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How to Take My Money

Posted by Jennifer Radons on April 8, 2013

Hi, my name is Jennifer, I’m a consumer and I have a serious case of “the wants”. I want to find things easier, get them faster and I want the entire process to be painless if not effortless altogether. And I want the companies I buy from to care about that process and, most importantly, about me.

I think most of us do. As our lives become more socially accessible it increases the number of touch points between the business and the consumer, and we are all aware of it. So what’s the best way for a business to give me the warm fuzzies that make me forget my budget and add to my cart (literal or virtual)? Listen to me.

Listen to me and THEN engage with me. Read more…

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Long Live the Twitter Callback!

Posted by Omri Duek on March 25, 2013

Has it happened to you too?

There I was, tweeting about a minor customer experience issue to one of the retail brands that I frequent. Less than 20 minutes later, my phone rang – “Mr. Duek? This is Charlotte from XYZ’s social media team. I wanted to get back to you about your tweet.”

The funny thing is that I wasn’t shocked – something about this approach made a lot more sense to me than the historical call-center model. I didn’t have to wade through phone menus to reach an agent; I skipped the ‘approximate hold time’ announcements; and although some brands have upgraded their hold music to Top 40 (of the 1950’s), I didn’t miss listening to that either. From the brand’s perspective, they were still able to document and manage my concern promptly and as part of their defined service process… really, the only thing that had changed was that I didn’t need to waste time on the phone (and to a lesser degree, that the brand was calling me rather than vice-versa).

Of course, Twitter didn’t start this trend. I’ve come across organizations in the past (e.g., Comcast) that have added “we’ll call you back” options when wait-times exceeded a certain threshold… but then I’d ask, why am I calling at all? Why not make the Twitter callback a standard, promoted practice for customer support in situations where a simple tweet back doesn’t suffice? And notwithstanding the customer experience improvement, isn’t it cheaper – yes, that means ROI, folks! – to run a customer service program this way?

If I step back, I’d even argue that social media (and Twitter/facebook in particular) is enabling the next generation of asynchronous customer service. Of course, it’s always been asynchronous for consumers in that we’re waiting on the phone for an agent; but social media has allowed brands to meet us halfway, saving everyone time and money. And best of all… no “garbage” hold music, which will certainly make Marissa Mayer @ Yahoo happier.

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Nordstrom’s Mint Save

Posted by Omri Duek on March 4, 2013

[disclaimer: the post below contains rampant personal advocacy for Nordstrom and Mint.com, which may not be – but hopefully is – shared by my employer]

As social media analysts, we sometimes struggle to balance our consumer relationships with brands online – on the one hand, we have clients and prospects we would not care to disparage; yet on the other hand, as consumers (and occasionally influential social media participants), we feel obligated to post about our experiences like many others.

Late last year, Nordstrom decided to terminate its relationship with Mint.com – my favorite personal finance tool – causing a fair uproar in social media. As you can see from my posts shortly following the change, I was not a happy camper…

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Brand Advocate After 60 Minutes Inside Zappos.com

Posted by Ellen Enrico on November 21, 2011

A couple of months ago, I published Advocacy is the New Loyalty; describing the power of advocacy as hyper-focused on the customer voice. I occasionally shop at Zappos.com, but last Friday, I became an advocate of the online brand after witnessing the people and unique culture behind the company.

The Story

I had a couple of hours to kill between the end of the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas and my flight back to Seattle. My colleague encouraged me to spend that time taking an insights tour of Zappos.com headquarters located just 11 miles from the Las Vegas strip. I tried calling (and tweeting) @Zappos to make an appointment but did not successfully reach a live person. I decided I would jump in a cab anyway and see if I could just pop in.

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Communications Privacy and Information Security in Social Media

Posted by Molly Ward on January 11, 2011

Communications privacy and information security, like other social issues, have been radically impacted by the advent of the Internet and social media. New technologies for sharing and interacting, conversation and connection, have destabilized traditional relationships of producer/consumer, private/public. Visible sits right in the middle of these issues for a whole range of clients. It’s critical to us that you understand that Visible is aware of the challenges presented by this relatively new communication paradigm. We take the legal and ethical standards of our industry—both codified and implicit—very seriously, respecting the privacy of our clients and their customers and keeping their data secure.

Thankfully, we’re not the only company wrestling with these issues, and we’re careful to stay abreast of the insightful thought-leadership coming from the likes of EFF, WOMMA, Groklaw, and. . . Martin Kjoster.

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Social Servicing: Supporting the Long-Term Health of Your Brand

Posted by Mark Hanley on November 19, 2010

Many companies are beginning to realize they need to take a more strategic view toward the intelligence they gather from social communities, realizing that this insight not only can transform their approach to customer service, but also support brand health over the long term. As a result, “Social Servicing” – understanding and addressing the needs of customers online and determining how to measure those efforts to make informed decisions as to when and how to invest in additional resources and scale on a global basis – is getting more focus.

Many global brands seeking to support and develop the long-term health of their brand are beginning Social Servicing programs as one of their leading forays into social activation. For most, customer servicing is one of the first business groups within the enterprise to begin social activation. Customer servicing programs can leverage social servicing into the business goals already in place. Most often the most successful programs are created from teams of existing service professionals already well versed at handling customer relations and adding the social channels to the more traditional channels already being serviced layering in social as part of their servicing solution. As businesses establish their online presence through easily recognizable and increasingly active Twitter handles, forum and social channel presences Social Servicing becomes normalized and the opportunity for Social Servicing to expand into new channels and to go beyond one to one customer interaction grows. Over time, this practice becomes increasingly important to the business and its reputation, organizations likely will need to increase the number of staff devoted purely to this function, especially across multiple markets. Customer service professionals are also going to want to have better ways to analyze the influence of each author to understand the bigger picture of their efforts and establish uniform criteria for issue resolution and escalation. To that end integration and usage of API’s is becoming a key component.

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