Social media is not about campaigns. Social media is a continuous force which needs to be relevant and up-to-date each and every day. But how do you take care of your content and how do you organize it?
Creating content is not as easy as it seems. To publish a daily average of two posts (which fit brand values, are suitable for global use, and are engaging and very shareable) is quite hard. To make the job easier, Coca Cola developed two key principles for content creation. The soft drink company developed a content strategy for all its external social communications which helps them in developing new content; it is called ‘Linked and Liquid’ and these two pillars can be put in good use by every brand.
Social media has grown beyond the marketing function. Whether it is PR managing a brand’s reputation, or R&D crowdsourcing its new product, it is a company-wide practice nowadays. Numerous CEO’s (i.e. Richard Branson) already start their day by checking the daily update on mentions, fans and sentiment. But for most companies there is still a world to win in becoming social, connected and agile.
On February 14th 2013 The Social Conference was held at Pakhuis de Zwijger Amsterdam, a conference on the impact and future of social media. Now social media is expanding, companies need to follow this trend and scale up their social practices. In my presentation titled “Social at Scale” I discussed how global brands can realize this while maintaining one voice and brand identity over multiple social platforms. Other topics discussed were “How to organize global content management?” “How to monitor sentiment in multiple languages?” and “How to engage and guarantee web care 24/7/365?”.
Last week I informed you about the rise of the mobile customer experience and the trend of phone contact as a channel of last resort. This week I am moving away from our favorite device to customer experience trends that appear across all channels: measuring customer experienceand personalizing & differentiating through analytics
Measuring the customer experience Companies are becoming more and more open about their efforts to improve the customer experience. Think about website visits, service calls and even your average in-store experience, where you often get the question to provide feedback, rate offered services and sometimes even queries for improvement suggestions.
The Net Promoter Score is still the most popular metric to measure customer experience. However, as its popularity grows, the validity of the scores is likely to decrease. As NPS is merely a representation of intention, actual recommendation behavior tends to be much lower. How many companies you actually recommend to others? Exactly: not a whole lot. Now think about the number of companies that ask you NPS questions, do your answers reflect your behavior?
From the moment you start your career as a Customer Service consultant, there is no turning back: you will inevitably take a different perspective towards all service experiences you encounter professionally, as well as personally. When I notice something new or different in my customer service experiences, I cross check these with competitors and service organizations in different industries. This way I keep track of the maturity of Dutch service organizations and spot new trends!
In the coming weeks I will post a number of the, in my opinion, most interesting customer experience trends; kicking off this series with “the rise of the mobile customer experience and the decreasing importance of the phone as a service channel”.
The rise of the mobile customer experience Retailers are constantly seeking new opportunities to connect with their customers and to provide them superior customer experiences. The use of mobile internet is (still) growing significantly. In the Netherlands, for instance, the volume of mobile data usage increased 21% in the last 6 months, while the more traditional mobile services such as sms are becoming less popular (-16%). Not surprisingly, retailers are keen on launching mobile websites and mobile apps. While initially mobile sites and applications might have been seen as just another sales channel, they offer opportunities for the entire customer journey from orientation, to purchasing and to after sales.
It appears to be challenging for retailers though to keep customers engaged via mobile apps. Features are frequently limited to shopping carts, store locator functionalities and viewing loyalty points. Mobile apps should offer the customer something extra, which should be relevant and fun, to continuously keep customers engaged. Think about offering customers a personalized reward when they’ve checked in 10 times, or in-store, location based mobile offers. The Neiman Marcus store in the US conducted a test letting customers communicate and interact directly with sales assistants via their mobile app. If a customer had downloaded the application and he or she walks into a Neiman Marcus store, sensors that interact with his or her mobile devices will kick into action. When that happens, alerts will be sent to the customer that let him or her know where in the store a preferred sales assistant might be working at that given moment in time. These are the fun elements that keep customers engaged!
In today’s digital world, customers are becoming very knowledgeable, more aware of their power and they easy step away. With customers having unlimited choices, staying relevant to them has become part of the life blood that sustains any organization. Organizations which don’t produce products that are important and provide value to its customers will cease to exist. So what is the secret of organizations like Apple, Google and Amazon having a tighter grip on the customer than their competition in keeping and winning customers? The answer is the R-factor, which stands for “Relevance at scale”.
To gain more insights and discuss the challenges of staying relevant to customers anywhere and anytime, Accenture organized the High Performance Marketing Conference on January 24th 2013. With six key note speakers and two break-out sessions of leading organizations in the Netherlands, the event started with Accenture’s global expert on interactive marketing Nan Nayak discussing that customers being in control is for many industries and organizations a complete turn-around. With the momentum of Digital, Social media and Mobile, delivering the right message to the right customer, at the right time, through the right channel is not the future of Marketing, it’s today’s reality.
Relevance is about customer centricity, putting the customer in the center of every strategy and action of the organization. Read more…
Once upon a time, when the shift from a product towards a service and experience oriented economy was made, inevitably customer service became more important. With the rise of new channels, even more ways of interaction have been demanded and created. By offering toll free numbers or @customerservice handles, organizations are trying to please the customers’ ever increasing demand of 24/7 contact and interaction. But are they doing the right thing?
From Channel to Touch points Customers are giving businesses a hard time. They are not only talking back via multiple channels, even worse, they are talking when nothing has been asked and expect a timely, personal and correct response. The average consumer does not think in channels or “moments of truth”, but wants interaction with (a representative of) a company at any time. Forrester outlines this in their “touchpoints-model”; this model links and mixes diverse ‘old’ channels such as TV, stores and websites to new interactions via apps or social media in different stages of being a customer. Every phase knows its own touch points.
The challenge for companies is to adapt and optimize their way of working around this new customer behavior on all interactions and touch points, to make each contact with the organization relevant to the customers. And that is easier said than done. Recent study by SAP shows that although organizations state they should use social tools for customer service, they don’t put the money where their mouth is: over 75% of surveyed organizations have invested less than 50K USD in social customer service.
Earlier this year Accenture published the results of their 3rd annual global survey of energy consumers titled, Actionable Insights for the New Energy Consumer. This report provides energy organizations a detailed perspective into the current drivers influencing the shift in consumer needs and behaviors.
“The energy consumer landscape is constantly shifting with smart technologies, new products and services and challenging economic realities.” — Greg Guthridge, Global Managing Director Accenture Retail and Business Services for Utilities
In the recent published Technology Vision 2012 one of six most important emerging technology trends is that social media are becoming powerful catalysts that are changing the ways customers, employees and partners use technology to interact with the world around them. But most enterprises have yet to catch up to that reality and almost none take full advantage of it.
While enterprises are eager to implement social media and collaboration tools (e.g. web meetings and video conferences) into the corporate communications and management strategies, they struggle to be successful with such initiatives. Although the reasons for failure vary, many can be traced to the difficulty with managing multiple talent and organizational elements effectively across a global enterprise.
Blog post written by Wilko Wielinga. Wilko is a former blogger on Blogpodium and CRM consultant at Accenture Netherlands.
In the last couple of years Social Media has become a hot topic on the agenda of many marketeers, PR-managers and consultants with believers and non-believers both being very opinioned about the subject.
If there is one conclusion that can be drawn out, it is that the uprise of Social Media changed the media landscape for good. By empowering the customer to shape the ‘communis opinio’ it allows customers to identify themselves with many brands by engaging in conversations, involving in brand communities and sharing media with each other.
The thing about passion is that it is catchy…the energy it gives rubs off onto others. A colleague of mine had a recent ‘service experience’ and wanted to share it with me and I would like to share it with all of you. I would like to introduce you to Lucinde Klop (@Lucinde_K ) – another passionate customer service consultant from Accenture – and this is her service experience.
Selecting a new health insurance plan has been on my ‘to do list’ for a couple of weeks. I was not looking forward to this task, as I was expecting my only choice was between marginal differences in monthly payments and reimbursements. However, when I finally got to it, I was highly surprised! Not only could I choose from monthly payment options, but I could also choose between various levels of service defined per insurance package.
Marjolijn: Hoi Rob, Dank voor je berichtje, het gaat inderdaad niet altijd zoals je van te voren hoopt. Maar des te mooier als je er met vallen en opstaan...Read the full comment
Social media is not about campaigns. Social media is a continuous force which needs to be relevant and up-to-date each and every day. But how do you take care of your content and how do you organize it?
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Once upon a time, when the shift from a product towards a service and experience oriented economy was made, inevitably customer service became more important. With the rise of new channels, even more ways of interaction have been demanded and created. By offering toll free numbers or @customerservice handles, organizations are trying to please the customers’ ever increasing demand of 24/7 contact and interaction. But are they doing the right thing?
In the last couple of years Social Media has become a hot topic on the agenda of many marketeers, PR-managers and consultants with believers and non-believers both being very opinioned about the subject.
