There is no question that social media is the hotness for the 2010-2011 fiscal years for companies. Communications and customer service folks have been utilizing tools and building communities and brand awareness while driving revenue as a secondary benefit. The dollars brought in from people who are generally not seen as revenue drivers has given marketers a set of green blinders. You know the ones, where money clouds one’s thoughts, especially when the entry point into a medium is virtually free and is a direct outlet to customers.

Common Misconceptions

When many marketers look at social media platforms, they are immediately drawn towards the audience of the site. Facebook for example, has over 500 million users on the site. These users can be targeted with pay per click ads and if a person becomes a fan you can directly market to them without fear of the CAN-SPAM act.

As Fleet mentions in his article many companies are also making one time use accounts for specific campaigns. The thought process is that fan page for product X can be tested against product Z as to who generated more fans or followers. The sheer focus of these campaigns is acquisition and does not factor in the long-term connection with these people or other areas of the customer lifecycle.

How do we fix this?

In general social media is a lot like public relations and customer service – a support for the business channel. Much like the previously mentioned established mediums, social media touches every nook and cranny of the business.

So with that in mind, companies should aim to build a lasting impact and relationship with customers using social media. Instead of looking at the shot-term wins, the focus should be on building lifetime value and keeping customers in the company’s loop.

Doing so takes everyone’s help starting with the initial transaction or contact with the company. After the sale, offer customers ways to keep in touch with the company that they are comfortable with – email, blog, text, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.  From there it is about keeping lines of communication open and pumping out great content.

Sounds easy right?

Like all forms of communication, social media requires a two-way conversation to be sustainable and mutually beneficial for customers and brands. This is a shift away from the old guard of positioning offers through tried and true marketing efforts and passing news via press release, which was the classics one-way street. Brands should not abandon these methods, but will need to evolve and create a more holistic customer cycle to thrive in the social Web that we currently live and play in.

Instead of treating customers like an anonymous mass that are bulk marketed to, companies need to look at customers in a different light and segment them by their preferred platform.

For example, CoTweet recently put out a research report, Twitter X-Factors, which showed some pretty interesting numbers when comparing regular Twitters users to all other consumers. Seventy-two percent of Twitter users blog compared to 14 percent of the rest of consumers and 61 percent of these users comment on blogs forty points higher than the rest of consumers.

Given the audience’s pension to blog and to rate and review companies and products, this is a perfect group to pool for product reviews or a refer-a-friend or loyalty program. On the flip side, if you anger this group be ready to hear about it in your Google Alerts.

Tapping into these active users on your social accounts also builds a personal connection with the brand along with offering your company real-time insight into customer behavior, likes, dislikes and potential customer issues. The only commitment is committing time to building the bridges.

But then again you can stay the status quo with a bridge to nowhere.

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• 10 September 2010 : Why Customers Don’t Care About Your Corporate Values
• 9 September 2010 : One Year Gone…
• 8 September 2010 : Judgment Day: Clients vs. Media
• 8 September 2010 : The C-level/Value Debate
• 7 September 2010 : SM 102: Social Media for (UNC) Jocks

Recently I came across an interesting article by Sarah Nassauer for the New York Times, “I Hate My Room,’ The Traveler Tweeted. Ka-Boom! An Upgrade!” The article discussed how customer service is changing now that we have a million eyes at our finger tips.  This isn’t new information as we all know that a company’s reputation can be hurt by a simple tweet, status update, Flickr image, YouTube upload, or TripAdvisor review.  And that’s only naming a few of the various platforms we use on a daily basis.  In the article a guest tweeted about his unsatisfactory room.   The front desk employee was watching and immediately went into damage control offering an upgrade.  Kudos to the front desk for monitoring the social network.  But does every guest that complains/whines about service need to receive compensation or a resolution?

Working in retail we learn that the customer is always right.  This is pretty similar in PR.  In the travel industry we stress the importance of interacting on social networks, especially with guests.  Every guests wants to know they are being heard even more so when in a situation that should be rectified.  However this is relevant for all industries and unfortunately it’s not realistic for every person that complains to receive an upgrade or even correspondence.   Shocking I know.

Curious what others thought, I asked around and here are some comments I received:

• Rich Pulvino: Quality customer service doesn’t differentiate between valid complaints and the whiners b/c customer should be #1 priority.  You need to prioritize the complaints and see if the resolutions are reasonable/feasible/doable
• TJ Dietderich: If someone can help, that’s valuable customer service.  If there is NOTHING that can be done and someone is just venting = whining.
• Jeff Esposito: Its good for customer service, however you can’t help everyone who complains with upgrades as it is not sustainable for hotels

These are all great points that lead back to the importance of qualifying a complaint.  When in this sort of situation decide what action steps need to be taken and what compensation/resolution can you give that is feasible for your company.  Although no one will readily admit this, also look at where the complaint is coming from.  Unfortunately I don’t believe the Southwest debacle would’ve been as big of a deal if it wasn’t for Kevin Smith having a big influence on his community.

So how do you treat these situations for your companies?  How do you train employees and associates on managing and responding to customers to give valuable customer service?

Bear with me here for just a second.

Old school fans of Must See TV might remember the episode. The entire day, the ER is bogged down, people are having the hardest day of their lives, the attractive doctors are getting frazzled, patients are complaining, and because of a myriad of complications, not a lot can be done. Then George Clooney gets up, grabs some first aid supplies, and starts patching up the dozens of people sitting in the waiting room. The other doctors join in, and the human spirit rises to the occasion: FINALLY, stuff is getting done despite the red tape because it’s just the right thing to do.

(Critics of this episode probably include malpractice lawyers and insurance folks who cry at scenes like this. Sorry, lawyers and insurance folks!)

In the case Danny points out, one company was too slow to respond to a problem, which gave another company a chance to save the day. Good on them, I say! But when we look inward at our day-to-day business, and we look for opportunities to save the day, we are often beset (sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically) by our own lawyers and insurance folks. Red tape is frustrating for everyone, both within and without the company. And saving the day isn’t easy when you have so many levels to go through before putting on your cape.

This is why I advocate small acts of kindness. Going above and beyond doesn’t have to be big. Going out of your way to make even the smallest gesture can make a difference to a consumer. If this sounds a lot like hippy kumbaya karma, it is. And I’m sorry I keep harping on this, but there’s really no other way to put it: you have to be nice. You have to be nice even if you don’t think the consumer deserves it, because you do not know whether or not the consumer deserves it. (Everyone has bad days, is what I’m saying, and if your first instinct is “that’s not my job,” maybe you should think about getting a different job. Because we’re professionals, and we’re here to help. In my overblown, utopian opinion.)

Because we all love lists, here’s a list of small acts of kindness that your brand can do for little or no money that may make someone’s day:

1. Retweet someone who doesn’t have a million followers, whose blog isn’t the top rated on Technorati, simply because their content was good.

2. #FollowFriday someone for about the same reason.

3. If a customer has issues with your product, even if your product is not at fault, offer to help. I was once approached by someone who had bought one of my assigned books and didn’t like it. It happens, but it’s also a chance to do something better than say, “Oh, tough luck.” I gave her another one of my books, one I thought she would like. And guess what? She liked it so much that she bought the other books in the series. Yeah, I lost a book, but I sold a bunch more. And if she didn’t like the new book, that would have been a net loss, but I had to try.

4. Commenting on blog posts about your brand. Monitoring is cool and all, but actually taking the 2 seconds to leave a comment, even if it’s just to say “thanks for the feedback” goes a long way. You can’t do it for every blog post if you’re a huge company, but when you can it lets the blogger know they’re on your radar and you care about their opinions.

5. Just talk. Not as part of a promotion, not as a way to get consumer data, not with any agenda in mind other than to talk. Very serious businesspeople might balk at this as a waste of time, and for people who feel that way, well, you must not have ever done it. Because if you have, then you would realize that just talking to your customers is the only way to make sure that those future promotions, data collections, and other agendas are successful.

You may recall my not-so-very groundbreaking observation that a lot our damage control is just plain ol’ customer service. We’re here to help, right? So here’s a story about that in action.

Last week, I went to the grocery store and was railroaded by my beloved roommate into buying two kinds of cheese. By some strange coincidence, when we got home we saw that both brands of cheese had been improperly packaged and were sort of gross. My roommate was sad. I was excited.

Hooray, I thought, now we can see some 21st century customer service in action. Let’s get us some replacement cheese! I took some photos, wrote down some batch numbers on the packages, and generally tried to be a very good consumer. I went to both brands’ websites to lodge my good-natured complaints. And this is what I found.

Cheese-maker A had a very simple web site. There was an e-mail address listed for their customer service department, so I sent them a message with all the information I had about the product, the date and place of purchase, and a photo of the icky cheese. “Please, sir, can I have some good cheese?” I asked.

Then I went onto cheese-maker B’s website. It was huge. Sprawling. A little confusing. But after clicking on a lot of different buttons, I found what I thought was the customer service page. I had to fill out a lot of information on a form. I’m pretty sure the cheese company now knows more about me than the IRS. But I was determined to wrangle some new cheese.

Here’s how it panned out. Within a day, cheese-maker B e-mailed me to apologize, thank me for my information, and mail me a coupon for a LOT of cheese. Cheese-maker A never answered my cheesy pleas. Which stinks because it was much easier for me to shoot them a quick e-mail than fill out a long form, but I guess it just goes to show that doing more difficult work makes the results happen quicker.

But what’s the point of even making a token show of customer service support, such as listing an e-mail address for it, when no one actually answers the complaints? If you have to choose between making it easy yet useless for a customer to contact you, and making it difficult yet highly rewarding for a customer to contact you, you might want to choose the latter. A high barrier for customer service will do several things: it will weed out the people who are too lazy to actually complain (if I hadn’t wanted that cheese so badly, I might have forgotten all about it), it will give your customer a sense of accomplishment, and it will seem (even if it is only an illusion) that your advanced complaint-taking system is being used to make your products better.

Furthermore, your clients or companies that are smaller than multinational conglomerates often complain about getting less press than their larger counterparts, but they have a chance to really excel in that field by treating their customers better than expected. That’s a story right there. As difficult as it might be to outmaneuver a company with more money and resources, smaller companies just can’t afford to drop that ball.

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• 10 September 2010 : Why Customers Don’t Care About Your Corporate Values
• 9 September 2010 : One Year Gone…
• 8 September 2010 : Judgment Day: Clients vs. Media
• 8 September 2010 : The C-level/Value Debate
• 7 September 2010 : SM 102: Social Media for (UNC) Jocks

You could ignore them. Or you could do your job and handle the hate.

To be clear: I am not suggesting you should acknowledge every whackjob and crackpot on the internet. Some people are just fly-off-the-handle crazy, and there’s no dealing with them. What’s the difference between those people and legit haters? Haters have a reason to hate. They’re real consumers that have been let down. And that’s where you have work to do.

Hey, do you like lists? Well, here’s one coming atcha!

The Complete(ish) Step-by-Step List of Instructions on How to Handle the Haters

Step 1. Reach out. Send an e-mail, tweet to ask for a follow so you can DM, try to communicate in some way. Private is best, but public is okay too. You know why? Because you’re not going to say anything the world shouldn’t know. This step is important because it’s proactive and shows that the hater in question isn’t shouting into a void. If they have a legitimate issue, then they want someone to hear them. You’re the person that’s hearing them.

Step 2. Acknowledge the issue. It’s not enough to listen. You have to actually understand the problem, even if you don’t see eye-to-eye with the complainer. Say something like, “Hi, I see you’ve been having problems with X. Believe me, I understand. I would be frustrated too if Y happened to me.” This isn’t lip service. You have to mean it. You have to put yourself in this person’s shoes for one second and get it.

Step 3. Don’t ask for anything. Just offer to help. You know when you’re standing in the post office and everything that’s happening is making it more and more difficult to mail your package? And people keep telling you to fill out more forms and answer more questions and generally waste more time? Yeah. You can’t ask an angry hater to do anything. Don’t say, “If you would just read this press release, I think you’d understand it better.” That’s work. Angry people don’t want to do more work. What you should say is, “I want to help you/I can send you this sample or whatever to try instead/Please let me offer Z.” Sound like customer service? It is. And just like customer service, don’t offer to help if there’s actually nothing you can do. If your client or product is really the problem, that’s something that should be reported. It’s not something to put a Band-Aid on. If you do this step correctly, you cannot make the situation worse, only better.

Step 4. Don’t be upset when they reject your offer. Chances are they will. They’re frustrated and hatin’ and they just wanted to vent a little on the internet. (This universal law is also called Haters Gotta Hate.) But that’s not the point. The point is you tried. And that one time, just that one time you turn someone from a hater to a fan is going to be totally worth it, because that’s a fan for life.

Handling haters is not easy, but it’s necessary. Tread lightly with a helpful heart, though, and you can’t do wrong.

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• 10 September 2010 : Why Customers Don’t Care About Your Corporate Values
• 9 September 2010 : One Year Gone…
• 8 September 2010 : Judgment Day: Clients vs. Media
• 8 September 2010 : The C-level/Value Debate
• 7 September 2010 : SM 102: Social Media for (UNC) Jocks

Not the author

It’s no big secret that I am a bigger Dunkin’ Donuts fan than most.  This weekend, in the wake of New Jersey’s monster hurricane, I traveled to three different Dunkin’s just to get hash browns and an iced coffee, and then I went to a fourth one later that night.  Today I somehow found myself in a Starbucks and asked for a medium iced coffee three times before I realized I was supposed to say Grande.  Dunkin’ is sort of always on my brain.

And I’m definitely not the only one.  Last month, Dunkin’ Donuts was named number one in customer loyalty (in the coffee category) for the fourth straight year, which shows just how many people in the United States have made stopping at the infamous chain part of their daily routine.  Of course the question that a study like this raises is, what is it that Dunkin’ Donuts does that inspires such utter devotion among their consumers?

I won’t be so bold as to claim that their activities in Social Media is the sole answer to this question (I mean have you ever had their Coconut Iced Coffee? It’s seriously delicious). However, I do think that they do a particularly fantastic job of taking advantage of all that social media has to offer and using it to reach their customers.  They were one of the first brands that I really started actively following on Twitter and Facebook and I have truly enjoyed keeping up with all of the things that they do.

Aside from their “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” contest, Dunkin’ doesn’t do a ton of large-scale, media attracting social media initiatives.  It’s the small things that they truly excel at.  They know how to keep consumers engaged and interested on a daily basis and they have a way of making you feel like you’re special, even as just one of their millions of consumers.  They may not make a huge splash by doing ridiculous things that no one has ever heard of, but I would argue that it really doesn’t matter.  By making the consumer the focus of their brand (which goes along perfectly with their “America Runs on Dunkin’” slogan) instead of the brand itself, Dunkin Donuts has ensured that they will stay loyal.

The brand’s Twitter account is a great model for companies looking to try their hand at the service.  Instead of just broadcasting information and deals, “Dunkin’ Dave” makes it a point to respond and talk to the fans that tweet at him.  I’ve been RTed by the account many times and have been reached out to after I tweeted a (semi) complaint.  The level of engagement really made tweeting with a brand FUN to me. And Dave definitely has a fun, witty personality that goes with the vibe of the brand.  I don’t know much about the backstory of Dunkin’ Dave, but I’d be really interested in learning more since it seems his full time job is tweeting (which is a fascinating concept in and of itself).  The Twitter account also hosts frequent promotions like their recent “Twinter Games” where followers can use a certain hashtag to win a number of different prizes.

Dunkin’ Donut’s Facebook account (currently boasting more than 1 million fans) does an even better job at interacting with their consumers.  The page is the site of weekly contests where fans can become the “Fan of the Week” and have their decked out photo featured as the brand’s profile picture.  I can’t think of a better way to keep consumers passionate about the brand than by letting them broadcast their passion to the world.  It’s incredibly entertaining to browse through the crazy pictures that mega-fans have posted on the page.

Not many brands participating in social media can say this, but the brilliance of Dunkin’ Donut’s strategy comes from its simplicity.  I think they are a perfect example of what the standard might one day be for any company that is looking to successfully engage with their customers through social media.

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• 10 September 2010 : Why Customers Don’t Care About Your Corporate Values
• 9 September 2010 : One Year Gone…
• 8 September 2010 : Judgment Day: Clients vs. Media
• 8 September 2010 : The C-level/Value Debate
• 7 September 2010 : SM 102: Social Media for (UNC) Jocks

Businesses tend to prioritize their customers. It’s not unreasonable to think bigger customers get better service, right? But, by providing less-than-stellar service to a smaller customer, are you assuming that that account will always be “small potatoes?”

Not always a good assumption.

Consider this situation: Joe is working with a company – let’s call them Company X – on a project. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a relatively small project for Company X, but for Joe, it’s an important project. So, imagine the frustration that ensues when Joe feels like he’s being treated like a tiny fish in a big sea.

Here’s the kicker: Joe now has the opportunity to bid on (and a very good chance to win) dozens of similar projects for another client. But, you can be sure that he’s going to look elsewhere. If Company X can’t properly support one project, how could Joe assume that they could manage a higher volume of work?

The point is this: Small potatoes won’t always be small potatoes. What may start out as a small piece of business has the potential to turn into a larger client. For those of us on the agency side of PR, how do we know a small retainer won’t grow into a larger one? How you treat someone when they’re “small” will make or break your chance to win this larger piece of work.

The question is: What steps can you take to provide solid customer service to your clients, whatever the size?

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• 10 September 2010 : Why Customers Don’t Care About Your Corporate Values
• 9 September 2010 : One Year Gone…
• 8 September 2010 : Judgment Day: Clients vs. Media
• 8 September 2010 : The C-level/Value Debate
• 7 September 2010 : SM 102: Social Media for (UNC) Jocks

photo credit:HAMED MASOUMI (CC)

Back in my day we used to say, “Any PR is good PR.” We had no need for crisis PR or Twitter customer service. So your tragedy ended up on the front page of The New York Times? At least it was above the fold! In a few days from now, no one will remember what happened.

But they will remember that you were in The New York Times. That is one hit you will never forget.

You know what else we didn’t have – new-fangled interactive polls. We had the old fashioned kind – the kind where we made up the results. That’s right, men don’t really prefer women that wear glasses but that optics company really needed some hits. And let me tell you, the press was eating up those results. Even the the wires didn’t bother to fact check that one. Where would they fact check it anyway? We didn’t have Google back then.

[Editor's Note: Mr. Publicity is an 'old-school' flack, though not old.  They will be offering some tidbits from time to time about antediluvian flackery (or at least what they claim to remember of it) -- when press releases actually got  printed and mailed, phone (or smoke signal) was the best way to build a relationship, and people actually ran into newsrooms yelling "Stop The Presses" (ok, I'm not sure that one ever really did happen)]