People Talk. You Should Listen

Below is my second article for The Danish Communication Association, this time about social media and customer service. Enjoy!

People are talking. You must be there to listen.

Social media has pushed customer service from being something that used to involve a two-hour phone call at your expense, to something that is an intrinsic part of an organisations marketing and communication. 

As I mentioned in my last article, intangibles have become the new currency. Choice and cost are no longer as pivotal in decision making as they once were, and as a result, organisations must now focus on these intangible methods, such as customer loyalty and reputation, in order to stand out from the crowd.

A good reputation is an extremely valuable asset – maybe even more valuable of tangible or physical assets – yet it is also uncontrollable. Reputations are bestowed on us – on organisations – by society in an intrinsic effort of self-preservation, and are built on and destroyed by consumers’ conversations – conversations that are going on every minute of every hour of every day on social media.

Just a phase?

So when I read Social Semantic’s latest report on social media use in Danish businesses I was flabbergasted to find out that just 9% use social media for service and support. If 40% believe that social media can increase customer loyalty and sales, and if 87% of management believes that social media can be used to create a positive reputation, then what better way to increase loyalty and create a positive reputation than via social media?

Apparently 12% of Danish businesses still see social media as a one-day wonder, and 21% haven’t carried out any kind of social media search for their own organisation as they don’t deem it to be important. Words can not express my incredulity at these figures. In the 1990s, interactive marketing and design agency Razorfish started with the simple premise of everything that can be digital, will be. Today, this has changed to everything that can be social, will be. It’s really very hard to overemphasize this statement. With 2.6 million Danes on Facebook (according to the report), and about 28,000 Danes on Twitter, all of whom are talking about brands and organisations, making and breaking reputations, it’s nigh on impossible to understand the opinions of those 12 and 21 percent.

Fullrate break the mould

Earlier this year, I had an experience with what I considered to be outstanding customer service from a Danish company, Fullrate. My internet connection kept cutting out, and one evening I tweeted, ‘Getting really sick and tired of #Fullrate. Massive complaint email coming soon.’ The next day, I received this email;

Once over my shock, I answered, and within hours the problem was solved (faulty router, new one on the way). I posted a screen dump of the email on Facebook, where it was picked up by a journalist, and before you can say customer service, Fullrate were being accused of breaching my privacy and being ‘big-brothery’. My Twitter profile is set to public precisely because (amongst other reasons), I hope that brands and organisations will be carrying out searches and will hear me. While others might have been put off by receiving such an unsolicited email, I was positively overwhelmed. My email address can easily be found online, and how different is it to a letter in my letterbox?

Berlingske, B.T, Klean, and of course Fullrate were among those which covered the story (with varying levels of sensationalism), and I’m happy to say that Fullrate emerged unscathed – and with a new loyal customer. B.T’s headline of ‘Beware of companies monitoring your moaning on Facebook’ (link is the same as the other BT one so wasn’t sure if I needed it?) might have been intended to worry people, yet for me – and many, many others – it simply confirmed what I had hoped was true in the first place; that companies were monitoring social media.

A Danish mindset?

What worried me the most about the whole episode was that other Danish businesses might have been put off by the initial reaction, the melodramatic shock and disbelief that organisations are using social media as a research tool. There’s always a first, and as is so often the case, the first tends to be received warily. But what about abroad? The internet is positively packed full of cases;Easyjet on Twitter, Air Asia on Facebook, Twelpforce Best Buy on Twitter, and let’s not forget KLM, Lufthansa and Eyjafjallajokull – Google ‘social media and customer service’ and take a look.

Act now

While 93% expect to invest in social media in the next one to two years, I believe that that is far too long. Invest now. It doesn’t have to cost a penny. I know I speak for many when I say that I hope many more Danish businesses will follow Fullrate’s example and use social media as a channel through which they can deliver efficient and effective customer service. It doesn’t have to be a whole dedicated channel – just use the search functions available. Search in Facebook, check pages, groups, and posts by everyone. There might be blog posts, Tweets, or comments that can give feedback.

 

You don’t even need a profile to search on Twitter – just use the search box.

Overskrift.dk allows search in Danish blogs, Twitter feeds, tags, content etc, providing a wealth of information for any organisation.

 

Google blog search, Social Mention, Addict-o-matic – there are a lot of free tools available for keeping track of what is being said, and there’s a lot being said. It’s not a breach of privacy. If someone hasn’t set their profile to private, then it’s public knowledge.

In short; if something is found; act. Make contact, no matter if it’s a compliment or complaint. Companies have to monitor social media, just as they monitor traditional media. People want to be heard, they want their voice to be acknowledge, and just sitting back and thinking that this social media lark is just a fad is not going to help you.

P.S. Fullrate actually have an advert in the report; 'Social networks demand good relations. For us, social media are a natural part of our customer service, and are essential for the future to make sure we have the happiest broadband customers.' I can vouch for that.

P.P.S. I do not work for Fullrate.

On The Brink Of A Precipice, Or The Edge Of A Revolution?

I've come to realise that the world is royally screwed and the only thing that can really save it is all out war. 

At least, it has to be something that will remove all those people in power, all those people will hidden agendas (of whom I think there are many), and all those people who don't have faith - not in religion of course, but faith that things can be done differently. It's not because those people are particularly mean, or cruel, but because they way things are right now, they'll never change. Ever. Although I have faith in the fact that we can live on this planet in a very different manner, I have very little faith in my fellow man. Power and money corrupt. Absolutely.  Unfortunately.

I watched Zeiteist: Moving Forward recently, and although I'm not one to get (too) carried away with these types of things, I enjoy them. It's good to hear different theories, from the plausible to the downright bonkers. It broadens the mind, or something. Anyway - it's fun. What struck me about Moving Forward was that it touched upon a subject that seems to be everywhere I turn, namely, the start of a new paradigm.

It's been something that has sat at the back of my mind for a while now, most certainly since I wrote my MA thesis, which centered around digimodernism - author Alan Kirby's suggestion as to what this new paradigm should be named. The general idea is that technology - the internet in particular - has altered society to such an extent that we can simply no longer be the same postmodern society we were in the early years of the WWW. 

More recently, just last week actually, I attended the opening of a new exhibition at The Danish Design Center, called Challenge Society. The exhibition shows how, "the world is transforming, creating complex societal challenges. The future sees fewer hands to care for the increasing number of elderly. The school systems fail, hospitals are down with billions in deficit and the welfare model in general is under pressure. Just to mention some of the future challenges. The situation needs immediate action and new, creative solutions." It's a very, very interesting topic. My place of work, Designit, is particularly involved in this area. As a strategic design company, it believes that design really can make a difference in how people go about their daily lives, and as a result, how society lives (I wrote a short blog post about the opening you might like to check out).

At the opening, we were lucky enough to hear from Chris Luebkeman (Director for Global Foresight and Innovation, Arup), Christian Bason (Director of Innovation, Mindlab), Chris Hacker (Chief Design Officer, Johnson & Johnson), Mikkel B. Rasmussen (European Director at ReD), and Josephine Green (speaker and consultant). Each and every one of them gave inspiring and insightful presentations on how society is changing irrevocably, and how as a result, design and creative processes must be incorporated into just about everything, from packaging to organisational mindsets.

Josephine Green made a particular impression on me. She spoke at length about how are moving out of the economic, mechanistic worldview we’ve had since the industrial revolution and beginning to recognise the flat, social, communal, socio-ecological world we now find ourselves in. Our traditional organisation structures are being to fail and are becoming part of the problem. Gone are hierarchies, the linear, managerial processes, and the idea that the 'top of they pyramid' holds all the knowledge. Today, we are open, flat and a community.

This complete openness is largely (if not solely) owed to the advancements of technology. The internet broke down borders, walls, democratised (largely) information and ruined the traditional sense of the market. The consumer is powerful, active and as a result, as Josephine so rightly pointed out, can hardly be considered a 'consumer' anymore. We don't just consumer. We create - from blogs to #18DaysInEgypt, society is participating in what was once out of reach.

As is clear, the two paradigms are one and the same. We're in the middle of a gigantic shift - the likes of which we haven't seen since the industrial revolution changed the face of this planet.

What is so unfortunate today is that precisely because of the previous shift and the enormous wealth it created, I honestly find it hard to believe that we'll move even remotely quickly or smoothly in to the new paradigm. The people who run this world, the banks, the global corporations, the governments, the politicians, the immensely weathly - all of them - do you really think they'll budge? I don't. I don't see them making any changes that will alter how we live in this world. They might make superficial changes, the kind that makes it in to the news, and helps put a damper on the 'hysterical', but real changes? Nope. To save this world (not to sound too soapboxy), virtually all economic processes would have to be rewired or shut down, and let's be honest - that's just not going to happen. Unless, unless something demanded it. Like total nuclear war. Or Yellowstone erupting and killing off most life. Something that changes the physical face of the planet, something that will give us the chance to reprogramme. 

Perhaps - probably - this will happen. In fact, maybe the best road to take is the one we're on. Afterall, it's the most likely to lead to such a disaster. 

I know this might sound a little desolate, but we've become far too entrenched in this current paradigm. I don't think we can dig our way out. So while we might stand on the edge of a monumental revolution, we are simultaneously teetering on the brink of a precipice. While it's nice think that we have the choice of whether we fall or lead, that might well be delusional. We will probably fall, but then, ultimately, it's a fall back to reality we're very much in need of. 

I Shop Online, Therefore I Am

This post is a copy of an article I wrote for The Danish Communications Association (Dansk Kommunikationsforening) this month. I'll be doing two a month over the next year and thought I would also share them here. The original link follows the post.

This article is based on my MA thesis (Digimodernism; the Future is Now!), and takes a quick look at the new paradigm of digimodermism, and what this means to communications. Hopefully it makes some sense. 

I shop, therefore I am I shop online, therefore I am

Postmodernism is dead. At least in the traditional sense. Society has been pushed into a new paradigm, a paradigm that author Alan Kirby calls digimodernism. Of course, as with modernism, postmodernism will never truly will be dead but it is impossible to deny the fact that society has undergone revolutionary changes, changes which can be attributed almost wholly to the internet. The world has changed, and theory must change with it.

One of my all-time favourite faux-pas is that of Clifford Stoll in a Newsweek article from 1995, entitled, ‘The Internet? Bah!’ In it, Clifford discusses how the internet is nothing but ‘techno-burble’, and how his local mall does more business in one afternoon than the entire internet does in a month. Needless to say, Clifford was wrong, but the he could be forgiven for his thought – the internet of 1995 was hardly the internet we know and love today. Yet in the same year postmodernism was in its heyday. This is the paradigm that ‘produced’ consumerism, which in turn, produced ‘us’; the postmodern consumer – restless, fragmented and fickle. Postmodernity is consumerism, and consumerism is postmodernity – do remember, though, that this was all before Amazon.com existed. Before email, before Facebook, before Twitter, before any kind of social media existed. If we were the postmodern consumer in 1995 before all of this, can we really be the same postmodern consumer today?

Society today still resembles postmodern society of 1995 in many ways, but what has changed, monumentally so, is technology – specifically, the internet and our use of it. It has infiltrated our lives, democratising information and paving the way for social media, which in turn have thrown open the doors to instant, global communication fundamentally changing the way we live.

Consumers have never had so much authority. The balance of power between brand and consumer has been levelled to a point where it can quite easily be argued that the consumer is an integral part of the marketing mix. In postmodernism you read, watched and listened. Now, we click, surf, and download. We are active, demanding, experience seeking, and channel-hopping. Media have become so entwined with life, physically interacting with it (think of QR codes, SMS X-Factor voting etc) it’s hard to see where we end and our media begin. We are no longer a society of the spectacle – we participate. Constantly.

This changes marketing and communication immeasurably. Consumers demand to be, and need to be, engaged. Examples of interactive communication abound – the ‘Hunter shoots a bear’ YouTube video, or the ‘Choose a different ending’ anti-knife crime video from the Met Police. Closer to home there was the Swedish ‘Hero’ television license campaign, and the controversial ‘Hit the bitch’ campaign. Each example is incomplete until the view interacts with it. We produce the communication. QR codes are another excellent example; they provide the means through which we can access further information but only as a consequence of direct action on our behalf.

While this kind of communication can be entertaining and while we might pass it on to our friends, they aren’t always optimal. One thing is providing an entertaining viral video, another thing is making the consumer work for a marketing message (a message which might very well be lost in the ‘fun’ of the video or advert). QR codes ultimately require work from the consumer, work which all too often only ends with a marketing message of some kind.

What must be remembered is that in this digimodern market, intangibles such as trust, loyalty, and relationships are being catapulted into the spotlight. Marketing must shift from a ‘market to’ philosophy, to a ‘market with’ philosophy, making the consumer and whole supply chain collaborators in the production and marketing processes. It’s probably the biggest shift yet in the history of business.

‘Marketing with’ doesn’t simply mean creating interactive, incomplete videos or adverts, it means being on the same level as consumers. Meeting them on their turf and finding out what they want. Social media presents the greatest opportunity yet for this to happen, so why the reluctance? The recently published report by Social Semantics, The Social Media Factbook, showed that use of social media in Danish businesses is finally at a tipping point. More and more businesses appear eager to acknowledge the fact that society – Danish society – has changed, and that if they want to keep their fans, their customers, and their clients, it has to in ways that create intangible value, through channels and times they ultimately can’t decide.

While postmoderism created the rebelling consumer, wise to the antics of advertising and unwilling to entertain, a digimodern consumer is one who is wise, but eager to talk, to listen, to share, and to collaborate. The digimodern consumer is ready and waiting, there has never been a better time to reach out. 

Original aritle - I shop online, therefore I am

Update on 2011-04-17 05:38 by Lara Mulady

I think I should have named this 'I am online, therefore I am.' Just wanted to say.