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THE SOCIAL CARE IMPERATIVEFOUR STEPS TO DRIVE BRAND HEALTH AND CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

Gone are the days when customer service was the exclusive purview of Operations and Marketing could focus solely on disseminating upbeat messages. Fast adoption of social media is quickly blurring the lines between Marketing and Customer Service. Customers cannot be herded to voice their questions, issues and complaints only on “service channels.” They want to be served where they choose, even if it litters “neat” marketing channels (e.g., your company-branded Facebook page).

Brands that still try to control the messages and the marketing channel are destined to fail because this approach runs contrary to customer centricity. Today, consumers increasingly determine when, where and how they want to engage with brands. A top 10 U.S. bank experienced this when trying to force all service issues to be handled on Twitter, while keeping its Facebook fan pages clean, tidy and positive (Figure 1).

THE SOCIAL CARE IMPERATIVEFOUR STEPS TO DRIVE BRAND HEALTH AND CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

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FIGURE 1: CUSTOMER COMPLAINS TO BANK X ON FACEBOOK AND IS DIRECTED TO TWITTER

@Customer: A phone conversation will certainly happen once your tweet has been received by the @BankX_Help team. From here, they will take the conversation into a Direct Message, where they will ask you for your phone number and contact you. By starting with a tweet to the team, it helps us to track all servicing request to ensure your case is resolved and closed in a timely way. ^bw

Bank X (Response 1)

Customer (Response 2)

Bank X (Response 3)

Customer (Response 4)

@bankx i do not wish to use twitter & its a sad & pathetic way to offer customer service via twitter...

Customer Complaint to Bank X

Bank X attempts to redirect customer

service issue to Twitter

The customer voices frustration with the service experience -

Bank X does not respond again

Bank X continues to encourage customer to use Twitter, offering a brief description of the

process

Customer clearly states desire not to use Twitter

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With consumers expressing themselves more frequently across a growing number of social channels, and sharing opinions and recommendations with a group of peers and influencers that extend beyond a brand’s realm of control, the picture gets complicated for marketers. Compounding this, McKinsey research shows that a single negative post on social media has, on average, as much impact on customer purchase decisions as five positive posts.1 In other words, Marketing can be toiling hard to build the brand and generate positive sentiment, but a single negative customer experience posted in public can wipe out the effect of five positive customer messages.

A single negative customer experience posted in public can wipe out the effect of five positive customer messages.For customers, there is value in being able to post questions, raise issues and voice concerns through social media channels and receive feedback and responses in near-real time. Research

shows that 46% of customers want to solve a problem when they are engaging with a brand on social media.2 In fact, most people do not bother to check whether a company has actually set up a Twitter handle to provide such support. They simply go to Twitter, post their issues and expect a direct response from the business, regardless of whether the business is structured to accommodate this (Figure 2). For a company not equipped to face this barrage and engage effectively, brand equity and brand health are at risk.

Negative Messages

Positive

Messages

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What is Social Care?

Social care is a system for companies to regularly provide customer service through social media platforms. Companies listen at the brand and category levels for customer questions, issues, needs and concerns, and address them through the social channels where existing and prospective customers express themselves. Full issue resolution might involve taking the conversation privately online (e.g., direct messages on Twitter), or diverting it to other channels such as phone, email or chat. In some industries, companies might develop and rely on user communities to answer peer questions.

In its more advanced form, companies listen for customer needs beyond their own brands, and may reach out beyond Facebook and Twitter into online boards and blogs to offer help, build relationships and engage new customers. This enables Customer Service and Marketing to partner for success.

If your company has a 1-800 number for customer service, social care applies to you. Higher customer satisfaction is immediately tied to the customer’s ability to influence peers across their social graph, with implications for your branding, sales and marketing efforts. There is also value to be gained by making it easier for customers to reach you, from “call diversion” and from operational efficiencies.

1 M. Corstjens, A Umblijs. The Power of Evil. Forthcoming, September 2012. Journal of Advertising Research.2 eMarketer. Social Media Customer Service Faces a High Bar. June 2012.

Some marketers are embracing this trend and engaging in basic social care: by Q4 of 2011 almost half of U.S. companies were already listening and responding to customers via social media, primarily through Facebook and Twitter. But what most companies have not embraced are the more advanced layers of social care, that, while perhaps more challenging to implement, ultimately add the most value. Companies face the challenge of not only appropriately responding to service complaints, but of effectively organizing their business to efficiently perform, manage and measure social care. Companies currently dabbling in social care often discover that they don't have enough qualified people that can provide real solutions to customer problems, that customer service representatives are not properly trained to provide service in a public arena, and that outsourcing the function decreases the likelihood of cross-functional treatment of any underlying root causes. With the viral nature of negative customer sentiment online, poorly designed and executed social care initiatives open the door for disappointed customers and pose long-term threats to

brand health. To win in this new world, Marketing leaders need to recognize that effective social care is imperative to driving positive brand health, customer satisfaction and customer acquisition.

THE SOCIAL CARE PAYOFF

Social care may very well be the ‘reality TV’ of customer service; it brings the conversation between brands and customers into a public arena. This level of visibility can work in a brand’s favor when passionate, engaged customer advocacy groups emerge. However, for brands facing negative customer sentiment across social channels, this visibility compounds the issue and can pose a serious challenge for marketers. Before you know it, your brand might get ‘voted off the island’ through a customer’s next purchase decision. For example, a leading pharmaceutical company got caught in a PR firestorm after mishandling customer comments on its Facebook page about an ad image and was forced to issue a public apology. A telecom company’s position in the marketplace was jeopardized by poorly addressing the social media channel during a crisis that brought its service down in many countries. A leading financial institution experienced spiraling negativity in response to a misguided poll question on Facebook.

Like all reality TV, there are attractive payoffs for those who do well. Positive brand health and brand equity can be enhanced and nurtured, and done so at a relatively low cost compared to more traditional ‘offline’ marketing and customer care channels. Properly designed and implemented social care models allow marketers to engage with customers at the category level, not just the brand level, and can lead to new customer acquisition. Comcast exemplifies how an effective social care model can help turnaround a tarnished brand.3 By effectively dealing with significant negative buzz about its field service, Comcast fueled a change of heart in their detractors, as depicted by the message ComcastMustDie.com facilitators posted on their site: “ComcastMustDie.com has now evolved. This is partly because we have declared victory against Comcast, a vast, greedy, blundering, tone-deaf corporate colossus which, in less than two short years, has finally seen the light.” As another example, a prominent U.S. bank is seeing an uptick in satisfied customers and business as they

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Customer 1“How have I been waiting in HSBC for an hour and a half!”

Customer 2“Omfg seriously wtf? #HSBC is becoming #CapitalOne”

Customer 3“#HSBC smh...what the hell. Cant believe it”

TWITTER.COM

FIGURE 2: CUSTOMERS WANT SERVICE ON THE SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNEL THEY CHOOSE

3 Frank Eliason. At Your Service: How to Attract New Customers, Increase Sales, and Grow Your Business Using Simple Customer Service Techniques. Wiley: 1st Edition. 24 April 2012.

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effectively engage brand detractors.4 Studies suggest that brand detractors, when engaged, spend more.

For unregulated industries, such as technology, characterized by online customer enthusiasm, effective social care can harness crowdsourcing to handle customer questions and issues, thereby lowering overall service costs, engaging customers and propagating positive discussion. Gartner research shows that user communities can reduce support costs by as much as 50%.5 TomTom community members handled 20,000 cases in the community’s first month, effectively saving $150k. Best Buy saves $5M annually as their 600,000 users engage in peer-to-peer support.

THE MARKETING IMPERATIVE

The CMO of a global financial services institution stated that "Unless we get social care right, it risks sinking anything we're trying to do in Marketing."

“Unless we get social care right, it risks sinking anything we’re trying to do in Marketing.” - CMO of global financial services institution

Considering the cost of negative public sentiment across social channels, the fact that customer expectations have fundamentally changed and the potential to cut costs, drive brand health and acquire new customers, marketers simply cannot afford to ignore social care (Figure 3). There are four steps to

FIGURE 3: SOCIAL CARE'S TWOFOLD IMPACT ON THE BUSINESS

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4 Javelin Strategy & Research. Banking and Social Media: Easy to Say, Hard to Do. 10 Jan. 2012.5 The Economist. June 2012 Edition, citing Gartner research.

1 InboxQ. Twitter Q&A Census. 26 May 2011.

User not on company website

User on company website

10%

30%

60%

Level of issue

complexity

Users that look up service number on company website before calling are ripe for online engagement to resolve issue: •Lowercoststoservice each issue•Providebettercustomerconvenience and thereby, maintain higher customer satisfaction

Low

High

Med.

Call Volume

When issues are resolved, satisfied customers engage in positive commentary, which...

•isvisibletocustomer’s “social graph” on Facebook and Twitter•engagescustomer’s contacts in brand/ product discussion, revealing new target customers•providesatargetaudienceatzero effective CPM

Positive service experiences establish consumer trust and loyalty •e.g.,64%ofonline customers that receive an answer from a business on Twitter would be more likely to make a purchase1

Increase Market Share & Customer Satisfaction

Marketing Efficiency & Customer Acquisition

Customer RetentionIllustrative

enable you to build an effective social care model that will appropriately combat public brand negativity and transform your customer service into a vehicle that drives business success:

1. Diagnose the current state of customer service and model t he business case for social care

The diagnosis establishes the benchmark on which social care improvements will be measured. The diagnosis phase should account for…

• The current volume of service requests coming in through social media channels. It should distinguish between those directed at the company/brand/product level, and those that may be at the category level (e.g., a person asking a question about a financial product without naming a brand).

• The breakdown of requests by social media channel – primarily Twitter and Facebook, but also boards, forums and blogs.

• A breakdown of requests from social media by issue compared to the issue breakdown (“issue trees”) of the contact centers – calls, email and chat.

This information will allow you to make an educated set of assumptions about expected growth trends and forecast the average time and cost of handling social care requests. Being able to predict volumes going forward will be immensely valuable as you set up your operations.

Finally, having these numbers will allow you to track if customer issues are starting to divert to social care. And if they are, you can effectively determine your cost savings and in essence, the ROI of social care. But keep in mind, in terms of ROI this approach is conservative since it does not assign any value to the marketing metrics your brand may be tracking and measuring regularly (e.g., a brand’s net promoter score, increased customer advocacy, improved sentiment, etc.).

2. Create a comprehensive social care playbook

The social care playbook will guide all service transactions to successfully build the brand, stimulate advocacy and acquire

customers. Unlike traditional service script books that can dehumanize and damage a brand, the social care playbook defines guidelines that allow trained service representatives to appropriately respond to a situation. Effective social care playbooks are informed by the contact centers’ script books, and contain the following elements:

• Systematically identified issues and sub-issues

• Response approaches for each identified issue, indicating if you should publicly respond, escalate it or take the conversation offline

• Issue prioritization schemes based on business goals

• Identification and prioritization of indirect service opportunities

• Framework for seeding, nurturing and monitoring the peer-to-peer service community

3. Design and build the new social care organizational model

Once the social care playbook is created, the managing department needs the ability to identify issue patterns and drive root cause analysis throughout the company to troubleshoot. An effective social care organization nurtures a customer-centric culture and carries enough clout within the company to act as a catalyst for product and process change. To build an effective social care management process, you need to answer the following design questions:

• Should social care be handled through a fully dedicated organic team, or through a collection of individuals from various units in a ‘virtual’ team?

• Should responsibilities be given to an existing Customer Support team or Marketing team (organic or virtual), or should a new team be recruited and staffed?

• Will the organization report through Operations (where contact centers typically report through), Marketing or a business line (such as eCommmerce/Direct)?

• Should there be a centralized global team or should each region/country handle its own?

Organizational design is followed by the creation of a management process. This defines the relationship between

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social care, other service channels, Marketing and the business lines. It should be comprised of both cross-functional root cause analysis and issue resolution teams. It sets up a steering committee and establishes a periodic review process.

4. Track and measure performance

Identifying a set of performance metrics and applying them to the organization and its operations is critical to ensuring your social care program continuously improves. These metrics should follow a balanced scorecard approach that includes customer-centric measures (e.g., a net promoter score). Productivity metrics centered on key team members should also be established. Finally, your performance tracking should include system-wide efficiency measures (e.g., overall time to issue resolution) and the most important

effectiveness metrics that relate to solving the underlying problems.

• • •

In today's world, there is a clear imperative for Fortune 1000 marketers to implement effective social care. With the potential for negative discussion to do irreparable damage when not caught, the proven cost savings of diverting service issues from inbound call centers, and the potential to conveniently solve customer problems and inadvertently gain new customers, social care is invaluable in today’s market. Innovative global companies are increasingly recognizing that social care is essential to their strategy. Don’t be left behind.

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About NM Incite

Global Fortune 1000 marketers rely on NM Incite solutions to discover emerging, industry-specific consumer insights and build relevant, differentiated and emotionally engaging brands. NM Incite customers are innovative, global marketing executives in brand management, consumer insights and market research at leading Consumer Packaged Goods, Financial Services, Healthcare and Technology companies. They understand that winning in today’s social world hinges on developing deeper and more provocative consumer and market insights to create superior marketing strategies, boost brand strength, develop new products, innovate in customer care and maximize the impact of marketing campaigns.

NM Incite is a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey & Company, bringing to bear deep expertise in measurement science and management consulting. As one of the largest global leaders in applying social media to solve marketing problems, NM Incite operates in over 30 markets, including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, India, China, Japan and Australia.

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