customer-centric social media – the future of social business

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CUSTOMER CENTRIC SOCIAL MEDIA BRIEFINGWritten by Tamsin Oxford @TamsinOxford

http://www.usefulsocialmedia.com

Customer Centric Social Media | Sign up for our FREE weekly corporate social media newsletter at www.usefulsocialmedia.com

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CONTENTS

Foreword Page 3

Customer Centric Social Media Part 1: From Products to People Page 4-8

Customer Centric Social Media Part 2: Personalisation and interaction Page 9-14

Customer Centric Social Media Part 3: Personalise the omni-channel Page 15-20


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FOREWORD

Social media has changed the playing field for many areas and discipline of business. Probably the most profound and significant change has been the opportunity to listen to what customers are thinking and saying.

In virtually all business functions, people, personality and relationships are key. The ability to listen and respond to customers via social media ensures companies can nurture and grow those relationships.

Smart brands are putting their most valuable customers at the heart of what they do. And in doing so they’re differentiating themselves from their competitors.

In this 20-page intelligence pack Tamsin Oxford delves into customer centric social media and outlines many ideas and methods to ensure customers are at the heart of your social strategy.

We hope you find the briefing of use and please do share your thoughts or questions with us via our Twitter channel or Linkedin Group. We look forward to continuing the conversation...

Liam Dowd Marketing Manager @liamdowd10

https://twitter.com/UsefulSocial

https://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostRecent=&gid=2743248


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CUSTOMER CENTRIC SOCIAL MEDIA PART 1: FROM PRODUCTS TO PEOPLE

FOR CORPORATIONS TO SUCCEED THEY NEED TO MAKE THE MOVE FROM A PRODUCT-FOCUSED APPROACH TO ONE THAT IS MORE CUSTOMER-FOCUSED

Corporations are focused on a set of key drivers that include: revenue, bottom line, financials, return on investment and growth. The consumer on the other hand is driven by an entirely different lingo that revolves around feelings, personal impact, intimacy, trust and engagement.

For the business to capture the loyal attention of their consumer within the social sphere, they need to shift their focus from products to people.

“It’s not harder to sell today, but it is harder to keep selling,” says Estelle Nagel, Head or PR for Gumtree in South Africa. “We are in the process of changing our social media plans to become more customer-centric even though we have one of the largest social media pages in the country. Even with close to 900k followers, we felt we had to make changes to get the full value out of it. Research has taught us that customers are less attentive, less brand loyal and more sceptical of advertising messages. They know you are trying to get them to part with their money and that you have an agenda.”

Almost every article talking about social media points out how huge it is, and how corporations and their brands simply must use it in order to grow as a brand and a business.

It’s easy to ignore this repetitive sentiment, as it doesn’t really add much value. However, some startling facts from around the web should get any business without customer-focused policy to rethink their status:

• Social networking has long since overtaken porn as the hottest Internet search.

http://www.gumtree.co.za/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/09/16/us-internet-book-life-idUSSP31943720080916


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• Social media is no longer relegated to the young and the restless with the 55-64 year age bracket growing by 79% on Twitter, 46% on Facebook and 56% on Google+ since 2012.

• You have under an hour to respond on Twitter, especially if it’s a complaint.

• YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn ranked as top three sources for referrals according to Shareaholic, with Facebook and Pinterest remaining King and Queen for referrers of traffic.

GETTING TO THE CUSTOMER

Developing a social strategy for your corporation needs to have two-way engagement that encourages communication and builds loyalty and trust. Many brands are not yet aware of how much power now sits in the hands of the consumer.

“There has been a power shift and we’ve moved away from looking at the product and instead we are focusing on the consumer,” says Dave Ogden, Customer Engagement Consultant at Aspect Software. “In just a few clicks, customers can research a product or company prior to purchase, or write a review about their experience. The power of opinion is undeniable and – without focusing on the customer to give them a positive experience – bad company reviews mean they will simply take their business elsewhere.”

This sentiment is echoed across all those who offered insight into this piece: ignore the customer at your peril.

“The influence of technology and social media has changed the way brands communicate with their clients and potential clients, and how clients engage with brands,” says Veli Ngubane, Creative Director at Avatar. “It is important to move from product focused strategies to customer centric ones as it is the brands that pair the needs of the product with insight that create positive experiences.”

Apple is one company that regularly uses the customer approach in order to boost the brand and the business. Their product interactions focus on how they will improve the lives of their users, not long and dusty lists of features and specifications that few people understand. They show the value of their product to the user and that value is based on insight into the lives and behaviours of their customer base.

Interestingly, it was Apple who bought Dr Dre’s Beats for

http://www.lithium.com/company/news-room/press-releases/2013/consumers-will-punish-brands-that-fail-to-respond-on-twitter-quickly

https://blog.shareaholic.com/social-media-traffic-trends-04-2014/

http://www.aspect.com/

http://www.avataragency.co.za/


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$3bn – a move that not only capitalised on the hip hop star’s understanding of the music industry, but also gave Apple access to a product that was entirely structured around a customer need. The business was built around a specific customer and has become one of the most popular in its arena as a result.

OFFERING INSIGHT

According to Lauren Shantall, Director of Lauren Shantall, the responsiveness of social media is what makes it such a strong tool for gaining insight into the consumer: “You can pose a direct question and get a real response,” she says. “The insights you can gain into customer behaviour by looking at demographics, usage, social media influencer tracking and virility potential are much more sophisticated and revealing.”

SOCIAL MEDIA POST-CLICK ENGAGEMENT

(SEPTEMBER 2013 - FEBRUARY 2014)

http://laurenshantall.com/


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“If asked, most customers are happy to tell companies about their needs and requirements and with their answers, companies can take action and respond,” says Fran Muiños, Social Media Manager at STD-Multiopción. “Today every company in most sectors competes with at least a dozen competitors worldwide and must keep up with an ever changing market. To know what your customer wants, before your competition does, could give you the leverage needed to survive and emerge as a market leader.”

Gathering the insight offered by the consumer allows the brand to develop communication tools and social media strategies that engage with their customer base and give them a sense of being heard. Showing the customer that you’re listening can make all the difference in the way that they respond and relate to your business.

“You can’t please everyone, but if you drill down to what people are happy or unhappy about and respond, nine times out of ten they are glad you took the time to speak to them,” says Nagel. “They feel like part owners of the brand and that’s what you want.”

Plum Baby & Kids Fashion is a wholesale business that used to focus on the products only.

When the new owners took over they realised that they had to adapt and develop a more customer-centric business. They used social media to achieve this goal as it didn’t demand a lot of capital outlay and yet offered greater returns on any investment.

“We have used social media to gain valuable insight into our customer’s wants and needs,” says Eugenie Pepper, owner at Plum. “Through social we were able to build connections and strengthen relationships with our end consumer. We asked our customers if they preferred side opening or front opening baby sleeping bags and found that parents of toddlers preferred them on the side, so we changed these to suit.”

Using social media has had a major impact on Plum’s presence in the marketplace and having moved to a customer-centric approach, they have becoming more attuned to what their customers want and have subsequently increased their sales, their following and brand identity.

http://www.stdmultiopcion.es/

http://www.plumcollections.com.au/


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What social media has shown corporations is that they are not selling products or features any longer. Social businesses sell benefits to their customers. Successful enterprises understand this shift and place it at the heart of all their marketing and customer support activities.


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CUSTOMER CENTRIC SOCIAL MEDIA PART 2: PERSONALISATION AND INTERACTION

PERSONALISATION HAS BEEN RADICALLY ALTERED IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND BUSINESSES NEED TO ADAPT

The age of social media has dramatically changed the way brands interact with their customers. Social networks offer rich resources of information that can be used to make conversations with consumers personal and attuned to their preferences.

Social media is awash with the passions, loves, hates, moods and preferences of a billion lives and corporations are in a unique position to use this data to create personalised customer interactions and create a lifetime of customer advocacy.

The major social networks of LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube hold a combined user base of over two billion people. That’s the needs, desires, choices and buying decisions of two billion customers sitting within the folds of these social giants. It’s like the gold rush of the 19th Century as brands gallop towards this data, trying to find the best possible tools to mine it, woo it and make it their own.

In the infographic provided by My Optimid, it shows some of the most successful strategies for capturing the consumer as well as some pretty impressive statistics including:

• Posts longer than 1,500 words receive more tweets and likes than their shorter counterparts.

• Infographics are still winning, growing traffic an average of 12% more for those who use them versus those who don’t.

http://www.myoptimind.com/


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• Videos can increase conversions by 86%, keep customers on the site up to two minutes longer and websites with video are 50 times more likely to be ranked on Google’s first page.

• Email marketing is a surprisingly strong contender with better click-through rates of 14% if personalised.


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IT’S PERSONAL. IT’S BUSINESS

Consumers are bombarded with information every day, on every platform. Email, Internet, mobile, television, radio – each of these is blaring a message and asking them to pay attention. Your corporation needs to make this communication feel personal so that the consumer doesn’t feel like they are another box to tick or cog in the machine.

“Social media itself is consumer centric,” says Jason Perelson, head of social media at Boomtown. “The brand that recognises this from the outset will achieve far greater results than those who purely use the digital space for direct marketing and brand messaging, as if it were a traditional media space.”

The first step is for the corporation to commit to a strategy that engages with the consumer on a regular basis and to ensure that response times are swift, and messaging is clear.

Consumers know when a complaint or message is generated by a machine or an internal codex and don’t respond well to it, regardless of the situation. If your business wants to develop personalised interactions on the service desk with social media, then it needs to place human beings behind those desks, people who can communicate with the consumer and build relationships.

Research undertaken by Genesys, Greenfield Online and Datamonitor/Ovum found that enterprises in the United States lose around $83 billion annually from poor customer service and that 71% of consumers have ended a relationship for the exact same reason. On the flip side, 78% of consumers labelled their most satisfying experience as one that resulted from competent customer service. So how does this relate to improved customer interactions?

The most common problems that had consumers labelling an experience as poor service included:

1. Being trapped in automated self-service.

2. Representatives don’t know history and value.

http://www.boomtown.co.za/

http://images.ibsys.com/mil-structure/images/sponsors/wisn_advertise/marketwire_mar_10.pdf

http://images.ibsys.com/mil-structure/images/sponsors/wisn_advertise/marketwire_mar_10.pdf


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“Generating personalised customer interactions comes down to hard work and technology,” says Fran Muiños, Social Media Manager at STD-Multiopción. “Technology will help you filter through customer responses and listen to what’s important and you can use these insights to generate personalised interactions. Clear training on social communications is essential for success.”

If a failure to respond via social channels leads to a 15% increase in customer churn then the second step towards improved customer interaction is to have a proper social system and staff.

“I think it helps to take a personalised approach to the organisation and staff,” says Estelle Nagel, Head or PR for Gumtree in South Africa. “At Gumtree, everyone has a voice at the boardroom table. We have great business minds with great emotional IQs and because the staff doesn’t feel like a number, customers don’t either. It gets passed down.”

CUSTOMER VALUE

There are plenty of examples of how a company has undervalued social and placed a junior member of staff onto social media management. Interactions reflect this immaturity and don’t lend themselves towards customer loyalty. Comcast are a great example of doing social really well by giving their staff their own social media identities. Now consumers know they are talking to a real person who will talk to them as if they are real people.

“The ability to generate personalised customer interactions also depends on the scale of the business,” says Emma Lovell, Director of Lovellly Communications and Digital Media Manager at TLC Publicity. “A company like Coca-Cola is going to struggle to have personal communication, however, their name on the bottle campaign was an excellent way to speak to people individually.”

The third step is to examine how customers interact on social media and to use this insight to create personalised experiences. Trends in customer patters and set behaviours allow for more precise analysis and understanding.



https://twitter.com/comcastcares


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“Customers who have only ever used online channels such as web chat are unlikely to respond well to a phone call, and those who have only ever called are unlikely to deal with you over the Internet,” says Dave Ogden, Customer Engagement Consultant at Aspect Software. “It’s about spotting customer behaviour and acting accordingly. Tesco and Amazon have been very clever with their customer analysis and really could be considered leaders in the field in buying behaviours and the propensity to take additional products and services based on customer history.”

The bleached bones of businesses that failed to engage with their customers and adapt to trends litter the timelines: Woolworths didn’t get online fast enough and Blockbusters were trampled by the superior services of Netflix.

According to JiWire, 80% of mobile internet users would prefer adverts that are relevant to them locally and 62% of adults are willing to share their location in order to receive more relevant content. Consumers are fairly welcoming of brand conversations as long as they talk to them.

Finally, for corporations to develop personalised interactions they need to deploy tools that capture, analyse and then map the personal data of individuals that are interesting and relevant.

“Once you understand who you need to talk to, understand what it is what they want to hear and are clear about whether or not you know these individuals, it is easier to sell to them,” says Alan Smith, Head of Customer Engagement, DIGIVIZER. “You can create communication packages for them and you become more relevant and credible. What’s valuable is real-time analysis of the conversations and what sits behind these.”

Personalisation has to walk alongside value. Customers will provide you with the information you need to create better communication, but they need to see the value to them. Demonstrate this and you can gain access to this gold mine and, to extend the metaphor, step away from panning for a few nuggets of information and into the shaft where the motherload lies.

http://www.aspect.com/

http://www.ninthdecimal.com/jiwire-unveils-location-conversion-index-the-mobile-industrys-most-accurate-drive-to-retail-metric/

http://digivizer.com/


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“It is important for brands to move away from thinking and acting like brands that are desperate to sell their products to the space of being a trusted opinion leader and content creator that fulfils the needs of the customer,” says Veli Ngubane, Creative Director at Avatar.

Use the information your corporation has gathered to measure the results of future campaigns and ensure that what you are saying remains relevant to your customers. Adapt communications to swiftly changing trends and provide bridges between the customer, your brand and the product so they become engaged in the process. Amazon allows for endless customisation and personalisation by both the company and the product and as a result remains a market leader in customer loyalty and brand identity.



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CUSTOMER CENTRIC SOCIAL MEDIA PART 3: PERSONALISE THE OMNI-CHANNEL

REACHING THE CUSTOMER IN THEIR DOMAIN, NO MATTER WHERE IT MAY BE…

Late October 2013, John Lewis releases a report that says 40% of their digital traffic was through mobile devices with 30% of sales generated online, and the kicker is that 40% of online orders were collected in-store.

The customer is not just in the physical shop or on the high street, or sitting on a mobile phone or surfing social media – they are using every avenue at their convenience and personalisation must be streamlined across all marketing channels in order to be effective.

“Every channel is different, but it needs to deliver a similar goal so stick to yours,” says Estelle Nagel, Head or PR for Gumtree in South Africa. “We always keep asking ourselves the same questions: How does this get people onto our site? How does this get people to buy and sell online? These are the same questions whether we are talking PR, social media, customer service or product development.”

Traditional tools, such as CRM systems, are not so much obsolete as insufficient. Today the customer touches points across the entire marketing mix and engagement has to be ready. Customers leap from channel to channel with social being a powerful sales channel, but also one that make lasting commercial connections with masses of consumers.

Brands now have a plethora of platforms upon which they can interact with their consumers and this can be used to their advantage. There is, of course, the flip side where brands need to be prepared to handle this level of interaction, understand the role that they play, and build solutions that can capitalise on it.



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Fran Muiños, Social Media Manager at STD-Multiopción says: “We have regular meetings with all the departments that we work with on the direction of the company, marketing and customer service. It helps us understand how the company operates and what campaigns are in the pipeline. We can then work on protocols to achieve maximum efficiency and impact.”

The customers who use STD-Multiopción have a variety of different needs – some prefer stepping-stone plans, which gives them clear control, some prefer more flexibility and the company works hard to ensure they can deliver on these with strategies that work for both the business and the customers.

Why do corporations need to look at every marketing channel? What’s the maths? The Direct Marketing 2014 Fact Book has some startling numbers that may surprise the enterprise:

• In direct mail 56% of postcards are read making them the most likely to catch customer attention.

• 108 million people in the USA bought something online in 2013.

• Email is the preferred communication method between retailers and consumers.

• Nearly two-thirds of commercial email messages were opened on mobile devices in December 2013.

ENTERING THE OMNI-CHANNEL

Sounding not unlike the name of a robot in a bad science-fiction movie, the omni-channel experience is exactly what is happening right now on the customer frontier. And corporations need it to meet the needs of both their customers and take advantage of evolving technology.

The difference between the multi-channel and the omni-channel is that the latter is integrated – all channels are connected and open to the consumer. In-store, online, mobile, desktop, print, direct mail – these are linked together in one cohesive system that delivers on context, need and brand.


http://eleventygroup.com/site/2014/04/30/25-standout-stats-multichannel-marketing-direct-marketing-association/


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Research undertaken by Neustar and Multichannel Merchant in a study ‘Optimize Omichannel Engagement with Actionable Consumer Insights’ points out some interesting facts:

• 78% of respondents realise or expect a sales lift with an integrated omni-channel marketing strategy.

• Delivering personalised and satisfying customer experiences is the top data and predictive analytics strategy and priority.

• 38% don’t have a strategy or plan to implement one across the omni-channel.

• The top five identifiers are email address, mobile phone, online cookie, home address, IP address and landline number.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RKrMFhxo2z90Sn1d_9XrJqtJRjTeEp8BxWlhs_QdzIY/edit#

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RKrMFhxo2z90Sn1d_9XrJqtJRjTeEp8BxWlhs_QdzIY/edit#


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Website

Email

Mobile

Social Media

Search Engines

Online Advertising

Landing Pages

Direct Mail

Call Center/IVR

Retail Store/Branch

Print RadioTV

Outdoor Advertising

87%

68%

61%

54% 53%

46%

41%

33%

26%24%

21%

14%11%

7%

76%

45%

3%6%

10%11%14%

16%20%

31%31%36%

40%43%

Critical Customer Touch PointsWhich of the following customer touch points are considered to be very important/critical to your organization?

Touch Points Areas for Additional Customer InsightsWhich touch point areas do or would provide the most benefit from accessing additional customer and prospect demographic, psychographic and behavioral insights?

9

10

Optimize Omnichannel Engagement With Actionable Consumer Insights

35%

27%

38%

No, but plan to achieve an omnichannel strategy

Yes No

Omnichannel Strategies are Very Important/Critical or Important to 70% of Companies

62% of Companies

Currently Have or Plan to

Implement an Omnichannel

Strategy

Very important, critical

Important

Somewhat important

Not very important

Not at all important

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

30%

40%

17%

8%

6%

#1Delivering Personalized and Satisfying Customer Experiences is the Top Data and Predictive Analytics Strategy and Priority

Linking Customer Identifiers

For the entire group of respondents, the top five most important consumer data identifiers are:

Most Important Consumer Data Analytics Trends

1 2

4 5

3

73% of the respondents say the ability to link all key customer and prospect identifiers or contact points to identify consumers across channels is very important/critical or important.

31%Very

important, critical

42%Important

17%Somewhat important

11%Not

important

29% Mobile phone

number

Email address

66%

31% Online Cookie 29%

Home address

25% IP address 24%

Landline phone number

6 Consumer Data Identifiers

Most Beneficial Consumer Insights In Real Time at Point of Contact8

y Purchase propensities and buying behaviors, according to 58% of respondents

y Profitability and lifetime value, 51%

y Purchase history, 49%

0 10 20 30 40 50

48%

44%

38%

30%

28%

21%

3%

Integration with other data, media and marketing programs and efforts

Need to analyze internal data to uncover actionable consumer insights

Proliferation of available data sources, providers and platforms

Need to integrate external demographic, psychographic and propensity data to

gain deeper consumer insights

Competitor use of these technologies and platforms

Senior executive management interest in this area

Other

7

78% currently realize or expect a sales lift with an integrated omnichannel marketing strategy.

All data taken from the 2013 industry study, “Optimize Omnichannel Engage-ment With Actionable Consumer Insights” conducted by Multichannel Merchant, and sponsored by Neustar.

23157


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“Making your customer-centric service a seamless event across all marketing channels will take a strategy that needs to be carried out through all levels of the business,” says Emma Lovell, Director of Lovellly Communications and Digital Media Manager at TLC Publicity.

“From management, to production and process to sales – all areas of the business have to be on board with what is to be delivered to the customer.”

Ask the questions:

1. What need are you fulfilling?

2. Why do they use your business?

3. What do they want?

4. Which social media channels are they using?

As Lovell points out, one of the first steps to take when taking advantage of the omni-channel and creating personalised customer interaction is to ensure that it is consistent and contextual.

If your customer is visiting you on Twitter, use the format of the social platform to engage with them, as that’s their preference. If they prefer a phone call, have the systems in place that allow for them to feel recognised by the brand.

“Brands need to have a human element in the relationship and the customer can easily see through the attempt to be seen as a customer centric organisation,” says Veli Ngubane, Creative Director at Avatar. “The move to being a customer centric organisation needs to be authentic and, furthermore, for it to work, it needs to be adopted as the culture of the organisation.”

From the telemarketer to the social media guru to the marketer who creates the postcards and mail drops – the messaging needs to adhere to the principles of personalisation (see Part 02 of our series here) [ and it needs to be authentic.



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In November 2013, Zendesk commissioned research into the omni-channel customer service gap that revealed some fantastic results:

• 67% of online shoppers purchased across multiple channels over the six months prior to the report’s release.

• 73% think brands pay more attention to generating sales rather than to providing seamless customer service experiences.

• 45% of customers say they will try any channel open to them and will wait until their problems or questions are resolved.

• 87% think brands need to work harder to create a seamless experience for customers.

“People don’t live in a single channel,” says Nagel. “There are perceptions and influences, and they have little to do with what people read, view or discuss. It comes down to speaking in a way that people feel shows an interest in what they have to say.”

There is a lot of choice and the customer is the one making the decisions, not your corporation. Preparing an omni-channel strategy that can offer an authentic, rich, seamless, integrated and personalised level of interaction with the customer will take advantage of the multitude of benefits and potentially keep your brand and business at the front of the queue.

http://cdn.zendesk.com/resources/whitepapers/Omnichannel-Customer-Service-Gap.pdf

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