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Ideas, tips and techniques for new generation selling and customer support.
2009
Customer experience is not just post-sale: Social Media gets clearer
Brian Haven is a hotshot who describes himself as a “recovering Forrester analyst.” He was involved with their social media practice. I heard him speak at today’s meeting of the Social Media advisory board of the Mass. Tech Leaders Council. Best session I’ve ever heard, personally, on how to make sense of the practical value of social media. This is the first of two posts I’ll do on it.
When I say “best session I’ve ever heard,” I don’t say it lightly. Aside from being a rather finicky analytical thinker, I’ve got some experience at online conversations: I’ve been doing forum communities for 20 years, I write on four blogs, and I’ve been madly involved in Twitter for four months, with a Twitter grade of 99.1 (at home). But Haven’s talk was the first time this all fit together in the context of the new world of customer relations – for business.
To get it, first understand the conventional marketing funnel. It’s all nice and linear, like this:
A certain number of eyeballs see your message, and some get it (awareness), some consider it, etc., until some buy. You work to tweak the ratios at each step.
In today’s world, not so much. For one thing, it’s not linear. For another, that diagram misses that in reality, important other voices come in – people don’t just hear the message you worked out so carefully in your cube or your conference room:
People can google your competition just as easily as they googled you; they ask friends (the most trusted source); there are often peer-review web sites; and that’s not to mention UGC – user generated content, including blog posts and Twitter. And you can’t control any of it.
The old funnel is pretty much shot, because the conversation goes every whichway, with all kinds of influences along the way. Not only that, but in reality today there’s more than one output: some people emerge as buyers, but everyone else comes out as influencers who’ll be the input to other people’s decisions later.
“What’s the marketing takeaway,” as our buddies at HubSpot TV say? In every bit of social media conversation about you, you can be fertilizing the soil in which your current and future deals will grow, or you can be ignoring it. So:
- Listen. Pay attention to what people are saying.
- Hear. At an event in February, social media was used to collect audience questions, but the questions were largely ignored. Oops: missed opportunity!
- Get in the game. If you’re still giggling or making rude jokes when people say “Twitter,” I’d say you’re in danger. The pundits who say Twitter’s just for idiots are missing the opportunity to set up a Twitter search for their own name, and hear what people are already saying about their brand … not to mention that they’re missing the chance to participate.
In short, the customer experience starts long before people buy. Are you listening? Be good to them as early as you can.
The graphics above were a small part of Brian’s slides. He’ll be posting them online; email him for a copy.
I hope to post next week on what he said about Forrester’s “engagement wheel,” which is the best model I’ve seen, by far, for conceptualizing old and new metrics into an action-worthy framework.
Continued in Part 2
Filed under: online scheduling
Tagged: collaboration, customer experience, social media, web 2.0
4 Comments
Scott D. Epter
Posted April 21, 2009 at 8:35 pm | Permalink
I will quote this over and over again. Thank you.
“The pundits who say Twitter’s just for idiots are missing the opportunity to set up a Twitter search for their own name, and hear what people are already saying about their brand … not to mention that they’re missing the chance to participate.”
Dave deBronkart
Posted April 22, 2009 at 12:32 pm | Permalink
Good to meet you, Scott. Send company.
Carmen
Posted April 25, 2009 at 8:25 pm | Permalink
Consider a recent essay written by Stowe Boyd as you craft your next installment to your latest article.
http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2009/04/unmarketing-backlash.html
I think you’ll find it harmonizing quite well with your posting. Keep up the good work.
Dave deBronkart
Posted April 28, 2009 at 4:07 pm | Permalink
Hi Carmen – nice to meet you. How on earth did you find us out here in the twelfth quadrant??
Everyone, the Stowe Boyd post that Carmen linked to is a real skull-bonker. Stowe’s a deep thinker himself, and he gets into it with two of the authors of the legendary book Cluetrain Manifesto. If you don’t know that milestone (which was published ten years ago this month), here’s the super-short version.
And because of that, I just read all the way through the chapter on markets. Holy cow, what a book. Ten years ago?? Why are we still treating things like this post as insightful?