How Visible Are Your Conversations?
Here's another example on the visibility of the conversation when your brand manages the social customer. (See Table 3.1.) Let's say you're selling mobile phone service and an unhappy AT&T customer, who we'll call Jane, is frustrated because her Apple iPhone contract ended in June 2010 and she thought AT&T would simply stop billing her. She went to the store, purchased a new Droid phone, and began using a new carrier, Verizon Wireless. She then receives a $150 bill from AT&T and calls customer service to complain. They accidentally disconnect her.
Jane then gets angry and does a Twitter search for AT&T. She comes across numerous other posts complaining about AT&T, some from other consumers and some from influencers (a search today yielded a number from Kevin Rose, founder of the popular social news Web site Digg). Jane decides to get into the action herself, posting on Twitter, "I can't believe AT&T disconnected me when I called to end my contract and get my $150 back; I thought it ended a month ago #attfail." That last part, "#attfail," is the hash tag used by thousands of other frustrated AT&T customers. Jane's complaint is the data input from the COMMUNITY (anywhere on the social Web, really-any public-facing social network or social Web site) that comes from the left part of the slide, and it can come from the social Web (the big cloud including LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) or the real world (e.g., a phone call, a postcard, or even an in-person complaint). Hopefully, someone at AT&T will pick it up using their listening tool, or perhaps they'll even take a note about it while speaking with Jane on the phone if she calls back.
Since AT&T is a big multinational, it's a safe bet that they use an enterprise-class listening tool like Radian6 (this is what Pepsi, Dell, and MolsonCoors use). Once this piece of information (Jane's complaint) comes into the AT&T office, there has to be a human decision made. Laura, the customer service rep who sees the social media monitoring system (in this case, the Radian6) Dashboard, needs to record this incident in the CRM, and then decide what to do about this complaint.
There are two choices Laura can make. She can choose a macro response-like a work flow, or a series of repeated actions-or a micro response, like addressing the customer directly, either on the social Web or by phone or e-mail. She then makes the response and records the answer in AT&T's Social CRM solution. If it's a macro response, the SCRM system may even launch a series of other parallel processes, alerting the billing and sales teams. If at the end of this Jane isn't satisfied with the resolution, we go back to the beginning, to the DATA INPUT.
In this case, the value of a satisfied social customer is a bit difficult to map, so let's examine it across a few different outcomes. Remember, when you're mapping value in these interactions, you have to look at the value to each stakeholder in the interaction. In taking a holistic approach to the social customer, we need to look at not only the brand and the customer, but also the ecosystem (the "friends" and "followers" that surround this incident) in the interaction.
Ed. note: This is part of a series of excerpts from The Social Customer, the new guide to social customer acquisition, monetization, and retention by Adam Metz. For the first entry, go here.