, management and coaching paradigms. Almost all organizations that deal with large numbers of customer engagements, have tried to manage this complexity by implementation of structures, processes, rules, strict diversion of responsibilities etc, etc.
Over the past 20 years we have been focusing on operational aspects of customer engagements only. This new way of thinking will require a more servant leadership style that can be characterized by giving trust to employees, control more on direction than on output, in other word loosen control. Only then will we see employees give the best of themselves to create branded customer experiences, regardless of the channel that they will be delivered through.
Rabobank's vision is founded on the idea's of Friedrich Wilhelm Raffeisen (1818-1888) who developed the idea that poverty can best be conquered by helping people to help themselves. The solution: a co-operation. Therefore the vision of Rabobank, or its identity, is build four elements that have remained the same of the years:
1. Enabling a connection with the customer2. Enabling a connection with society3. Enabling a connection with the future4. Enabling a connection with each other
Rabobanks' brand values: Nearby, Involved and Leading are nested in this identity.
“We wants to be nearby our customers. Whatever the medium. With our offices as personal advice centers and our mobile apps as daily lifeline.”Joost Augusteijn, Brand Strategist Rabobank
That Rabobank was the first Dutch bank to offer Internet Banking and the first mobile bank in the world, and the fact that customers communicate via web, mail, social media and web care have not changed the identity of the bank. Mobile banking brought the bank literally close to the customers heart (Nearby) Being the first to adapt these new technologies emphasized the innovative character of the bank (Leading) As such the adaptation of social and digital channels are logical consequences of the bank wanting to remain a stable, future proof bank (Connection with the future)
Another good example of a company completely build around a strong shared value is Telfort, which was the third mobile operator in the Netherlands.
Back then it was not easy to become a customer with a mobile operator. You had to fill in a lot of paper work, had to wait for a day to be activated, the pricing schemes were not transparent and there were not too many places where you could buy a mobile phone. The core value of this operator, that was also directly translated into a promise to its customers, was: "We are going to make mobile telephony EASY". This was translated in a large number of organizational aspects, like marketing and sales, customer service, service delivery processes etc. A few examples:
• There was only one subscription form, with a fixed price per minute;• Customers didn't have to go to a telephone store to become a customer. They could
buy a phone off the shelf in a super market or toy store;
• The handsets where packaged in milk cartons, which emphasized the fact that mobile telephony was available for everybody;
• No paperwork to be filed in the activation prices. By opening the package the Terms and Conditions where accepted;
• After unwrapping the package the first call that was made was redirected to the customer service center, where a realtime credit check took place. In stead of 24 hours it to less than three minutes to become a customer and make a first call.
• A customer had in its life cycle only one moment at which he had to give his contact details, after that this information was never asked again;
These are just a few examples of how customer experiences are designed to make mobile telephony easier for customers. This became part of the corporate culture and it made this operator the most successful new entrant in the Dutch mobile market.
It is important to understand that “making is easy” is the overriding identity and brand experience. The choice of channel is secondary and in the example above digital and social media was not used much at all but it is easy to see how important it would be to ensure it fits in with the larger message and is easy to use.
Unfortunately there are a lot of bad examples where companies define digital and social identities that are not inline with a positive brand experience or clearly defined identity. In the US AT&T for example has an elaborate web site that lets a customer choose anything from calling plan, data plan, phones and services of all kind. However, it is everything but easy to figure out what I really need. The choices are confusing and in the end the store clerk was the best person to help my wife and me figure out what was best after much wasted time online. I wish AT&T could have simply put a chat, phone number or even twitter link on the website and be authentic about their confusing mess. “You will never figure it out on your own, call us!”
EXPERINCE DESIGN – A holistic approach to experience designOnce the strategic direction for digital and social engagements are set and the messages based on the identity of the organization and its brands are understood it is time to design the actual experiences.
We like to speak of a holistic experience design because we want to highlight the interrelatedness of digital and social with brick and mortar, phone and traditional media. The brand and company identity has to be the same across all these channels.
Digital and Social Channels are also not just one homogenous entity. We can distinguish at least three areas:
1) Representation of our brand or organization in digital form. 2) Listening and responding to comments and conversation in the virtual world3) Actively influencing and initiating social conversations and viral campaigns
We will explore each area in a bit more detail below giving some examples.
1) Digital RepresentationDigital representation includes the brand or company web or Facebook site but also includes listings in Yelp, Wikipedia and other sources that clients and consumers leverage to find information about a company, product and service.
It is obviously most important that our information can be found. In that regard search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are frequently used terms that follow established standards. This paper does not try to elaborate on this topic. However, monitoring the way our identity is presented in a search engine's search result, on the iPhone map, on Yelp and Facebook etc, is very much a concern we feel deserves to be highlighted.
In one bad example we can think of a traditional food company that built a Facebook page for a specific brand involving macaroni and cheese. The company and brand identity were based on attributes like old-style, trusted, comfort. So just the idea of Facebook was a slight clash to that identity. However the worst part was that the discussions on that site were mostly disgusting descriptions by teenagers and college age youth about their experiences with days (and in some cases weeks) old servings of that brand’s product. Needless to say that this was neither positive branding nor a positive experience for the average reader.
It is surprising how many companies have abandoned hard learned lessons on branding and Marketing 101 when designing digital or social experiences. A company may have spent 100's of hours to train in store sales personnel on dress code, and service oriented language that is in line with the company’s identity and branding. The same effort has to be extended in digital and social engagements. An identity or brand should be presented in style, look and feel but also in tone and language used in all conversations.
2) Listen and RespondWe discussed the opportunities and risk of holistic listening earlier in the paper. As for experience design we would highlight two key elements
A) Identify the conversationsThere is a conversation about your brand, product or service in progress at any given time somewhere. At a minimum you should pay attention to what is said. In more advanced stages you can start building intelligence of who is talking, where and when.
Not listening can be futile. There are many ways to respond to virtual chatter. You can respond in the same channel that was used by the originator but you don’t have to.
The key is that you should respond to consumers whenever possible. Having a strategy for doing so in modern media channels like Facebook or twitter but also blogs and posts on message broads is a good practice.
Let's call this passive communication in response to brand impacting statements.
B) Respond@ symbols and # signs may just not gel well with a conservative and traditional bank for example. While Virgin Atlantic can happily leverage these symbols of modern conversations and other shorthand without a negative impact on its modern brand.But even in Facebook or Twitter you can send very different messages depending on the identity you want to portray. However it is not necessary to respond in all channels at all times.
Let's say someone is asking about the closest location to purchase your product or where to find a specific bank's ATM. You can extend significant effort to intercept these conversations and respond. But sending them a link to a web site where they can enter a zip code and then find the location is not a good user experience. If you do respond, why not send them a link that uses their geo location and provide a clear answer as in an iPhone or Google map with the locations highlighted including store hours etc. If you cannot get their geo location you have to ask them where they are. However in most situations it will either not be feasible or necessary to respond real time in all channels.
If you have absorbed lesson 1 above you have made sure that your locations are clearly marked on iPhone and Google maps. Now all a consumer needs to do is enter your brand name into the Google or iPhone map and voila here it is store hours and all. It they twitter the question a few million Twitter users will point them to your app or explain smart phone usage to them. You simply do not need to do that.2 Effort extended on making information easily found and presented in helpful tools like maps and listings is much better use of your time.Naturally you can have a twitter address for your company or brand. But in that you simply respond to inquiries just as your customer service team did in the time of the telephone.
It is more important to have the relevant information ready in digital form. If I have a technical issue, don't send me the 150 page pdf user guide. Tell me the solution. If you twitter, text, email or call me really does not make a difference to me. “Fix my damn router and if you cannot fix it send me a new one.” If you do that I will tweet all my friends what a great company you are even if I had to call a telephone number.
Feeling valued, listened to and experience good service out wights the choice of channel for that communication. Razorfish and other studies highlight this.3
In fact extending too much effort on new social and digital means of communication can be decremental if the traditional values of service and customer orientation suffer because attention is taken off what really matters.
2 A JC Williams Group consumer survey found that 91 percent of respondents ranked consumer generated content as the number one aid to a buying decision. 74 percent of customers said they are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy a product. Marketing Sherpa found in a survey that 87 percent of respondents would trust a friend’s recommendation of a product or service over a review by a critic, while 84 percent said they would trust user reviews over a critic. Buzz Agent found that one word of mouth conversation has the impact of 200 TV ads.3 “Are internet users more likely to purchase from a brand after becoming a subscriber, fan or follower?” 37% of Twitter users say yes, 31% are indifferent and 32% say unlikely. On Facebook, “only 17% agreed, 34% were on the fence, and a staggering 49% disagreed,” (ExactTarget via Brian Solis).
3) Actively influencing and initiating social conversationsWhile this paper has taken a slightly critical view of over hyped new communication tools there is some very obvious advantage to using social tools in marketing4 but also in company internal projects and processes as well as in enabling better communication in the supply chain or partner network.
What should be understood is that monitoring 100's even 1000's of simultaneous virtual conversations is complex and expensive. Few brands and companies can invest in social media command centers that come close to a live newsroom environment. There is much to be said about the merging of media and marketing. Adidas TV and social campaigns of many cool brands are fascinating. For those interested the Super Bowl organizers (Americas biggest sports event) have come up with a great plan for such a social media control center.5 But for many organizations this is just too expensive and too risky to do.
However, Salesforce Chatter, Yammer and other companies have introduced affordable tools for internal social communication. Extending a traditional project portal with a news feed and discussion board is just a very good idea that does not need to cost much at all. It also will allow employees and managers to experiment and learn about good and bad use of such tools in a business setting before unleashing them in broader consumer or client settings.
CONCLUSIONIn conclusion we like to summarize that digital and social means of engagement are tools that should follow a well-established strategy in which the identity of brands and organizations should be strengthened and through which each interaction should become more valuable to the parties involved.
In order for that to happen companies need to clearly identify their strategies across organizational lines, allow their organization to reassess their identities and those of their brands in light of the defined strategy and finally they need to design the actual internally or externally facing experiences in a way that will provide compelling, authentic and hands on helpful messages and tools.
4 - 53% of active adult social networkers follow a brand - 70% of the active online adult social networkers shop online, 12% more likely than the average adult Internet user - Among US social media users, 15% are more inclined to buy brands advertised in social media sites;- Across a snapshot of the 10 major global markets, social networks and blogs reach over 75% of active internet users (Knowledge Networks).5 - Read more here: http://mashable.com/2012/01/21/super-bowl-xlvi-social
About the authors:Magan ArthurAs author for Focal Press and contributor to industry publications such as the Journal of DAM and CMS Watch and through his work and speaking engagements at international conferences Magan has become one of the thought leaders in the digital marketing space. Magan is focused on building and leading teams thru the end-to-end execution of innovative digital, social and mobile programs that seek to cut operational cost and introduce Digital, Social and Mobile capabilities that truly impact the ability to relate to customers, employees and partners in more meaningful ways. Magan also supported the Information and Service Design Program at the School of Information at UC Berkeley and the Mills Collage MBA Program as a guest lecturer and mentor.
Rob Mallens has 20 years of management consultancy experience. In the past 15 years he has been involved in customer management. Rob has had a number of speaking engagements at international conferences and frequently shares his ideas, via printed and digital media. Main focus areas: are defining corporate identity, branded customer experience design and leadership styles. Currently he is helping a number of organizations to define a desired customer experience and his company assists in implementing the accompanying organizational changes. These changes can be in leadership style, organization culture, coaching processes, in business processes, management information systems etc.
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