The New Rules Of Customer Engagement

One of the most common questions I'm asked is "should my company do a blog?" And if it's not a blog, it's a podcast, or a wiki, or some other new social software tool, like a swiki. If you're a marketer, it's important to leverage new technologies that can help you engage your customers, but if you don't know your customers as well as you should, you'll spend a lot of time and money getting all dressed up with nowhere to go. The new rules of customer engagement may be driven by new technologies, but what matters most is the dialog they enable.

Whether or not you already have a corporate blog--in fact, even if you're already syndicating weekly podcasts from the CEO--there's one question I would ask to gauge how well you understand the new marketplace: Where do your customers or prospects meet online to talk shop, and what are they talking about? Okay, technically that's two questions. But chances are your market is already connected out there somewhere, talking about things that matter to your bottom line. Just as any good marketer should know what magazines their customers read, and what events they attend, they should also know where their customers are networked online.

If you don't have a clue where to start, the first places to look are the Web sites of magazines that serve your industry, followed by trade associations. They'll often have discussion boards of their own, or links to them if they don't. If you want to tap into more of the organic dialog you can always check what sites people are bookmarking by doing a keyword search at del.icio.us, or by searching blogs at Technorati. Once you find one good blog, follow the threads through their blogroll and comments to other sites and discussions.

If you already know where you customers are connected, the next question is: How often do you visit those places and contribute to the dialog? The world of Web2.0 is all about sharing ideas and information. For businesses, active participation in the market dialog translates into brand awareness, better search engine rankings, more traffic to your Web site, and even customer satisfaction.

One of my big hobbies is mountain biking. Recently I shelled out a lot of money for a new frame. Three months after I bought it, part of the frame broke, and when I took it to my bike shop they said the part wasn't covered under warranty. I called the manufacturer and got the same story, and ended up having to pay to get it fixed myself. So I expressed my anger and frustration on an online mountain biking forum where I'm a member. Within an hour after I posted my story, I got a response from the VP of Marketing at the manufacturer. He apologized for the runaround, and then called my bike shop to cover the cost of my repair. For $200--the cost of the repair--the company demonstrated to a community of 60,000 mountain bikers how they stand behind their products.

The interesting thing to me about that experience was that when I called the company directly, I didn't get a great response. But when I posted my experience online, they responded immediately. This is key to understanding why the social media snowball is accelerating. When customers are publicly  networked, it compells accountability that doesn't exist when the lines of communication are limited to a private channel.

What impressed me the most was how fast the manufacturer responded. Even though they don't host their own blog, or do podcasts or other forms of social media, they know exactly where their customers are talking, and they are actively participating in the conversation. If there's anything that exemplifies the new rules of engagement it's the notion that as a marketer, you're no longer up on a pedestal with a megaphone trying to shout louder than your competitors to "cut through the clutter". You need to be down in the crowd as an active participant in your market community.

Note: Daniela Barbosa has a good clip on her blog about Web 2.0, including a video clip that's getting a lot of buzz in social media circles. Check it out.  

Comments

[Share Tactics]

Chris,

Although I'm glad they paid to fix your bike, it sounds like what the VP of Marketing was really apologizing for was their standard policy. It's too bad it took a public drubbing and subsequent special intervention to get the decent service initially denied over the phone. But maybe that's what it takes these days.

As "the social media snowball" gets bigger, with more people jumping online with gripes, I hope that growth is matched with an expansion in the role of the customer service rep; maybe they can be trained and paid more to monitor and respond in relevant forums when their phones aren't ringing because, unfortunately, I don't think expecting the VP of Marketing to come to our rescue scales very well...

[Chris Kenton]

Hi Pete--

I totally agree that it shouldn't take a public forum for a company to stand behind their products, but unfortunately I think it's all too common--which is one of the reasons consumer forums have become so popular. I remember when the same concept was carried out in Consumer Advocacy newspaper columns or television shows, but only for those customers whose issues were selected. (Remember "Fight Back with David Horowitz"?)

Also, I think you're absolutely right: we'll start seeing more customer service happening "in the field" as opposed to the strategy of waiting for customers to call. Not everywhere and not for all products, but if it's happening in sports I'm sure it's happening elsewhere. Some companies sponsor discussion boards within larger forums precisely to gather customers together in dialog, where many customer service issues are likely to arise. Every time I've seen an issue raised and resolved proactively on a public forum, there's always a lot of goodwill expressed--and I think that's a much more powerful message than a banner ad impression.

By the way, I don't mean to suggest that customer complaints are the primary driver of social media, but it is one area that highlights the implications of a well networked marketplace. Word of mouth travels fast--for better and worse.

Thanks Pete,

/chris

[John Dawson]

Hi Pete,

I'm about to start a new B2B company and for us I think Blog's are an obvious and vital marketing tool - they certainly help to demonstrate commitment on behalf of the blogger to useful industry debate and hopefully show some thought leadership.

In the B2C world, I think it's interesting to see how product failures are a big topic of interest. I'd be interested to understand if the feedback of your bike reached the R&D team or not - I certainly hope so. However there is a limit to how many times an organisation can rely on this method of feedback before they loose credibility.

I recently noticed that a mobile phone manufacturer here in Europe released a sub-standard high end handset (way too many bugs to be useable) and then monitored chatrooms to get their bug list for software updates. The community has picked up on this and my guess is that this has been incredibility harmful in the mid term for the brand and it’s reputation to loose control of product quality. In my opinion, although it’s now much easier for the marketing department to debate with consumers online, the rest of the organisation needs to be tuned into this. If the wider organisation doesn’t understand this, Marketing will fall on it’s face – remember that it was the Marketing VP and not head of Development or Sales.

John

[Chris Kenton]

John--

It's an interesting issue, and one that I think changes from industry to industry--partly because of product differences, but also partly due to cultural differences and consumer expectations. The software market is an interesting example.

Microsoft spends years in development and infinite testing before they release a product, but it hasn't helped them avert a lot of patches and customer satisfaction problems. A lot of companies now, like Google, pursue a strategy of rapid releases and public betas. The notion of having a community of users--not just developers--test your products has taken hold especially in the hosted software industry. Obviously that wouldn't meet customer expectations for cell phones--but it does work in other hard products. In the case of my bike, not only did the information make it back to R&D (I wasn't the only one with the problem), they machined a new part that went out to bike owners, and it was incorporated into the next generation frame.

As I cyclist when I look at the dramatic transformation of mountain bikes over the past 15-20 years, I appreciate that it's an evolving art, and I'm excited to play a role as an ordinary rider connected to a networked community. Other riders who just want a functional bike would probably have more of the kind of expectation I have for my cell phone--I just want it to work and not break. The cool thing about social media is that companies can use it to connect with those members of their market community who are passionate about their products, and very willing to provide insight and feedback to help improve the products they use.

/chris

[Dr. Leigh Kibby]

I think these ideas are worthy but we need to link them to organisational design and culture...I developed Corporate Snakes and Ladders to "de-silo" and link design to outcome...Corporate Snakes and Ladders to deal with culture...add this to emotions management (ours and the customers through tools such as neuro-Empathic Programming) then we will have a mix that delivers!

[Dr. Leigh Kibby]

PS to my last...I recently added DCorporate Chess to integrate sales with Org functions so that people can see the value of HR, IT and sales and Marketing