Winning by Sharing

Moo cards. A software that speaks with a human voice

This surely is the best in class for email communications with customers.  A software robot that speaks with a human voice;

"Remember, I'm just a bit of software, so please don't reply to this email. You'll find our Service Agents far more conversational". 

 

 

This company is simply peerless in its industry.  They must have read the Cluetrain for sure. Hat tip.

 

Anna Pollock. Seeing the way

The quite brilliant Anna Pollock sums up how to understand change in a globally connected age in a single graphic.  “We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.”  Here's why.

 

Customer manifesto for social business?

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider to our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so." I'm not entirely sure of the source of ths quote but it's apparently Ghandi.

How many brands, companies, government departments actually give you the feeling that this is what they stand for, and this is how they behave?

Could a culture like this lead to a truly social business?

The future of brands?

Related articles

• What's On The Horizon For Social Business? (darmano.typepad.com)

An approach to creating a social media business case

Dancing with the customer. Image by ixtlan via Flickr

Whilst working at Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy I made a contribution to Forrester's excellent report on the ROI of Customer Services Using Online Communities.  One of the major obstacles that big companies still face is how to justify spending on social media in a language and format that financial planners and budget holders understand particularly in terms of benefits, which really means revenue and/or cost reduction.  This report includes some realistic figures that demonstrate how a strong financial argument can be made for using Twitter for some types of customer service.  In this case, the business case is based on reducing the cost to serve information to customers who would otherwise call the contact centre - typically the difference is $5 (call centre) versus (50 cents) Twitter for a successful transmission of information that enables the customer to self-service (for example configure email on a smartphone).   The spreadsheet accompanying the report uses these key paramaters to build the business benefits case;

Direct call deflection
Indirect call deflection

Basically if you can offload x% of traffic from the call centre how much is this worth in terms of fewer agents?

Other factors include...

Increase in agent productivity
Reduction in agent assisted email
Increase in relevant Web site content and search engine optmization (SEO) rankings
Customer retention and customer lifetime value

I use a handy spreadsheet as a starting point to guide people through calculating the business case. The biggest challenge is translating intangible benefits into revenue or cost reduction numbers.  Feel free to download and improve.

Download Sn biz benefits v2

 

BP opens up. Not.

Image by ixtlan via Flickr

Way back in 2004 my first post here on Typepad was entitled Big Oil Companies Open up.  It's about Shell reaching out to stakeholders and the launch of it's 'conversation' platform called Tell Shell. 

It starts with;

It’s not often that a company publishes accusations of murder on its website, especially when the accusations are directed against the company. 

At that time it was a functional online forum although heavily moderated.  Now this is what you get;

Thank you for taking the time to send us your comments. Your message will be sent to our Customer Service Centre. A Shell representative will contact you soon.

It obviously didn't work out and was very quickly replaced with a citizen's alternative tellshell.org which documents how pointless and futile it is to attempt open, transparent conversations with oil companies.  

BP's recent oil spill disaster reminded me of the Jean Francois Noubel's statement about the survival of companies;

The future of a company is less about the nature of its issues, and more about its capacity to invent social structures able to solve them.  In other words, an ability to create and nurture networks.

Someone, somewhere on this planet has a solution to BP's oil spill disaster.  But because BP like every other large multinational is organised in command and control structures, it stands no chance of harnessing the wisdom crowds.  What do companies need to survive?

This form of organisation is unsustainable, and we all know it.  BP, where are your super connectors?

The bank of Facebook

Image by ixtlan via Flickr

Thomas Power, Chairman of Ecademy, has produced this intriguing video predicting the evolution of Facebook into a bank.  His rationale is based on the idea that "the winner of the game is the one with all the names", which he's been saying since 2001. Ridiculous then, but a bit obvious now.

In the same way that Steven Spielberg can't get his films into movie theatres without the cooperation of distributors, however powerful and influential he is in the industry, Thomas argues that if you have a distribution channel the size of Facebook then you can pretty much dictate what goods and services get to these people.

Change comes from within

Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG) is a membership association comprised of companies that provide technology services to hotel groups around the world.  I was invited to speak at their European Members meeting in Lisbon on the wider implications of Social Media.

My biggest frustration with social media commentary is that it’s almost always focused on the latest functionality from Twitter, Facebook, Google and the plethora of other Web 2.0 platforms, gadgets and services.  Very few industry pundits provide an insight into the impact of social media on business and society, and even fewer explore the end game.  So the purpose of this presentation was to provide some thought leadership in these areas backed up with some practical insights drawn from personal experience in deploying social media platforms with British Airways and Mornflake.  The key theme is based on what I describe as the biggest untold story of the 21st Century being played out right under our noses – the increasing irrelevance of command and control organisation as a the default structure for the production of goods and services, and why social media is most transformative inside the company.

Change Comes From Within

View more presentations from Leon Benjamin.

I’ve done a lot of public speaking over the years and I have to say that HTNG is easily the most well organised event I’ve spoken at.  Spanning three days located at the Lisbon Marriott (a hotel of course!) it combined the best aspects of an exhibition, a standalone networking  event, formal presentation and knowledge exchange (by way of break out and workshop sessions). 

HTNG just struck me as being a particularly good example of a Community of Practice, led by CEO, Douglas Rice with a small army of highly competent technicians and administrators.  I was well looked after by Sara Pardo and Merry Marwig before, during and after the event and was really touched by the personally written card pushed under my hotel door the evening I arrived, wishing me luck with my presentation the next day.  This is customer service.  Big thank you to everyone at HTNG.  I enjoyed the experience immensely.

From banner ads to banner apps

*****Fast Forward to 2013*****

A study by eBay Research Labs economists Thomas Blake, Chris Nosko, and Steve Tadelis — analyzed eBay sales after shutting down purchases of search ads on Google and elsewhere, while maintaining a control set of regions where search ads continued unchanged. Their findings suggest that many paid ads generate virtually no increase in sales, and even for ones that do, the sales benefits are far eclipsed by the cost of the ads themselves.

Barely anyone clicks on banner ads anymore

2009: With the recent historic news that the UK's advertising industry now spends more online than on print and TV comes a reasonably authoritative report from Comscore that 'barely anyone clicks on banner ads anymore'.  The findings are breathtaking;

"The number of people online who click display ads has dropped 50% in less than two years, and only 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks, according to the most recent "Natural Born Clickers"

Shock horror.

In 2006 academics reached this conclusion a while back, as far back as 2006 but Techcrunch picked it up earlier this year here.  Their research is based on the analysis of large datasets from Youtube, Flickr and others and concluded that the current model is unlikely to survive, principally due to lack of trust. Forrester predicted this scenario as early as 2002.

Isn't it interesting that banner ads are really broadcasts.  They don't speak with a human voice or meet a specific need.   Despite all the warning signs, brands still broadcast while consumers connect and they continue to 'preach' to people whose attention is focused elsewhere.  So the £1.75 billion size of the online ad market is a total waste of money.

So where's it going?  There's a glimpse of the future of advertising here - Pick 'n' mix business.

Engaging the customer using social media

Big thank you to my friend and colleague Anna Pollock for this insightful talk at Unicom's conference on Engaging the Customer: getting it right with social media.

Engaging the Customer with Social Media

View more OpenOffice presentations from Anna Pollock.

I particularly like slides 36-39.  What do these people have in common?  Just brilliant.

The most unique internet video competition ever?

I'm working with The Law Firm Group and one of our clients is is a 300 year old cereal company based in Crewe, Cheshire.  Mornflake is the 8th oldest company in Britain handed down over 14 generations. As a company, it epitomises probity, fiscal responsibility and social conscience and has rejected every offer of being acquired in all this time.  Kind of values we want to see in all companies right now, right?

Problem is; few people have heard of Mornflake, although anyone who eats porridge is likely to have eaten their cereals.  Mornflake already supplies most of the major supermarkets’ own label oats based cereal foods and is re-launching its own brand of cereal foods.

Since TV advertising is no longer the default way of creating widespread awareness of a new brand, we’re organising a very different kind of video competition for Mornflake.  Our approach differs in three unique ways;

1.    We’re asking people to make videos about themselves. So lots of good material there!  More specifically, videos about their values.  The Mornflake brand must feature in the video but in a product placement kind of way. We’re not looking for cheesy reasons why people should eat Mornflake oats.  The best video creator will win a cash prize of £15,000.

2.    We’re conducting the competition on Facebook using an application called Uvizz (check out the video on their home page – truly impressive).  Uvizz works in a way that financially rewards video creators and video viewers for spreading video around their personal networks.

3.    We’re adopting an open source approach to engaging online communities and have commissioned a network of independent thinkers called Minciu Sodas.  They are building a directory of online communities in the UK and starting conversations with people in an open, respectful and authentic way.  A way that reflects Mornflake’s values.  This data will be made available to any other organisation that wants to learn how to engage these communities and will help those communities be found by other people.

The competition launched on June 15th and runs through to July19th.  Sign up here.