At F8, Facebook.com ’s developers conference in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, announced the use of plug-ins designed to embed its social networking service into third-party sites. As the FinancialTimes.com reported, “The initiative is designed to put people at the center of their web experiences by providing more meaningful connections.”

Companies might like the idea because –with the more than 400M members, Facebook’s plugins could drive a lot of traffic.

The “Like” Button

How does it work? Let’s say a Facebook user was on a website. They would be able to click on a “Like” button –on stories or products they want to share with friends. Their friends would see a pop-up window that shows their friend’s activity on the site and allows them to share comments.

As the NewYorkTimes.com story said, “It would, in essence, allow Facebook friends to enjoy those sites together.” If you want to follow some additional great coverage of F8 and other tech news, check out @benparr – he’s got the goods.

Focusing on the Big Picture of Social Business

As many of my readers know… I am very focused on the customer-facing aspects of social media. That means that I always have a keen eye towards wondering what each of the new developments will mean to companies and their ability to enhance or at least maintain their customers’ experiences — i.e., in particular their ability to deliver a quality brand-equity enhancing experience –otherwise known as customer service.

While the idea of the plug-ins theoretically sounds like a great idea… it could also lend itself to a PR nightmare. Let’s say for instance, that someone is sharing about something. And let’s say that a number of those people weighing in on that shared product or service are not too happy. What could happen is a spiraling of unhappy customers sharing their unhappy experiences.

So what can companies do as they adopt the Facebook (FB) “Like” button? Get a little satisfaction.

What do I mean by that? For many companies, their Fan Pages or in this case,  extended fan experiences are or will become a company’s “other” homepage. Companies are finding that these “fans” or customers  spend a significant amount of time on FB and thus are possibly a great way to engage their most social customers.

More Engagement Means Doing Less of “The Ostrich”

What I predict will happen, is that, as more and more companies are embedding these “Like” buttons — not only will they increase engagement… they are likely to also increase the amount of feedback. While many Facebook-type initiatives are started as a PR/Marketing effort, the social net has become a place where consumers can scream very loudly and to millions about their disdain for a company’s products, service and overall attitude towards customers.

This addition of inter-connectivity or third-party FB “Like” buttons doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t adopt the “Like” button. But it does mean that you need to be strategically ready to handle the additional customer service issues that are likely to explode.

And note that adding a “Like” button IS NOT the cause of more customer service issues. If the issues are there, they are being talked about — at the watercooler, at the cocktail party and somewhere on the internet. So its not about whether you adopt the “Like” button, its about whether you take your head out of the sand and stop doing the “ostrich.” Stop pretending that your company, its products, its services and they way it handles customer issues isn’t being talked about. It is. Start thinking strategically about how you are going to handle them.

Don’t Under Estimate The Need For Customer Service Interactions

Customers view your Facebook Fan Page-type interactions as another channel to interact with you on. And they assume that you– the brand –will be there to answer their questions, acknowledge their ideas, etc…   But companies who are not planning ahead often underestimate the need to provide service & support via the fan page-type initiatives.

I’ve worked with many PR and Marketing professionals who didn’t anticipate the amount of Customer Service they ended up doing when they interacted with customers via social media. By not planning ahead and supporting all you social media channels properly, you can essentially alienate your most social customers.

Facebook Fan Pages have roadblocks that make it hard to serve/engage customers. For instance:

• The Wall has no search function (This translates into  costly, repetitive responses)
• Information on the wall has no permanence–as engagement/activity increases the wall “turns over” faster.  (This means there is (limited exposure of valuable content to fans and companies are having to answer the same questions over and over — inefficient & ineffective… (In addition, This means that there is limited value to internal teams/systems to garner that value information and feedback to make changes, improve products and services, etc…)
• The information is “locked” inside of Facebook — ( That means no SEO, and you can’t use that information other places ([brand site for example])

What is a Company to Do? Getsatisfaction.com

Here’s what I think the real news is: Get Satisfaction has partnered with Involver to solve these problems by building an app that recreates Get Sat within the Fan Page. What does this combo provide? Here’s a couple of advantages:

• Allows users to search to see if question has already been asked (benefits both company & customer).
• Since the information is stored in the Cloud, the Fan Page content can be syndicated to other places (search engines, community on a brand page, etc…)

If Facebook is part of your social media business strategy, then you’ll want to think strategically about how all of your functional disciplines are affected. (Note: I did not say functional departments. I am encouraging clients to move away from functional silo’s and think in terms of social business.

Social business means that you are considering how all social interactions affect your company — every single person, department and especially how they manifest in your customer’s experiences.

If you want to learn more and join an interesting discussion TODAY on social business, check out the Facebook Social Engagement Hub Webinar.  Here’s a link to it:  http://bit.ly/SEH-GetSat

It’s at 11 AM PST TODAY. I’ll be there. Will you?

Luv to hear your thoughts about these new developments on Facebook and how your company is leveraging them.

Learn. Share. Grow.

Dr. Natalie

Follow me on twitter — www.twitter.com/drnatalie

GetSatisfaction.com Newest Addition: Involver

From all the posts, comments and tweets, we all know that customer service needs to shift. Is social media the way the shift will happen? That remains to be seen, although there are already hundreds of companies going in this direction.

Would love to hear your thoughts and comments!

If you are still wondering if there is an ROI, check out this presentation on slideshare.net:

ROI of Social Media

Learn. Share. Grow!
Thanks for tuning in!

Dr. Natalie

Follow me on twitter:  www.twitter.com/drnatalie

Here’s is a candid interview with Sean O’Driscoll of Ant’s Eye View:

Learn. Share. Grow!

Thanks for tuning in! Dr. Natalie

www.twitter.com/drnatalie

You can learn more about Sean at http://www.antseyeview.com/blog/

and follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/seanodmvpt

At Dreamforce Marc Benioff announced  Chatter. As both a collaboration application and a platform for building social cloud-computing apps, Chatter is designed to help you connect and share information securely  in real time.

I talked to Mike Krigsman and Dion Hinchcliffe about their thoughts around the user adoption issues with Enterprise 2.0 collaboration software and platforms, change management and Knowledge Management challenges organizations face when trying to use all the social interaction data within their company as well as externally. This is part 1 of the interview:

Learn. Share. Grow!

You can follow Mike and Dion at:

http://twitter.com/mkrigsman and read his blog at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/

http://twitter.com/dhinchcliffe and http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe and http://hinchcliffeandcompany.com/

and ZDNet is at: http://twitter.com/zdnetblogs

Fractal photo source:  flowtv.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/fractal.jpg

Michael shared with me the impetus for the invention. At Rockfish Interactive they build websites that pull in social media elements, one of which is Twitter feeds. The development of the Tidytweet was instigated when a site that was pulling in a certain hash tag which had been spammed. That spam ended up on the client’s homepage. So Michael came up with a monitoring engine. They quickly realized that this would have value to other people and they began to expand their development of the idea.

I asked Michael about the concept of moderating Tweets. The trend in social media is to allow people to state their thoughts, openly, honestly, authentically and genuinely. This means that if someone makes a comment on your website, your community or in Twitter, the protocol is not to just take it down because it is embarrassing. Rather the protocol is generally to allow it to stay posted. And the company is left to decide to respond and interact with the feedback.

Michael said that if someone was to do a search on a particular hash tag, that information is still in the cloud. Some of which the company might not want. What TidyTweet does is control what makes it to the client’s  web page. They filter out bad language and clear attempts to maliciously destroy a brand. Michael says that is NOT an attempt to discourage honest dialogue in the cloud. Rather if someone is bent on ruining a company by continually posting horrible things, then that’s the point at which companies might consider this product.

On well run community sites, companies have established some best practices on posting as part of their welcome package they ask newcomers to read. Perhaps something similar needs to be adopted for other social media channels. Perhaps if the comments are in the tone of “I’m frustrated, please help me1” Or “I mad as heck- and here’s what would be better if…” then those are genuine dialogues companies will be impelled to interact with. Certainly no one wants to be attacked or spammed- and that kind of behavior may not be what companies in Twitter or other channels want. It’s our cloud- our community – just like we would not litter, we might consider negative spamming in the same light.

Click here to hear more about Michael views this interesting topic. Do you agree or not?

Click here to hear about Michael’s point of view on keeping websites clean….

You can follow Michael on twitter at www.twitter.com/mpaladino

And learn more about this product by following the product on twitter at www.twitter.com/tidytweet

Learn. Share. Grow.

Jeanne Bliss tweeted me to thank me for writing about her book. And as we got to talking, she provided me with a link to the first chapter of her book, just for you:

http://www.customerbliss.com/pdf/Chapter%201%20I%20Love%20You%20More%20Than%20My%20Dog.pdf

(may have to copy and paste the URL)

Chapter 1: Your Decisions Reveal:  Who You Are and What You Value!

It’s very generous of Jeanne to provide me a link. I hope that you take advantage of it!

The chapter starts with a quote from Walt Disney:“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.”

Walt Disney, The Master of the Customer Experience

Companies that are loved by their customers make decisions differently than other companies.

The common denominator, according to Jeanne, is that these companies bring consciousness and humanity to the decisions they make.  When you make decisions that respect and honor your customers, your customers will grow your business by word of mouth. They will tell their friends, who will they their friends, who will tell their friends…

Remember that Breck Shampoo commercial back in the ’60s that used this as their tagline?

The most important thing a company can do is to form an army of cheerleaders and publicists urging their friends, neighbors, colleagues and strangers to get behind your company.

Have we ever seen this in action? Sure we have… Land’s End for instance. That’s where Jeanne started her customer experience career. The founder of Land’s End, Gary Comer, described Jeanne’s job as:  nurturing the “conscience” of the company through the decisions they made as they grew. And they experienced 20-30% grow per year. Their stand? Long-term growth was dependent on retaining their strong emotional connection with customers.

At that time, the stories customers told about Land’s End, revealed their values. They drove not only customers to the company, but also an engaged and loyal employee base. Land’ End need over 200 employee volunteers to answer all the, “I love you, Land’s End!” mail they received each month.

And have we seen this lately? Yes, at Zappos.com When Tony and Alfred started Aappos.com they didn’t have money for large advertising or marketing programs. They made the conscious decision that the way they would build and grow their business was to provide such great service, interactions and experiences, that they tell their friends, who will they their friends, who will tell their friends…

And 2009, Amazon.com bought Zappos.com for over $922 Million.  That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it.

And its not that these types of companies are perfect. It’s not that every single interaction is perfect. What is so is that they have a huge reserve of gratitude from their customers, that if and when a mistake is made, that customers are willing to be more forgiving. Especially when that tender, loving care is how they deal with the mistake or issue.

As Jeanne would say, “The decision is yours.”

]]> http://drnatnews.com/2010/01/free-chapter-1-i-love-you-more-than-my-dog-by-jeanne-bliss/feed/ 0 http://drnatnews.com/2010/01/five-decisions-that-will-change-your-companys-customer-experience/ http://drnatnews.com/2010/01/five-decisions-that-will-change-your-companys-customer-experience/#comments Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:20:39 +0000 admin http://drnatnews.com/?p=381 This is the second post about Jeanne Bliss’s book, “I Love You More Than My Dog.” As I read it over the holidays, I became intrigued with the idea that its in the decisions that companies make that determine what their customer’s experiences will be. As Jeanne puts it, ” Your company’s key decisions expose their true purpose, who you are and what you value.”

What’s important about that? Well customers today want to feel that you care about them. That you value their participation in your business. Customer’s evaluate whether you “care” about them from each and every action and interaction they have with you. They evaluate your company based on the interactions with customer service agents, with your website, with the IVR, with your email responses. They evaluate your company based on the experiences they have with those touchpoints.

And unfortunately most companies, when they deployed these technologies their values were focused on the company’s efficiencies. They were not thinking or even in most cases, considering how the technology deployment would affect their customer’s experiences. To them, that either wasn’t part of the decision process or it sounded too much like “motherhood and touchy-feely stuff” to even consider.

What’s happened is that those decisions, 20 years ago, to deploy technology to make the company more efficient has created a backlash from customers. After 20 years of very poor customer experiences, customer are mad as hell, and they are not going to take it anymore. What we see today is a reaction to the decisions made years ago.

Flash forward and what do we see? The backlash comes at a time when the evolution of the Internet is in its second phase, Web 2.0. Where customers don’t just tell 10 or 20 people when they are upset, they tell millions via a giant megaphone called social media.

Customers are mad and they are vocal!!!

Examples? Dell Hell, United Broke My Guitar and Comcast’s Sleeping Technician videos on youtube.com

If you haven’t seen the videos, here’s some links:

United Breaks Guitars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Comcast’s Sleeping Technician: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viw2TVBygBg

So what does this mean to you and your company?

Here’s the five decisions in: I Love You More Than My Dog:

1. Decide to believe

2. Decide with clarity of purpose

3. Decide to be real

4. Decide to be there

5. Decide to say sorry.

The decision is yours.

You might think I am talking about a romantic relationship. I am. But not the kind that you might think. It’s a kind of love that is rare. That is cherished.

There is an energy that comes from being believed, from being trusted; its like coming home. We all crave it. We all desire it. We want to emulate it. When our intelligence, our creativity, our emotions and humor blend, and is acknowledged by another, we realize our full potential.

Amazing Authors: These are the words of an amazing author, Jeanne Bliss. And the title of this post is the title of her newest book. When I met Jeanne, at the Earth Cafe on Melrose, I met someone who created an indelible mark of kindness and passion that makes people want to be with her. She emulates what she writes about. She is someone you love more than your dog. (Or in my case, my cats!)

What is Jeanne’s book about? She writes about the kind of corporate America we all dream of. Of a place that we ourselves can believe in. Of a place we are seen, heard and respected. Of a place where customers are seen, heard and respected.

Book Reviews: One of the things I wanted to do in this blog is to share the amazing insights from the various authors of books that are creating the shift. So this is one of the first of many posts about amazing authors, their amazing stories and their ability to take words and fashion a story that moves from where we were to where we dream is possible.

Author Jeanne Bliss and her dogs!!

If you haven’t picked up a copy, you need to. And when you read it, don’t just read it, absorb it. Use it as a way of evaluating how you and your company does business. Ask yourself, “Do my customer’s love us more than they love their pets?” And if not, why?

Follow Jeanne on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JeanneBliss

Happy New YEAR! 2010! Dr. Natalie (follow me on twitter.com/drnatalie)

Learn. Share. Grow.

Partial List of Companies In Jeanne’s Book:

1. Rackspace

2. Griffin Hospital

3. The Container Store

4. W. L. Gore

5. Zane’s Cycles

6.Trader Joe’s

7. Cutomer Ink

8. Wegman’s Food Markets

9. Chik-fil-A

10. Harley-Davidson

Is your company on this list? Or mentioned in Jeanne’s book? If not, why not? And what can you do to begin the shift towards being beloved?

CEO of ScoutLabs.com Jennifer Zeszut

In many companies, Marketing and PR were the first to pay attention to customers in the cloud.  Jennifer’s interview addresses some of the issues around the various functional departments within an organization and how measuring can help customer service.

Click here to hear Jennifer’s interview: CEO Jennifer Zeszut, of ScoutLabs at Web 2.0 NYC

You can follow Jennifer and scoutlabs.com on twitter:@jenniferland and @scoutlabs

And you can follow all the fabulous speakers at http://www.web2expo.com/webexny2009/

Learn. Share. Grow.

Follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/drnatalie

Tony Nemelka, Social CRM Expert

Tony started his career at IBM in mainframe sales, then went to watch the PC, client server revolution.

And today he is seeing a new kind of revolution:

• First is the transformation of business to a more social business where customers and employees are thought of as “partners.”  This change in strategy and its accompanying technologies results in changes in business processes introduced by the internet.
• And second is revolution is around the “cloud” or others might refer to it as SaaS.

He sees companies looking to deploy things that are going to offer them competitive advantages. And the questions they will be asking themselves are:

• “Where is the innovation going to come from?”
• “Where is it going to be built? On premise or in the “cloud?” and
• “What tools/ applications will can we use?”

He talked about his experience with the VC (venture capital) world. He does not seem them focusing on funding on-premise technologies or applications. Which sounds like the innovations will be centered around the “cloud.”

Click here to hear how Tony sees the future shaping up:

You can follow Tony on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/tnemelka

p.s. Tony’s lanyard was via http://www.zebra.com/

**************************************************************

To participate in more conversations on Social CRM, follow me on twitter: drnatalie and use the Twitter hash tags: #SCRM #CustomerService #VSCRM #SocialMedia

Learn. Grow. Share.