Social Media MegaTrend : Customer service is now 24x7xEverywhere

by Hareesh Tibrewala on Sunday, August 15th, 2010

Once upon a time life used to be 8×5 …eight hours a day for 5 days a week. For some it would be 8×6, 9×6 or some such combination.

Then Internet came along…and life became 24×7. Internet gurus taught us how our ecommerce store could continue ringing in revenues even while we slept…and with 24×7 revenues, came the need for 24×7 customer service. On the other hand, our bosses gave us laptops with data cards…and we became 24×7 corporate slaves. The concept of time changed completely.  It was no longer neatly bracketed into silos (time to work, time to play, time to sleep, and time to do nothing) … it became one long line…with anything happening anytime.

Let me warn you; all this is set to change, again. For good or for worse I don’t know, but it is going to change be sure.  This is how:

  • If I need to get my Dell laptop repaired, I need to either look up their manual for a 1.800 number so that I can call them, or I need to logon to their website, pull out a custserv email id and write them a mail, or I need to fill in a form on their website giving details of the complaint. Right?  … Wrong! No need to do this anymore! (BTW Dell India has one of the worst IVRS….it keeps you on hold endlessly)
  • Now all you need to do is logon to twitter and send out a tweet “Having problems with my #Dell laptop. Need help”. Chances are that a Dell representative who is continuously monitoring twitter for tweets with references to Dell, will send you a @ message offering a help. Chances are also that a Lenovo representative (who is tracking competition) will also send you a @ message offering help, even though you are a Dell customer (hoping that Lenovo scores some brownie points with you for helping you out !)

The point is that as a consumer, I no longer need a “definitive” address (phone number, email id, website URL etc.) to reach out to a brand. I can just tweet into cyberspace (even without knowing Dells twitter handle). It is like standing on top of my building’s roof and shouting that I am a Dell customer and I need help… and my expectation is that Dell will hear me and respond!

Social Media will create a huge jump in consumers’ expectations of service levels from a brand. He no longer needs to reach out to the brand. It is his expectation that he can just shout out anytime and from anyplace … and that the onus of listening to him and seeking him out lies on the brand. Brands now need to be truly omnipresent.

Welcome to the new reality: 24x7xEverywhere.

15.08.2010 Hareesh, Mega Trends, Social Media Mega Trends, customer service, learning View Comments

Listening to iPod Speakers: How Social Media Monitoring can lead to Actionable Insights & More

by mihir on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Executive Summary: Is Social Media Monitoring just an academic exercise, or can it lead to concrete benefits to the Brand? We conducted a Monitoring exercise to find out. The chosen domain was iPod and iPhone speakers and docks. To know more about what we found, read on. (Hint: It was the latter)

The method used for conducting this Social Media Monitoring exercise was essentially similar to the previous exercises carried out by us (Online Travel Sector in India and Hybrid Cars – Whats the Social Media Buzz). The study differed however, in that we completely focused on deriving points of action from it. We specifically chose this particular market  (iPhone and iPod docks) to conduct the exercise, because it was very close to another market/domain (iPods and iPhones themselves) which have a very high level of noise. We would have to ensure, therefore, that the search was very well defined, so that the number of irrelevant results retrieved would be kept in check. The entire exercise involved:

  1. Identifying the appropriate search terms to enter into the Social Media Monitoring tool, so as to reduce the number of irrelevant results retrieved. (We restricted the searches to retrieve four days worth of data, June 12th to June 15th)
  2. Running the searches, and allowing the Software to perform a first level classification of the results.
  3. Our Social Media Executives cleaning up the results, to remove all the irrelevant ones.
  4. Higher level, intelligent classification, categorization by our Executives.
  5. Analyzing these results to extract points of action, and identifying influencers.

Our learning:

If I was a company about to launch an iPod Dock/Speaker system, what would be the features I would ensure that my product had? Apart from the obvious feature, viz. Good Audio output, our monitoring exercise revealed two features which were highly appreciated:

  1. Compatibility with different generations of iPhones/iPods: What may seem to be an obvious enough feature, was not present in some models (eg. Bose SoundDock Portable). Conversely, whenever a mention was made of a dock which had this feature, it was highly praised (eg. GenevaSound Medium).
  2. Ability to charge your device while music is being played: This feature, as well, wherever present was highly praised (eg. Harmon Kardon Go + Play). Yet, not all systems seem to have this feature.

On Social Media, Issues resurface, constant vigilance is required. The Bose SoundDock Portable, mentioned above, had a problem. Days after the 3G iPhone was released on 11th July 2008, people started talking about issues with the SoundDock Portable. While charging the iPhone 3G, the dock made a popping/clucking sound, every 5 minutes. This was reported on a particular thread on the Apple Support forums. We saw users helping each other, recounting  their interactions with Bose’s support  (which incidentally, did not reply in the thread). The problem was solvable, requiring the users to send the dock to Bose, who would modify it and send it back. As it happens, three new posts was posted on the the same thread, on 15th June 2009 (which is why the tool picked it up).  These people had the same issue, one year later, and still had to help each other solve it.

Action Required:

We identified results, which merited response as ‘Action Required’ results. They were further classified into ‘Action Required: First Level Response’ and ‘Action Required: Escalate to Customer Service’. Within these four days, we found three results on which we determined action would be required, in terms of escalating those three results to Customer Service. They were all related to the Bose SoundDock and problems associated with the same. The first Action Required result was about Bose SoundDock not being able to charge a users iPod Touch. The second and third results were from the apple support forums, with users talking about the popping/clucking sounds being made by the SoundDock Portable.

Influencer Identification:

From among the various sources where iPod docks were spoken about, Social Media Monitoring also helps us identify the influencers, viz. sources with the widest reach. While the largest number of reviews of various iPod docking systems were on the blog Smart Reviews Online, the popularity rating for this particular blog was 2 (out of a maximum possible rating of 10). On the other hand, the blog Geek.com, which did not always talk about iPod docks, had a popularity rating of 10 (highest rating possible). The only talk about iPod docks on geek.com in this time frame was about the passPORT home dock enables the Soundock to charge iPods while playing them. Another big influencer, with a popularity rating of 10 (source with highest reach or popularity) was, unsurprisingly Apple’s support forums, which had a single thread active, with only three posts during this time frame. It became clear, that frequency of posting (which may lead to a particular blog/channel being seen as influential) may not really be the most popular source.

The above study is an illustration of how monitoring Social Media can very clearly be used to derive well defined and specific action steps. It also helps in identifying which are the most influential sources of information about your product or brand.

The categorization done by our analysts, opens up opportunities for some interesting insights. First let us look at what is the ratio of relevant to irrelevant results from the one’s extracted by the tool:

How do users percieve your brand? What are the thoughts, words they associate with your company? We can analyze the themes being touched upon on Social Media, when people are talking about your brand. In this example, we did this themes analysis on the entire set of relevant results, viz. across brands.

In the tag cloud shown above, larger the size of the word/tag, more closely it is associated with the brand (in this case across brands). The above cloud, for example reveals that the word ‘System’ is very closely associated with speakers/docks, something which should be considered while thinking of a branding strategy for your next product. The word ‘dock’ is individually bigger than ‘speaker’, however, the word ‘speakers’ also figures prominently in the tag cloud.

Now that we know the themes being touched, we want to see which domains have the maximum volume of conversations about iPod Docks and Speakers (a reminder, we are doing this study for the four day period from 12th June to 15th June. It can easily be conducted for longer durations, and on an ongoing basis). The most popular domains, which spoke about iPod speakers, were as per the following image:

If we look at the above graph carefully, we see that there are two posts on Craigslist. Which means there is probably a resales market for iPod docks. We classified these posts concerning resale, and now we can see, which brand has the most resale related posts  for the given duration:

These resale related posts were not restricted to Craigslist alone. Done on an ongoing basis, this can help identify the size of the resale market for a particular brand, or even a particular product.

In previous Social Media Monitoring exercises, we have seen some basic data analysis, including Ratio of Tone within brand, Tone analysis related to product etc. As we can see in this post, much more complex and insightful analysis is possible.

Your questions/comments are invited. What other insights would you like to be able to draw from Social Media?

If you wish to download the White Paper for this study (PDF), you can visit the Resources Page on our website.

14.07.2009 Services, Uncategorized, customer service, iPod Speakers, mihir, social media monitoring View Comments

Why India does not have a customer service attitude, and why Social Media will change that!

by sanjay on Monday, June 1st, 2009

** There is a website visibility blog series, which is in the working. Meanwhile, pitching in with this post. **

The inspiration for this post comes from some interactions with Indian brand managers, where we got a suggestion that Social Media may not be on their priority, simply because there isn’t enough of their target market, out there, just yet. When we talked about possible brand reputation risks, and suggested that at least a good social media monitoring exercise should fall in place (quoting cases like the Domino’s story, for example), responses suggested that ‘there have been numerous complaints of cockroaches found in Coke bottles, but that has not hurt their sales growth one bit’.

So why are we like this, in India? Why does customer service come low on priority?

I have personally had outstanding experiences with companies like American Express (for lost traveler checks), Southwest Airlines (for last minute change of bookings, etc.), Cort furniture rental (when I had a short 4 month stay in the Bay Area) etc. I have also heard / read stories of other customer-centric brands like Nordstrom.

But ALL of these are from outside India. I cannot think of one outstanding customer service experience that I would like to talk about, in an Indian context (perhaps, Orange County, Coorg might make the cut for me). Considering that I have spent far more time within the country than outside it, this makes for a generally pathetic state of affairs. Why so?

My analysis of reasons why Indian brands are not too concerned about customer service is:

  1. There are just too many of us! When you have a bad experience at a restaurant, curse your way out and promise to never step in again, does that impact that restaurant’s business? Not by much. There are new suckers who are willing to try him out, each day, day after day. Think about a mobile phone or mobile service provider problem?! With millions of new users coming in each month, do they feel threatened by the dissatisfaction of a single customer?
  2. Our ‘chalta hai’ culture. We accept mediocrity. Of ourselves. And hence of the service we get. We are a service provider (to an internal customer or an external customer) as much as we are a service consumer. And when we are prepared to accept mediocrity of ourselves as a service provider, the same comes back to us as a recipient of service. And in our true ‘chalta hai’ spirit, we accept it!
  3. The slow legal system. So the automobile garage short changed you. You can even prove it. What good does that do? You know you do not have the time for the painfully slow courts of law. And other than taking the law in your own hands, you do not have any other resort. So you resign yourself to your bad luck while the garage continues to give shoddy service.
  4. The lack of an effective consumer movement. Again, we have a more active consumer protection mechanism than earlier, but for the size of our economy, it is still too little, and too late. There is no serious case of ‘consumer backlash’. Even with the high media attention that the ‘fertilizer in Coke and Pepsi’ case got, I do not believe their sales were dented by much.
  5. The lack of a strong, single point media vehicle that can go after these cases. Yes, when it suits them, mainstream media takes up some of the cudgels. But there are always other ‘breaking news’ fighting for the minutes or the column inches, and the brands at fault, just need to wait out the time. On the other hand, there has not emerged in the online space, any strong brand that can just work to take up the cause for the consumers. At least, none with a serious brand recall.
  6. The freeloader attitude that many of us have. Why can’t a brand offer “30 days free replacement” in India? The kind that is a par-value service offering in the western worlds? Because it would be a disaster. Unfortunately, coming from a ‘shortage economy’ legacy that we do, we have a tendency to grab whatever is on offer for free. If there is a 30-days free replacement, you would find the longest queues for returning these, on the 29th day, after using the items for those many days. Likewise, brands may assume that any leeway given in terms of customer service could end up getting abused. In a restaurant that I know, they will not allow on a single table, people having a buffet and a la carte meals. Because they fear that the smaller a la carte ordering folks, will end up sharing the one free unlimited buffet that is ordered! Unfortunate, but true representation of the average Indian L

It is for all these reasons that we do not see brands and companies getting particularly aggressive towards excellent customer service, and we continue to suffer, as consumers.

Moreover it is for these reasons that companies often do not much care about Online Reputation Monitoring, as they figure that it does not matter!

However I strongly believe that brands and companies are missing a trick, as they ignore this Online Reputation monitoring effort, and believe that it does not matter in India.

  1. Online memory is longer. While stories that came in the newspapers or on TV are fresh only as long as the stories are alive, online, these stories do not die. They are searchable, they are accessible, and they can haunt you at the least expected moment of time!
  2. Snowball effect. What could start as a whimper or one dissatisfied voice, could soon convert into a community of dissatisfied users, and then become a snowball. Dissatisfied customers in Cochin, Mangalore, Patiala, Lucknow, Pune..wherever.. are now connected. By the medium known as Social Media!! And in size, their voice is amplified and the whimper can become a big holler!
  3. When social goes mainstream. Domino’s went from YouTube to the New York Times in 3 days. When such transitions happen, God help your brand. You do not really want to wait for that to happen. Stem it while you can, should be the mantra.
  4. You may have many customers, but you have few bankers, investors, joint venture partners. Once you slide down the reputation path, and have tons of bad press (well, more like bad ‘web-content’) , then you may just find it getting tougher to get bankers to trust you, to have investors putting in money or giving you a decent valuation, or to get joint venture partners. Because of our population, customers may still come, but margins may go down, as the premium factor disappears!
  5. And what about people? Good resources do not want to work with companies having bad reputation. Not when they have a choice. If you choose to ignore the complaints, customers will write, blog, tweet, shout. And these noises will keep good talent away from your company!
  6. This can haunt you at the most unexpected and inopportune moment. When you are going for the IPO and your papers are filed, your competitor might just pull out all that dirt from the web and social media archives, and ensure that it gets the maximum visibility. Since content does not disappear here, you always carry this risk!

It should be clear then, that even if you are selling in a seller’s market, reputation matters today! And especially online reputation or reputation being created via Social Media conversations. It is important to monitor Social Media for social chatter about your brand, your competition, your vertical, and be alert on any unusual developments.

Of course, it is critical that the company gets customer focused in the process, and does not allow much customer ire to happen, in the first place. In many cases, these may be a significant cultural change to bring about!

Do you think Social Media will impact our attitude towards customer service? What is your opinion on Social Media’s role as a reputation builder/breaker? Looking forward to a great discussion.

** Social Wavelength offers the service of Social Media monitoring. Social Wavelength will use industry standard software tools to tap all conversations around a brand. This can generate a very large amount of data, though. Our social media executives then work to ‘clean up the data’ and tag the conversations on various parameters, enabling effective and actionable reporting to clients. In cases where brand reputation sensitivity is extremely crucial, Social Wavelength can also offer 24×7 Real Time Online Reputation Monitoring and Reporting. For more information, please email info@socialwavelength.com. **

01.06.2009 Sanjay, customer service, india, social media monitoring View Comments