Background Noise

What's the value of social networking?

Yesterday, I published a post that questioned the amount of time we put into social networking and whether or not we're actually getting anything out of it.

Shortly after I posted, a friend sent me a message on Twitter, with a link to a very similar thought process, "Are Social Networks just another MMO Grind?"

I don't think I would have come up with this analogy in a million-years, primarily because I never really played MMO games, but I know exactly what he's talking about. There's a lot about social networking that feels like you are just working to get to the next level. And then when you get to that next level, you have to work harder.....to get to the next level. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Brilliant...I couldn't have said it better! Which leads me to my original point: Where's the true value in social networking for the vast majority of people who aren't on the grinding away on the treadmill?

I would suggest that we haven't really seen the "killer app" for social networking yet. It still feels like we are building out the infrastructure a bit, but waiting for someone to get it right. I'm showing my age here a bit, but I can remember when the Internet had very little value except for the power-users that knew how to navigate it...and then along came e-mail and all of a sudden the infrastructure become indispensable.

There are already a few applications that I think might give us a glimpse into what that killer app will look like:

ChaCha: These guys have taken some heat in the Web 2.0 world for their original model of human-powered search on the web, but they have recently embraced the mobile application and I expect big things. They still use the notion of "guides" right now, but I would expect that this might evolve as well.

GetSatisfaction.com: This is simply a great application of exposing the social infrastructure for something truly valuable: customer service. If you have a problem using  a product or service, who would you rather reach out to: a) someone being paid $10/hour to answer the phone, or b) other consumers of that same product or service who are willing to collaborate to help solve your problem? This is currently the customer support model for Twitter, and you can see several other companies getting on board.

The common thread here is that these applications are starting to show us how to leverage the wisdom of crowds in a valuable and productive way. Hopefully, we'll see more attention given to these types of applications in the Web 2.0 world as the infrastructure starts to plateau.

How much time do you put into social networking?

I've been thinking a lot lately about how and why people use social networking communities like Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc. At the end of the day, what do you really get out of  all the time that you put into it? For me, my time is probably my most precious commodity, and I find that I have very little of it to spend on activities that don't show some form of a "Personal ROI". In other words, I need to get something out the process; mentally, spiritually, physically, financially, whatever.

I came across a post recently called "How Much Time Does Web 2.0 Take?" on a site called "Museum 2.0". According to the site, the purpose is "to explore the ways that the philosophies of Web 2.0 can be applied in museums to make them more engaging, community-based, vital elements of society."

It's a really nice post, written for an audience that is not a bunch of social networking junkies. The gist is to try and explain how "normal people" can participate in social networking activities based on how much time they have to invest.

(image courtesy of Museum 2.0)

This feels about right to me, although there are a few holes and the far right can be left to interpretation. Twitter is a fairly low-impact activity on my time, and I seem to get a lot out of it right now, so my Personal ROI for Twitter is pretty high. Blogging certainly takes more time, but it's a creative outlet for me and seems worth the effort.

How many hours a weeks do you spend on social networking, and is any of it generating a Personal ROI for you?

Social Marketing & eCommerce

The team that I work with at ATG is putting together a corporate sponsored blog for our customers on the subject of eCommerce Strategy and Best Practices. The blog is still in pre-launch mode, but I wrote a post for it yesterday that I thought would be good for a cross-post here.

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Part of the Solutions Strategy role at ATG is to keep abreast of eCommerce trends, not only with our own customers, but in the market as a whole. I know first-hand what kind of time and energy it takes to run an eCommerce business, which leaves precious little time to keep up on best practices and emerging trends, so hopefully our team can help shed some light!

One question that we seem to be hearing a lot is, "How can I leverage the explosion in Social Networking trends as part of my online marketing strategy?". This has been a fairly hot topic at just about every eCommerce event in the past year, and  there really isn't a simple answer to the question.

There have been a number of ambitious, yet failed, attempts to try and recreate the same energy and sense of community of a MySpace or FaceBook on retailer web sites. The problem with these experiments, is that your typical Digital Millennial consumer knows when they are being marketed to, and an overt invitation to come to a big-box retailer to "hang out" and connect with other consumers usually comes off as patronizing and makes the retailer seem out-of-touch with that consumer.

The good news, is that we are starting to see some very promising examples of retailers starting to bridge the gap of social expression and eCommerce:

Leverage the Voice of the Customer: There is no question that the use of user-generated content, primarily through reviews and ratings, has been one of the most effective marketing and merchandising tools to surface in the last 2-3 years. It has quickly moved from a "let's test this and see how it goes" initiative into an eCommerce best practice. I have long been a proponent of ratings and reviews as a merchandising tool, and saw the impact that it has on conversion in my own business. If you aren't doing this today, I would encourage you to reach out to one of our partners, BazaarVoice or PowerReviews, and find out how to leverage this on your site.

Blogging: This starts to get into murky water. The key for any retailer that creates a blog, is to try and create an environment that provides relevant content to their customers without coming across as a scrolling billboard for merchandise. There are a number of pretty poor examples out there on how to do this, but I'd like to focus on the retailers that I think really nail it.

Wal-Mart's Checkout Blog: What Wal-Mart has done here is quite surprising for a company of their size: they have turned some of their corporate buyers and merchandise managers loose on a public blog, and encouraged them to write about what they think is interesting/hot/cool/fun.  The posts are informative and written by people who actually know something about their subject! As you would expect, there are many links back to product pages on the Wal-Mart site, but they are all within context of the blog. This definitely feels like more of a branding play more than anything else right now, but you can certainly see how they are also using it as a way to creatively merchandise products and categories. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be promoting it very prominently on their web site, but I think that will change as the user base grows.

Bluefly's Flypaper Blog: This has always been one of my favorite examples of a retailer's blog, and I have often pointed this site out as the benchmark for what I think a retail blog should be. The content is fresh and written by people who understand what their customers want to see, and it's done in bite-sized posts that are easy to digest. What I've always liked about the blog is how it transitions well into the Bluefly site. They promote it on their home page, and carry over the same design elements, even using the same shopping header.

Video Blogging & YouTube: Not for the faint of heart, obviously, but there are a few brave souls that have embraced this medium and seem to be using it to their advantage. The key to success with video, is the presence of a strong personality to help drive the message. Some great examples:

Ice.com on YouTube: If you've been in the eCommerce business for very long at all, you either know who Pinny Gniwisch is or you've seem him at industry events. Pinny is the VP of Marketing at Ice.com, and has posting videos on YouTube for almost a year. While this is purely a branding play, I think it's a great way to get the Ice.com brand exposed to a different consumer.

Wine Library TV: It would be impossible for me to mention video blogging without including Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary is the Director of Operations for Wine Library, a wine shop in Springfield, NJ owned by his parents. During the last few years, he has helped guide the business from $4M to $50M in annual revenue, and his embrace of video blogging has been a big part of their success. He posts videos 5 days a week, and has more than 60,000 viewers each day! This has been a huge branding success for their online (and off-line) business, and there's no question that it's had an impact on their revenue.

Twitter: This is definitely a trend that I would put in the category of "emerging", but it's gaining momentum and should be on everyone's radar. Twitter is a "micro-blog" service that allows users to send short updates to other users in their network - think blogging as a text message. You can "follow" someone on Twitter just as you would add them as a "friend" on MySpace, FaceBook or LinkedIn. There are over 1 million users on Twitter right now, and that number will just continue to grow. The corporate applications for Twitter aren't fully exposed right now, but we are beginning to see some movement. Comcast is monitoring the "Twitterverse" and reaching out to customers who are complaining about customer service issues. I would expect to see more brands begin to try and leverage this network as their users continue to increase.

The common theme that you see here with all of these examples, is that they are using some aspect of social networking to reach out and create a dialog with their customers. Whether you want to call it branding, marketing or merchandising, the net result is going to be a higher level of customer satisfaction and a positive impact on top-line revenue.

Dear Comcast, I Know You're Reading This...

I was up kinda late last night, catching up on emails and blogs and such, and I happen to catch a series of Twitter messages from Michael Arrington's TechCrunch account about Comcast. It seems that he was in the midst of a 36-hour network outage, and had less than a warm fuzzy experience with them on the phone.

I can relate - I was a long-time Comcast customer, and would probably still be one had they not jacked up the installation when I moved last year. But I digress....that's for another post.

Another Twitter message from the TechCrunch account...

"update: Got a call from Comcast HQ, and they sent a team out and fixed the problem. They say they monitor twitter and saw my complaint..."

This is where it gets interesting: Michael updated the TechCrunch blog with more details on his experience with Comcast, and their reaction to his Twitter messages. OK...I get it. Arrington was using Twitter as a bit of a bully pulpit, vowed to spend a lot of time and energy trashing Comcast over the next few weeks. They picked up on it, had an "oh shit!" moment and then scrambled a Comcast SWAT team to fix his problem. Some of the comments on the TechCruch post were saying the same thing, and Michael responded that he didn't feel that he got preferential treatment by being an A-List Internet guy with a lot of reach.

I kinda wanted to call BS on this, but instead of posting comments on the TechCrunch post I thought I would use Twitter instead. After all, if Comcast is really scanning Twitter then maybe this would pop-up on their radar. A few minutes after my reply to Michael, I get a message on Twitter from Carter F. Smith, with further examples of Comcast taking action after monitoring blogs and Twitter messages.

Not more than 10 minutes after my initial tweet, and subsequent dialog with another Twitter user on the subject, I received a message on Twitter from a Comcast employee. Yes, they are indeed monitoring Twitter for customer service issues. And yes, they would have taken the same action were it me bitching about them on Twitter and not Michael Arrington. He even went so far as to give me a personal email address to use if I ever did have a problem (not knowing that I wasn't a current customer). To bring this full circle, Michael picked up on my Twitter message and posted it as a comment on TechCrunch as further proof that Comcast wasn't playing favorites.

Well...there you have it. I find this pretty remarkable customer service based on my previous history with Comcast. When I was a customer, we had what I would politely call a "stormy relationship". The only reason that I remained a Comcast customer as long as I did, was because I used to live in a DSL black hole with AT&T and I had no other option for broadband.

Bravo, Comcast. And if some in HQ reads this, you need to find the person that came up with this idea, and promote them. Seriously.

Now if I could just figure out how to convince them to get their buddies at DirecTV to do the same thing, maybe I could get this stupid message off my TV!

Adventures in Customer Service

It's probably no secret to those that know me that I have a very low tolerance for poor customer service. I've spent quite a bit of time managing the business end of call centers, and I had the wonderful opportunity of watching a customer service organization grow from one person to over 100 under my watch. I certainly understand the challenges that come with the territory, especially in a large organization, but I also have a pretty good understanding of the technology and tools available to help mitigate those challenges.

By and large, many large companies treat customer service as a necessary evil instead of looking at it as another channel by which they can engage and interact with their best customers. I was reminded of this in vivid Technicolor this week when I had to contact DirecTV to help resolve an issue I was having with their OnDemand service.

I try to do as much as I can on their web site, which is actually very useful as a subscriber (disclaimer: their site is powered by the company that I work for, ATG), but there are limitations to what you can accomplish on the site. I can't remember the last time I had to call them for anything, but that's what this was going to take, as their OnDemand service is still in what they call "beta".

Just to provide a little background: I have been a DirecTV customer since 1995. I was actually working at RCA when the whole DBS hardware and services went into production, and was part of the original test group. I've probably spent enough on DirecTV services over the past 12-years to pay for a year of college for one of my kids. They seem to recognize this on their web site, but in the contact center? Not so much...

Here's how my call went:

Me: Pick up the phone and dial 800-DIRECTV
DTV Auto-attendant: Please help us verify your account...
Me: Fabulous...love to! Anything to help make my experience go smoothly
DTV auto-attendant: Please tell me what you want to do
Me: I have a message on my screen when I try to watch a OnDemand movie
DTV auto-attendant: I have no idea what you're talking about, so I'm going to just guess instead of passing you to a real person! Do you want to pay your bill with a credit card or by a check?
Me: WTF? ok...repeating slowly this time: I have a message on my screen when I try to watch a OnDemand movie
DTV auto-attendant: I still have no idea what you're talking about, so I'm going to guess again! Please tune to the channel where you have no picture...did that fix the problem?
Me: Slightly louder and slower...I WANT TO TALK TO AN AGENT
DTV auto-attendant: Transferring you to an agent

YES!

A pleasant, yet robotic female voice greets me with an odd English accent. Seems that we just left the good old U.S. of A.!

DTV Agent #1: Thank you for calling DirecTV. May I please have your phone number?
Me: Didn't my phone number pop-up on your screen when you took my call?
DTV Agent #1: Yes, but I need you to verify your number for security purposes.
Me: What? Why in the f....oh, nevermind. I give her my number.
DTV Agent #1: Can you give me the name on the account?
Me: Don't you have that in front of you too?
DTV Agent #1: Yes, but again we need to verify...
Me: <sigh>I slowly realize that I cannot win this battle
DTV Agent #1: And who am I speaking with?
Me: <Is this is a trick question?> K-E-N-T
DTV Agent #1: OK, now what can I help you with today?
Me: Explains the problem...
DTV Agent #1: OK...I can't help you with that, so I will have to transfer you to Tier 2 support.

At this point, it's obvious to me that Tier 1 support for DirecTV is offshore, and they can only handle basic account-type calls. That doesn't really bother me...too much. I just want that damn message on my screen to go away so that I can watch the movie that I just paid for. A few beeps and held breaths later, I finally hear the sweet, sweet hold music/programmed commercial of my next queue.

After a short 5-minute wait, I get another human. This time, it appears to be a not-so-pleasant sounding man.

DTV Agent #2: Thank you for calling DirecTV. May I please have your phone number?
Me: Yeah, look..I just got transfered from Tier 1 so I have to think that all that info came over with the transfer, right?
DTV Agent #2: No sir, I need to look up your account information.
Me: ...W
DTV Agent #2: Can you give me the name on the account?
Me: ...T
DTV Agent #2: And who am I speaking with?
Me: ...F??
DTV Agent #2: OK, now what can I help you with today?
Me: Explains the problem...
DTV Agent #2: I need to put you on hold for about 10 minutes while I pretend to look something up. You'll hear some clicks and noises that might make you think you are going to be disconnected, but I'll eventually come back. Unless you get disconnected.

Five minutes later...

DTV Agent #2: OK, I don't have any information on OnDemand because it's so new. So, I will have to transfer you to technical support.

More clicks and beeps and I'm into yet another queue...this time I have a very pleasant-sounding young lady.

DTV Agent #2: Thank you for calling DirecTV. May I please have your phone number?
DTV Agent #2: I'm so sorry..Can you give me the name on the account?
DTV Agent #2: I'm so sorry..And who am I speaking with?
DTV Agent #2: I'm so sorry..what can I help you with today?

OK...this has gone on long enough, and I think you get the point. The last agent apologized about 50 times, but never really helped me with anything. She said someone would call me back to help try and fix it, yet 3 days later I still haven't received a call.

The moral of the story, is that a company with a customer base the size of DirecTV should really be taking customer service a little more seriously. I didn't mind getting sent to India on the initial call; that is a reality that most customers are going to have to deal with, and it probably was the least offensive experience in the whole call. My beef is that at the end of the day nobody cared about or took ownership of my problem, and they clearly don't care about the customer experience when someone calls.

One could probably view this as being a symptom of a company that is more interested in acquiring new customers than retaining the customers they already have. That's not a company I would invest in, and that's exactly what we're doing as paying customers. For now...