In practice, though, it's usually a shortcut that lacks a real content strategy for social media, leaving the brand open to all kinds of liability instead. How? Because of a simple turn of phrase used on the phone all the time: starting out by saying your sorry.

On the phone it makes total sense, it's a conversational response that puts someone complaining at ease, makes them feel like they're being listened to.

The issue is that social media is conversational, not conversation.

When your customer service representatives or community managers write "sorry," what they're saying is we "express regret at a mistake or wrongdoing; to accept responsibility for a misdeed.'' That's not what they mean, is it?

So how do you effectively respond to complaining customers in social media? Here's a few A's to think about it without opening up a can of liability:

Acknowledgement

Say thanks. Seriously, you have no idea how effective simply telling someone thanks for taking the time to let you know there's an issue modifies their behavior, and the behavior of people who are looking at your very public community. Usually people just poke the brand through social to see if some person is paying attention. Let them know someone is.

Ask a few simple questions

Very rarely is a complaint in social the beginning of a customers' conversation with a brand. More likely it's the result of a long line of frustrations boiling over onto your account. The best thing brands can do quickly is gain more context: Is this really about your brand or the community? Have they already talked to someone at the call center, or emailed?

Advocate

Really, more than an apology, people usually want to know that you're on their side. They want to know that a human is there to help them solve what's wrong as fast as possible. Taking this, "how can I help you," approach is often the best way to weed out jokers, spammers and trolls from people who really want, or are open to, a solution.

After taking this tact, you may find out that you do owe someone an apology. If that's the case, over deliver on it. Again, think about all of this unfolding in public, and the behavior you want to encourage across a large scale community: as a brand that is human and reasonable, or one that is afraid and quick to cover. The decisions you make with your content are the people you'll invite to be vocal.

What's your take on a good, responsive content strategy for brand communities at scale? Drop your idea in the comments or continue the conversation @mleis.

Social Media use by persons of all ages continues to grow.  Facebook is the most used social media tool by people across the world.  Social Media is not a fad, it's penetrated to become part of our fabric as a society.  As businesses have seen this change, they have responded to incorporate social media as part of their business strategy.

Many use Social Media as part of a sales and marketing strategy but increasingly we are now seeing Social Media, and particularly Facebook, used by businesses as a fast and efficient support and customer service tool.

Here's how Facebook Pages specifically, can be used as a support channel for a business:

As a Announcement Tool

A brand Facebook Page can be  location used as a announcement tool for service issues.  For example, if there is a new product update, a organization can post a message on their company Facebook Page to let users know the details about this change.  This is a pro-active way to get a message out quickly where customers, fans, and subscribers can see it and potentially Like, Comment, or Share the news.  The more fans share the news or comment, the further the reach of the information extends.

As a Monitoring Tool

Many social media software services like HootSuite, PlanYourPost, and Sendible allow you to setup searches and monitor terms.  A business could monitor terms for their business name so that they catch "social chatter" related to the company and can respond to comments, questions, and complaints.  This is sometimes called "social listening".  Listening and monitoring can help a company offer assistance which can help boost sales and solve customer issues.  Cable giant Comcast is noted for using Twitter as a support tool as they have staff monitoring terms on Twitter, for example, so that they can review and respond if someone is tweeting about a Comcast cable service issue.

As a Quick Response Mechanism

Sometimes the best response is a quick response!  If a customer is having trouble setting up your product, purchasing your product online, or wanting to know something, a quick response can make all the difference in the world in terms of their overall satisfaction.  Allowing users to send your company a Tweet or post on your Facebook page News Feed allows your company the opportunity to publicly respond.  This can solve the issue for the requester but also answer that same question for others who were getting ready to inquire!  This public answering can help elevate your company and be a differentiator between your company and a competitor.

Real World Example on Facebook

A utility provider in Arkansas, Entergy Arkansas, recently used their Facebook Page as a key support tool during weather related power-outages in their service area.  While the company Facebook Page notes that it is primarily monitored during business hours, the Page offers key resources using TabSite‘s page App tools to add resource tabs to the Fan Page so that users can view information on Facebook about service outages and getting power back.  By posting updates on their Facebook Page and using tabs on their page, fans of the Page are kept abreast of the latest information and can share this with others.

Ultimately, the more options for getting information out quickly and effectively to customers, the better. So, like many businesses, it may be time to take a deeper look at social media not only as a marketing opportunity but also as a support channel.

______________________________________

Mike Gingerich is a co-founder of TabSite.com, a leader in Facebook fan page tools for businesses. TabSite offers brands the power to boost Facebook marketing .  For more information on Tabsite, please visit www.tabsite.com.

There are a variety of factors that contribute to being socially challenged. Take highly regulated industries like pharma, finance, and healthcare for instance. Maintaining compliant yet engaging language can be tough. What’s more, reaching out to followers after listening to their tweets and posts can be even trickier. Tricky but not impossible. Compliance driven brands can develop and sustain meaningful relationships with customers by doing something they are not entirely familiar with – sharing thoughts and updates that have nothing to do with them. Companies in these sectors, especially in recent years, really need to work at appearing trustworthy and human. So this holiday season, social media departments in these industries should share content relevant to the interests of their audience without being heavy-handed. Share content on pop culture, favorite holiday recipes, tips for saving on travel, and some of the most cherished black and white seasonal flicks. You might be surprised by the level of engagement you spur and amount of trust you build.

Again, compliance-related industries have an understandable hurdle to climb. But not every brand is a drug company, insurance agency, or healthcare organization. It might come as a surprise to learn that some of the worst social media customer service offenders are in digital. Online advertisers, marketers, and brands have much more freedom to be expressive and engaging. Yet, many follow the “freedom isn’t free” premise. I have known some pretty cool companies with really lame Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and, well, forget LinkedIn. When it comes to building a social presence, sometime brands with hip corporate cultures choke on their own awesomeness. They suddenly forget who they are and instead try to sell their coolness to followers when they should be letting it show naturally and organically, SEO pun intended. Listen to what your customers are saying about you on social and respond in a voice they will recognize and appreciate. Anything less should put you on the naughty list.

Whether you’re trying to perfect your rugelach recipe, struggling with your tree lights, or preparing to light the Mishumaa Saba, make a pledge this holiday season to commit yourself to social customer service. By next December, you might find that engagement, sales, and customer love, actually (another shameless holiday movie mention) are all around.

Social media has forever changed customer service through the following four ways:

A Once Private Interaction Has Gone Public

Gone are the days when a customer service interaction was always a one-on-one interaction. Online support forums changed this a few years ago, but social media takes this type of multi-directional conversation to a new level. According to an article earlier this year in Mashable, 62 percent of consumers have already engaged in a customer service transaction using social media. There are both challenges and opportunities here.

The primary challenge is that customers are now sharing their problems, product defects, and other complaints in a completely public forum, and this is a challenge for brands that are pushing out marketing messaging alongside customers’ comments. However, brands have the opportunity here to demonstrate how responsive, empathetic and truly helpful they can be. What better way to make a positive impression on potential customers by showing you are proactive and take care of your customers in real time, publically?

Customers Choose Their Channel

According to a study by Genesys on Forbes.com, over half of Fortune 500 companies are not using social media for customer service, and as many as 27 percent don’t even link to its Twitter or Facebook profiles from the corporate websites. This is a serious problem, especially when consumers are increasingly choosing social media as their primary way to interact with companies. Brands who choose not to be part of this conversation will suffer a lack of control over customer support, and they’re clearly opting out of the solution process.

What do you do if you don’t want to handle customer service on social media? Unless you are one of the big brands that have chosen not to be on social media, make it clear on your marketing-focused profiles that you have other channels for customer service, and make sure you respond if a customer poses a question or problem on your company profile.

Organizations Must Be Nimble

The current way that many organizations are structured needs to change. Smaller organizations can be more nimble, but a larger organization whose marketing, public relations and customer services are spread across different departments, locations and even supporting agencies can have a difficult time adapting to the demands that a public customer service channel, such as Twitter or Facebook, can create.

One thing to keep in mind here is that the same type of response and interaction that works well in a one-on-one environment, such as a call center, is not necessarily what works best in a public-facing environment such as social media. There is a public relations aspect to these open communications that might best be handled by someone (or a team) that is used to handling situations watched and followed by people.

This means that the same types of responses that a call center gives might need to be tweaked a bit for your social media channels. It also means that a new hybrid PR/customer service role is needed in this age of customer service on social media. To start, make sure that all departments, roles and agencies that are tasked with managing your social media presences are on the same page about where, when and how to respond to customer service requests.

Customers Can Help Each Other on Social Media

Online forums have provided a way for customers to interact with each other about their problems and challenges for a while now, but social media provides a new spin on this type of interaction.

Interactions on social media take place where consumers spend their time for personal reasons, and thus their conversations with brands are shared with friends and family. This adds an important dimension to the type of help one can get. Instead of anonymous, or unknown users on an online forum, if you post a question or problem on a brand’s Facebook page, your friend or colleague can see your post and respond to you with advice. This enables you to get advice from a trusted source, as well as the people who you don’t already know that are less anonymous than the users that have generally inhabited message boards and forums due to the nature of social media profiles.

Brands benefit from this because they provide a public forum where all can give help. Brands can jump in when they need to, but can also let other fans, friends and users advise each other, thus demonstrating that there is a supportive community around their company or product.

Conclusion

Whether you like it or not, there is no going back to the old ways and silos of teams and information. While customer service on social media presents some challenges, I hope you see that there are just as many benefits when you do it the right way.

For more thoughts on the convergence of customer service, public relations and marketing on social media, take a look at Carousel30’s white paper on the subject.

In my recent article, The Ascent of the Social Buyer, I made mention that social buyers today were exhibiting an internalized Social Engagement Index.  The mention of a Social Engagement Index is not new.  The people at Alterian have talked about a Social Engagement Index (SEI) as well as a Social Sentiment Engagement Index (SSEI).  Recently, Brent Leary and John Hernandez offered a perspective for The Social Customer in a report called The Social Customer Engagement Index 2011.  The report focused primarily on how companies are leveraging social tools and technologies to reach and engage customers in customer service interactions.  It also pays note to how satisfied customers are with these interactions.

My mention of a Social Buyer Engagement Index is coming from a different direction.  In my anthropological inspired studies, the interest has been on the value buyers today are placing on the ability of companies to provide social engagement capabilities.  It is asking the question: are buyers today evaluating a company’s social engagement capabilities as part of the overall buying experience as well as social experience?  Although in an embryo stage with further research warranted, I think we are beginning to see the emergence of this new expectation. There are three areas that buyers today may be looking at as they evaluate a company’s social engagement capability:

Service:  Socially adept buyers today may be placing a premium on the instantaneous service capabilities that social networking and technology tools offer.  Does not having social engagement capabilities in service – whereby a socially adept buyer sees only conventional email and toll-free numbers – affect a buyer’s receptivity to this company?

Knowledge: Social buyers today are knowledge seekers.  One of the profound shifts in the social age is how buyers today can avail themselves of knowledge that may have been hard to come by in the past.  As the social age evolves and advances, so does the social buyer’s savvy discrimination for real knowledge versus content in general.  There has been much attention paid to content marketing and content strategy recently as a form of new media marketing.  Social buyers today are becoming savvier at distinguishing between push marketing messaging and real knowledge.

Self-Direction: In attempt to avoid the now cliché expression and perhaps to elaborate on the “buyers are in control” adage, social buyers are oriented towards self-directed means of interactions.  When evaluating the overall buying experience, social buyers may be looking at what we may refer to as the avenues of self-direction that a company may offer.  Are there several avenues by which a social buyer can choose to engage and interact with an organization’s sales and service capabilities?

These are three of what are sure to be more factors associated with how buyers are internalizing their own form of a Social Engagement Index.  This emerging trend ups the ante’ for companies today to begin looking seriously at their social engagement capabilities.  Without doing so, they may become oblivious to a new expectation buyers are considering in their overall buying as well as social experience.

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Sure, you created a brand, you service customers, you make a profit; by all accounts you’ve made it right? Wrong. You’re there for right now but it’s up to how you communicate that will keep you there in the future. How are you going to stay there if you rest on what you did yesterday?

Every single day businesses make fundamental errors in judgment when it comes to customer service, providing said service and communicating clearly and constructively with their customers and vendors.

What follows are three examples of how to be just average:

1. Believing that using technology makes you better. In fact, this does not make you better; it just makes it more visible that you are average.

Case in point: I flew to the Bahamas last week on vacation and had purchased my tickets on Expedia. Upon my return to the USA I arrived at the airport and found out I didn’t have a reservation (even though I had clearly paid for one with receipt in-hand to prove it). I came to find out Expedia sold me a route on Continental Airlines that no longer exists (and hadn’t for months). Thus, I didn’t really have a solid reservation (neither did my wife and two small kids). Not fun! Continental figured it out and got me home (thanks, Continental), but then Expedia did exactly what I mentioned above. They used technology (in this case Twitter) to make visible just how average they are.

Shortened Transcript of my Conversation with Expedia:

@sparkerjr: “Thx @expedia for screwing up my flight home from the Bahamas with 2 kids, you made the end not fun.”

@expedia: sorry to hear that please DM us with your itinerary# and descrip of what happened.

@sparkerjr: my trip was from MHH to WPB to CLT to CHS. Airline didn’t have record of my flights. Itinerary #0ABCXYZ0.

@expedia: thanks for the information, we’ll pass along to customer care.

@sparkerjr: when should I expect a response?

@expedia: we will let you know if we get an update regarding your case.

And that’s where it ended. You may say, well they responded to you, Steve, you should be happy. True, they responded, as they should. I paid for customer service when I bought my tickets through Expedia. But they have not communicated to me anything of value in my customer service experience. My expectation was clear in my last message, “When should I expect a response?” Their last message failed me. The elephant in the room is the word “IF”—“IF we get an update.” They left me wondering if average was their best.

You hear in social media circles all the time to ‘be a listening brand’ and I’ll agree – Expedia is listening, but they are not clearly communicating. What’s more important is to communicate clearly with your customers and meet their expectations especially when their inquiries are basic and reasonable. A simple “in 24, 48 hrs or 2 weeks” would have sufficed. Instead Expedia chose to be average.

IF we get an update = average.

2. Thinking your customers are happy. The reality is that in this day of information access there is someone who will very likely treat your customers better, service them faster and possibly cheaper – or your customer may be someone like me and simply be willing to pay a little more to get better service.

Case in point: My company spent approximately $9 million dollars on our American Express cards last year. AMEX treats us really well, but they don’t rely on thinking we will simply be around next year. They involve us in educational events, they call us and they email us to check in on needs – every month. Meanwhile, the bank we had used for the past seven years (a bank that wanted us to use Visa all the time) in which we have many more millions deposited at any given moment and have invested in a number of CD’s, etc…rarely, if ever, called us and rarely, if ever, checked except with a problem.

Guess who recently got replaced? It’s not that we wanted to change, we were just left without options. We didn’t have that feeling of satisfaction (they never communicated with us anything of value). We needed a bank focused on our needs. A bank willing to go beyond just holding our money and using us as a source of it. We didn’t expect the world, we just wanted a partner that cared and would communicate that they wanted to improve upon our business needs. (see Partnerships: It’s About Building Relationships article on ASQ)

Don’t assume your customers are happy – know that they’re happy. How do you know? You ask! You communicate and you let them know they are important by listening to their concerns and needs. That doesn’t mean you provide for ALL those needs, but you let them know which needs you can fulfill. It’s important to communicate.

Special Note: Studies have shown time and time again that the cost to acquire a new customer are 5 – 10X the amount to retain a current one. Seriously, stop and re-read that last sentence. It is that important.

3. Failing to realize you’re treating your customers like second class citizens. Many businesses treat their best customers like second class citizens without even realizing it.  Offering 50% off the first order for “new customers” is a slap in the face to your best and most loyal customers. Offering $100 cash back or a free flight to a new customer while charging your best and most frequent customers full rate without any bonus is meritless.

In fact, and this is humorous because I know you too have experienced the same, here’s a common scenario: You’re a customer of a business but you receive an email, snail mail or call from that business asking you to become a customer and if you do they will give you X. “Ummm, I’m already a customer, can I still get X?” you ask. Their answer, “No.” Of course not, you’re not a “new customer.” This is a huge failure because…

a) The brand has just created a relationship with the new customer based on a gimmick and,

b) They’ve managed to also alienate their best customer.

How does this make any sense even in the most bizarre world? I’m a big fan of Seth Godin and in one of his latest blog posts he wrote:

“If you define “best customer” as the customer who pays you the most, then I guess it’s not surprising that the reflex instinct is to charge them more. After all, they’re happy to pay.

But what if you define “best customer” as the person who brings you new customers through frequent referrals and who sticks with you through thick and thin? That customer, I think, is worth far more than what she might pay you in any one transaction. In fact, if you think of that customer as your best marketer instead, it might change everything.”

Well said Seth, as always. Thank you for the contribution.

Clearly, none of us want our businesses to be average, but if you want to be better you have to begin Asking Smarter Questions and challenge what you believe to be right – don’t simply trust everything on instinct, challenge things and get a partner to help you create that challenge. It is not easy to tackle all these issues at once. But to eat an elephant, you have to do it one bite at a time.

I’d appreciate your feedback and response below, or via Twitter @sparkerjr

Initially, service will only be provided to San Francisco (SFO) and LAX from DFW. However, I’ll be shocked if Virgin doesn’t expand in the near future because of how different their approach to air travel is compared to their competitors. Virgin America’s mission is to provide low-fare, high-quality service for long-haul, point-to-point service between major metropolitan cities on the East and West Coast. This seems like a typical goal for a major airline, but is Virgin America really focused on customer service, not just more transactions? Based on everything I’ve read to date, I believe they are trying to do three things better than their competition.

1.         Ensure its brand experience is consistent across all touch points. It is irrelevant how new the aircraft is or how great the onboard amenities are if potential customers have a negative experience booking travel. Most likely it will be consumers’ first contact with the brand. Virgin America has won the Zagat’s annual airline survey for midsized domestic airlines since its inception in 2007; their Web site being one of the four primary factors evaluated. This year, the carrier received praise for the quality and usability of its Web site.

2.         Provide a delightful guest experience. “With touch-screen entertainment offering live TV, movies and hundreds of entertainment choices and new aircraft that look like nothing else in the skies, we think our service will be a breath of fresh air for Dallas-Fort Worth travelers,” said Virgin America President and CEO, David Cush. What a shift from the current experience one expects when flying out of DFW on the other domestic airlines. Branson summed it up this way during a recent interview. “Here in America, people expect quality service from hotels and restaurants. Why are the airlines able to get away with offering an experience similar to a cattle drive?” As for me, the more comfortable seats and additional leg room are what will make me consider switching from the airline where I have accrued almost a million loyalty miles. Now that there is a better choice in regards to airline service, how long will it be before we all jump ship?

3.         Align its practices with the values of the community. As the only California based airline, Virgin America is working hard to ensure that its daily operations are as sustainable as the relationships they hope to cultivate with new customers. Along with many green design elements, including the vast utilization of natural light, modern ventilation systems that require 20 percent less energy and a reclaimed water reuse program; the airline isinstalling “hydration stations” in T2, Virgin America’s new terminal at SFO.  These allow flyers to fill reusable water bottles once past security, reducing the volume of waste created by single-use water bottles. How often have you had to throw away an almost full bottle of water before going through security? In addition, they are pushing the “slow food” concept. T2 will be the first airport dining program in the country to feature organic food vendors, offering wholesome food grown locally and prepared in a healthful manner.

As Virgin America settles into DFW, I look forward to my first opportunity to try out their fleet of new planes with great amenities and onboard entertainment. But I anticipate this approach to customer service will be what brings me back again and again. I predict in the near future that they will be flying enough routes to justify redesigning their current terminal at DFW so my Virgin experience is delightful from beginning to end.

Case in point: Best Buy.

The retailer has received numerous write-ups about their Social Media initiatives, their @twelpforce and @bestbuyCMO have a strong presence on the Social Web and their Facebook  page has more than 1.1 million "likes". Pretty impressive. But, after my last visit to a local Best Buy, I wonder: Are they listening? Or just hearing? Are they improving? Or just reacting? While Best Buy's social presence is impressive, their store experience hasn't changed over the years:

• Silos everywhere and requests for help are still being answered with: "I don't work in this department."
• The pressure by associates for extended warranties has increased dramatically.
• Calls/Emails for help are either left unanswered or end nowhere.
• The only way I can get in touch with someone helpful is through Social Media.

The reason why more and more people are resorting to Social Media to communicate their dissatisfaction with a brand is a symptom. It's a symptom that all other channels (Phone, Email, Chat) are basically a road to nowhere. Or lead to a phone bank in a country nobody can pronounce. Would you fix a dislocated shoulder with a flashy band-aid? Why do brands believe a dislocation of their customer service and experience can be repaired with a flashy Twitter band-aid?

You can have all the conversations in the world, have all Social Media pundits on your side, engage with your audience all day long. But if these conversations don't lead to changes in your products and services, why even bother? Do you want to be the star of the Social Media pundit circuit or do you want to make money by providing a product/service that delights people?

Businesses need to understand that extensive engagement on Social Media platforms discussing customer service issues should be seen as a symptom of a bigger problem. You can use Twitter as a platform to dive deeper and better understand the negative emotions related to your brand. You can even use Twitter as a temporary bridge to improvements in Customer Service since changing other customer channels (Email, Phone, etc.) often requires an extensive investment and re-allocation of budget. But you should never consider Twitter (or any other Social Media platforms) as THE solution to your real problem.

My plea to brands: Don't get shamed into Social Media. You don't need to respond to each and every petty complaint. In my college days, I worked for United and heard "I will never fly your airline again." at least 5 times a day. People forget their passport, they miss their connection - facts of life. And all these people came back to fly with United again. People get angry, people say things, people forget. Instead of erecting Potemkin villages of Social Media, improve your product/service. Just because everybody does Social Media, doesn't mean you have to follow the herd pretending to care. Improving your overall service communicates caring much more than any Twitter response. No outside forces should tell you when to join the conversation and develop a Social Media strategy. You will know when your organization is ready.    

And a plea to all of us: Is it really such a big deal that your coffee took 5 minutes, the flight is delayed, the customer service agent didn't smile and house cleaning woke you up at 8.15am? Why don't we reserve those Social Media attacks to real problems? All these new megaphones are nice but we should use them sparingly: Complete customer service failure. No opportunity to communicate with a brand. Sharing with the world each petty issue creates way too much noise. So much noise, brands won't hear you anymore. 

Banks are leading culprits. On a good day, banks nibble away at your money. Widely perceived as a necessary evil, these days they are drawing major ire by borrowing large sums from the government and crying poor mouth while simultaneously gouging consumers with a slew of fees and charges. Many banks ratcheted up these bogus fees and changed the due dates and the rules for payments and credit cards in anticipation of new laws outlawing the most egregious abuses. Worst of all the outsourced droids on the phone are neither compassionate nor empowered to solve problems. 

This situation has created a new breed of unhappy customers. They now share their angst on social media and bad mouth miscreants online. But while this releases some of the steam, effective complaining is the most effective form of redress. 

Recently my daughter overdrew her account because she didn't really understand the linkages between her savings account and her debit card. She was charged $790 in fees. In lieu of rejecting her cash request, $225 in fines was assessed against a $10 overdraft. If you're getting hot just thinking about these numbers, you now have the picture. 

Enter her mother, the professionally aggrieved Wall Street lawyer, who swiftly complained to the CEO of the offending bank, who, in turn, eliminated the fees and restored equilibrium to my daughter's financial and emotional universe. For those seeking to battle corporate greed and callousness, here are Jane Shahmanesh's six rules for provoking effective customer service. 

Act Swiftly. Don't stew. Attack. Don't give the bureaucracy a chance to loose focus. Don't be put off by the initial unhelpful contact. 

Go to the Top. Get your message to the top forcefully. Fed-X your letter to the CEO, who often has a special process for resolving customer issues and who has a clear incentive to be a "good guy" publicly. 

Detail the Problem. Document the issue and any interactions you've had with underlings. Don't get excited. Just write down the facts. 

Make a Specific Request. Tell them exactly what you want. In some cases you might need to rationalize why you want the proposed "fix." In this case, it was straightforward; she wanted the abusive fees canceled out. 

Outline the Consequences. Here's where you lay out the carrot (you'll save a loyal and profitable customer) and the stick (we'll go to the Attorney General and bring a class action suit against you). This doesn't have to be nasty. Don't use a threatening tone but convey determination and intensity to support the inference that this problem won't go away without direct action from the recipient. 

Ask for the Order. Politely but firmly reiterate the "ask" and close the communication.

Consider this real-life example.

For months, a successful professional woman is thinking about a new personal computer. She reads everything she can find. She talks to everyone she knows. Interested, but clearly a digital immigrant, she slowly rallies to the idea of an Apple MacBook Pro.

She scours the Apple website. She visits the Apple store several times to hover over the potential purchase. She quizzes the associates and gets the feel of the track pad on her fingers. She examines the machine from every angle mentally picturing herself typing purposefully, carrying it to meetings and surfing the Net from bed. She's emotionally trying the brand on.

Slowly and deliberately over several months, she talks herself into the purchase. She knows it's double the cost of a new PC. She is clearly in touch with her anxiety about learning new moves. Worried that she might not truly be a "Mac person" in her heart of hearts, she discusses the prospective purchase endlessly with her Mac-enabled friends listening closely for support, validation and any signs of doubt..

On her 8^th visit to the new Apple Store on West 68^th Street & Broadway, she makes the leap of faith. Encountering the young androgynous salesperson, 30 years her junior, she test drives the MacBook Pro for the last time. Her questions are answered. Her doubts are put to rest. She buys the machine and the $99 Apple Care package. Excited by the prospect of one-on-one training, she schedules her session 48 hours later -- right then and there.

Giddy like a teenager she puts the funky bag on her back and struts home feeling like she's turned over a new leaf and tuned a corner in her computing life. She calls all her friends, excited to report her new purchase and eager to be welcomed into the ranks of the Apple faithful.

Fast forward 48 hours. She is awakened early Sunday morning with a call from the Apple Store. They pre-emptively cancel her first training session claiming that the store will be hosting a concert at that exact moment. When asked why they scheduled her in the first place, she gets a non-answer answer. The next opening isn't for 5 days.  The Apple Store rings off.

Our new brand loyalist is pissed off. Feeling heart-broken and betrayed, buyer's remorse sets in even before she's unpacked or plugged in her new machine. Her excitement and empowerment turn to dust. She rants to all her friends.

The moral of this tale:

1. Understand how buyers buy.
2. Appreciate the emotional commitment buyers make to your brand
3. Accept the idea that purchase is not the end, but the beginning of a relationship
4. Do everything you can to eliminate disappointments within the first week of purchase
5. Anticipate everything that can go wrong and structure your system to avoid them

I go to a lot of industry events for advertising and digital media, so it was a refreshingly optimistic opportunity to be in the presence of an "industry" of entrepreneurs. To be honest, before I went, I wasn't too enthused. But I left feeling really humbled to be among this proud group of people who are making the American Dream happen for themselves every day.

Sound sappy? Maybe, but it's how I feel this morning.

Last night, they gave the Entrepreneur of the Year award to a woman who, despite being severely handicapped in a car accident when she was 23 years old, invented an "invisible bib" for people in wheelchairs to protect their clothes—and turned her idea into one of the 5000 fastest growing companies in America. I've never felt so genuinely humble.

The conference brought in one of the best lists of speakers I've ever seen. Jim Collins, who wrote Good to Great, tore the house down. Tony Hsieh from Zappos spoke. Randall Graham from (Traction's former client) Bonny Doon Vineyards. David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue. Eric Ryan from Method Products. BET founder, Robert Johnson. ZipCar CEO, Scott Griffith. And so on.

I even got to have a one-on-one conversation with Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke (see video below). I'm hoping he'll consider me to be part of the advisory council to the new Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. We talked about Twitter and how Traction's healthcare premiums (they went up 40% between 2007-2008).

So, what did I learn?

Two things:
• Truly great brands don't define themselves by their products, but by the experiences they provide to their customers
• What you do on the inside is as important as what you portray outside in creating a real brand

Just two weeks ago, I was in Hangzhou, China as a guest of my client, Alibaba.com to attend their 10th anniversary celebration and the APEC SME (Small Medium Enterprise) Summit. Great speakers there too, including Bill Clinton and Nobel prize winner Mohammed Yunnis.

Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, also gave a great speech at APEC.

And, here's something telling: The advice he gave was almost a carbon copy of the advice I heard over and over again at Inc. 5000.

• Zappos does not define itself as a great online shoe store. It's their goal to provide the greatest customer service in the world.

• JetBlue does not define itself as the great airline. It's their goal to provide the greatest customer service in the world.

• Starbucks does not define itself as a coffee company. It's their goal to provide the greatest customer experience in the world.

And all of these leaders had the same thing to say about how to get there. Exceeding customer expectations was not the most important thing in the world for their companies. What was?

Exceeding employee expectations.

It all starts with providing the greatest employee experience in the world. It was striking that again and again, the thing that made all of these companies so great was their people and their people were great because they loved their jobs, understood the vision of the company and their role in it.

Zappos employees are offered $2,000 to quit anytime during their training period to weed out anyone who doesn't truly believe in the vision. One JetBlue employee told David that she was famous because she worked there—people would call out to her in church and at the supermarket. Woo hoo, JetBlue. Stuff like that.

As a branding professional, these are two insights that are critical to understand. The world's greatest companies don't position themselves around product attributes or holes in the competitive landscape. They define themselves by the experience they deliver.

That experience is not window dressing. It starts at those companies' very core—their people.
Traction has defined our mission as being a respected creative agency where the experience getting there is as great as the work itself. Since, we started our company in 2001, we've had three people quit ever.

The Inc 5000 made me feel like we're on the right track.

Back in the "old days," we met in person or maybe at an industry conference or even at a cocktail party. You never knew when the next connection would come along. For those of us who weren't in the business of collecting leads, you didn't add that many new people to the Rolodex each month. Chances are you added people who themselves didn't add too many people. This fact let us all be a little lazy. We could take a few days or even weeks to recontact our new connections and they remembered us. They remembered the conversation and why they were interested in talking with us in the first place. This only worked because they didn't have many other new connections calling them.

That was a long time ago though. Today, you meet hundreds of people every month especially if you use any of the popular social networking tools. The people you meet are also meeting hundreds of new people. Back when we didn't meet that many new people, we could take our time in following up and know that people would remember us. That's not the case anymore. Since we meet so many more people and don't have the face to face connection we once had, our new "friends" are a lot more forgettable. They blend into each other pretty quickly as we add more and more connections. Why did you want to follow that person in the first place? What did you ask them to send you?

After a couple days, you forget because you're onto the next thing. It's the reality of our hyper-connected online world where we're doing five things at once and our brain spends a lot of time trying to figure out what's worth remembering and what can be discarded. When you don't follow up after a few days, chances are your new contact's brain has put you in the trash bin.

What's true for individuals is even more of an issue for brands online. When people research online, think about how many of your competitors they visit before getting to your site. During these visits, they are looking for the same information and making the same comparisons. They also might ask you for a specific piece of information or a question about a product feature. And, if they asked you, they probably asked your competitors. To further complicate this, while researching your, say, digital camera, they're researching refrigerators and doing a hundred non-research tasks as well. To draw the analogy, they're meeting a bunch of "people" online all at the same time and have a different interest in each one. Because of this, your potential customer might have a hard time even remembering what they asked you or why at that moment they wanted to learn more about you. When you wait a few days, this memory fades even further. It gets to the point that when you do finally respond, your message might find its way into their spam folder as unsolicited junk.

If you interact with others online (and since you're here, you do), make yourself a follow up rule. For those people you meet or inquiries received online for your brand, get back with people immediately. If it takes more than two days, you probably can forget about it. It doesn't need to be an elaborate response or one with every detail about the customer's question, just a note that you're working on getting an answer and that acknowledges what they asked (i.e., not an automatic response). That buys you a little extra time to come back with a meaningful response and ensures that you aren't forgotten.

It may be common sense, but how many times did you wait for that response that never came? Ironically, you might not even have an answer to that one because you've forgotten that you even asked.

Jonathan Richman is the author of Dose of Digital, a blog about e-marketing in healthcare. He works at Bridge Worldwide as Director of Business Development. You can follow him on Twitter (@jonmrich) and he promises to respond if you send him a tweet.

1. Use Twitter to Take the Pulse. Twitter theoretically enables you to find out what's hot and what's not and capture the real-time vox populi. The only limiting factor is the so-so quality of Twitter's own search tool and the variable quality of search tools created by 3rd parties to achieve this goal. It is widely rumored that Google will establish a beachhead in micro-search by creating a better tool to search and mine tweets. 

Assuming the search issue gets solved, the next burning question becomes are tweeters sufficiently representative of any given population to rely on them as a representative or as a directional sample of public or professional opinion? Here you have to balance sheer numbers against a qualitative judgment. Zillions are tweeting. But are they following some party or partisan line (think right wingers who bombard talk radio shows) or are they truly representative of the spectrum of opinion? Does the size and weight of the tweets offset any political or partisan skews?  Do we have enough information to base a judgment call on? 

This is a matter of individual taste or editorial policy. So far many mainstream media types are using Twitter as an opinion direction finder and are counting pro and con tweets as if they were straw polls. They are reporting on the intensity of opinions expressed and taking Twitter seriously.

For those participating in events or conferences or watching events on TV, Twitter is real-time reaction meter. By using the hash tag convention, you can group comments and make them mrte findable. Probably 99 percent of the 140 character participants were madly posting tweets during individual presentations and offering individual assessments of the crowd, the food, the swag, the venue and looks, words and attitudes of their fellow participants. It was a multi-taskers ball.  

2. Join the Conversation. Tweeting is expressing an opinion -- everything from your mood to a point of view on a topic. Naturally by connecting your tweets to a broader conversation you gain traction and credibility. Similarly by attracting followers you spread your opinion and encourage others to retweet your words to even larger audiences. Brands have an opportunity to craft a Twitter page to reflect the marketplace posture they aspire to. The burden is on the author to say something interesting, different and relevant and to attract sufficient attention for that opinion to matter.

3. Outmaneuver Dictators. Because of its immediacy and broad use Tweeters can finesse government controls on websites, e-mail, SMS and instant messages. In the case of Iranian election protestors this might be short-lived since Tweets do leave a trail that the descendants of the SAVAK can use to hunt you down and arrest you. It has also temporarily gotten around controls of oppressive state regimes in several countries, though its long-term viability as a revolutionary communications tool, even with the endorsement of the US State Department, is uncertain.  

4. Augment Customer Service. Several brands, notably Dell, Starbucks, Zappos, JetBlue and Whole Foods have added Twitter as a customer service channel with results that customers have bragged about. We don't know if the channel per se or the small team working on it make Twitter a more nimble tool than an 800 number, e-mail, live on-site chat or web contact forms. Customer value seems to be derived by the perception that brands are listening closely, addressing issues one-to-one, moving quickly in close to real time and then telling others what they did.  

Success turns on communicating the availability of this channel to your customer base, attracting significant numbers of followers and building buzz around your brand's responsiveness. There is also the possibility that by monitoring tweets about your brand that you can discern customer needs, create opportunities to improve customer satisfaction and gather marketplace and product intelligence. 

5. Actively Promote Your Brand. Brands are using Twitter to announce new products and services, socialize news and communicate sales. By telegraphing branded information in short messages, marketers hope to borrow some of Twitter's high tech, fashion-forward equity and to impress online customers with their sensitivity and savvy. 

Success depends on content, relevance, tone, manner and frequency. Brands have the burden to create followers or to inject branded messages into the natural context of ongoing conversations. Tweeters are fairly sensitive about over commercializing the channel and can quickly respond to perceived violations with negative tweets. You must also be forthright and overt about who you are and what you are selling -- all in 140 characters or less.

Twitter is a mass market online phenomenon. Growth trajectory of new users and defectors are both strong. Customers in every psycho-demographic cell are trying it out. It makes sense to experiment with micro-blogging by crafting a credible brand presence, building a following, following customers and/or competitors and participating regularly in the cycles of tweeting, listening and responding. 

]]> http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2009/06/18/5-ways-for-brands-to-use-twitter/feed/ 0 http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2009/02/03/jet-blue-marriott-southwest-engaging-customers-with-twitter/ http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2009/02/03/jet-blue-marriott-southwest-engaging-customers-with-twitter/#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 Mario Sgambelluri http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2009/02/03/jet-blue-marriott-southwest-engaging-customers-with-twitter/ Still not sold on this whole Twitter thing? Well, it's probably not a good fit for all brands and all strategies, but a report at USA Today shows Twitter is working for brands in the travel and hospitality spaces. The article cites examples from Jet Blue, Marriott, SouthWest Airlines and luxury/boutique group Tablet Hotels. 

Starjacking works like this: a consumer gets bad service from a company, complains, and said company does nothing to make restitution. In retaliation, the consumer and hundreds or even thousands of other people visit the various rating sites online and negatively rate the company’s offerings, until the collective starsault depresses the company's ratings.

Zorro!

So, for example, say you run an airline that currently enjoys a 5 star rating (aside: yes I know, it is to laugh!) on various feedback sites. Then your team makes a passenger sit on a seat soggy with a child’s pee, and offers no compensation for the moist inconvenience. You wake up tomorrow and discover that your rating has dropped to 1.5 stars, and hundreds of text complaints have been added to your ratings soup. Now you’re pissed instead of the passenger. Arr arr.

Zorro!

The vigilante nature of the digital public never ceases to amaze me. And doubtless there are companies that deserve their overcast ratings from such starjackings. Doubtless too, some companies will suffer from star theft for no good reason.

I am reminded of the sage words of PR pro/maven/diva Bronwyn "Own The Room" Saglimbeni who once said to me, “The difference between PR today and PR 20 years ago is that you cannot ignore anyone. Some blogger you’ve never heard of calls with a request, and if you don’t answer it quickly, you’re in for a somethingstorm.”

With starjacking we are now in an age when anyone with a beef needs to be treated with courtesy. Fancy that in a so-called service economy. A lesson that mobile companies, to take a particularly glaring example, would be wise to remember.