We recently had the opportunity to interview Josh Bernoff, coauthor of Groundswell and Empowered, for our SmartBrief on Social Media column. Josh is a Social Pro, so we wanted to share this entire interview with everyone. Enjoy!
Josh Bernoff is Senior Vice President of Idea Development at Forrester Research and co-author of Groundswell and Empowered.
SOME BUSINESSES BLOCK EMPLOYEE ACCESS TO SOCIAL NETWORKS ALTOGETHER, OTHERS ALLOW EMPLOYEES TO USE THE NETWORKS? WHICH APPROACH WORKS BEST, IN YOUR EXPERIENCE?
Blocking is, frankly, a very poor policy. Your employees have smart phones and they have computers at home. Blocking social networking sites won't stop them from posting, but it will make it hard for them to check what's happening on these sites, which may be a part of their jobs in marketing, sales, product development, customer service, human resources, etc. And, you are sending a clear message to you staff that you do not trust them.
But keeping the sites accessible is not sufficient. In addition, companies should have a policy on what is appropriate on these sites (who can speak for the company, a prohibition on sharing inappropriate confidential material such as financial results, and so on). Employees who want to use these sites for work purposes should go through a training course about how best to use them (that's what my company Forrester Research did). And of course, policy should include the fact that Tweeting, Facebooking, and other social activities for non-work purposes should not take time away from work.
YOUR BOOK EMPOWERED ENCOURAGES USING EMPLOYEES AS 'HEROES'. CAN EVERY ORGANIZATION BENEFIT FROM USING EMPLOYEES IN THIS WAY?
Every single organization has people in it who have creative ideas on how to reach out to customers in social channels. And every organization needs a plan for tapping into that creativity. Obviously, if you're the U.S. Army or a pharmaceutical company, you can't just let people build whatever social applications they want - there are security rules. But in general, the organization that taps into this energy is going to be more competitive and more connected to customers than the one that doesn't.
WHAT TYPES OF EMPLOYEES ARE BEST/WORST UTILIZED AS HEROES?
Our surveys show that marketing and non-retail sales staff are most likely to be HEROes. Marketers often have great ideas on ways to reach out in social channels. Customer service people are among the least likely, which is a shame, since they're the ones on the front lines interacting with customers every day. But we see HEROes in every department. In one case, a 21-year veteran underwriter at the multinational insurance company Chubb figured out a great way to better serve the company's life-sciences customers. The question is, when people come up with these ideas, is your company able to support them?
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF EMBRACING EMPLOYEES AS HEROES?
First, in an age in which one of your unhappy customers can reach a million people with a single tweet (this happened to Maytag), you need to move in a very fast and nimble way to reach out. This requires embracing the HEROes in your organization. Second, the people who interact with customers in your organization are the ones most likely to have great ideas on how better to serve those customers - you don't want to waste that. And finally, embracing HEROes gets innovation coming from everywhere in the company. Companies like Best Buy, Dell, and Intuit that have embraced this idea move more quickly and creatively than their competitors.
WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF EMPLOYEE HEROES?
HEROes have a lot of good ideas, but they have a lot of dumb ideas, too. We're not advocating chaos. When a HERO comes up with an idea, management needs to vet that idea and decide to fund it, block it, or work on developing it further. We've got a tool for evaluating HERO concepts. In general, to mitigate the risks, companies need to enforce policies about security and public statements, and they need to carefully screen larger projects to estimate potential risks associated with them. They also need a policy that says if an employee makes a mistake in social channels, he or she needs to go in and correct it.
PEERS VERSUS EXPERTS. WHICH IS MORE INFLUENTIAL? DOES RECENT DATA FAVOR EXPERTS OR PEERS?
We've analyzed this in a report. Basically, experts - which we call social broadcasters - can have a big impact. Public relations departments already reach out to press influencers, and most have expanded to "expert" bloggers as well, and this is great - if you can get David Armano or Rachel Ray to write about your product, go for it.
What we also say, though, is that about 28 million people, less than 20% of the online population, account for 80% of the influence in social channels. These are the Mass Influencers. Obviously, you can't reach out to them individually. But you can create programs that make it easy to share what you've got (and that means more than Twitter and Facebook buttons on everything.) If you can get them going, you'll generate a lot more influence.
WHAT'S THE #1 MISTAKE THAT BUSINESSES MAKE WITH EMPLOYEES RELATED TO SOCIAL MEDIA?
The most common mistake is blocking it (see above). Another common mistake is not training people in appropriate behavior. The recent incidents on Nestle's Facebook page were made far worse by an employee who responded in ways that inflamed the controversy over palm oil with an insensitive response.
HOW MUCH OF A GAME CHANGER IS MOBILE AND GEOLOCATION FOR COMPANIES?
Local check-ins aren't really that big yet for companies - I'd characterize that technology as "watch carefully" right now. Mobile, on the other hand, is huge. Especially since our data show the most influential customers are far more likely to have smart mobile devices. Any company that has a rich Web page should be thinking "What do my customers need on the go?" and building mobile applications to serve that need. Autotrader.co.uk's app was a great example - you could use your iPhone to take a picture of a car on the street and it would identify the car and tell you who was selling that model near you with prices and photos. It became the top iPhone app in the UK in a matter of weeks.
CUSTOMER SERVICE IS A 'DEPARTMENT' IN MANY COMPANIES. HOW DOES THAT NEED TO CHANGE?
We're not advocating the end of customer service departments. Customer service people have the training and knowledge to help, and it's their full-time job. But what companies also need are teams that can respond to social channels - and these teams are typically part service, part marketing, and part PR. For example, I once tweeted that I was disappointed in the support for Firefox in SharePoint's wiki. I got a response from the product manager for SharePoint's wiki saying "we're working on it."
He's not in customer service, but he sure impressed me with his listening skills and his response.