What Does Great Customer Service Look Like?
There are plenty of sites these days dedicated to customer service horror stories, but I think it’s even more important to point out customer service victories. This one is personal.
It started with my first phone bill from AT&T. This was, of course, followed shortly thereafter by a tweet:
(Needless to say, I got some interesting responses. Also, I’m sure you noticed that is not my real hair – Happy Halloween!)
Because merely projecting my frustration aimlessly into the Twitterverse wasn’t going to get the $694 charge taken off my phone bill, I followed up with an email directly to the saleswoman who had sold me the phone and data plan. This is customer service success #1 — she had given me her direct info when I made the purchase, so I didn’t have to wade through general AT&T customer support. I’ve used her real name, because although she may never read this, she deserves the credit. My email read:
Hi Yashira,
I purchased an AT&T Tilt from you at the Cambridgeside store on September 6th (phone number 617-[removed]), and signed up for a new contract at that time as well. The phone has been great, but I was surprised when I received my bill this month to discover $695 in data charges. At the time I purchased the phone, you had told me it impossible to even sell me the phone without a data plan, at a starting rate of $70/month (which I wrote down as we spoke about it). I noticed on my bill that my monthly plan was only $50, so between these two discrepancies I have to assume that somehow the data services were not added to my account, resulting in the $695 charge for data usage in the past month.
Since you sold me the phone, and specifically recommended I contact you directly if I had any problems, I would appreciate it if you could call me at your earliest convenience and suggest the best way to remedy this situation. I already called the mobile number on your card (it went to voicemail) after I had trouble getting through on the store line just now.
Thanks, hope to hear from you very soon.
Jamie
Within 24 hours, Yashira called me back. She also had the courtesy to follow up by email, since I still hadn’t set up my voicemail yet (doh! having two cell phones can be a challenge). Here was her thoughtful response:
Hello Jamie.
I apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused. I tried calling your cell phone number but your voicemail box has not been set up yet. I can help you set that up if you need assistance. I have done some research on your account and it seems that there was a system error at the point of activation. I have requested a credit to your account through the customer care department and it should take no longer than ten business days. I am truly sorry that your bill came up to be so high but I will do anything in my power to rectify that. You can give me a call at your convenience if you have any further questions. I will inform you when the credit is applied to your account.
Thank you,
Yashira
Does customer service get any better than that? A huge, frustrating disappointment turned into a fantastic experience.
Now more than ever, a company’s relationship with a consumer does not end with a completed sales transaction. Consumers have Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Consumerist.com, and countless other forums to express their satisfaction or displeasure with a brand. There are studies coming out constantly that argue the potency of one or another of these mediums over the others. But for me at least, a personal recommendation still goes the farthest when it comes down to where to make a purchase, or who to call for a service — especially if I can get a recommendation of someone by name.
And since I have a blog, which a few people do in fact read (hey thanks!), I can make one such recommendation myself. If you’re in the Greater Boston Area and ever have AT&T Wireless questions, you now know of a real person who verifiably goes above and beyond the call for her customers.
Hope you all have a fun, safe Halloween weekend!
The Need for “Social Proof” May Be Genetic, Not Just Psychological
Last week Dan Zarrella, the leading independent “social and viral marketing scientist” (as far as I know), published an extremely insightful piece on the importance of “social proof” in evaluating everyday decisions. Dan sums up this concept quite well:
Social proof is the idea that people rely on the reaction of others to make decisions, and we assume that others (individuals and especially groups) know more about the choice than we do.
The role of social proof is indisputable in almost every form of human interaction and decision-making. While at first it might seem like this is rooted in some common human psychological shortcoming, like insecurity about being left out, the cause could be more fundamental still.
Neuroscientist Gregory Berns discusses the significance of this herd mentality in his new book, Iconoclast. He argues that this as a sort of evolutionary internalization of the Law of Large Numbers, which basically dictates that the more data points you have, the more accurately you can estimate the mean (average) of an unknown variable. The implications of this are that if a consumer is trying to estimate an unknown value (such as a the quality of a new product), seeing many other consumers purchasing the product helps to estimate this unknown and ultimately decide the product might be worth purchasing. Berns writes,
Viewed from the perspective of evolution, the law of large numbers will give any animal that uses it a distinct advantage. Consider a creature whose life depends on finding food and water. One strategy would be to forage for food in the hopes of stumbling upon something good to eat. If successful, this could pay off handsomely because the animal could horde it and gain an advantage over its competitors. This would be a risky strategy with a relatively low likelihood of success but a high payoff if it worked. The law of large numbers, however, says that such an individual strategy would most likely fail. Another animal, that was perhaps a little more strategic in its thinking, would observe what other animals did before deciding its own course of action. Because a group is statistically superior to an individual, an animal that discovered this strategy would always do better than the loner. In addition to vastly increasing the likelihood of success, the second strategy is much lower in risk and does not cost the animal much energy to observe what other animals do. The power of the group is so much greater than the individual, evolution favored animals that used it, and “groupthink” became the dominant strategy for all animals that could observe each other’s behavior.
If this is true, and social proof is rooted essentially in our DNA, how can we afford to ignore its significance?
Most social media tools inherently provide mechanisms for indicating endorsement by other users. It’s easy to see how many followers an individual has on Twitter, or how many monthly active users a Facebook application has. How are you implementing indicators of social proof and utilizing social media to validate your personal or corporate brand?
Technology That Can Read Your Mind
New technology sometimes brings out my cantankerous side.
Back in my day, you used to have to buy whole albums if you liked a particular song that wasn’t released as a single. Albums came on these plastic discs called CDs, and to play them on the go you had to have a device called a Walkman that was a whole 8 inches in diameter. If you heard a song you liked and didn’t know the title or artist, you were never, ever going to find it again to listen to.
Back then, radio was low-def and loaded with commercials. You could pick your genre of music (maybe) by choosing one of a dozen stations on your dial, but then you were at the mercy of the DJ’s particular tastes.
When you got in your car and drove down to your local Blockbuster, you had to walk through a sea of DVD releases, loosely grouped by genre. Maybe you had a friendly clerk who go to know your tastes over time and could recommend other movies he thought you’d like — but maybe you didn’t.
Fast forward — what, five years? NetFlix has a now-famous patent on a proprietary algorithm that takes your past movie ratings, compares them to other users with similar tastes, and makes frighteningly good recommendations for what to watch. Not only does Netflix pick my movies for me, it has them waiting for me when I get home from work — so that even before I consciously think “You know, I’d like to watch a new movie tonight,” one is already in my hand.
Pandora was next, redefining radio. In fact, Pandora is so far from traditional radio, we probably should come up with a new word for it. Suddenly I can create my own radio Pandora stations based on a song or an artist I already know and like, and Pandora will play me other music that I don’t even know I like yet. Pandora knows you better than you know yourself.
The latest, greatest step in the evolution of mind-reading technology, hands down, is Shazam. Hold up your phone in a club, or in the car, or to your TV during a commercial — any time you hear a song you don’t know, Shazam will listen for a few seconds and tell you what it is. If you’re using Shazam on the iPhone you can then click through and purchase the song immediately through iTunes — now you own that song you couldn’t even name 30 seconds ago.
WHAT??! Where was this ten years ago when I was just discovering my passion for ’70s funk standards that get radio play about once a year (now you know something about my taste in music — but still not as much as Pandora does).
Media consumption now is cross-platform, on-demand, and fully customized to your individual tastes. Kids nowadays are growing up in a world where they will never have to worry about finding new music or movie suggestions, sitting through commercials on television (Tivo is a topic for another post), or tracking down an unknown song they like.
Every generation likes to think that it was character-building to have faced all the challenges that technology overcomes automatically for subsequent generations, but maybe it just makes us bitter. Then again, it’s hard to stay bitter for long while you’re grooving to a commercial-free Kool & The Gang Pandora station, knowing that an obscure indie film you’d never heard of (but are almost guaranteed to love) is on its way to your doorstep.
The Bubble Bursts for Facebook Applications
Since Facebook rolled out their new design over a month ago now, many application developers have seen a disappointing drop-off in user engagement. Despite the latest improvements in the developer platform itself, apps no longer have real estate (for the most part) on the front of their users’ profiles, and many viral actions are no longer allowed to be incentivized. The landscape has changed significantly, and at first glance it seems that apps simply are no longer as relevant to users.
Justin Smith over on Inside Facebook wrote this morning about the surprising recent growth of the “Causes” application in the past 30 days, and it got me thinking about the growing opportunities for strategic partnerships among Facebook applications. In the case of Causes, I would argue that a significant portion of its sustained growth over this period has to do with the relationships it has with other applications. “(Lil) Green Patch,” the largest “environmental” app on Facebook, uses Causes to record donations it makes to The Nature Conservancy. This of course drives traffic to Causes; but in turn, people using Causes can see (Lil) Green Patch as the top donor to The Nature Conservancy, driving more traffic back. This is of course is an unofficial partnership resulting from the relationship established by the use of one app to serve the other, but formal cross-promotion between applications is becoming more popular as well.
Back in early September, when the move to New Facebook was just getting under way, I wrote a white paper about the challenges posed to app developers by the transition. My conclusion was this:
New Facebook has been looming for months, always on the horizon but always an uncertain distance away. Now that the “Y2K” of application development is finally upon us, it’s hard to say where Facebook will be after the … dust finally settles. For sure, there will be a certain amount of perceived injustice and disappointment along the way…. In the long run, however, Facebook users will be left with a potentially higher caliber set of applications to choose from, and ultimately a better set of tools to engage with them.
The bubble has burst on Facebook apps, just as it has on overvalued companies from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. I argue this is a good thing — the Facebook apps that will survive are the ones that provided value all along; the rest, apps that were merely trendy or gimmicky, have become utterly irrelevant.
Brand Advocacy in Social Networks
What defines the people who will take your brand’s message and endorse it, even propagate it, through social media? Some folks call these advocates “Brand Fans,” others call them “Fansumers.” It’s easy to get caught up in the details of what a social media influencer is — but what does brand advocacy in the setting of a social network actually look like?
It looks like this. Twice a week, consistently, for over a month since I added the (lil) Green Patch application on Facebook, I’ve received invites from Laura to join her in helping to “fight global warming” through this app.
This is powerful stuff. Not only does Laura endorse this message, but she has actively promoted it; not only has she actively promoted it, she continues to actively promote it, sending invitation after invitation to her network of Facebook friends. She is regularly engaged with the application, which alone is a win for any any app developer, but she also determinedly spreads her passion for the cause.
This is an interesting example, because for the most part the successful “environmental” apps on Facebook toe the line of being complete scams. There’s very little accountability in these applications, and users are made to feel they are making a much more significant “difference” than they verifiably are.
But what if instead of an ambiguous, quasi-deceptive message of environmental action, Laura had an opportunity to engage with, endorse, and propagate a message from a trusted and beloved brand? Internet users are already talking about brands — not just occasionally, but constantly. Given additional points of contact and the tools to promote their favorite brands, social media users instantly become volunteer brand ambassadors.
Are you giving your consumers — the ones who are already talking about your brand, whether you’re listening or not — the tools to turn their brand loyalty into brand advocacy?
5 Guidelines for Branded iPhone Apps
Speaking with Mike Proulx at the Social Media Breakfast on Thursday got me thinking it was time to share some of the things I’ve learned from being in the iPhone development space for a couple of months now at Brand Networks. I’m not sure anyone has written any such guide to date, so I’ll jump on this one.
It’s a completely new ballgame for brands looking to engage consumers on the iPhone. Google recently announced the ability to serve iPhone-specific versions of their AdWords, a no brainer for them — but what about companies that want a deeper engagement with their brand, beyond impressions or clicks? It’s time to start thinking about building your own branded iPhone app.
Audi launched the first high profile branded app, a driving simulator that exploits the iPhone’s internal accelerometer to control your steering. Ford was not far behind with an app promoting the new Flex. I just came across a new Mercedes application this morning. The Audi app in particular got impressive marks from CNET Reviews:
The odd thing was that in spite of the game’s flaws, I couldn’t stop playing. While it’s no Gran Turismo, Audi’s little iPhone app is a pretty fun distraction during a boring commute on the train…. Of course, at it’s core, the game is a marketing app for Audi’s vehicles, but it’s not an overt one. At no point did Audi make me sit through a commercial or a sales pitch. The link to the iPhone optimized site sits quietly on the main menu screen for you to click or ignore. I think this minor amount of advertising is well worth being able to play a cool, free game.
The first thing Audi got right, and this is absolutely crucial, is that they recognized when you build a branded iPhone app, people are using their app despite your brand’s affiliation, not because of it. This may sound off-putting, but it has implications that are extremely positive. For Audi, it meant that users invited the brand onto their iPhone, engaged with it regularly and for relatively long periods of time, and most likely talked about it with friends. Could you come up with a better definition of success for a branded iPhone application?
Although many companies will now rush out and try to build the Next Great iPhone Arcade Game in Audi’s footsteps, it’s important to reflect on the fact that a slick driving game resonated with this particular brand — the product placement (the Audi line of vehicles) fit naturally into the function of the app.
Without further ado, I bring you five guidelines for a successful branded iPhone app:
- Be cool. Not in the trendy sense, but in the laid back sense. Chill out. Build an app that people enjoy and can use, and let them engage with your brand along the way to whatever degree they choose. No pre-roll anything.
- Be true to your brand. I guarantee there are brands out there trying to repeat Audi’s recipe that have no business doing so. Some consumer packaged goods company is going to build a flight simulator. Good luck with that.
- Don’t forget it’s a phone first. Know what the iPhone is, and what it isn’t. Keep in mind why people use it in the first place — communication first, media (MP3 and video) consumption second. How can you extend one of these primary functions?
- K.I.S.S. Don’t try to do too much. Just because you can tie in to a million robust features of the iPhone through the development platform doesn’t mean you should. Apple products are synonymous with simplicity. Yours should be too.
- Generate word of mouth. People should want to blog/tweet/email about your app. But most of all, they should also want to show it off to people offline (in the “real world”). We’re still early enough in the iPhone’s product life cycle that these things still still have a ton of novelty value and people want to show them off. Create apps that your users want to show off to their friends. I’m a huge fan of the infamous I Am Rich application, if only for the incredible buzz it generated.
It’s an exciting time to be building apps for the iPhone. The development platform is unprecedentedly robust, and the App Store provides the perfect delivery channel for app-hungry users. Although the territory is relatively uncharted, many lessons have already been learned about what makes for a successful branded application.
(Photo credit: Popgadget)
MySpace MyAds Revisited
A comment I made on the Social Media Insider blog last week was quoted in MediaPost’s Letters to the Editor section on Friday. Apparently I represent a minority opinion of people who seem to be less than impressed with the platform at this stage. But before I get labeled as a MyAds bully, let me take a moment add a few words in defense of the platform.
Too many others who are critical of the platform have been criticizing it for pointless reasons. It’s been compared to Google Adwords over and over again. That really needs to stop. It’s unfair to compare what really are apples and oranges. It’s just as pointless as criticizing a minivan for lacking the performance and handling of a Ferrari, or complaining that you can’t fit your 2.3 children, dog, and camping gear in the Ferrari — both cars seek to serve completely distinct purposes.
Google AdWords are contextual ads, triggered by content in the page being viewed. If you’re reading a review of a Nokia cell phone, you may see a Google ad for a Blackberry. This has been shown to be a profitable model for Google and advertisers alike.
MyAds, on the other hand, are not contextual ads. They are called up to be displayed to users who have been identified by certain interests and characteristics. If you list an interest in surfing in your MySpace profile, you may see an ad for a Hawaii vacation package regardless of what page you are viewing.
I’m not taking a stand to say that one model is better than another. They both seek to accomplish the task of getting your ads in front of the right consumers. My point is just that they are different, and can’t be compared quite so one-dimensionally.
That said, I stand by my earlier assessment that the MyAds platform is outdone by Facebook’s Social Ads. But at least these two are in the same ballgame.
Maximize Your Facebook Social Ads Campaign
The highly precise demographic targeting available within the Social Ad platform is widely documented as one of its most unique and appealing characteristics, but Social Ads can still be painfully irrelevant to even the “right” consumers without proper consideration. Many creators of Social Ads seem to consider their work to be done once their ads have made their way to a carefully filtered audience; somehow, delivering a compelling message has become an afterthought. The powerful targeting potential and “self-serve” nature of the Social Ad platform has resulted in the ubiquity of ads that fail to consider their actual relevance to the consumers that ultimately view them. Any advertisement, no matter how accurately it may be targeted, may still underperform for a host of reasons as old as advertising itself. Here are five principal features of a successful Social Ad:
- A compelling headline. Pique interest, pose a question, but above all get to the point. The headline will be all most users will read.
- The product or brand name. Users are understandably skeptical of ads that fail to inform them of where they will be taken when they click.
- Advertise a benefit, or reason to try/buy. Why should the user click this ad in the first place?
- Including a relevant graphic. A logo or product shot may serve most brands well. Irrelevant images of celebrities, etc. may not (remember you’re paying for those unqualified clicks).
- Stay in Facebook. Ideally, clicking through your ad should take the user to a Facebook property you have created (such as a Facebook Page or application). Facebook pages have a surprising amount of flexibility in terms of the amount and variety of content that can be presented – from there, you can direct users to visit your site. This has the added effect of helping to validate your product or service once you develop a core base of Fans of your page.
Besides the elements critical to the success of an individual Social Ad, much more is required to effectively manage an entire Social Ad campaign. We’ve been running Social Ad campaigns for our clients since the platform was created, and have garnered a number of lessons from the field. Here are a few of the most important considerations for any Social Ad campaign:
- Diversification. Particularly when launching a new Social Ad campaign, it is extremely valuable to run a variety of ads highlighting different headlines, images, features and benefits – then see what sticks.
- Constant adjustment based on results. This is the complement to #1: let consumers identify for themselves which ads are most effective – they do this simply by clicking on ads they find more compelling. The nature of the Social Ad platform makes it extremely cost effective to make performance-based adjustments on the fly.
- Only one feature or benefit per ad. Social Ads are constrained to extremely short copy. It is usually advantageous to run separate ads for different features or benefits; this has the added benefit of attracting unique groups who might be attracted to the same product for different reasons.
The bottom line: executing a successful Social Ad campaign requires careful planning, constant adjustment, and, above all, a well-crafted and impactful message.
Douchebags: A Case Study of Integrity in Advertising
Roger: What do I do all day, what do I do all day? Umm… I sit here and think of ways to make people feel bad.
Nick: Oh, I thought you wrote for commercials.
Roger: I do… But you can’t sell a product without first making people feel bad.
Nick: Well why not?
Roger: Because it’s a substitution game. You have to remind them that they’re missing something from their lives. Everyone’s missing something, right?
Nick: Well, yeah, I guess.
Roger: Trust me. And when they’re feeling sufficiently incomplete, you convince them that your product is the only thing that can fill the void. So, instead of taking steps to deal with their lives, instead of working to root out the real reason for their misery, they run out and buy a stupid looking pair of cargo pants.
Nick: So, umm, is it fun?
Roger: It can be.
- Roger Dodger (watch here at 3:47)
Roger Swanson, the eponymous antihero of the film Roger Dodger, explains his job as an advertising copywriter to his teenage nephew in this way. Cynical, yes, but too often true — I occasionally wonder if this is how people outside the advertising industry typically perceive my own job when I mention what I do.
For this reason, I am always ecstatic when I come across an advertising campaign that adheres to a higher standard of integrity. And I may have never in my life come across a more supreme example than this campaign for tourism to Las Vegas by Vegas.com. This campaign should win some kind of award for honesty in advertising — even if I have to create that award myself.
At this point you probably have two questions for me: Is it really a good idea to be using the word “douchebag” on a professional blog? And what does this poster have to do with integrity in advertising?
The answer to the first question is, well, you don’t have to, but this is my blog and not yours. And the answer to the second question is, of course, everything.
The brave, bold individuals behind this campaign (dare I call them mavericks?) know what the Las Vegas brand means to a certain segment of the population, and they’re taking those douchebags head on. They’ve built an amazing landing page and an even more amazing MySpace page. I immediately Tweeted this story as soon as I came across it, and Vegas.com wrote a note back to me. A couple of hours after my Tweet, they launched a new Twitter account to put a face to the message.
Clearly, these folks get it. Look at all the buzz on Twitter surrounding this campaign. And the great thing about douchebags is that they tend to know that they’re douchebags, pretty much guaranteeing this campaign’s success.
Are you in denial about what your brand really means to consumers? Well look yourself up over at Brand Tags, and then get to work. Maybe next year you can win the soon-to-be-created Jamie Scheu Integrity in Advertising Award. In the meantime, I’ll raise a Jagerbomb in a toast to Vegas.com, and to this wacky, wonderful industry of advertising.
Social Media for Higher Education
I wrote this yesterday from Rochester, New York, where I was attending my alma mater’s homecoming reuinion weekend. It’s given me pause to consider the implications of social media for institutions of higher education, most significantly as multidimensional tools for recruitment and growth.
In a traditional, one dimensional sense, social media tools provide yet another channel for schools to broadcast their promotional messaging to prospective students. Social networks, Facebook in particular, represent the greatest concentration of high school students online. Advertising within Facebook is a no brainer.
Leveraging the relationship-building tools that social networks and other platforms provide adds a second dimension to the promotional opportunities available to colleges and universities. Creating a Facebook Page (like the one pictured), for instance, allows prospective students to receive timely and relevant information from schools in a setting that they are familiar and comfortable with. In addition to the one-dimensional mass-marketing approach, schools can interact directly with prospective students through messaging, discussion forums, and other media.
Finally, the third dimension consists of establishing not just one-to-one or one-to-many relationships with prospective students, but truly enabling a community built around the school. Through social media, schools can build a network of prospective students, current students, and alumni who are able to carry on a public dialogue with one another directly. This is win-win-win-win: prospective students get their questions answered and the “real deal” about schools they’re looking at, current students can offer advice to future classes as well as connect with alumni to learn about job opportunities, alumni can tap directly into a pool of current students for recruiting purposes, and of course the school itself benefits from every conversation and interaction that takes place within the community.
I’m proud to say that the University of Rochester is farther along than many schools when it comes to using social media for recruitment. There’s already a U of R Facebook Page, and a community like the one I just describe has begun to grow up around it. It’s a great start, and sets and example that I hope many other institutions of higher education take notice of and resolve to follow.
Subscribe via RSS