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Customer Experience Management Has Just Gone Overboard
Call a Therapist!
Mr. Jim Sterne,
Founding President, Web Analytics Association,
G-CEM International Partner (US)
www.targeting.com
This article is exclusively written for G-CEM.
Just when you were getting comfortable with search marketing, multivariate landing page testing, website navigation, content management, conversion optimization, feedback management and so much more, your attention is being dramatically and forcibly shifted away from your corporate website ship of state and out onto the constantly roiling seas of social media.
Your website has become somewhat shipshape, living up to technical, industrial and corporate standards. You have ensured that there are people, processes and technology in place to measure activity, collect visitor opinion and optimize the tasks visitors most want to accomplish on your site. You created governance modalities and escalating chains of command to address errors, omissions and satisfy the most persnickety passengers who seem to complain about everything from the color of the forward mess room to the size of the staterooms to the inconvenience of the weather.
Suddenly, like a fast following storm, your attention is being dragged off the deck to face the denizens of the deep, the exotic animals of the land and the flighty, noisy birds on the wing. Social media gives those not necessarily on board to have their say and impact the experience your passengers enjoy, or not.
The birds of the air are not only loud and can raise a ruckus, they can easily decorate your well swabbed decks with enough effluent to make the surface unpleasant, unsanitary and unsafe. These detracting aviators may be competitors, angry ex-passengers or just nut cases who have decided that you are their target du jour.
These sharp-beaked aerial Heckles and Jeckles might well have a point. The first well known lesson in ignoring things not happening directly on board was learned by Intel in 1994.
In the summer of 1994, Lynchburg College professor of mathematics Dr. Thomas Nicely discovered a problem with his new Pentium processor machine. He was pursuing a research project in an area of pure mathematics called computational number theory and came across a division error. After eliminating all other likely sources of error (software logic, compiler, chipset, etc.), he contacted Intel in October and was told that no such bug had been previously reported or observed.
He decided to go public and make an inquiry of the CompuServe forums, much like the Internet newsgroups. He posted a "To: Whom it may concern" bug report, wherein he suggested that, "It appears that there is a bug in the floating point unit (numeric coprocessor) of many, and perhaps all, Pentium processors," and went on to provide an example of a division problem that returned a false answer,
Dr. Nicely discovered others shared his findings. Lots of people were having problems and carrying division problems out to the 9th or 10th decimal was pretty important to lots of disciplines.
Intel, in a clear misunderstanding of the power of electronic word-of-mouth, treated each individual caller as an individual and not part of a larger community. Intel told each individual that Intel had been aware of the problem for some time and was working on it. They suggested it wasn't as serious a problem as people had been led to believe. Wrong answer.
The problem did not dissipate on the evening wind overnight, but found its way into the morning paper. On November 11, 1994, John Markoff wrote in the New York Times:
CIRCUIT FLAW CAUSES PENTIUM CHIP TO MISCALCULATE, INTEL ADMITS
Intel said Wednesday that it did not believe the chip needed to be recalled, asserting that the typical user would have but one chance in more than nine billion of encountering an inaccurate result as a consequence of the error, and thus there was no noticeable consequence to users of business or home computers. Indeed, the company said it was continuing to send computer makers Pentium chips built before the problem was detected.
A full blown tsunami was picking up velocity and heading for the decks of the Good Ship Intel. Concerned scientists had made enough noise to gain the attention of the press which squawked loud enough for Intel CEO Andy Grove to get the message that something was amiss.
Toward the end of November, Grove posted on the newsgroup suggesting that the issue was overblown in that the error only effected a very few people, "engaged in work involving heavy duty scientific/floating point calculations." As such, Intel would treat each case as a singular problem to be dealt with and resolved.
The plan was to have those self identified people call a toll free number and speak to a, "technically trained Intel person" in order to identify those who were in need and, "resolve their problem in the most appropriate fashion including, if necessary, by replacing their chips with new ones." Further, "It is going to take us time to work thru the calls we are getting, but we will work thru them. I would like to ask for your patience here."
But Pentium users were not patient. What seemed like a reasonable solution to those bunkered in the corporate communications stateroom, living in a telephone and fax world, did not seem reasonable to socially media connected customers. The reaction was not pleasant and it not slow. Flocks of Intel customers swarmed the decks of the U.S.S. Intel and made life quite unpleasant for those onboard. Intel was being greedy, they squawked. Intel was foisting shoddy product off onto a public that was kept in the dark, they cawed. Intel was being disingenuous they shrieked.
On December 12, 1994, while the swabbies at Intel were wondering how to clear the decks of this aeral dreck, IBM made an announcement. They were going to halt shipments of their Intel-based computers. They were going to offer a chip replacement to anybody who wanted it. No questions asked.
The New York Times ran the headline on the front page: IBM. HALTS SALES OF ITS COMPUTERS WITH FLAWED CHIP.
That put Intel so far in the dog house it would take months of promises, apologies, and replacements to recover. The Canonical List of Pentium Jokes included 60 Intel zingers such as:
Q: How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: 1.99904274017, but that's close enough for non-technical people.
"I asked for a refund on my Pentium, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"
Q: What's another name for the "Intel Inside" sticker they put on Pentiums?
A: Warning label.
These were the lessons learned in 1994. It is now well past time for the captains of their corporate ships to invest in the new radar, sonar and GPS technology available to help navigate the shoals of public opinion. In this day and age when invective and spite can overwhelm facts, an organization has to be prepared to respond quickly.
Community Managers, A New Breed
In my last article (Not the Same Old Touchpoint Management), I discussed how your website is no longer the start of your customers' online experience with your brand. Your content and your press releases are not necessarily the first thing your prospects and customers are exposed to when they go online, looking for information about you and your goods and services.
"To manage online touchpoints means mapping out all the places people might talk, chat, post, blog, and upload pictures and videos about your products and services," I wrote. This time, I want to delve into an area that some companies are addressing aggressively while others are still finding their way and the majority have yet to wake up to the need: Community Managers.
A Community Manager is responsible for breadth and depth. First come the breadth of social tools. They need to be technically fluent in the use of Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Linked-In, Twitter and the twelve other new tools that because must-use com tech since yesterday. But they also need depth.
The first half of required depth is straightforward if not simple. That would be subject matter expertise. The most social media savvy community manager is not going to be up to the task if they don't know the product. Tweeting, "I'll look into that and get right back to you," is a sure sign that the company has the wrong person in place. Find the right person.
Next, comes the need for depth in the industry. If Blogger A makes an outrageous accusation, it's vitally important to know who Blogger A is before popping up with a response. Some Bloggers and some comments should not be dignified with a response. This takes a solid knowledge of history, personalities and psychology. And you were going to hire a college intern to be your community manager? Think again.
The final area of required depth is the need to be socially adept. While product knowledge and industry history can be catalogued, indexed, cross referenced and taught, social skills are usually learned in the home, long before a business career is on the horizon.
A community manager is the linchpin of a vibrant group. They are the instigator and catalyst of conversations. Like a gracious host, they are essential to encourage dialogue, initiate new discussion topics, make introductions and smooth over the jagged edges of social interaction. As organizations recognize the need to add this new role to their employee roster, the skill set for hiring is not based on years of experience, projects completed or knowledge of Facebook programming. These new members of your contact center are going to be successful if they understand the ebb and flow of human relationships. Is there a psychologist in the house?
Fitting Social Media Into Your Organization
As Community Manager is a new position, there is a lot of discussion about where it should live in an organization. It may take some time for a Best Practice to reveal itself, but based on conversations with community managers and online customer care executives, here are a few suggestions, starting with central support
As with public relations, there are some things a central group can offer those who communicate with the public: training, tools, processes and procedures and a conduit between those who have the same responsibilities so they can share stories and support each other.
Perhaps the most valuable thing a central team can create is a clear escalation plan for issues that might spin out of control. Who should be responsible for notifying whom under what circumstances and at what point is the legal department brought into the loop?
The next level of central support is from Corporate Communications. Should issues become serious enough (stuck accelerators, massive oil spills) then corporate level pronouncements will need to be crafted, approved and distributed. There are times when the CEO must be front and present and with instant communication being what it is, having the CEO instantly available is not always the best policy.
Yes, I am all for transparency and accessibility. Tommy Hsieh does a wonderful job as Zappos CEO but when the company gets bigger and the stakes get high, it's important that more than one person is thinking about what to blog, tweet or say to a TV reporter.
But those high stakes situations tend to be the exception rather than the rule,. The typical tweeter should be autonomous -- given a solid set of Guidelines to follow. Product marketing managers are ideal for fielding questions about goods and services, tech support reps for tackling those pesky technical questions and the good old customer service team is perfect for responding to tweets that cry out, "Where's my stuff?"
When the volume of social mentions warrants it, some companies are placing front-line monitoring in the hands of the contact center. They are tasked with quick responses and links to answers for frequently asked questions and for distributing the rest to the proper correspondent when the matters get stickier. Tools that help manage email and route phone calls can be brought to bear distributing tweets and Facebook posts.
However sophisticated the tools become, there will never be a community management autoresponder who can smooth riffled feathers, quell disappointed customers or ask just the right question in just the right way to keep a conversation flowing and valuable for all involved.
Being the face of a brand or a product line just took a giant step away from being a spokesmodel and has become the cruise director, responsible for the positive experience of everybody on board. If you find good ones, hire them at once and be sure to pay them well.
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About the Author
Jim Sterne has spent more than 20 years selling and marketing technical products and produced the world's first "Marketing on the Internet" seminar series in 1994 and has since devoted all of his attention to the Internet as a marketing medium.Today, Sterne is an internationally known speaker on electronic marketing and customer interaction and a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and Internet entrepreneurs. Sterne focuses his twenty years in sales and marketing on measuring the value of a Web site as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships. Sterne has written six books including:
World Wide Web Marketing, 3rd Edition
Customer Service on the Internet, 2nd Edition
What Makes People Click: Advertising on the Internet
E-Mail Marketing
Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success and Advanced Email Marketing
Sterne is the producer of the annual Emetrics Summit and is the Founding President of the Web Analytics Association.
Sterne has presented his unique perspective on Internet marketing at conferences around the world, and has lectured at Stanford, Oxford and MIT. He stays active as a public speaker and as a consultant, helping each client set Internet marketing goals and determine customer relationship strategies. With a special focus on web analytics, Sterne is dedicated to helping companies understand the possibilities and manage the realities of conducting business online.
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