My quote of the year 2011

Every year, you create a quote that you use either to explain your business, to justify what you are doing or to establish some kind of heritage for those that you think are interested in what you are saying.

Last year my quote was “Talking is online, silence is print!”. Although, I have had many tweets and many likes on this, there was also some critics coming with it… which is good. It shows that people think about the value and impact of the quote… and they start conversations. That’s what we want to initiate in business… not only with our social media activity.

For this year the quote will be about social media strategy…

“Community Strategy and Social Media is NOT a discipline. It IS an attitude to strategy in business.”

And before you start asking… By “discipline” I mean departments (like marketing, sales, customer service, HR, or other) that are responsible for using, handling, organizing and planning the business tactics around the brand, product line or service offering of business relevance.

… and now start discussing!

How Cisco’s SocialMiner helps improve the conversation with customers (a John Hernandez interview)

One-on-one interview with John Hernandez

John Hernandez is General Manager of the Customer Collaboration Business Unit (CCBU) at Cisco, which provides contact center and interactive voice applications to enterprises and service providers. In this capacity he oversees product and market development, and is closely involved in the business with the Cisco sales force and partners.

The Strategy Web spoke with him about the launch and benefits of their new customer care product SocialMiner.

What were Cisco’s most successful social medias tactics in the last 2 years? How did Cisco came across the new solution SocialMiner? Why is social media monitoring so important from a strategic point of view for businesses?

Cisco is very active in social media. Our employees were some of the earliest adopters of Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social sites. We have tens of thousands of active social media users in our company, as well as a robust and vibrant corporate presence on the social web.

Social media monitoring can become a key strategic advantage for businesses. From a contact center perspective, social media could be treated as “just another channel” in a multichannel approach. However, the public nature of social media, along with the sheer volume of social media postings, makes social media as much a business intelligence tool as a new way to engage with customers. Cisco believes that proactive social media customer care will have a transformative impact on how companies engage and serve their customers.

The concept of the SocialMiner product came from our observation of the changing communication habits and Internet usage of consumers. As consumers have adopted social media channels for their individual communications on an ever-increasing basis over the past couple years, it is only natural that they would consider interacting with a business via social media. This concept of social impacting customer relationships is a very active topic within the emerging “Social CRM” community.

Is SocialMiner just a Customer Service product? Bearing in mind that social conversations on the web affects the whole business…

Cisco SocialMiner is an engagement product, not a “listening product.” SocialMiner is designed to scale the quality and quantity of social media interactions performed by a business. SocialMiner can be used for a variety of business functions such as Support or Sales, but we believe the customers that derive the most value from social media will also use these engagements to drive business process change. For example, an organization could use SocialMiner as a source of business intelligence to provide real-time customer appreciation or criticism of a product or service (or of a competitors’ product/service). Social media can direct their business strategy. Cisco believes that companies that learn from social media will become closer to meeting their customers’ expectations and this will drive overall business success.

Which three benefits do business users have using SocialMiner compared to other tools in the market (Radian6, Alterian, etc.)

1. Cisco SocialMiner is complementary to brand monitoring dashboard solutions. It is designed to support scaling social media by leveraging the best practices from contact center type operational models: Queuing, Service Level Metrics (Average Speed of Answer), and productivity metrics for users. By contrast, many of the brand monitoring dashboards have pieces of workflow capability, but these capabilities are either relatively limited or recently introduced functions.

2. Cisco SocialMiner is a component of the Cisco contact center portfolio which currently includes an installed base of over 10,000 customers. SocialMiner is packaged, priced, and delivered along with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise solutions, and therefore it supports the same installation, deployment, serviceability, and user experience as these other Cisco collaboration solutions.

3. Cisco SocialMiner is a very easy to install and operate software appliance. It runs on premise or in a customer controlled data-center hosting facility and offers unlimited capture capability. Cisco SocialMiner is an API-first product with 100% of functionality available via REST API’s and all user interface delivered as OpenSocial gadgets with documented source that can be modified by Cisco channel or customers. This model supports the preferred consumption model of most enterprise organizations along with a broad customization capability.

Can it be used as a stand-alone product or only in combination with other Cisco products for customer service? Do you have any case studies of success?

Cisco SocialMiner can be used as a stand-alone solution. We have several case studies that illustrate SocialMiner’s success. Zone Labs is one of them. The small wellness company was looking to accelerate revenues & grow 1000% in next 3 years, implemented Cisco SocialMiner to increase customer engagement, customer satisfaction and sales. Zone Labs started developing social communities on their own website as well as Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets. They used Cisco SocialMiner to route and queue contacts to experts within their organization.

Using SocialMiner, experts were able to proactively answer health and wellness questions via Twitter, providing encouragement to consumers on the Zone Diet, customer service and expert advice on questions such as vitamins and healthy recipes. Zone Labs saw improved agent productivity by automating capturing and responding to social media posts (currently estimated at ~10x). They gained greater customer satisfaction & brand mind-share from faster first inquiry resolution on the web, and were able to compete on comparable scale with larger companies. Their social media activity reduced their customer acquisition cost and created a larger funnel with more leads, that were converted more easily and more quickly than before.

Within 4 months of using SocialMiner, Zone Labs saw tremendous results:
- Web site transactions up 189%
- Revenue up 203%
- 202% increase in total visitors to www.zonediet.com

Thank you for your time, John. And by the way: I like your commercial for the product…

KLM Surprise – a discussable social media campaign…

When I first came across the KLM Surprise idea, I thought “cool customer service”, “very modern approach” and “nice use of a Social Media campaign”. It seems KLM engages in how to make their clients happy, how to understand personalized customer service of the future and how to use social media to reach out to their clients one step ahead.

On a second thought, clients could be overwhelmed in a negative way. The approach of the airline might be seen as “social media stal….”. Shall we really use this phrase? Is there some validity in it?

The idea implements all aspects and features of an advertising campaign, and the KLM claim for me seems to be: modern social advertising. Or as the brand puts it: KLM is “committing little acts of kindness because we wanted to discover how happiness spreads”.

Nothing bad about it in my eyes. I like the idea in some way…

Nevertheless, my question is: Is this modern social advertising approach going to far? Is it addressing too much the human characteristics of personality and individuality? Or is it just the modern way of personalized advertising? Some kind of the future of Social CRM?

Know what?! Let’s discuss it! Watch it and give us thoughts….

Book Review – Marketing in the Age of Google

When somebody used to work for Google there is a lot of knowedge to be shared. And I thought, I could learn more about SEO techniques and tactics. Vanessa Fox did work for Google (apart from inventing Webmaster Central), and so I thought, I need to read the book Marketing in the Age of Google. As a web-strategist I should know the secrets of ranking high on Google for my clients.

Getting Vanessa’s inside view on how Google and their search technology operates, gives an aggregated insight on the evolution of search topics. It is saving time and presumingly more efficient than following or reading many SEO experts thoughts. And then let’s help clients to optimize their site fropm a SEO point of view.

To write a review is a challenge. As I follow some of the most interesting SEO cracks, I knew some content topics already. But there is much more quality thoughts and knowledge in it that makes the book worth reading. If companies want to optimize their top rankings, the book offers good tactical approaches and a clear structure how to start and evolve your content strategy as well as how to conquer the top positions in Google. 

Having said this, the book is based on the theory of having a web-strategy in place that is aligned to the company’s business strategy. If your company has the consumer approach understanding the needs, desires and motivation why consumers go online to evaluate products and services, then the book is a must read.

The way people used search engines has changed in the last years as the web has become mature from an information platform to a consumer generated content base. It is not about what the company spreads but what the users are looking for and the content they share and create. People hear something about a person, a brand or a campaign and instandly start going to search for more information. Not seldomly they are finding consumer input. And often the initial search entry point starts with offline marketing, PR or customer service conversation – in print ads, TV commercials or an wallpapers.

Business that know how to connect offline and online efforts will succeed in the future. Happy that this was my main claim when I started this blog and thus gets now backed up by a Google specialist… Thanks Vanessa!
 
Spot On!
The amount of input the book Marketing in the Age of Google offers is probably only handable for a SEO specialist. And this person has to have the buy in from the C-level to manage the online strategy accordingly. A lot of the strategy is based on content creation and content framework which is a PR, marketing, HR, R&D and Customer Service topic in the future in my eyes. These departments need to learn how to place content effectively in the search world. It will affect the way peope perceive the business strategy of a company and the way the companies and brands interact with their clients, partners and employees. What I missed was the effect taxonomies and social tagging might have on search in the future but maybe this comes with the next update. 

The new ROI – If I only had time…

Sometimes I am asking myself where the social web world, tries to take us… Companies want to have us as personal social advocates, want us to spread and share their latest marketing message, or that we engage in their digital embassy. They create offline virtual and online fitting rooms (here and here) to take our time for brand passion and fashion sharing. Time is becoming the main ROI figure of the future, the gold companies try to get from their customers in the future.

Have we ever talked to companies in the past? Have you started communication with them without any purchase intent or customer service issue? in the last ten years before we started getting engaged in the social web maniac, I have not… The social web, clever smartphone capabilities and new search technology make us doing these things. In the past, I was playing football and golf, going out in bars, meeting friends, seeing TV shows and reading books and magazines. And I still love doing this… though I am always chasing time to accommodate a number the things I like doing.

My magazine rack is full of issues from Business Punk, GQ, Brand Eins, company brochures and other fashion materials. Yes, I stll see much value in print reading. On my bedside table, nearly 8 books to review try to fight for the pool position (and I just found another one I would like to read). And in my car, I have found the latest program for LeWeb10 where I will be going and know how much material to review, read and learn about I will find in these two days.

I read my list of RSS-feeds, check my Facebook updates or try to follow the main news and social influencers on twitter. I try to share as much information as possible on Delicious. I do networking on LinkedIn or on XING. Many companies and brands call me their fan on Facebook. And yes, there are some more social topics I try to get engaged in. And in the centre of this social activity stands this blog…

Have I mentioned that I am living a traditional father’s life. I do have a job to do (with quite some traveling) plus look after my family, my lovely boys and my wife. They want to talk to me, have their “airtime”. They like to get some decent minutes of awareness on the playground of life. I remember when my father was at home and we had time to talk to him. And then, he had forgotten everything we said after some minutes. I see some danger to fall into his patterns of family communication as well…

Life is becoming more and more challenging these days with the evolution of the social web, social media and all formats of social networking next to our common daily habits. Although I am trying to live the 36-hours day with respect to trying what is possible as a human being. One sentence jumps to my mind and keeps repeating itself every hours I am awake…

If I only had time… If I only had time. If I only… If…

No, the social web has not yet conquered the last corner of my sleeping soul although there are companies that already envision the extreme world of social media in the future. Still, there is evidence how less efficiency could create a better work-life-balance. At some stage, in order to remain successful business people we probably need a personal web manager in the future. This person could become the master of the new ROI calclation in employment output.

If anyone feels like me, share your view and let’s discuss. Tell us how you manage your business time today…

Multinationale Studie: Twitter und Kundenservice

Offensichtlich gibt es noch zahlreiche Firmen, die nicht wissen, wie man Twitter für den Kundenservice einsetzt. Eine weltweite Studie von UXalliance hat dies vor allem im Bereich der multinational-agierenden Firmen nachgewiesen.

Im Kontext des World Usability Days hat das internationale Netzwerk von User Experten die Nutzung von Twitter bei 10 der 50 beliebtesten Firmen in 17 Ländern verglichen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Kundenservice via Twitter noch in den Kinderschuhen steckt und von den Firmen mit unterschiedlicher Ernsthaftigkeit betrieben und niedriger Wichtigkeit bedacht wird.

Die Erkenntnisse zeigen, daß zahlreiche Firmen immernoch Probleme haben mit den User-Erfahrungen in Echtzeit umzugehen. Toyota präsentierte sich im Vergleich als “Bestperformer”, da sie sich mit adäquaten Profil darstellen und hochwertiges User-Feedback in wenigen Stunden gaben. Bei BMW sah das offensichtlich anders aus, da man hier schon Schwierigkeiten hatte, das lokale Twitter-Profil zu identifizieren. Da es dort keine lokalen Accounts gab, wandte man sich an den globalen und erhielt nur für 3 der 17 angefragten Länder ein Feedback. Eine Erfahrung, die ich teilen kann, da auch ich schon mehrfach eine Kontakt- oder Kooperationsanfrage geschickt habe, ohne bisher ein Feedback zu erhalten.

Gerade im Zeitalter der Echtzeit-Kommunikation erwartet der User, wenn er Tool wie Twitter nutzt, auch wirklich Echtzeit-Feedback. Ein Umstand, der den multinationalen Firmen offensichtlich noch nicht wirklich nahe geht. Wenn 60% der Tweets gar keine Antwort erhalten haben, ist das wahrlich ein schwaches Bild für das Verständnis von Kundenservice 2.0. Immerhin 12% wurden in 12 Stunden beantwortet. Auch hier zeigt BMW nicht unbedingt Bestnoten: Die Response Rate lag unter 20%.

Spot On!
Der Einsatz von Twitter für den Kundenservice ist im Vormarsch. Die Chance zur schnellen Kundenzufriedenheit sowie Klärung von Wünschen, Notwendigkeiten und Bedürfnissen bietet ein Twitter-Account. Er muß aber auch als Echtzeitkanal verstanden werden. Sonst ist nämlich der Griff zum Telefonhörer schneller und effizienter für den Kunden. Und wer nicht zuhört oder schnelles Feedback offeriert, kann sich den Aufwand eines Twitter-Accounts eigentlich auch sparen. Denn dann überlässt die Firma dem Mitbewerb das Feld sowieso. Eine gute Einzeldarstellung der Stärken und Schwächen der getesteten Firmen gibt es hier.

Social Media: Internal, external or who to use?

Internal or external resources, agencies, consultants or publishers? Many companies still give the responsibility for social media to the hands of the existing marketing and communications teams. A new study by the public relations agency MS&L and PR Week shows that companies leave it to these teams to handle the activities. Only 5% said they outcource the social media planning and execution to external agency partners.

It is still interesting to see which companies are addressed to get the responsible for their social media activities…
- 21% direct marketing agencies
- 20% ad agencies
- 17% digital agencies
- 16% PR agencies
- 12% media buying and planning agencies

In the online survey with 262 marketers taking part, 47% of those with social media programs handle social media activities using in-house resources. Some companies are hiring their expertise: 13% stated additional staff was recruited to handle the conversations.

Most companies understand the impact for business. The reason why companies make it a business critical topic becomes clear when 79% agree social media management and reacting in real-time to customer needs is a competitive advantage. 26% encourage their employees to share social media input for the company’s benefit. The effect on R&D is in between the lines of the result that 33% of companies have changed their products or marketing efforts based on feedback they’ve gathered from social media.

Interestingly enough Social Media education comes from…? Kids (26%)! – Coming in as third important source after internal discussions (46%) and vendor sponsored conferenes and webinars (33%), says the report. This result actually comes at the same time as a study by Nielsen Norman Group that comes to a similar conclusion. Kids are not even 10 years old to tell us more about the Internet than we might know but still get confused by advertising if it is directed towards them.

Spot On!
Social Web experts argue the aspect of a cultural shift – handling social media is a challenge for the whole company and all departments – be it HR, R&D, Sales, PR, Marketing or Customer Service. If we look at who is responsible when the social media business is outsourced, it becomes obvious that traditional agencies are the leading edge of the social media activities. Sometimes, I am asking myself, if companies like business consultants (whole company approach), strategy consultants (business model apporach) or even publishers (experts in audience building) could not be a better partner for making social media strategy work.

Curious to listen what your ideas about that might be…

Marketers relying more on blogs in the business world

Although Facebook and Twitter are highly rated from internet consumers, blogs are the standard approach for marketers in the business world (b2b).

eMarketer just released a study that states 34% of all US companies are running a public blog. The outlook for 2012 is even more promissing: The study projects an increase by 11 points to a total of 45% by 2012. In 2007 only 16% of companies used a blog for their communication strategy.

“Studies have shown that marketers perceive blogs to have the highest value of any social media in driving site traffic, brand awareness, lead generation and sales—as well as improving customer service.” Paul Verna, senior analyst, eMarketer

Especially smaller companies with less marketing bucks see the potential of blogs. Short sign-of processes, faster internal dynamics and more flexibility in choosing social technology make it easier for a managing director of an SMB company to set up a blog. Larger companies like stock listed companies have more restricted options to go live on WordPress, Blogger or Typepad in terms of potential legal, IR-related and logistical issues.

Though Twitter and Facebook are easier to set up and kick off the conversation with clients, the impact of blogs is manifold. Blog posts are indexable and searchable on Google as well as on other search engines. And blogging has a long-lasting effect. While tweets cannot talk about complex topics and disappear quite quickly from search engines, blog post stay – no matter if you are looking for that information today ot in five years time.

Spot On!
If companies can manage it from a resources perspective, the best way to go forward is to set up many social media access points. The professionals have identified by web analysis and social media monitoring where client engagement takes place and where their clients are talking. In a perfect world, users will find the blog post via Twitter and then use the “Like” button to get to the Facebook page – and ideally find some interesting and relevant content there again. But creating different content for different access points is the biggest challenge…, bigger than writing a blog post. Don’t you think…?

Social Media oder die Qual der Wahl

Wir haben gestern einen Ausflug gemacht. An den Tegernsee, denn wir lieben die Bergregion um München. Schöne Berge, traumhafte Natur und auf den Almen immer nette Menschen und leckeres Essen. Aber eine Sache macht uns immer wieder zu schaffen. Die Qual der Wahl… Die Qual der Wahl, welche Hütte wir diese Wochenende “bewandern”. Welchen Weg wir nehmen sollen. Oder, welches Essen uns wohl am meisten ansprechen wird, wenn wir oben auf dem Berg angekommen sind. Und selbst wenn wir es wissen, lesen wir die Karte und sehen immernoch vor der Entscheidung … oder haben weiterhin die Qual der Wahl.

Eine große Auswahl zu haben, ist eine schöne Sache. Man könnte sagen, ein Luxusproblem… Aber wie auch schon Miriam Meckel in ihrem Buch Das Glück der Unerreichbarkeit klar macht, ist die Qual der Wahl eine unserer größten Herausforderungen der Zukunft. Viele Sachen stimulieren uns, viele Sinne rühren uns, viel Auswahl verwirrt uns. Ohne Filter wird alles zu einem einzigen Chaos.

Wir lieben es Karten zu lesen, die eine große Auswahl bieten und soind enttäuscht, wenn die Karte nur klassische Breotzeit offeriert. Es sei denn auf der Hütte, wo die Brotzeit zu einem kulinarischen Highlight avenziert. Und wie es immer so ist, scheint der Hunger und die Begeisterung größer als das Bedürfnis. Die Qual der Wahl wächst…

Warum erzähle ich das alles?

Manchmal möchte ich nicht in der Haut von den Leuten stecken, die ich so berate oder beraten habe in den letzten Wochen und Monaten. Social Media Marketing scheint einen ähnlichen Effekt auf Marketing-, PR-, HR- und Customer Service Manager zu haben.

Die Qual der Wahl stapelt sich für sie in Form von zahlreichen Fragen…

- Nutze ich Social Media überhaupt? Eine Wahl, die eigentlich keine mehr sein sollte…
- Bleibe ich besser bei meinen Leisten und erklimme nicht die Höhen und Tiefen der modernen Medien?
- Welche Kommunikationmedien nutzt meine Zielgruppe (am liebsten und in 5 Jahren noch)?
- Welche Plattform schmeckt mir (Benutzerfreundlichekeit, Usability, Technik) am besten?
- Welche Plattform oder welche sozialen Medien ist/sind für mich zielführend?
- Kann ich eine Strategie, die meisten meinen eher eine taktisches Vorgehen, eines Mitbewerbes adaptieren?
- Geht die Geschäftsführung d’accord mit einer unstrategisch wirkenden Trial-and-Error Phase?
- Welche Tools, Taktiken und Trends nutze ich um meine Botschaften anzubringen?
- Wie und womit hört man eigentlich am besten in die Zielgruppe rein?
- Wie kommunizire ich und mache die Marke menschlich?
- Mit welchen Techniken oder Apps erhöhe ich meinen ROI-Output?

Die Qual der Wahl ist wie ein unbewanderter gebirgiger Waldweg. Man muß sich ab des Weges der Konformität wandern und testen, wenn man dann doch mal mit Ruhe einen klaren und zielführenden Gedanken fassen will.

Ein paar grundsätzliche Fragen, die man sich machen sollte…

- Wer ist meine Zielgruppe und wie ist sie im Social Web heute und morgen unterwegs (Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z)?
- Wann soll mein Auswahl Erfolg zeigen? Deklinieren Sie vom kleinsten gemeinsamen Nenner der Unternehmensziele (Markenbildung, Engagement, Leads, Umsatzzahlen…
- Was schränkt mein Vorgehen (One-Voice Policy, Kunden Status Updates, Kommentare oder Posts) mit den sozialen Medien aufgrund business-strategischer Vorgaben ein?
- Warum scheinen soziale Medien für meine Zielgruppe am aussichtsreichsten? Eine gute Analyse der Erfolgssäulen gehört vorangeschaltet, um Kosten, Personalaufwand und sonstige Resourcen abschätzen zu können…
- Wie setze ich die sozialen Kommunikationskanäle Blog, Twitter, Faceboook, Youtube oder XING/LinkedIn zukunftsträchtig als Informationsmedien auf, wer testet und wer optimiert? Wie kann hieraus ein steter Prozess entstehen?

Vielleicht bietet der Post eine Leilinie zur Entscheidungshilfe. Falls nicht, sagen Sie mir, wie sie mit der Qual der Wahl umgehen oder umgegangen sind. Die Diskussion ist eröffnet…

My Starbucks Case Study – Connecting Offline and Online

One of the famous examples we all hear when we join webinars and seminars on how to leverage your brand with social media is Starbucks. Starbucks is using Facebook and Twitter for customer care and yes, we can say that to increase sales. Case studies are a lot on the web and I often talk about them in my presentations. Asking my self if there is way to improve for Starbucks when connecting offline and online…

Now, sometimes you become part of a learning curve for brands as a prosumer. It happens quicker than you want or expect. And it happened to me at my last Starbucks visit.

When I was paying my bill, the friendly women at the counter started talking about my nice netbook. She was actually getting me inside of a comfortable small talk that was obviously intended already before I accessed their coffee shop. It is a part of their customer care strategy which connects offline and online in an interesting way.

When the cash desk threw out my receipe, the woman gets a smile on her face. She cut in our conversation with a “Hey, Congratulations! You have just been selected to take part in our customer online survey“. She hands over the recipe and explains that I have to answer some question and then will get a coupon for a free tall drink. I thought for myself “Nice idea!”, let’s see if they connect it with their social media efforts.

Now, obviously they were lucky in some way that I am a (business) blogger and always pay attention to such efforts of companies to look after their customers. I do not know whether she saw that I have logged in on that Starbucks shop via Foursquare while standing at the cash point. That would show how well trained the people at Starbucks are. She definitely knew that I will be working and going online during my stay in their shop. If the cash maschine has a customer care survey button, I don’t know. Anyway…

So, I took the survey and thus can interpret from their questions that there is an intention to get customers into a conversation. “Cluetrain in the offline world” comes to my mind. The survey itself is a normal five minutes multiple choice research. Nothing special. In the end, I get the code for my free drink, write it on the coupon and get my drink. Their customer care process works!

Spot On!
Now, why do I write about this experience? Starbucks is said to have a good social media approach -some might call it strategy- to work with their customers. But when the survey was done, I was surprised that I did not find a button to become their “fan” on Facebook. Which actually would lead me a step further in their process to think about their customer care card (see their app promotion). Or to become a follower of their Twitter account, so I can spread the word about my free drink and praise their cool customer service approach. And now, I am asking myself, is it better that they don’t ask for too much brand commitment. Or is it normal to give when you get? Maybe you can help my find an answer…

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