Here at 1000heads we often extol the virtues of using human analysts to derive meaningful insights and recommendations from WOM listening. We also talk about how brands need to be more human when interacting with people in social media (and beyond). For a large organisation to achieve this, and to deal with any customer service issues that arise, there must clearly be some sort of process involved.
But what happens when that process actually makes the humans seem like robots?
Watching the recent Tesco employment story evolve, we saw a well-run and personalised customer service Twitter stream begin repeating the same message to multiple people for hours on end. But regardless of your views on the issue itself something went very wrong with the way Twitter was used to respond to people’s concerns. What’s more, I’ve no doubt that it was a human in charge of the Twitter feed. So what went wrong?
I imagine what we saw here was that Tesco has a prescriptive set of KPIs telling operators how many people they should reply to and a flowchart telling them how to respond in a crisis. These two processes perhaps worked together to make Tesco suddenly appear less human and more like a robotic call centre. Like other Twitter outbursts such as the GAP logo change, this may not have a lasting effect on Tesco’s reputation in the short term. But all brands should remember that human operators are more than capable of appearing machinelike in certain situations. A coordinated, sincere, human response to a situation like this is really hard to pull off, but a modern social business has to aspire to it.
How do you encourage the people running your social presence to come up with a better solution? For me it has to start with measuring the right things. For example, if you measure the % of tweets you are responding to as a success metric, your team is left with no incentive to demand a change to the script when it’s really needed. They’ll just keep on tweeting to hit their quota. It’s the same reason why direct marketing can become labelled as junk mail. The need to hit volumes outweighs the ambition to be targeted and relevant, and brands only entrench themselves deeper when social interactions go wrong.
This problem of blind process getting in the way of delivery has been solved elsewhere. In his excellent book “How to Measure Anything” Douglas Hubbard describes the early days of agile software development, where people measured the speed of work simply because it is an easy thing to quantify and optimise. But when these developers produced a large amount of features that no-one wanted to use, the realisation struck that a gauge closer to a consumer-facing outcome was needed.
So if our supposition is correct the first thing Tesco needs is a shift from speed-of-work based reporting to measurement based on outcomes. In doing so its Twitter team would be empowered with the flexibility to identify an issue and elevate it internally (with the benefit of a linear organisation structure to provide the speed and level of authority needed), which would ultimately allow the brand to respond in a human and empathetic way.
We have a new look. Perhaps the result of a delayed January detox and an early Spring clean, we’ve tweaked our brand identity and revamped our website.
Yet while visual updates are refreshing and reinvigorating, what else has changed?
Mike Rowe recently talked about the journey we’ve come on, from humble beginnings in 1999 to more recent client wins, new hires and award successes. Over that time we have changed – in size and skill set – but what’s remained constant is our steadfast belief in Word of Mouth, conversation and sharing; in social communication.
And as the marketing and social landscape continues to change, at a rate nobody could have ever predicted, this ethos has never been more relevant.
So we’ve given ourselves a new look and used some new, simpler words to set out our stall.
Wednesday heralded one of Social Media Week’s most exciting events: the Nokia Social Innovation Lab. Four young entrepreneurs gave inspiring presentations about how social tools have helped turn their business idea into reality. Each had a different, but equally fascinating story to tell.
Within the packed room, tensions were running high (and so was the air conditioning) as Becky Straw took to the podium. Despite having flown in from New York that very morning, she delivered a passionate and inspiring presentation about The Adventure Project, a not-for-profit organisation that seeks to provide jobs and dignity to people in developing countries.
She explained how social media is “absolutely integral” to her business, not just in terms of spreading the word, but even in the simple logistical task of keeping up with her team – her business partner, Jody Landers, lives more than 1,000 miles away in Iowa.
Social media also played a huge part in The Adventure Project’s “Coal for Christmas” mission. By selling special “festive” lumps of coal for $20 each, Becky and Jody helped provide more than 1,000 charcoal-efficient stoves for families in Africa and Haiti. Now that’s what I call ethical social media!
The second inspirational speaker was Jess Ratcliffe, founder of GaBoom, a video game swapping website.
GaBoom is essentially a social network for those who want to swap video or computer games. It acts as a middle man, matching users to a network of individuals with whom they can swap and trade their games. As Jess put it, social media is not just essential to GaBoom’s business model, it “is the business model”.
She is also a firm believer in social media being a “means to breaking down barriers” between individuals, using examples from her own experience to show how making connections on social networks can have tangible results in the physical world.
Tricia Bertero also spoke passionately about how the “spirit of conversation” prevalent in social media is crucial to the ongoing success of her start-up, TextPlus.
She told of how TextPlus has grown out of the observation that people are actively choosing texting over calling as their primary method of communication; it’s fast, easy and relatively discrete. From this simple insight into people’s behaviour, Tricia and her colleagues have created a booming business. Also, by conducting polls and monitoring usage, TextPlus has the ability to listen to its users and evolve to accommodate their preferences and needs. This is a shining example of how a business can be successfully social.
Being the last speaker up on stage was never going to stop award-winning “soultrepreneur” Andre Campbell, whose community project Enfuse Youth is all about empowering young people with the passion and drive to achieve their goals. His energetic and interactive speech was, for me, the highlight of the day.
Andre was very vocal about the need for businesses to tap into the youth market, calling young people “the most valuable resource in the world”. His passion and insight exemplified how innovation and participation can’t just be online, and that social encompasses both the real and the virtual worlds.
Although each of the four speakers were very different people, with very different backgrounds and very different visions, they were united by their passion for their business and their successful use of social (and not just social media) to promote it. And they each had their individual (social) success stories.
A couple of weeks ago, David Cameron announced the introduction of a Co-operatives Bill before the next election. The proposed bill will consolidate and simplify 17 different pieces of legislation, making it much easier for investors to start up and run a co-operative organisation.
The People’s Supermarket: run by the people, for the people
Why do I care?
Because I am always surprised by how little discussion occurs about the value of co-operatives in the social business sphere. When you’re looking to build robust new business models that are rooted in social participation and innovation, learning from co-operatives is a no-brainer.
A paper just published by leading economist and trend predictor Professor Noreena Hertz, Co-op Capitalism, suggests that co-operative business models will lead the capitalism of the future. “In the Co-op Capitalism era,” says Hertz, “the businesses that thrive will be those that acknowledge the power of collaboration, are able to engage in meaningful ways with their customers, workers and suppliers, are proficient in investing in long term relationships and embrace the ethos of co-creation and co-design.”
You don’t need me to point out the resonances that kind of talk has for the social media generation. You know all those social buzzwords – transparency, authenticity, community? Well, in a co-op, they’re pretty much baked in. Solutions for ‘social capitalism’ of exactly the type Hertz describes are the subject of popular recent books from Clay Shirky to Simon Mainwaring.
This doesn’t mean every social business has to go full-out co-op; but they can provide some pertinent strategies. At 1000heads we operate a profit share, and although the extra money is obviously fantastic, what the scheme says about how we work and what we value is just as important.
Will this be the year of the co-op? I wouldn’t be surprised.
As 1000heads’ HR manager you’d think Social Media Week has the potential to pass me by. Not so; yesterday I was invited to take part in a panel discussion, entitled ‘Mind the Gap: Avoiding a Social Media Skills Crisis’.
Crisis might seem like a dramatic word, but it’s true that many brands, organisations and agencies continue to struggle to recruit the right people to support their social media efforts. Yet I don’t believe a lack of social media skills is the problem; actually it’s almost the opposite.
Take graduates as a perfect example. For what is essentially a new and ever-evolving industry, graduates offer a virtually endless source of ‘social media savvy’ people. Students, perhaps more so than any other demographic, understand how to use Facebook, Twitter, and any number of social platforms and presences. They’re young, keen, and with social media experience built in, what’s not to like?
But it’s here where we begin to run into a few problems.
Having a passion for social media (something I read on a lot of CVs) is almost always inaccurate. People have a passion for their passions, and they may well use social media to converse and share in those passions, but they are very rarely passionate about a social media tool itself.
Using social media to manage a busy social life and interact with a multitude of friends and acquaintances is very different from using social media to listen, monitor, gather insights, activate campaigns, and do all the other things that will ultimately be required in the workplace.
Understanding social media doesn’t mean a person has social skills, understands workplace etiquette, or even knows how to deal with all of the diverse audiences working life brings to the door. Much of this comes with time, practise and experience, but too often the ambiguity of the word social can confuse our expectations of what it means to be social.
The crisis comes when employers misinterpret using social media for understanding its place in a business context. The reality is, we can teach someone to effectively use Twitter as part of a client campaign far more easily than we can train someone on how to problem solve, communicate with clients or juggle multiple tasks. So when a graduate knocks on our door, what skills should we be looking for?
For us, social media are just one piece of the Word of Mouth puzzle; and every other piece is just as important to up skill for.
As part of our graduate recruitment drive, this year 1000heads will be launching a summer school aimed at students who are about to graduate or who are still studying. While we’re obviously on the lookout for new team members, it’s also designed to give those attending a first hand experience of life in an agency. For us there’s no better way for all involved to understand the skills we think are truly important.
Watch this space for more details.
And any students looking for some immediate inspiration should check out the free Nokia’s Social Innovation Lab that takes place at Social Media Week on Wednesday 15th. The session presents four ‘Young Social Innovators’; each telling the story of how social has helped them bring their business idea to life.
Social Media Week kicks off today and a huge range of exciting and interactive events will be taking place in 20 cities around the world.
As ever, here at 1000heads we will be in the thick of things. We’re taking part in many events but one we’re particularly excited about is the launch of Nokia’s new social innovation – Agora.
Agora is core to Nokia’s desire to be a listening company and it delivers up to the minute insights into online conversations that its customers are having.
Creative content, both internal and user generated, real-time social conversations, and real-time social metrics are shown on banks of flat screen displays in dedicated social spaces in Nokia offices all over the world.
Agora helps Nokia better understand its customers and puts social listening right at the heart of the organisation.
Take a look.
If you’re at Social Media Week in New York we’ll be showcasing Agora every day, displaying the social content being created around the event and the hashtag #SMW12. It’ll be at Big Fuel’s office here.
The guys (and girls) of 1000heads, like many, took part in last year’s Movember campaign. If you’re not familiar with Movember, or if you want to see how the more and less hirsute of us fared, check back here and here.
As we’ve said before, it’s a great cause, a fun (and highly social) idea, and every year Movember seems to grow in popularity, much like the myriad of moustaches it inspires. What’s more, something arrived in the post today that has taken our relationship with the organisation to a whole new level.
It’s always nice when someone takes the time to say ‘thank you’, but it’s even nicer when they do it in a thoroughly thoughtful, surprising and delightful way.
A hand written card (no printed text or autopen in sight) says so much more than a catch-all email, blog post or tweet. It says ‘we really do appreciate your support’, and it does so in a physical, tangible and highly emotional way.
The result? This year’s Movember may not be happening for months, but it’s already in our diary. And there’s a lesson here; sometimes it’s the very smallest of things that have the very largest of impacts.
Last week, my boiler broke down (bear with me I do have a point here). For two full days during one of the coldest weeks in the year I had no hot water or heating in my flat, and when I called British Gas I was quickly assured that an engineer would be round imminently to fix the problem.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that the person on the other end of the phone was charming, personable and efficient. I hung up feeling like a valued (albeit rather cold) customer, secure in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to be left to freeze. But no one turned up. Then, after waiting for more than ten hours, I had a call from the British Gas engineer to say he couldn’t make it that day and would come the next.
As a result, British Gas found its way into my bad books.
The point I want to make (see, I said I had one) is that despite the very good customer service I experienced from one part of the company (in this case, its call centre), the no-show and rather dismissive attitude of another part (the engineer) succeeded in tainting the whole of the British Gas brand for me. I even tweeted about it:
We at 1000heads are strong believers in the fact that in order to become successfully social, brands need to become more human. This is true both on and offline, whether the point of contact between a brand and an individual is someone sitting in a call centre, standing behind a counter or updating a Twitter feed or Facebook wall. People want to be able to put a face to a name, and a personality to a brand. That is what being social means.
But companies are often so preoccupied with ‘humanising’ and engaging people with certain aspects of their brand that they forget that for the average person, the brand is seen as a single entity; if they have a bad experience with one aspect of the organisation, then it will taint their perception of the brand as a whole.
The trick is to get the balance right. Being human should not mean losing sight of the overall message you want to promote, and being professional should not mean coming across as unapproachable or disconnected.
British Gas made the mistake of believing great call centre experiences are the key to customer loyalty, rather than customer service as a whole (although I should mention that it has since apologised and offered me compensation for the extra day I spent feeling like a polar bear in an ice storm). Others have cottoned on to the fact that maintaining a personable, human side to every aspect of their brand is crucial in making people believe and trust the services on offer. Take a look at this little gem. The sign could easily read “Please use other door”, but in saying so much more, it (ahem) says so much more about the brand beyond the doorway….
Here’s a visualization of American internet users and their daily relationship with Facebook. Over 155 million Americans are spending more online time on Facebook than anywhere else (Nielsen says nearly 8 hours per month). According to the digits below, the average user is spreading the word among 229 friends, the majority from high school and extended family.
This week, I claimed that companies like ours are the agencies of the future but somebody put me in my place by pointing out that 1000heads is a child of the last century. Day to day work normally gets in the way of reflection, but this made me pause for thought and consider the journey we’ve been on and the journey that lies ahead.
It was indeed in 1999 that plans to launch 1000heads were first laid. To put this into perspective, there was no Facebook (can a $100billion business really grow that quickly?), no Twitter, no YouTube, no MySpace, and social media meant no more than sharing a newspaper in the park.
We may not have partied like it was 1999 ever since but it’s been an action-packed, white-knuckle ride from our early days in a (thankfully converted) cowshed in rural Oxfordshire. We now have around 75 talented and inspiring people working out of our offices in Soho, we have a dozen more in New York under the leadership of North American CEO Mike Davison, plus growing teams in Australia and Germany.
As the grizzled veterans of social media, we have seen a global industry grow up with us, and around us, and we are proud to be a part of it.
In addition to clients such as Nokia, whom we have had the pleasure of working with for the last seven years, we are delighted that Mars Petcare, Skype, Toyota, Rebel Sports and Gala Bingo, to name but a few, have recently joined the 1000heads family.
Social media is in our DNA but today brands want so much more. We talk a lot about social communications, helping brands’ stories to travel further and faster. People talk and share information wherever they are, whatever they are doing, and whoever they are with.
Meeting that challenge is sometimes scary but always exhilarating and I’m delighted that we are able to welcome some fantastic new ‘Heads’ to the fold, as well as promotions for existing Heads, who together will be part of the leadership team taking 1000heads forward.
Joanne Jacobs takes up a position as Chief Operating Officer in our Sydney office from March 1st. Joanne describes herself as a ‘geekgirl’ and has a passion for all things social. A former lecturer in the MBA program at the Brisbane Graduate School of Business at Queensland University of Technology, Joanne is returning to Australia after a four year stint in London during which time she was Client Director for Xenial and more recently Chief Operating Officer for Hibrow, an online arts offering from British-based film-maker Don Boyd.
It’s a real coup to have Joanne join us and I know she will build on the great success we are already starting to see in the Australian market.
Here in London, Phil Borge has been appointed to the newly created role of Strategic Planning Director. He joins us from PR agency Eulogy! after 10 years of service, where he was most recently Senior Account Director and strategic lead within its marketing services division.
In short Phil is a guy who gets things done and he will be responsible for developing the agency’s approach to client strategy, working with the insights, project management and creative teams across multiple projects and campaigns. He will also spearhead the addition of PR activation within client campaigns.
He will be working alongside Frank Grindrod, previously Group Account Director, who has been promoted to Client Services Director. Frank has been with 1000heads for six years and while ‘social media guru’ is a term he would shrink from, we call him it anyway.
Simon Adamson, another long-serving ‘Head’, has been promoted to Group Account Director and will continue to keep calm while all around him ‘chaordic’ enthusiasm reigns.
We also shortly hope to be announcing the appointment of our first Community Director, another key hire for the business. The Community Director will be responsible for our 20-strong Community team, running social presences, advocacy programmes, and community events.
Our journey may have started in the last century, and it may feel like we have been travelling 100 years at times, but the reality is that we have only just left the station and the tracks are infinite. We are delighted to welcome our new travelling companions on board.
