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….
Scarcity, secrecy, exclusivity. Three words that don’t exactly reflect the transparency and freedom of information that brands are supposedly striving for in a social age. But that’s also the reason that they can be so powerful in triggering emotional impact and peer-to-peer conversation when they are used well.
Last week, a friend of mine invited me to volunteer for something called YMBBT. Armed with no more information than an address in the West End and a time for that evening, I was slightly nervous that I had signed myself up for some dubious Soho debauchery. When a quick Google search revealed nothing except for the fact that YMBBT stood for ‘You Me Bum Bum Train’, my anticipation – and anxiety – understandably increased.
For those of you who haven’t heard about YMBBT, well – the first rule of YMBBT is that you don’t talk about YMBBT. All I need to tell you is that it’s a highly sought-after interactive theatre experience run almost entirely by volunteers who, like me, don’t really know what they are volunteering for. And when I say highly sought-after, I mean sought-after. 80,000 applied for just 1,000 tickets during its last run, all without a clue what they were signing up for.
The absolute secrecy of the whole enterprise is key to its success. Counter-intuitively, explicitly asking people to restrict the nature of their word of mouth drives word of mouth like wildfire.
YMBBT is just one of several examples of brands that know the value of cloak and dagger. We’ve talked before about how pop-up shops harness people’s desire to uncover unconventional retail gems before anyone else.
Secret Cinema is another fantastic example. Paying over the odds to see a film you may or may not like in a location that may or may not be anywhere near you sounds bizarre in a world of hyper-personalisation, convenience and tribal passion groups. But it sells out every time precisely because it subverts those trends. Sometimes, not being pandered to makes you respect a brand or experience very much indeed.
Of course, exclusivity taps into very basic human drives. We’re herd animals – we enjoy inclusion and being privy to something special, and those emotions can quickly be converted into loyalty and advocacy. We want people around us to know we’re part of this magical experience, both to bond with our fellow participants and to badge our selves with a sort of ‘in the know’ cool.
Of course, not every brand lends itself to this kind of ‘popularity through secrecy’ approach, especially those that can’t rely on the impact of the live experience. Practical, non-experiential and non-luxury items such as say, household cleaner, rely on candidness, transparency and cold hard facts to make their product stand out in a sea of competitors.
But Apple is proof that you don’t need lots of stunts to make consumers feel special. Its carefully – some might say anally – controlled flow of information is absolutely key to the cult. The ultimate Generation Y brand, Apple doesn’t have a blog, Twitter account or Facebook page.
Yet by revealing so little Apple all but guarantees that every announcement it makes is met with fevered global excitement and advocacy.
So how might you be able to drive demand with a bit of social scarcity? What assets, information or experiences might you be able to withhold, tease or stagger to generate that sense of privileged camaraderie? Don’t forget: silence can be one of your most powerful tools in harnessing word of mouth.
With the social business industry exploding at the moment, here’s a quick digest of some of the recent interesting developments, resources and reads out there to help you keep on top of the latest thinking and case studies.
First up, IBM, which we’ve profiled here before, continues to position itself as a leader in social business practice as well as technology. Fast Company’s interview with Ethan McCarty, their Senior Manager of Digital and Social Strategy – called Move Over Social Media, Here Comes Social Business – shows that the industry is increasingly permeating the mainstream.
Then this week, Dachis Group opened its Social Business Index to the public. The Index, another attempt to define the ROI and effectiveness of social business strategies, is built on top of the Group’s Social Business Intelligence Insight Platform and “tracks the performance of the most socially engaged global businesses, providing real-time ranking, analysis and benchmarking”. With over 26,000 brands currently loaded it’s definitely worth a play – as Headshift co-founder Lee Bryant says, “the idea here is to gauge the effectiveness of your organisation’s own social engagement strategies and tactics - not just sentiment but defined, identifiable behaviours”.
Yesterday, Chess Media Group published a new research report, The State of Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration. Based on a survery conducted over spring 2011 of 230 small, mid and enterprise size companies which are using collaborative technologies to improve their business performance, the main findings include:
Business managers and IT managers are beginning to work more closely together to co-own and co-sponsor emergent collaboration initiatives
There is not a strong enough focus on developing an enterprise strategy before deploying a technology platform
Solving a business problem or achieving an objective is just as good as being able to show a financial ROI
A combination of both a structured and unstructured approach is the most successful and commonly used approach by organisations
And finally, Jeff Jarvis’ new book, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way we Work and Live effectively explains how the need for social business has emerged. After putting our era of huge social and technological change in a grounding historical context, the book then “introduces us to the men and women building a new industry based on sharing”. For a taster, why not listen to an audio excerpt, watch a video or read the introduction below.
Or social business. Or social theories, whitepapers, stats or case studies.
It is to get stuff done. The stuff that your business is made of; be that selling shoes or healthcare provision or delivering fish.
We don’t call our colleagues on the telephone to discuss how awesome it is to talk on the telephone and brainstorm all the creative things we could do with the hold music. We don’t use email to tell our customers that we’ve redesigned our email signature. So why do we spend so much time using social platforms to talk about social platforms?
Sure, if – like us – your business relies on a sophisticated knowledge of this technology and the behaviour behind it, it makes sense to ponder these themes. However, in most companies the tools are best used when they disappear and become effortless conduits for better sharing, better innovation and better engagement.
For example.
Nurturing a company’s existing ‘social stars’ is an important first step in driving uptake of internal social tools, but in his recent blog post ‘Mr Popularity and Your Enterprise 2.0 Community‘, Steve Radick reminds us that “those very active champions who are so critical to the early growth of your community may also be the cause of its downfall.”
‘Mr Popularity’, the early adopter who is super comfortable with the technology , may also be skewing the agenda towards discussions about social itself, and inadvertently discouraging less confident and knowledgable staff from speaking out.
This indicates a wider issue. For most businesses, ‘social’ now brings with it such an aura of specialist knowledge and skills – usually accompanied by earnest company announcements, laborious workshops and promotion of predictably young digital natives to positions of guru-dom – that people forget it is an innate human instinct made up of familiar concepts such as openness, warmth, listening, quick reactions and word of mouth.
Every single person in a business, whether they’re a tech whiz-kid or still mistrustful of email – should understand that they have the ability to be social in what they do -whether they make tea or run the company – using whatever tools they find best fit their own personality and role.
Yes, some basic tool training is needed so that everyone has the full raft of options, and keeping on top of developments in social media can be inspiring. But the sooner the internal comms platform becomes a space to do deals, share ideas and tackle problems rather than being seen as an ‘innovation’ in itself; the sooner customer-facing social platforms are used to give better service and forge deeper relationships, rather than being considered social by simply existing – the sooner we’ll see results.
Results that everyone can take credit for and celebrate.
Today I’d like to share a really useful social business deck created by Michael Brito for Edelman Digital, promoting his new book ‘Smart Business, Social Business’.
Then I’d like to make some suggestions about how we can broaden that concept of social business to become something a little more, well, physical.
Brito’s slides provide an admirably clear and comprehensive overview of the evolution and anatomy of social business. They outline the industry’s progression from social customer to social brand to social business, and include some good basics around social organisation models, governance and training frameworks.
However.
To be a fully social business, you have to be social on and offline. There is an assumption in these slides that ‘social’ means ‘social media’ (whether you’re using it as an internal tool or for consumer engagement), when of course social media is just one channel businesses can use to be social, both inside and out. Take a look:
Brito makes a great start here, but don’t forget that a fully social business will also have to look at things like:
Helping staff to be more social offline – getting them regularly interacting face to face with consumers and each other
Embedding a knowledge of what ‘being social’ and ‘word of mouth’ means beyond social media so that the attitude and effort that goes into the virtual presences and intranet translates into every area of the business
Understanding and using social catalysts such as observational learning, authenticity, gaming and disruption in everything you do – be that in the retail store, in the staff kitchen, or on Facebook
Another important qualification I would make to Brito’s definitions is that social businesses facilitate people being social with each other, not just with the business itself. This is essential because the most valuable, trusted and behaviour-changing sharing occurs between people and people, not between people and brands.
That’s our take on social business. Questions? Thoughts?
Is your business ready to be mobile? Because your workforce is.
Social contact manager Gist has put together this infographic on the rise of the mobile worker and, as you can see, productivity is no longer synonymous with desk-bound nine-to-five. A mobile business culture is going to be very important to the next generation of talent.
However, it is important to remember that mobile working does not necessarily equate to working virtually. We have had the tools to work remotely for decades now, and we still rely on water coolers and meeting rooms. We still travel thousands of miles just to share the air with a colleague; video conferencing is as disappointing as it ever was.
This is because the fact remains that nothing beats face to face contact when we’re getting a job done. It brings energy, challenge and emotional investment to our work, prevents misunderstandings, ensures quicker resolutions, and allows much more chance for serendipity to surface.
Yes, working socially means using the best social technology available – but it chiefly means working by engaging with people. And that’s still generally best done in the physical world.
Of course, it’s great to opt out of the rat race. Some focused tasks are much better done in a room of one’s own, where we can put the outside world on silent. When we feel like we have the freedom to move where we wish, that sense of empowerment often brings more passion and ownership to our work.
But when we’re not tethered it’s also much easier to be social, as well as solitary. We can go and see people, rather than always talking on the phone. We can mingle on the shop floor while we’re creating that customer service strategy. We can dip between different regions, departments and desks, ensuring that we’re not solely sharing with and learning from the one guy who sits next door. This is where I think the real value of mobile working lies.
Mobile technology is a gamechanger; I couldn’t work effectively without it. But make sure you’re using it to be more social in the real world, as well as online.
The success of our social recruitment work with Mars has left us pretty evangelical about its possibilities, and it looks like increasing numbers of HR and recruitment professionals are starting to source and engage with talent in a social way.
Here in London Bill Boorman‘s #trulondon social recruitment unconferences are a good place to look for insight – we learnt a lot back at the one in February. The Social Recruiting Conference (#SRCONF), which hit London in June and moves on to Paris in December, also provided some good case studies, such as this from Paul Maxin, Global Resourcing Director of Unilever.
A couple of weeks ago Bill hosted #truboston and evidently companies in the US are also taking social recruitment to heart. Today I found this Jobvite infographic via Carve Consulting’s Paul Harrison, another excellent brain on this topic, and the numbers speak for themselves.
Of course, social recruiting gets really interesting when you move beyond profiling on LinkedIn and make the entire recruitment process social.
Can you set candidates a task that is uniquely conversational?
How is their experience made to feel personal?
What surprises and delights can you inject along the way (on and offline)?
We’ll start to see more of this stuff emerge as companies gain confidence, and integrate their efforts, in this field.
So what are your favourite examples of social recruiting to date?
I’m often asked for case studies of great social businesses, and I must admit that it can be a hard task. Many brands are doing elements of social business well – BestBuy’s customer service, say, or Deloitte’s social recruitment – but very few yet are demonstrating a thoroughgoing commitment to being social from the inside out.
Enter IBM.
These guys are, I believe, pretty much the best example we have right now of a social business. Check out this video from Ted Stanton at the Social Business Summit 2011, charting IBM’s evolution to full social functionality across B2C, B2B and B2E. If you don’t have half an hour to spare, I’ve shared a few key takeouts below…
Their ‘social intranet’ includes over 30,000 specialist communities (some strategic and top down, some grassroots), 18,000 blogs and 12 million chats every day. Lesson: people really do use it, and employee surveys prove its business value to a range of stakeholders from HR (it makes people happy and improves retention) to sales (they do actual business deals in there)
The social media guidelines were written by IBMers in a Wiki. Yes, legal and HR then made amends, but at the core it comes from the people it affects, and everyone is encouraged and guided to build personal profiles in social media
IBM’s Jams, both on the intranet (‘how can we help the Japanese tsunami?) and through external platforms such as developerWorks (‘what will a social business lok like in 10 years time?’), are a brilliant way to gain insight and build relationships between employees but also with competitors, partners, independent consultants, the press and customers
When it comes to starting with social business, there is no magic bullet, just make sure you: communicate the value to everyone; identify the key stakeholders; define the business value for each stakeholder; and organise governance.
Of course, IBM isn’t a perfect example. There are no doubt many regions or areas of the business that don’t feel ‘social’, and Stanton himself admits that ‘it’s a long journey’.
But the important thing here is that a big, global company, with a lot of organisational complexity and a strong legacy, can make a hell of a difference by taking action, trusting its people and giving them the tools to thrive.
If you’re thinking about starting the journey too, get in touch.
I spent yesterday afternoon in a 4-hour Developing Social Business workshop, hosted by the excellent folks at LikeMinds and attended by sterling social practitioners such as Lloyd Davis and Benjamin Ellis and a variety of brands from Stardoll to Investec.
What was most interesting to me was the fact that, although we covered a broad range of topics from organisational models to social media guidelines, internal comms platforms to leadership styles, the conversation kept coming back again and again to the frightening tendency of social to collide the personal with the professional.
How careful should you be when posting opinions online? What are you liable for as an employee? Should employers interfere with personal venues, providing positive guidance and encouragement, or simply step back?
When does a personal opinion have professional impact?
This has become a big roadblock of fear that companies get stuck behind when thinking about becoming social, and there are no easy answers. But it’s essential that we make some kind of peace with this uncertainty . This issue exemplifies the fact that people-centred business necessarily brings a host of ethical and cultural challenges, and often trust, common sense and giving permission to act and yes, maybe fail, are our only enablers to move on.
Benjamin Ellis made the excellent point that this is a relatively new dilemma; in the past our work and personal selves were one, as we lived in geographically bound communities where our identity embraced both. Thanks to the transparency of social media, we are in some ways going back to this state where we have to consider our whole selves as visible to colleagues, bosses, potential employers, competitors and family and friends.
I have three main thoughts.
Basically, this is a good thing. People should not be hiding or masquerading their real selves at work, and employers need to start accepting that for most of their customers or colleagues, discovering that Mark guy cross-dresses at weekends or that Jane hates the HR woman is not going to matter one iota. If someone is moaning about you with good reason, focus on tackling the problem and treating them better, not restricting what they say. If they’re just moaning, fine, it happens. We all do it. It won’t collapse the business.
Online word of mouth may be more widely and permanently visible, but the same principles should apply as offline WOM. Do not libel, do not betray confidences, and do not stand up and yell something in a crowded pub (or Facebook page, or blog, or Twitter feed) you aren’t willing to defend. Even more so if you’ve invited your boss or clients along to that pub (or platform). Otherwise, go ahead and be yourself. But if you want to criticise other people, you have to give them the right to do the same to you.
As Lloyd Davis pointed out, this heightened transparency and accountability means that businesses are going to become increasingly conscious about who they hire. If you don’t think that a candidate truly reflects your values as a business, then why would you want them in your team? Again, to me this is a positive development.
The legal situation around employee word of mouth continues to develop with all the halting contradictions you might expect, but Andrew Gerrard did highlight one important development I was unaware of: a case last year between American Medical Response, who sacked an employee after she criticised her boss on Facebook, and the US National Labour Relations Board, who in response asserted for the first time that employers break the law if they discipline workers who post criticisms on social networks under the First Amendment for free speech.
Of course, there are exceptions. The NLRB’s Facebook page asserts that Facebook comments can lose protected status depending on where the discussion takes place, the subject matter, the nature of the outburst and whether the comments were provoked by an employer’s unfair labour practice. But in general, people simply have to be allowed to speak their mind, even if it is unpalatable to you.
There is so much more to say on this, but it is clear that businesses simply have to stop being afraid of their people, and vice versa. Micro-monitoring and disciplining of word of mouth is not sustainable, and ineffective. Approaching the issue with honesty, realism and a willingness to try is the only way past the roadblock.
Yesterday, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney announced that it would allow its advisers to use social media platforms, providing all 18,000 advisers access to LinkedIn and Twitter in June and graduating to Facebook soon after that.
It is the first large financial firm to do so, marking a sea-change in the industry’s resistance to adopting potentially confidentiality-threatening tools. Morgan Stanley’s only real social toe-dipping to date was the infamous report on How Teenagers Consume Media they commissioned from a 15-year-old on work experience.
However, Andy Saperstein, head of wealth management says, “Many of our clients have been demanding social media. Many of our advisers have been demanding it.”
Of course, it’s the clients that probably made the most impact. Staff are one thing, but when the guys who pay you big bucks start to demand something, you sit up and listen.
Finance is a very private thing. We’re eager to broadcast both our passions and our work, but as the ill-fated Facebook Beacon showed, the idea of broadcasting our purchases or wealth (or lack of it) makes us uncomfortable. It’s an example of the technology colliding with a deeply held cultural taboo and a self-protective reflex which kicks in however safe these apps promise to be.
On the other hand, we are finding it increasingly difficult to communicate in a personal, transparent and networked way in some areas of our life and not in others. And this is where the how comes in. Financial companies absolutely need to become more social – people are demanding it, after all – but they will need to do it in a particular and appropriate way. Ironically, transparency will be key – not in the sense of laying bare confidential information, but in being very clear to both clients and colleagues about which purpose each platform will serve and where the public/personal boundaries will lie. Here’s a nice deck from Monica Hamburg with some basic rules for finance professionals:
God knows what their guidelines are going to look like, and it will undoubtedly take some careful revision of existing processes and internal barriers, but this is a heartening example of just how much companies are starting to value social. In the language these folk use, the benefits now outweigh the admittedly big risks.
We’ve worked with big companies in both finance and pharma, so we know this is true. But how could social media add real value to you as a financial client? How would you like to see wealth management companies embrace these tools? And what would you not want to see?
