Social media customer service? It’s not rocket science

I’m slightly confused as to why people think their clients stick with them, or more importantly stay with them. Do they really think that they can serve up whatever user experience suits them and the customer will stick with it? I’m not just talking about functionality and usability, I’m also talking about customer service.

I have recently had a rather poor experience on a side-project that I run. I’m being moved from one provider to another against my will (the result of a buy out) and losing vast amounts of usability and some essential functionality as a result. Ok, I guess I can work with that and research ways around the problem eg other providers, different kinds of webhosting for downloading digital files.  I received assurances from the new provider that certain services would be extended to me for 3 months however these were then removed after 1 month. And when I called to ask if this could be dealt with in any way, reminding them of the previous conversation, I was basically told “computer says no” or not even that really. Finally, they emailed me to ask if I needed any questions answered about migration and I replied with 2 questions – that was 5 days ago and no reply as yet…So I am now in the process of having to migrate my project to another platform completely.

I’m lucky. I know the basics of programming and that gives me substantial benefits in terms of navigating my way around the multitude of website hosting providers, free software publishing platforms like WordPress and free creative tools that exist all over the web. So for me it’s more of an extreme annoyance than a complete full-stop to the project. But as I said, I’m lucky, most of the people using my old provider don’t have that kind of experience so they are left with reduced functionality and a new and rather slapdash provider.

While I appreciate that it’s not really an incoming company’s fault if they don’t offer the functions I need to make my project work, surely every company is now aware that even if they lose me as a customer, if they give great support/customer service then I am more likely to recommend them to someone else further down the line – net promoter score in a very literal sense! As it is I am highly unlikely to recommend the incoming provider to anyone.

There are so many simple, easy touches that make the customer experience better that there is no excuse any more for delivering a poor experience in usability and customer service. Web Hosting Rating asked me to look at their site and maybe write a review and frankly I am happy to, because they clearly demonstrate  just one easy way to make people feel more informed and better helped. It’s not rocket science, it’s a blog. And it’s not even a daily updated blog, it’s an information blog that provides guidance on making the most of the services they provide. More that this, it thinks widely. It references software you might want to host on the platform, how to install and apply it and suggests way to maximise your engagement. And of course all of this makes using their service more attractive and simpler.

There’s a lot of buzz about customer service via social media. It doesn’t have to cost the earth but I firmly believe it will make the difference between businesses succeeding and failing. I would be interested to learn how many of the people who were moved to my new provider are happy with the service they are receiving, how many will leave and how many will stay because they have to.

NFC NVG (not very good)

 I am very proud of my new NFC enabled phone, in fact I specifically chose it over a slightly earlier model because I think NFC is going get bigger and more important in the next  couple of years and I like to be in with the in-crowd. So imagine my delight when I discovered that the bus stop at the top of Tottenham Court Road, which I use to catch buses back to Marylebone, has an NFC touchpoint on it.

The touchpoint promises – Travel information and extra information from brands.  And curious I tried it out. All it offers is a link to the TFL mobile site.

Ok, that is travel information, but that’s not extra information from brands. I was disappointed.

I don’t know, but I suspect that Clear Channel are charging brands to put content onto the NFC touch points which is why there was absolutely nothing from brands there.  I would suggest that brands are offered free access and the opportunity to provide any content they want – even a tv ad I’ve already seen would be better than promising everything and delivering nothing. In that way a growing audience will be built. Of course you can argue that these things take time, but why waste time? It doesn’t make sense to offer more than you are going to deliver because my expectation from now on will be that the content behind ad funded NFC will be thin at best and non-existant at worst.

Beautiful installation at Osaka station

This is a beautiful and useful installation. All physical experiences have the potential to combine the two, but too often clients want one or the other. It’s our job as agencies to ensure that our physical work is both delightful and purposeful and in this way we will bring real value to our clients and to the audience.

A collection of predictions for 2012

I have been mulling over what I might usefully write at the turning of the year. I feel the need to mark the completely arbitrary distinction between 31st December and 1st January in some way. And the easiest thing would be to prepare some predictions for you to display my foresight and unbelievable genius. And my talent for sarcasm.

The fascination with making predictions about what the coming year will deliver online/in social/on mobile is a bit like the prediction frenzy that goes on in women’s magazines. Not so, you say. We base our predictions on understanding of the market, new developments we know about and our own razor sharp insight, you say. Hmmm. Who remembers the predictions around the Year of the Mobile? 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005…

And what about the various woolly predictions from last year? Here is one I read about Google+, and I kid you not,

“Someone will do something interesting with Google+”

Well strictly speaking there’s no way you could fail on that one. The writer didn’t say they were related to Mystic Meg…

Anyway – rather than attempt predictions of my own I thought I’d point you at some interesting ones on a variety of topics. If nothing else maybe you’ll get a laugh. Happy New Year!

What 2012 holds for social media on thenextweb
5 predictions for the Chinese mobile market in 2012 on Forbes
Online video predictions for  2012 from ReelSEO plus some good tips and info on searching and marketing on YouTube
*&%@#! and Other Ads Trends for 2012 from The Wall Street Journal
9 Facebook predictions for 2012 that don’t suck from NorthSocial

And finally, almost as accurate and certainly more amusing

What does the year of the Dragon hold for you? from gotohoroscope
Mystic Meg’s money predictions for 2012 from The Sun
Gung hay  fat choy! (phonetic chinese)

Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ rollin’

Imagination rolls on to new heights. We came first in the top 100 design agencies this year and there was special mention of our digital offer, so congrats to everyone and may I say I am proud – typically it happened while I have been on maternity leave… Boasting over.

I’ve been interested to follow the Labour behind the Label campaign running this week. It’s using a combination of guerilla marketing and social media to get the message out that sand blasting jeans causes fatal lung illness.

The week started predictably and appropriately with putting an image on facebook to drum up awareness of the issue and moved on to directly messaging big brands questions about sandblasting via Facebook. Yesterday the same tactic was employed on Twitter and today the action is to pop leaflets in the pockets of jeans in shops – brilliant. Crowd source your activists, motivate them and give them all the tools they need to be effective in their own social graph.

Charities are well placed to use social media as they can garner a “love marks” kind of support for their brand and an activist following by the very nature of their identity, but I think that this is a particularly good example of how a social media campaign for any brand or organisation should be run, where online feeds offline and vice versa.

And it’s already been sucessful. Diesel have committed to stopping the use of sand blasting for their products immediately – originally they were going to wait until 2012.

Go Labour Behind the Label!

BIMA boast

Ok so I shouldn’t boast….oh go on then. Imagination won a couple of BIMAs at the awards two weeks ago but I have only just got round to writing about it.

I was involved in both projects but one more than the other, the Pearl Plant interactive for Shell. I am proud of this project because it takes a cutting edge technology and actually makes it accessible and useful. It was a bit of a battle for me to get the AR model manipulated by usable means, a rotating plinth, but it was a crucial insight about the audience for the interactive which was driving it. They were business men with little time, little understanding of new tech but desire to experience. Simply using a symbol that can be manipulated in front of a webcam works for “cool” campaigns that appeal to a young demographic but it would have been disastrous for this experience.

AR is a beautiful technology and I think it has many applications but you have to be careful not just to create a beautiful and inspiring experience, but one that really speaks to the audience. I think the combination of planning and beautiful creative we achieved in the Pearl AR is the reason it won.

when it freezes over

Ogilvy are “freezing” the Senate building tonight using projection art from Seeper the art collective. There will be 4 lasers that you can interact with and images of people skiing, climbing etc. down the building. The aim is to draw attention to the latest model S-Max, the people carrier for sporty, male types.

http://www.ogilvy.co.uk/ogilvy-and-mather-advertising/new-ford-ford-s-max-launches-with-public-interactive-projections-to-freeze-over-uk-cities/

My questions are:-

How many of the target audience work around Senate House? Or is the aim to create an asset that goes on YouTube and can help win awards regardless of the audiencee?

How many of the Visteon pensions action group will be there? (Potentially quite a few when you look on the Facebook group of the 150 people who have said they will be attending)

Would the lasers enable me to hack the climbers/skiers off the tower thus allowing me to fulfill my James Bond villain ambitions?

Sorry if I sound jaded, but to create an event that has any meaning it has to be in the right place with the right message, not just generate some beautiful assets for YouTube that reflect the tv ad campaign. And I’m sure they will be beautiful and fun.

But relevant?

Smell-o-vision is real!

A great example of mixing digital and physical to create a great  brand experience, and with a banner! I love this kind of creativity.

Something new and interesting for Friday

I received a rather interesting comment post, transcript below. They seem genuine and actually if they aren’t I don’t care – I’d rather be a wide-eyed sucker than a cynical and hard bitten old bag (I may be the latter already -discuss)

Here is the post!

“We are Robin of Shoreditch, an anonymous group of creative outlaws looking to take from the rich and give to the poor. In this particular instance, the people of Haiti.

How? Well, we’re not rescue workers. And we’d be no good on a celebrity single. But what we can do is provide creative ideas that can add value to businesses and brands. So we’re providing every one of Brand Z’s Top 100 brands with just such a creative idea. In return, all we’re asking for is 1/10,000,000 (that’s one ten-millionth) of the value of those brands as a fee. Not for us. 100% of that fee will be going to the continued relief efforts in Haiti.

So why should you care? Well, we’d like to ask a little favour. You see, the more people who know about this project, the more pressure will build on the brands to pay their ‘invoices’ and the more money will be sent to Haiti. So we’d really appreciate it if you could put the word out on your blog and send people along tohttp://www.robinofshoreditch.com. Hopefully that way news of the project will spread so that the brands in question see that it’s in their best interests to pay up.”

They asked me to post a link and I have. I watch with interest.

IAB social media blog

So I am a bit late in announcing but the IAB Social Media Council (of which I am a member) has launched a blog which you can find at http://iabuksocial.co.uk. I am part of the team posting and as usual will try not to double post on here.

Current favourite posts of mine include Fleur Hick’s talking about online influencers and this very clear post from ain MacMillan, RMM and Robin Grant, We Are Social on the 10 ways that social media has changed the customer service game – send it to your clients!