Posts Tagged ‘employees’
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
…we mind them not apologising.
I was browsing some WOM from our latest client event when I came across Hayley’s latest post ‘House of Fraser Fail’.
Yesterday, Hayley posted an account of her less-than-glorious experience with a House of Fraser personal shopper. Although she had some pretty bad service, it was a light-hearted, balanced post, encouraging the store to up their act. She even sent it in an email to their website so they could use the feedback
Today, she received a comment on her post which she traced back to the House of Fraser server.
As Hayley says, “For a company who, lets face it, probably would like all those 20 somethings coming and spending their disposable income in store, this is quite a cockup. Social media, such as blogs and Twitter, is quite an important thing in terms of advertising these days. Within 5 minutes of posting the above picture on Twitter, I’d had lots of replies from people saying how disgusted they were.”
But that’s not really the issue.
Lots of employees are still unfamiliar with social media etiquette. Many won’t have been invited to a conversation with management which outlines best practice and the need to remember that you’re a company rep when giving opinions about them online. Consumers don’t expect brands to be perfect.
No, the real problem comes in the subsequent silence. Despite Hayley’s generous call out that “perhaps theres a really good reason for this. House of Fraser, I can’t wait for your reply!” they have apparently failed to respond in any way.
Is it because they don’t care? Is it because they’re twisting themselves in knots trying to think of a strategic thing to do, rather than just reaching out and saying ‘Sorry, our bad. We’ll do our best. In the meantime, have this discount on us.’
Or, most likely, is this because they simply aren’t listening?
Nowadays, we expect it. Not listening is not an option any more.
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
…we mind them not apologising.
I was browsing some WOM from our latest client event when I came across Hayley’s latest post ‘House of Fraser Fail’.
Yesterday, Hayley posted an account of her less-than-glorious experience with a House of Fraser personal shopper. Although she had some pretty bad service, it was a light-hearted, balanced post, encouraging the store to up their act. She even sent it in an email to their website so they could use the feedback
Today, she received a comment on her post which she traced back to the House of Fraser server.
As Hayley says, “For a company who, lets face it, probably would like all those 20 somethings coming and spending their disposable income in store, this is quite a cockup. Social media, such as blogs and Twitter, is quite an important thing in terms of advertising these days. Within 5 minutes of posting the above picture on Twitter, I’d had lots of replies from people saying how disgusted they were.”
But that’s not really the issue.
Lots of employees are still unfamiliar with social media etiquette. Many won’t have been invited to a conversation with management which outlines best practice and the need to remember that you’re a company rep when giving opinions about them online. Consumers don’t expect brands to be perfect.
No, the real problem comes in the subsequent silence. Despite Hayley’s generous call out that “perhaps theres a really good reason for this. House of Fraser, I can’t wait for your reply!” they have apparently failed to respond in any way.
Is it because they don’t care? Is it because they’re twisting themselves in knots trying to think of a strategic thing to do, rather than just reaching out and saying ‘Sorry, our bad. We’ll do our best. In the meantime, have this discount on us.’
Or, most likely, is this because they simply aren’t listening?
Nowadays, we expect it. Not listening is not an option any more.
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Staff talking about their employers online is one of the thorniest issues around. Companies are increasingly eager to embrace word of mouth and new technologies but also eager not to replicate the recent mistakes of Habitat, Primark and many others who have been on the sharp end of employee WOM gone wrong. So how do you make the most of the people who should be your biggest brand advocates, and what sort of conversations do you need to be having with them to ensure they’re suitably self-conscious when expressing their opinions online? Well, click through here to read my short but practical how-to guide in Utalk Marketing and let us know your own thoughts and stories in our comments below.
Monday, July 6th, 2009
You’ve no doubt read about the new head of MI6, who started his tenure in spectacularly silly style when his wife failed to check her Facebook security settings and released a raft of personal details into the social sphere, including some fetching snaps of Sir John in his stripy Speedos. Now this morning Primark have announced that they’re launching an investigation into staff who have called their customers ‘pikey, ‘fat’ and ‘twats’ on Facebook.
Oh, it’s so, so easy to mock – and it’s doubtful exactly how enemies of the state could leverage the fact that Lady Sawyers is a fan of Cabaret – but the whole debacle does demonstrate that the impact of social media on our professional lives is becoming ever more complex. According to The Times, “Foreign Office staff are warned about using social networking sites when they join”, and the MI6 are super rigorous about what content can be released, but obviously this is not being communicated in the right way. And who knows what guidance Primark give their staff? Freedom of expression is the fuel of the net, and rather than just establishing dictatorial rules, companies need to engage their employees in face-to-face dialogue about where the boundaries lie.
Yes, we all need to activate a bit of common sense, and I have very limited sympathy for these fools. But it’s also the job of businesses to take the subject seriously and not just let their people become the fallguys for an inadequate policy.
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
There is an increasing tension in the way companies are using social networking as an internal operations and business branding tool. Deloitte, who have announced that almost one-third of executives are in on the game, have also written at length on how business leaders are struggling to communicate with Generation Y. And as you can see from eMarketer’s new stats below, whilst brands are using social networking in a number of different ways, 74% of employees agree or strongly agree that using social media can damage a company’s reputation. No wonder, when 53% consider their online profiles none of their boss’s business, and one third give no thought to professional impact of what they post personally.
It seems incredible that so many companies are jumping into the space when 55% of executives admit that their companies do not have an official policy for social networks. Treating word of mouth as a short-term, reactive experiment is a recipe for disaster, and employees are often the ones who become the fallguys. It’s great to see brands embracing social media, but they really need to think about what they are trying to do by using these tools, and which are the most appropriate for them. I suspect that many of them just spewing out white noise and diluting their presence without adding value to either these venues or themselves – and at worst, they might be using and discarding consumers in the space, encroaching into communities they don’t know how to communicate with, failing to properly guide or protect their employees, and escalating the negative WOM around their brand.
So, a few suggestions for these eager but anxious executives. Question what your intended outcomes are. Ask whether you have anything relevant to say. Investigate where the genuinely powerful, selective synergy is between social media and your brand. Make a long-term plan, and think before you tweet.
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
As we keep telling clients that they need to become conversational within as well as without, by learning how to turn their employees into brand advocates and transform their internal comms into a creative, collaborative social network all of its own, we’re careful to walk the talk ourselves.
Having experimented with platforms such as Wikis (not dynamic or visual enough, and unwieldy with a big team) we’ve seen great success with SocialCast, which allows us to share and debate internally in a way that feels absolutely intuitive to the Facebook generation. The series of microblogging-style update options, where you can throw up an idea, a question, a link, or indeed a worklog explaining what you’re up to, are a refreshingly immediate way of keeping connected to members of all the different teams, and as a global company, we find it especially useful; our offices are spread across both London and Oxford, and at any one time a good few Heads are likely to be at an event or meeting abroad.
Of course, it comes up against the same issues we see in public social media; as your Socialcast presence draws in feeds from all your other sites (Twitter, Flickr, Digg etc) the work/personal lines can become blurred, and we’re still working out how to keep things focused without stripping away the intimacy that keeps it human and creative. But it’s already stimulated a lot of conversation about how we can make the way we work better – which is what we’re all about, in the end.
What have your experiences been of branching into conversational comms? McKinsey have a neat summary on Web 2.0 tools for companies here…
