A great post by Jeremiah Owyang on social media and how corporations can active engage in the dialogue that their customer base is already having/will have on them.

A well writen and though provoking article.

Hugh MacLeod is about to start a two week 35 'roadshow' around Tesco's stores in the UK.

I cannot wait to see what impact blogging about the roadshow and the events themselves will have on Stormhoek sales. I am hoping to catch up with him on his tour and ask him.

Thanks to Tim Beadle of Marketing Improvement for alerting me to a new report from Wharton on social media tools.

The article is about how individuals have personal influence with others and through their networks of contacts can influence many others on selection and purchase of products or services.  

I use TripAdvisor before any holiday or business trip to check out peoples reviews of the quality, location and facilities. I use the site as it contains ‘real peoples’ opinions – not paid PR or ‘expenses paid’ travel writer comments. I use the ‘herd’ method of selection. If there are many more positive reviews than negative ones I will book.

What if I knew the reviewers ‘personally’? What if I knew that we shared the same hobbies and pastimes? Taste in music, food and books? What if we each agreed with the others feedback and comments made on hotels? We would begin to trust each others judgement – not just on hotels – but on other purchases too!

That is the power of social media. Through YouTube, MySpace and blogs people can disclose more about themselves and so allow others to learn more about them – their personality, beliefs and attitudes. As Alan Partridge would say ‘Knowing me. Knowing you’. The tools can also provide a platform for ‘two-way’ conversation which further enhances personal relationships.  

To paraphrase ‘It’s not just what you know, but who you know (and how well you know them)’. For an excellent academic study on this subject see here. Usually our circle of influence is restricted by time and distance. How many people can we ‘personally’ know and would seek advice and recommendations from? Social media tools changes these dynamics completely. It can put a ‘human face’ on a company. Look at the blog from Bill Marriott, CEO of the Marriott Hotel group. Bill mentions the business but talks about himself, his personal involvement in the heritage of the business and his family. He has had hundreds of comments.

Direct dialogue with customers can be invaluable. Often CxO’s and senior managers are so focussed running the business they lose touch with their customers and their issues and rely on reports from Management Systems, Focus Groups and Attitude Surveys. Social media tools can also be a valuable early alert system for crisis management. Listen to the dialogue on the blogosphere to see what the issues are. They also provide a platform for CEO’s to regularly ‘talk’ to shareholders and employees rather than use quarterly or Annual Meetings and Reports.

Sources:

‘It’s not what you know but who you know’

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_5/nardi/#n8

Wharton report http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1637&CFID=350925&CFTOKEN=15945591

Marketing Improvement http://www.marketingimprovement.com/

Bill Marriotts blog http://www.blogs.marriott.com/

Alan Partridge http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/partridge/

TripAdvisor http://www.tripadvisor.com/

Our camera crew was in action at the site of the MSC Napoli recording the oil polution and resultant clean up operation yesterday. The beach had been closed by the police and members of the public being told to stay away.

You can clearly see the oil-slick to the right of the boat and some of the vessels involved in the containment and dispersal operations. Reports this evening spoke of a slick a km long but heading out to sea.

In the picture you just see vessels alongside the ship pumping out the remaining 3.5k tons of oil estimated still on board.

For more pictures see here

For video footage see here

Some of the studio engineers were off today from the studio on location filming the MSC Napoli and the resultant polution for one of our clients the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. I am not sure if they made it as the police were closing roads due to the number of people attempting to salvage things!

I have been preparing to record two podcasts this week. One is for the European Podcast Summit which is happening 19th/20th March in London. The other for a project I am working on that is in its early stages but will be real fun if it comes off.

One of the big frustrations in the media production world is the number of great ideas (not always mine I hasten to add) that go nowhere. It is usually a problem with diaries and availability. Sometimes it feels like 'herding cats'. I have been working on one concept for almost 6 months now. Everyone agrees it is a good idea but trying to get everyone free and available to start the production is a real pain. I worry constantly that someone else is just about to beat me by getting exactly the same idea podcast before I do.

Later this week I am coaching a senior executive of one of the top European Management Consultancies in presentation and influencing skills. We use video and audio as part of the evaluation and feedback loop. It is very powerful as many have never seen themselves.

In his most recent 'Sales Caffeine' newsletter Jeffrey Gitomer said:

"Presentation skills are one of the least taught areas of selling, and one of the most critical. Your ability to present in front of a group, and be compelling, will make your one-on-one presentations seem like a piece of cake. Obviously, it will take more than one week to get good at presentation skills. I recommend that you take a class for an hour or two a week, and stay in that class for years. Presentation skills evolve over time, and they require self-evaluation in order to give you the real-world jolt to get to the next level.

Very interesting post regarding trust from Edelman PR following their conference this morning. Thanks Hugh MacLeod for mentioning this in his blog. 

It appears that research is showing traditional media and sources are being trusted less and less. No real surprises that the 'masters of spin' are past their sell-by-date. What is shocking is the rate of decline is so fast. Trust in Government fell from 33% to 16% this year. Trust in the media was only slightly ahead at 19%. Trust in business was over 40% but not so strong for CEO's themselves.

Social media enabled 'communities' have come to the fore as trusted sources of information. The concept of the independent reviewer has been around for a long time - look at Which. Certain individuals can build 'personal trust'. Richard an Judy and their book club for example. For the last couple of holidays and trips abroad I have used TripAdvisor (feedback from ordinary people - not PR spin or paid travel writers). I found that the input was honest but like all opinions - coloured by that persons experiences, beliefs and values. If mine were a close match to theirs I could see immediately what they meant but if not I did not always agree with them. 

Edelman found that -

"A ‘person like yourself’ and a doctor/healthcare specialist are the most trusted people in the developed world (both 52%).

In the UK, the credibility of a ‘person like yourself’ is influenced by shared interests (72%), while same gender (7%), religion (6%) and race/ethnicity (2%) are far less important."

The challenges for companies is how to engaged an increasingly sceptical audience. One that does not always trust them, their CEO's nor the media they use to communicate with them. In addition the traditional marketing communication platforms of TV, radio and print are not as impactful as they once were.

What are companies to do?

They need to fundamentally re-think their communication strategy. Instead of the heirachical, command and control infrastructure that de-personalises the communication into corporate speak they need to empower their employees to show that they are 'just like the customer'. Social media provides tools to enable this to happen.

It is fascinating to look at the results of the Threshers Viral/Word-of-Mouth marketing campaign and the area of social media in the light of the ‘Small World’ experiments done by the social psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933 – 1984).

Milgram’s research into the ‘small world’ happened in the 1960’s when he gave 60 volunteers a letter with instructions to get it from Nebraska to a stockbroker living and working in Massachusetts. The only stipulation was that it had to be passed by hand. In the first experiment only 50 people participated and only 1 letter (5%) reached its destination. However later experiments resulted in up to 90%+ arriving.

From Milgram’s work we get the concept ‘Six degrees of Separation’. His observation was that it takes an average 6 steps to make a connection. Even in the 1960’s it only took a few days for the letter to travel across an America and arrive at the named person. Milgram’s and others research into the ‘small world’ concept showed ‘small groups’ and highly connected individuals acted as accelerators and ‘hubs’ in the process. Without doubt some ‘hubs’ are better connected than others.

40 years ago my Mum knew lots of people and seemed to me as a kid to be at the centre of village life – Women’s Institute, Youth Club, Guides, Church, Fetes. She had a little red address book and seemed to be always involved in some project or other. She spent a lot of time at meetings and coffee mornings and writing to people. We then got a phone but even then it was still labour intensive – one-to-one communications. In ‘small world’ terms she would have been a ‘hub’ I guess.

Fast forward to today. I have an address book with 40 or so names of family and friends. I have an Outlook address book with 300+ ‘business contacts’. I also have access to a company database with over 5k contact names. Within minutes I can contact them all. And they can contact me. Compared to many other people I am not a ‘full-hub’ – just a mini one. When a message hits a ‘full-hub’ it gets a massive push. Things can reach a critical mass quickly. This is what happened with Thresher’s. A few very well connected ‘full-hub’ people accelerated the viral marketing to another level and in a few weeks they had £15m of extra sales as mentioned in a news interview.

In his excellent book ‘The Tipping Point’ Malcolm Gladwell discusses Milgram and explains how this concept can be applied to many other situations.

I just wonder what my Mum would have done if she had had access today’s social media tools.

LinkedIn uses the principles of Milgrams work to create a business networking infrastructure. You can have some real fun seeing potential links.

So for example I am only three steps from Bill Gates. I know Dave Gurteen from our time together at Lotus. Dave knows Ray Ozzie from the time they both worked in the US on Lotus Notes and Ray now works for Bill Gates. Ray and I both were involved with Lotus Symphony but he worked in the US and I was based in Europe. In suppose in theory I can get hold of Bill using my connections. Guess what - thousands of others could do too and no - Ray and Bill don't send me Christmas cards!  

References:

Gladwell, M. ‘The Tipping Point’, Abacus, (2005), London UK, pp. 34 – 36

Milgram, S. ‘The Small World Problem’, Psychology Today, (1967) Vol 1 pp. 60 - 67  

My saga of customer service BMW style continues...

Still no response so I call the garage today. Everyone busy - they take my number and will call me back. Sounds familiar....

Yep. You guessed it. By noon still no returned call. Why set my expectations and then dash them? What sort of system do they run? Do the messages get lost or are they simply saving cash by forcing customers to ring back? Wouldn't it be better to just ask me to ring back in the first place? Not sure how this fits into the Customer Care Programme they must run.

I ring.

I speak to someone who looks up my original estimate. Looking good. But no - I spoke to soon. There is a problem. My order has a number of red marks against some of the parts. Why? What does it mean? The person who is handling my query is not sure. They will have to speak to someone more senior. Now? No everyone is busy. Oh no....they take my number and will ring me back.

4 hours later still no call. I ring again. This time I speak to someone who knows what the red marks mean. I have to explain my whole story again but at least we agree that the job will take only 45 minutes to fit a few parts - the rest I can take away and do myself.

I now have a date and a time. Yippee....

Now I just have to start the process of calling the insurance company.

Sorry. I forgot to say. This was all the result of my car being stolen in early June 2006. Now there is another story!  

Oh yes....what do the red marks mean? It means unallocated stock. No. I don't know. I didn't ask.

So what was my second bad experience.

3 years ago I bought a BMW. Not top of the range but a mid-model costing £35k. I say that to only put it into perspective. Love the car and until now loved the service - expensive but very good.

My car had a few parts that needing ordering and fitting from the last service. They had tried to interest me in a test drive of the new model while my car was being serviced but I was too busy. I had a quote for the parts and rang now - a month later - to book it in.

I was told they couldn't deal with my request as the 'system' was down but they would ring me back. I gave them them the job number and quote reference so they could look it up.

Thoughts:

• Not good for a garage selling £20k to £70k+ cars to have a systems issue with no back-up
• Great - they will call

What happened? No call later that day as promised, nor any of the next day. So I rang them to explain the situation. No appology, just a statement about the problems they had been having (now not computer but just workload) and a promise to get someone to call me 'when someone is free'. That was at noon. It is now 7.30pm and no call from anyone.

Does make you wonder. I want to spend something like £300 for parts and fitting. I am also potentially in a market for a car. Guess what I am thinking of doing? Yep - I will look at the local Mecedes garage.

Let's see what happens tomorrow.

Twice this week I have had poor customer service expectations where promises have been made and then dashed.

The first time started last week. I had placed an online order for contact lenses early in the new year, the money was charged to my credit card and an automatical e-mail sent to me confirming shipping. Nothing arrived after a week and half so I rang. The response was 'Sorry. We had a problem. Guess they didn't ship. We will get back to you later today or tomorrow and let you know'.

My thoughts:

• Why didn't they e-mail everyone a week before with that information? Why did I have to contact them?
• Why not an immediate answer or offer of some compensation?

It got worse.

No call that day or the next so I called them and had to give them the whole story again. She didn't acually say my story sounded wrong but all she said was I am not aware of any problem and I cannot see any notes on the system.

My thoughs now:

• I have two differing stories - don't they know what it is
• They said they would ring - they didn't
• I am told the conversation and promise of a ring back is not even recorded so what does that say about their ystem, processes or customer staff training
• I wasted 2 days waiting for a call back promised but never scheduled or recorded
• My story is treated slighly off-hand that makesdme feel distrusted by the company
• I am not offered any sort of compensation

Here I am almost a week and a half after my first call and still no contact lenses. I got a mailer through the door today offering half price lenses and eye testse one. All I want are the ones they charged me for! Have they e-mailed me to confirm shipping? No. So I will call them tomorrow and tell you what happens.

Last night was fun. We had some neighbours in to share the New Year with. We played board games and had a good chat which is nice as we are all often dashing about living our hectic lives we never really get a chance to meet and talk. My kids (21 and almost 20) had headed off to New York with my ex-wife to see in the New Year over there. They are back tomorrow so I will get an update on how New Yorkers party the night away.

We decided to make it a 'scrag-end' party. People brough left-over food from their Christmas celebrations. Whilst the name leaves a lot to be desired the idea was fun. I am sure someone would be able to get a real insight into people by what they eat but for us it was was just fun to created a 'shared table'.

The fireworks in London looked wonderful on TV. Shame Scotland and other areas had weather conditions that stopped their enjoyment.

I have made my resolutions. My first is to stick to them. Let's see how I do.