10 Top Questions for Contemplating Social Media Monitoring

For companies contemplating social media monitoring, this post analysis is meant as a starting point for integrating such an offer with Social Gastronomy’s Enterprise Social Management consulting services.

The Social media monitoring technologies are not sufficiently mature to be “install and go”; especially if the provider is looking to integrate multiple tools. This will require additional selling, implementing, customizing, and executing to manage the integration of the multiple data stream; which are exponentially more complex beyond single tool selection. Some large brands use up to 16 different tools in its social media monitoring program, we use 10+ for just our social market audit. Adding to the complexity in tool selection is the fact that a strategic snapshot that shows the relevance to the brand and business is different than the tactical dashboard and may require a completely different tools set.

 Additionally, the competitive tool landscape becomes more complicated as provider moves up the “food chain” to sell to new levels. The expectations as to how extensive the monitoring program will become will be dictated by the CMO’s desire to consolidate efforts; ie. Across monitoring for brand, reputation management, customer contact, etc. the provider could find itself competing for a broader base of business against PR, Marketing Communications, and Contact Center firms for the Social Media business. We suspect that this will naturally (already) occur as CMO’s will come to the conclusion that the monitoring and listening capabilities should be centralized and feed data for multi-purposes.

Recommended Planning Steps

Area of Planning	Key Issues	Impact
Business Planning	Expected return Ownership within Organization Measure success What are you really buying Investment required over time Resources Business case Technology investment to support offering	Roadmap will dictate the business and investment requirements. If requirements are more extensive than expected, will cause perception issues as to quality and ability to execute.
Program Management	Pricing Packaging Target customers within organization Tool selection now and future Duplication of data Data cleansing process Start with a core application and add other offerings	Expectations around the offering will dictate whether one tool or many will be required. We are seeing client have more mature requirements in terms of comprehensive information collection and synthesis.
Operation Execution	People Requirements Process Requirements Technology Requirements	How far along the business requirements have gone in preparing to scale the a program
Solution Customization	Add’l types of listening tools Process Training Dashboard Addl tools Packages? Pricing	If you trend as other enterprise social media clients that we have seen, then the customization requirements eventually will be extensive. Preparing for scenarios may allow for better initial package and accelerated scalability
Integration	Process Requirements Customer training Project set-up Policies and procedures setup Roadmap for clients	The enterprise customers seem to be more mature in expectations around integrating offering into their environments and not as tolerant for siloed management. Has impact on operations and customization.

 

10 Top Takeaway Questions to Answer

1. What is the expected hand-off when Social Gastronomy does strategy?
2. What if organization wants other tools to include into the mix?
3. What if monitors in other areas and wants to combine – call center, pr or marcom firm?
4. Reputation monitoring, brand reach, complaints, categories, competitive intelligence, and qualitative analysis – what are you monitoring and why?
5. Sentiment analysis – how leverage, how integrate with other data, how overcome shortcomings?
6. Sentiment analysis challenges and manual review, omissions, volumes, discrepancies
7. What does the integrated tool dashboard look like? Is there a different dashboard for the daily user, weekly manager, and monthly/quarterly executive?
8. Integration into CRM – process, results, so what?
9. How integrate into broader programs, how to use as door-opener for new expanded social media presence management?

10.  Where does this go? Roadmap?

GoDaddy Killed My Email Mailbox: Customer Experience & Social Media Case Study

Reposted from www.socialgastronomy.com

I have used www.godaddy.com for my web hosting for probably close to 5 years or so. I would say that I am a loyal customer as I have half a dozen domains with Social Gastronomy’s website and email hosting being there, as well.

So, if I am UPSET enough to write a blog post to describe the poor customer experience as a case study of what NOT to do, you can understand the magnitude. Comparably, my wife call the president’s office of a our national bank office when they charged us unnecessary fees from the way that they do their deposit accounting practices.

If you are reading this as of thursday morning, I have been without my social gastronomy email for 22 hours. I don’t mean that I can’t access it, I mean that if you email me, you get a bounce back. The rest of the team can get email so feel free to email them, but I can’t get GoDaddy to fix the problem.

It started with our desire to upgrade our email from GoDaddy’s standard POP email account to the hosted exchange service. We were trying to coordinate calendars virtually which was killing our productivity. Ironic…

We signed up for the product and found out that it woudl take 2 hours to port the MX record over from one product to another. Called customer service and they did it manually. Score one for GoDaddy. Very polite person. Score two.

However, I had a problem with how I set up my particular account, you had to use a weird naming convention till you could port the domain record over. Ok, did it. Didn’t work so she suggested that we delete the particular mailbox. Ever have that “I don’t think this sounds right moment”. It got stuck. She did some checking and found out that we had to delete our mailboxes on the old plan before starting the new one. Ok, that was inconvenient, but was quick. She does email me the instructions for getting outlook to work. Good job.

All of them worked, but mine. She tells me that it takes time for some accounts to populate with the new MX record. Now, having been involved with the web for 15 years as a product manager, marketer, etc.; this doesn’t sound right if all but the one account that was different now doesn’t work. Well, then I do some testing and find out that my particular mailbox is now bouncing emails. She tells me to call back in a couple of hours after the record populates. Then sends me a customer service “how did we do” survey.

Ok, so now I have no email, no plan to fix email, and a nagging feeling of panicked “My email is boucing”. So, I call back in to find someone else. Explain the situation. She tells me that if one works then the others work. So the first person was wrong in telling me to delete AND doesn’t understand how they manage MX records.Cool. However, she can’t access my email address and since I am in a car, I have to call back in after my next meeting.

I get home from my meetings and call again. I explain the situation to the 3rd customer service person that I have now talked with about my lack of email. He agrees with me that this is a problem. He then does some checking and confirms that the reason that I can’t re-add my email account is that it is hung up in the deletion process on the server. He needs to open an escalation ticket to get it resolved. Great! We are making progress….

It will take 24 to 72 hours to resolve. In the meantime, “why don’t you create another email address with a variation of your name…” I explain in a panicked voice that I have all of my business cards and contacts who use this email address and need this escalated faster. “Can’t do it, Sir.” He does very politely send me trouble ticket email.

So 15 hours later…. I call back in to find out how I get email back. I get another customer service rep. No help. I ask to escalate to the group as he doesn’t have access to their work queue. Tells me that it is 24-72 hours. I ask for his supervisor, who he grudgingly connects. Now at Customer Service Rep #5. Who proceeds to tell me can’t help, can’t escalate, can’t provide information, can’t see the queue, and since it is in Arizona, no one is in the office to work on it (implied), but he can’t tell me that information for security reasons.

Beyond Being Angry, What do I Know about What is Going on?

1. Unfortunately, this is pretty common for customer experience across many industries and size companies

2. It is fixable. AND they need to fix it as it a real indicator of potential business issues. If I didn’t think it was fixable, this would be a twitter post on why this company SUX and why I am never using them again… etc. I don’t think that they are bad, just that they have mediocre customer service and antequated support systems. There is a better way.

3. When a loyal customer starts to consider moving their accounts because of poor customer support, ineffective systems, and slow response times; you have a problem. It takes 2 hours to move a MX record (switch providers), but it takes 72 hours to fix a problems. You have a problem…..

4. If your call center systems and processes are designed to shield your employees and not allow access to people who can actually address customer problems, you have a bigger problem….

5. This is why customers are taking to social media, blogs, etc. to vent and to CIRCUMVENT your antequated customer service infrastructure. Either I get help from someone who actually knows what they are doing OR I am venting because I get the standard call-center “I understand, but don’t really care” response.

6. This is a major concern for a lot of organizations; Customer Service who gets managed against customer ratings, Sales which loses opportunities, Marketing which loses ability to influence the narrative on the company, and the CEO who gets hammered on the web everytime a pissed off customer vents about their poor service.

How does this relate to Social Media?

1. I am actually using this to see if they are monitoring social media and twitter to see if they will respond to a public complaint as I am stymied within their call center.

2. I found 523 GoDaddy current employees near their corporate headquarters on Linkedin; including their CTO…

  3. 56,400 hits for “I hate godaddy” on Google

4. GoDaddy Sucks has 64 members on Facebook, GoDaddy had 65 members.

5. Do a search on Twitter for GoDaddy, this is what you find…

6.The first 2 pages of search on godaddy is standard corporate messaging from GoDaddy. If I were a new customers, I would discount this messaging and look for the real scoop. Hence a search on twitter, facebook, and linkedin. If I was really interested, I would go to the more technical social media platforms for technical discussions, etc.

7. I am annoyed more than angry, but I want my email account fixed AND I want to see that I can get better attention due to my urgency. Going into the blackhole of customer service is not going to be acceptable as consumers become more adept at researching providers on social media sites to understand the real scoop. Providers will have to become more responsive and understand that a pissed off customer doesn’t just tell 10 people anymore, they tell EVERYONE….

8. I am posting this at 10AM, now down almost 24 hours. Let’s see if they are paying attention. I will update when I hear back and what form they communicate.

One last point, this blog post is hosted on GoDaddy…

Matthew Rosenhaft

Principal

Social Gastronomy

mrosenhaft@socialgastronomy.com (when it works)

In the meantime, you can reach me on twitter: www.twitter.com/mmrosenhaft

4:30PM Update: I got a canned email that my problem is fixed. Obviously, GoDaddy is not monitoring social media otherwise they would have responded to my blog post, tweet, linkedin or facebook status updates.

Corporate Social Media Roadmap

One of my contacts on Twitter posted a reply back that “Social Media is a Fad”. I have been thinking about that for the last couple of days. There is a tremendous amount of momentum around leveraging social media for business. This isn’t the first time that I have heard this in the last several months, but I guess perception is reality.

So, to that end, I have outlined a social media roadmap for those who are trying to “figure out” if the hype will lead to something real. I have been around enough to have seen this conversation a few times; websites, ecommerce, web applications, and now social media. This simple roadmap is targeted to those who want to do something, but are having a hard time presenting a business case, especially in this economy.

Social Media “Crawl”

• Make sure your team has a complete profile on Linkedin –It would be nice if they were on Plaxo, Facebook, Twitter, etc.; but make sure that the profiles are complete and up-to-date; including past roles. For a lot of potential buyers, awareness of your company comes through an employee’s profile. Make sure they have a good impression.
• Make sure that everyone has the same basic description– For the company, links to the various pages on the website (including one to careers). Also, make sure there is consistency in the company name (ie. Abbreviations, LLC on the end, Website name, etc)
• Create a social media policy for employees– There is a fine line between personal and private. Social media can blur that line, especially on Facebook with pictures. Make sure that policy also includes connections to partners, vendors, customers, and other employees. I am not recommending that you curtail their ability to interact with online relationships, but make sure there is protection for the company.

Social Media “Walk”

• Inventory Corporate Online Relationship Networks – You will be amazed at who your team is connected and no one else knew it. “I needed someone who could do this” or “We need an introduction to X”.
• Identify who or which companies are missing – a key to successful networking is getting outside your own network. A lot of times it is the 3rd degree relationships that can produce the greatest opportunities.
• Run a networking program for employees – Sales people and Executives generally know how to network, but the vast majority of employees don’t. But, they represent the vast majority or potential introductions as they had lives and experiences prior to joining the company.
• Build an Online Relationship Campaign– This isn’t going out and collecting 25,000 random twitter followers, but building online relationships (across multiple social media sites) with the key influencers, bloggers, buyers, vendors, and participants in your industry. If the saying is “Sell where the customer is…” ; you need to start a program of connecting to them online.
• Start an enterprise blog on your website– designate a team approach to creating an online thought leadership center for your company. Tie your blog updates to your social media participation. I update my Linkedin, Twitter, & Facebook every time I create a new post. It provides content and value for your connections; at the same time, creates a call to action for your website.
• Cross Pollinate Your Traditional Marketing Database with your Social Media Contacts– I add all of the new contacts that I meet into my Linkedin and other social media accounts. Social CRM is becoming the new “hot” thing as companies are trying to manage the multiple (potential) customer communication channels.
• Multi-Channel Marketing now Includes Social Media– I have been integrating my social media contacts into an email campaign list that I send my weekly blog digest. I have gotten a tremendous boost to my blog traffic by integrating email, social media, and traditional networking. A multi-channel, integrated approach allows you to reach the potential customer where and how they want to communicate. Especially with our busy schedule and email overload, don’t assume because they did not repsond that they are not interested. They may not have really “seen” the message.
• Be Respectful– don’t SPAM your social contacts with random messages. Make sure that what you send them provides value to your network. They may not want to buy, but they will respect your attempt at providing value to the relationship and credentialing your thought leadership.

Social Media “Run”

• Building your own online community into your corporate website – Use social media components to create a more compelling interaction on your website. Also, this provides great search engine optimization, thought leadership, differentiation, lead qualification, customer experience management, etc.
• Build public, semi-private, and private group areas in your community– Provide value without a login through public groups, but encourage them to sign up (membership) to see a lot more. The private group areas are then used to continue the sales pursuit and provide individualized customer support.
• Integrate your community with your marketing and sales activities– By integrating your online community, you provide a call-to-action for your outbound sales and marketing efforts. Also, this allows you to leverage your corporate website more effectively during the transition from marketing awareness and interest to sales process and lead management.
• Integrate your community with Social Networking sites– Google, Facebook, and Linkedin all have member APIs that allow someone to use their membership in third-party communities. This removes one major obstacle for people to participate; the dreaded sign-up.
• Integrate your community with your Enterprise Systems– Integrating your existing content and data with your online community is important because it allows you to leverage the investment in your existing CRM, ECM, etc. systems more effectively.
• Leverage Web Analytics and Lead Scoring –An online community provides a trememdous amount of interaction data that can be measured, scored, and utlized for lead qualification.

Social Media “Sprint”

• Integrate your business processes with your online community – Customizing the interactions of the community for your business processes; customer experience management, sales support, Call-center, project delivery, supply chain, partner management, etc. This means that different audiences interact within the community, but have personalized experiences based upon their roles and goals. I serve up a different forecasting dashboard in the Product Management Group versus the Sales Group.
• Reimagining your Information Architecture– Some of the leading organizations are rethinking the traditional ideas around organizational Intellectual Property. They are begining to build flexible information architectures whereby the “community” is really the presentation layer for their corporate systems. They build interfaces as “application mashups”. Your access to information and applications is based upon just-in-time rights management. If I am working on a project, I get invited to the project group that has all of the project history, notes, documents, and applications that I need to interact with the project team. This also then is extended outside the organization to partners and customers. The enterprise is no longer a “castle” with a moat and a drawbridge, but a modern city with buildings, doors, locks, security systems, etc. This allows for more effecient business scalability.

At the end of the day, I don’t see social media as a fad. I think the hype factor will dimish along with the effectiveness some of the early adopters have been able to drive, but I see online social interaction as the next logical step in the evolution of the web and business.