social media under_one_roof_%20_integratae_social_media_with_the_tce_model

Social Media Under One Roof

Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model

Global Customer Experience Management Organization September 2010

Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model

CONTENTS

Foreword.............................................................................................................. 3

I. Where Social Media meets Customer Life Stages ................................................................ 4

II. Social Media and Research & Development...................................................................... 7

III. Social Media and Branding/Public Relations.................................................................... 9

IV. Social Media and Marketing .................................................................................... 11

V. Social Media and Sales .......................................................................................... 13

VI. Social Media and Operations ................................................................................... 15

VII. Social Meida and Customer Service........................................................................... 17

VIII. Integrating Social Media with Total Customer Experience .................................................. 19

XI. Manage Your Brand and Social Media with One System ....................................................... 23

Footnotes.............................................................................................................27

About the Author and the Contributors ............................................................................ 28

About Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM)......................................... 30

Copyright © 2001-2010 Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM) The copyright of and title to this white paper belong to Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM). No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the rights holders.

Please contact [email protected] for reprints or any further requests.

© 2001-2010 Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM). All rights reserved. 2


Foreword Bob Thompson, CustomerThink Corp.

Social Media: Adding Value to the Total Customer Experience A few years ago, the term “Web 2.0” was coined to reflect a shift to users creating their own content and collaborating with others on the Internet. Clearly this consumer-friendly Social Web is here to stay, with hundreds of millions of people using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and thousand of other free services. Individuals are using social media for personal reasons, but increasingly are also sharing their views about brands. A 2009 Cone Consumer New Media Study found that 78% of new media users interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools, up from 59% in 2008. These “social customers” can build up a brand—or tear it down—at unprecedented speed. More recently, social technology has begun to penetrate the enterprise. In some cases, creative employees are using services designed for individuals as new channels to engage with customers and prospects in marketing, sales or customer service. In others, enterprise-grade applications are being implemented to improve employee productivity, power customer communities, monitor conversations and so on. Now is the time to start separating social media hype from reality. The June 2010 CustomerThink “social business” study found that business managers are enthusiastic about the potential for social media to help their business:

42% consider social media “very important” in their jobs 53% say social media helps their organization succeed. Improving the customer experience is the No. 1 expected benefit

However, we also learned that about 80% of respondents were unsure about the ROI of their social media initiatives. Of the key six issues analyzed, “poorly defined business requirements” stood out as the biggest obstacle to success. In our research, we’ve consistently found that the customer experience is a key differentiator that drives loyalty and retention. Strategically, as Sampson Lee points out, you should plan more holistically to use social media to enhance the total customer experience. Don’t create social media silos to frustrate your customers!


http://www.customerthink.com/user/bob_thompson

http://www.customerthink.com/


I. Where Social Media meets Customer Life Stages

Figure 1: Touch-point Experience across the Customer Lifecycle - Overall

Do You Need to Read this Document? If your primary objective is to learn how to ride the wave of social media to enhance the customer experience within a specific touch-point or departmental function, there are already numerous blogs, articles, and publications which serve this purpose well. There is no need for you to spend time reading this document. If, however, our core messages are aligned with your most pressing concerns, it is worth investing your time in reading this paper. Here’s what we’ll be covering:

How to integrate social media into the Total Customer Experience across the entire customer lifecycle; How to optimize resource allocation among various social media by aligning with business objectives; and How to manage your brand and social media with one integrated and quantifiable management system.

Document Structure: The Flow and Specifics of Each Section This document is composed of nine sections. Three sections are written by me, Sampson Lee of Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM), and experts in each specific domain contributed the other six sections. Section ONE: Where Social Media meets Customer Life Stages - I start by stating the reasons why you should spend your time reading this document and I introduce the flow and give a perspective on how social media fit into the customer experience and influence experiences across the customer lifecycle. Section TWO: Social Media and Research & Development - Co-creation with customers was a regular practice at some companies even before the emergence of social media. Today, Wendy Soucie from Wendy Soucie Consulting is going to show us that social media makes it easier and more effective for customers to engage in the product development process. Section THREE: Social Media and Branding/Public Relations - Brands are owned by both customers and non-customers. Karl Havard from pownum illustrates how social media enables customers and non-customers to shape, interact with, and influence your brand long before they are touched by your own branding and public relations efforts.


Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model Section FOUR: Social Media and Marketing - Marketing in the world of social media is about engaging your customers and non-customers. In a broad sense, as Jim Sterne from Web Analytics Association tells us, it closely relates to branding, PR, sales, and customer support. In short, you have to create relevant and compelling content so that you can attract attention; no matter what kind of activities you want to engage customers with in your next steps. You want your customers to talk with you – by leaving message, posting on your blog, following your company tweets, etc. Section FIVE: Social Media and Sales - Talk is cheap. You need to turn conversations into actions, not just interactions with your customers and prospects. Axel Schultze from Xeesm demonstrates with a real case how to achieve tangible and more effective sales results by reallocating resources from traditional sales channels to the new emerging social media. Section SIX: Social Media and Operations - Can social media help to enhance efficiency? To achieve the same results with fewer resources? To achieve better results with the same resources? To maintain or even enhance customer satisfaction levels while investing fewer resources in operations? Rick Mans from Capgemini shares with us how social media affects operations in a client case study with sound results. Section SEVEN: Social Media and Customer Service - Can social media be used to service your customers? It is fast, interactive, and convenient for end-customers. But, at the same time, it poses new challenges to companies in terms of organizational structure, dynamic workflow, and resource allocation. Guy Stephens from Foviance interviews one of his clients and provides insights on this controversial topic. Section EIGHT: Integrating Social Media with Total Customer Experience – In this section, I will organize the silos into an integrated whole. To look at an organization meaningfully, we must first derive the importance levels of social media on each customer life stage during the entire lifecycle. Besides the horizontal perspective in a natural time sequence, we also have to dive deeply into the vertical perspective by weighting the influence of social media in delivering experiences at each life stage among all customer-facing channels. Only with both the horizontal and vertical perspectives, can you have a comprehensive and strategic view of how to allocate resources to various social media. Section NINE: Managing Your Brand and Social Media with One System – I define Brand as a perception – generated by the aggregate customer experiences across all touch-points and covering the entire customer lifecycle. Social media is just one customer-facing touch-point; there are other channels to deliver the numerous touch-point experiences. Real data generated from our work with clients and research on the global credit card customer experience1, the global mobile communications customer experience2, the global city visiting experience3, and the global B2B purchasing experience4 is used to introduce the concept of ‘Branding by TCE’. This data illustrates how social media fits in the big picture of the TCE

otal Customer Experience) model, by each touch-point experience and by each functional area. (T


Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model An Overall View on where Social Media meets the Customer Life Stages Figure 1 shows the customer life stages in a natural time sequence. In reality, the actual sequence may not fall into this exact order; there is no absolute sequential order for all customers and all circumstances. For example, Branding/PR may touch customers at multiple life stages. Toyota’s quality issue and the PR surrounding its resolution affected some customers at the end of their lifecycle and, yet it touched prospective buyers of Toyota’s cars at the beginning of their lifecycle with Toyota. In some circumstances, Customer Service touches a customer before Operations, or perhaps Customer Service touches customers before Sales. In general, this model gives us an idea of the key components of customer lifecycle with which social media may interact. Our contributors will explore this sequence step by step, beginning with section two through section seven. As more and more types of social media emerge, it is logical and even necessary to consolidate their management into a single system. In sections eight and nine, I will show you how: by integrating social media with total customer experience nd I’ll show you why: the beauty of putting social media under one roof. a



II. Social Media and Research & DevelopmentWendy Soucie, Wendy Soucie Consulting

Figure 2: Touch-point Experience across the Customer Lifecycle - Co-creating

“Co-creation with customers was a regular practice at some companies even before the emergence of social media. Today, Wendy Soucie from Wendy Soucie Consulting is going to show us that social media makes it easier and more effective for customers to engage in the product development process.” Recently I had the opportunity to work with a company from the earliest days of new product design all the way through launch and two phases of product diversification. This example stands out as being unique because the company’s entire product management approach was guided by social media. This business case study is about a Social Business Application called Xeesm and the company behind this product is Xeequa. Gathering Initial Product Requirements The company’s leadership team saw a need for a product that would help people manage their social sites. It was meant to be a free widget that everybody could use and share freely . . . in essence, a contribution to the social ecosystem. Xeesm was designed to be easily installed. At first, there was neither a business plan nor a long term product strategy. The tool was offered to existing customers and friends of the company. At the core of the tool was one key feature that was part of all Xeequa products: an embedded function that allowed users to provide instant feedback. Ultimately, this function was responsible for turning the Xeesm product into a whole new social business solution. Beta users provided in aggregate over 1,000 responses, feature requests and bug reports that quickly revolutionized the product.


http://www.wendysoucie.com/

Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model Product Management Challenges The flood of crowd-sourced feedback provided challenges as customers drove the product in a direction neither the product management team nor company leadership envisioned. One of the first decisions made was to invest in this product even though its "strategic direction" was still being determined. Customer Recognition and Responsibilities In the months following this decision, the product management team recognized the efforts of individual customers and beta users by sharing their ideas. The team publicly featured each of the ideas provided by customers and encouraged others to provide more inputs. The company blog helped to highlight upcoming changes and new features. Those posts laid out some of the rationale for the releases. They were written in a very transparent fashion, with consideration of the problems, and they tied in the opportunities that might be in the “next” application. The beta community also seemed to be doing research alongside the company and that vindicated the community. The product roadmap was drafted by selecting the most wanted features over the "nice to haves." Today, customers have become integrated into the product strategy. As a beta user, I recognize the power I have as a user supplying my input, but my input has to make sense for the entire ecosystem. It’s great to feel some ownership of this product – other users and I helped to create a future direction for the product. Product Strategy The Xeesm case is interesting also from a product strategy point of view. The typical "strategy model" is that a company develops a product, determines a certain direction for the product, and then markets to customers, encouraging customers to follow the strategy of the company. While at first there wasn’t a strategy or plan, today, the Xeesm strategy is to build the best social relationship management product based on user needs, usage pattern and collaboration with visionary users. If you ask the Xeesm Product Manager for the long term direction of the product he will point you to a page on their website where it answers this question with "Where do YOU want to take it."



III. Social Media and Branding/Public RelationsKarl Havard, pownum

Figure 3: Touch-point Experience across the Customer Lifecycle - Acquainting

“Brands are owned by both customers and non-customers. Karl Havard from pownum illustrates how social media enables customers and non-customers to shape, interact with, and influence your brand long before they are touched by your own branding and public relations efforts.”

There was an interesting article in The Mail Online6 recently. It accused organizations, which have adopted the social web into their communications mix, of “spying” on customers. Organizations such as BT, T-Mobile, Virgin Media and many others use technology to check on “brand” conversations; they can “hear” what is being said and know who is saying it. They listen because: • They very much care about Brand perception and reputation, and protect it vehemently; and • They care about their customers’ experiences with their brand and wish to ensure they are always of a high quality. The fact that this article exists, demonstrates there is a risk to this approach. “Eavesdropping” is probably a more accurate term to use, which for many still isn’t associated with above-board behavior...it is very 1984. “Brand Trust” could be compromised. So what are the options for organizations? Consider these from a consumer and from a brand/PR point of view: • Continue listening in to all brand buzz, deciphering sentiment and then assessing whether or not to interact.

(Eavesdropping or “spying.”) • Consider a more proactive and transparent approach and actively invite consumer feedback. • Do nothing. (Not considered a real option, unless as an organization, you don’t really care.)


http://www.pownum.com/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1284363/How-BT-Sarah-spies-Facebook-account-secret-new-software-allows-BT-firms-trawl-internet-looking-disgruntled-customers.html

Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model The second option dramatically reduces the overhead of analysis, technology (a lot of which interprets sentiment inaccurately) and people’s time. More importantly, it eliminates the risk of compromising existing consumer trust. You’re receiving opinion from people who choose to give it. If people are genuinely passionate enough about your brand and offering, they will let you know. One organization that stands out as an excellent example of this, and surprisingly they come from the usually conservative financial sector, is First Direct. They actively invite feedback and have invested heavily in the interactive part of their website. They are accessible, responsive and take action. Hence, they build high degrees of trust with their customers, and rate highly on many review sites. First Direct have just recorded a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of +42%, which is 46% higher than their sectors average of -4%. This is a clear demonstration that being accessible, open and responsive really does improve advocacy. They are also present across the main social web platforms. They have invested heavily in time, resource and money to create this level of “transparency” – a luxury many organizations cannot afford, even if they wanted to.

Real transparency can only be achieved by inviting feedback on an unmoderated, independent platform. Even better if it enables people to provide a meaningful score, backed up by detailed reviews. There is no organizational control and no possibility of censorship. Of course, this requires a massive leap of faith for many brands and a big change in mindset, introducing a level of transparency previously considered insane. However, the way the social web (or the web) is developing, it is fast becoming a reality. Soon we will see such invitations (as shown in Figure 4) appear across a number of consumer-focused websites, making it really easy for the general public to offer their opinions; and in turn, really difficult for organizations to ignore them.

Figure 4: Social Media and Branding/PR - First Direct



VI. Social Media and MarketingJim Sterne, Web Analytics Association

Figure 5: Touch-point Experience across the Customer Lifecycle - Engaging

“Marketing in the world of social media is about engaging your customers and non-customers. In a broad sense, as Jim Sterne from Web Analytics Association tells us, it closely relates to branding, PR, sales, and customer support. In short, you have to create relevant and compelling content so that you can attract attention; no matter what kind of activities you want to engage customers with in your next steps. You want your customers to talk with you – by leaving message, posting on your blog, following your company tweets, etc.”

I love to write about social media and marketing but when I reviewed the outline, I see that I am sandwiched in between "Social Media and Branding/PR" and "Social Media and Sales" which is followed by "Social Media and Customer Service." I find myself trying to figure out how to separate marketing from branding and sales in a world of social media. It begs the question, "What is the role of marketing?" With social media, I can: Create buzz (branding and PR) Nurture a community (branding and PR) Offer time-sensitive discounts (direct sales) Answer prospect and client questions (customer support) Share interesting tidbits (branding and PR) Establish an industry personality (branding and PR)

Promote an event (direct sales) and so much more.


http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/

Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model When I started talking about web analytics as a window into the hearts and mind of the marketplace, it was the direct mail people who understood it first. They were used to years of catalog testing across different lists in different months and days of the week. Life was simple then. Advertising was meant to drive traffic to websites which were built to convert browsers into buyers. Business to business websites were built to convert browsers to qualified leads. But then things shifted.

Today, social media has put the company's reputation well and truly into the hands of the public and this has created a struggle for the Marketing Department. Brand managers need to join the conversation out in the sociosphere. Direct sales people need to understand their impact on the company brand if they push too hard, too often or too irrelevantly. PR people need to get everybody to change their communication mentality from broadcast to conversational. Product managers must understand that the contact center now establishes the product brand in the eye of the buying public. So when asked to write about social media and marketing outside of its role in branding, direct sales and customer support, I have to admit defeat.

Figure 6: Social Media and Marketing



V. Social Media and SalesAxel Schultze, Xeesm

Figure 7: Touch-point Experience across the Customer Lifecycle - Purchasing

“Talk is cheap. You need to turn conversations into actions, not just interactions with your customers and prospects. Axel Schultze from Xeesm demonstrates with a real case how to achieve tangible and more effective sales results by reallocating resources from traditional sales channels to the new emerging social media.”

Not everything in social media is about the fancy fan pages, strange video clips or fun campaigns exciting the masses. The EMANON Group (company name was changed by the author) decided to engage in social media to outperform the competition and reduce the cost of sales. Social Media without the fanciness This organization of about 250 employees understood that their current sales approach was not leading to expected results. However the product seemed to be well received by their existing customers. A young sales rep blazed his own path and engaged with his customers through Facebook, Twitter and an industry specific Yahoo group. This sales rep was pretty successful, but the rest of the team did "business as usual". Business as usual for EMANON Group meant sending email shots to their address database, buying new addresses and sending out introductions to the company and invitations to webinars. An inside sales team followed up hoping some of the emails resonated with potential clients. On a typical day, each rep made 40 - 60 calls, trying to leave voice mails and hoping to get 3 - 5 conversations per day per rep. Their objective: make an appointment for the field sales organization, confirm attendance at a webinar or otherwise gather positive feedback.


http://xeesm.com/

Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model How corporations use social media to gain market share The strategic engagement began in March 2009. After some review meetings, we included a few customers as advisers to the new social media strategy development. In May 2009, the strategy was simplified and reduced to one sentence: “Create a superior customer experience.” After the development of a social media-leveraged sales strategy, the sales team reduced their email volume dramatically and used cold calling only in cases where they could not find their clients in the social web – LinkedIn, Xing, Facebook, etc. The team that used to do mostly cold calls is now engaging with clients on the social web. After some training, the team was able to reach about 200 people per rep per day and they have approximately 30 - 50 interactions. Success is now measured by how many clients are touched, the number of responses and how many resulted in an engagement. Within six months, the sales team found their best practice model for the market and effectively reduced the cost of sales by 4%, which contributed to a 20% increase in profitability. Current Social Media Engagement Still today, the company has no fan page, only a few video clips that provide service handling information. There are no Twitter campaigns and no social media marketing initiatives. But the team is highly engaged with their clients and prospects leveraging social networks, communities, and social media monitoring tools for lead generation. A social media business application is handling the relationship management part and provides reports to management. So far the company has achieved two objectives: 1) The customer advocacy level has grown and, in combination with the more effective sales team, market share seems to have grown as well – we will see more quantitative details by the end of this year. Indicators of growing market share include new clients who come from competing brands, motivated in part by existing customers. 2) Cost of sales per unit has decreased and revenue increased with no additional sales people. Sales headcount was reduced insignificantly. Three sales people left because of the new sales model. Apparently it wasn’t attractive for the hard core hunters to move to a more collaborative engagement model.



VI. Social Media and OperationsRick Mans, Capgemini

Figure 8: Touch-point Experience across the Customer Lifecycle - Using

“Can social media help to enhance efficiency? To achieve the same results with fewer resources? To achieve better results with the same resources? To maintain or even enhance customer satisfaction levels while investing fewer resources in operations? Rick Mans from Capgemini shares with us how social media affects operations in a client case study with sound results.”

A big IT firm specializing in customized software experienced a decline in customer satisfaction in general and an increase in customers sharing their negative experiences with the customized software online. In order to turn the tide, I advised them to go out on the web and solve the issues as soon as they appeared, rather than waiting until customers approached the firm with their problems. Together with the communications department, I identified three main areas that needed to make this change. First, they needed to discover the conversations that were going on about their products, services and brand. Second, they had to think about how they would participate online. And third, they would have to require collaboration between departments that weren’t collaborating at the time. To make sure they were able to find the conversations about their brand, products and services, they invested in professional tools and hired experts to set up the monitoring and reporting necessary to gain ongoing insights. The monitoring is real-time and validates whether the conversation was effective.


http://www.capgemini.com/

Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model Since their standard approach to customer service already included interacting with customers, we used the existing customer service processes and modified them for online interaction. Also, I helped them to decide which issues they could handle via social media and which issues should be handled via the traditional channels (phone, letters and offices). Based on their processes for online behavior, they were able to participate in a consistent way with a group of customer service agents, plus they ensured scalability as soon as the volume of mentions went up. This organizational change was a collaboration between customer service, marketing and public relations. The online team is part of the customer service department and solves customers’ problems; they need to be in close connection with public relations to validate what can and can’t be communicated with customers and in close connection with the marketing department to share customer feedback and to integrate their activities. By turning online complaints into online conversations, they managed to increase positive mentions online from 34% to 73%8 while the volume of mentions increased, resulting in an all-around positive customer experience and an increase in new customers.

Figure 9: Social Media and Operations



VII. Social Media and Customer Service Guy Stephens, Foviance

Figure 10: Touch-point Experience across the Customer Lifecycle - Supporting

“Can social media be used to service your customers? It is fast, interactive, and convenient for end-customers. But, at the same time, it poses new challenges to companies in terms of organizational structure, dynamic workflow, and resource allocation. Guy Stephens from Foviance interviews one of his clients and provides insights on this controversial topic.”

I first came in contact with Anjali Ramachandran in early 2009 when she tweeted about a problem she had with The Carphone Warehouse. At that time, I was working at The Carphone Warehouse as their Customer Knowledge Manager, and was responding to customers’ complaints and queries via Twitter. The issue was resolved quickly and successfully, and Anjali wrote a short blog about the experiment/experience.7 Reading through Anjali’s blog again recently I was interested in her choice of words and phrases to describe the ‘experiment’: positive, apologizing, pleasantly surprised, very impressed, very helpful, very courteous, didn’t…waste my time, thumbs up to you. One phrase in particular stood out: …his [Guy Stephens] response was pretty much immediate (so I didn’t have time to formulate any negative theories.) I recently tweeted Anjali to try to understand more about her experience at the time. Here are a few brief excerpts from that longer conversation.


http://www.foviance.com/

Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model Why did you resort to social media? I was tired of being placed on hold for interminable periods on the phone, which historically has been a brand's mode of choice for engaging with customers. I was also tired of sending emails which, if they are acknowledged at all, get nothing more than an automated reply – something that is extremely impersonal and gives no indication of whether anything will be done at all. Twitter is a public forum and brands don't want to be seen as negative when customers complain about them there… Why go from a blog to Twitter? In the specific case that you helped me with, I felt that escalating to Twitter would be more likely to be noticed, and therefore solve my problem. What were you expecting by using Twitter? In The Carphone Warehouse case, my expectation was that something would happen and also to talk about it with fellow consumers who may have experienced the same thing. Why do you think companies seem to get it right on Twitter? It's about the personal connection. Traditional call centers are usually outsourced and customers are directed to someone who often does not understand their situation, leading them to become very frustrated. You started off as a detractor, by the end you became an advocate… I became an advocate because the resolution of the issue was favorable, and in addition, the experience was good. With American Airlines, however, I had a less than 100% satisfactory resolution but the experience was excellent, and I’m an advocate because the specific issue wasn't easy to solve, which I understood. Do companies set unrealistic expectations that complaints can be resolved by Twitter? No. If a brand is on Twitter, which mixes the personal (the ability to have individual conversations via @ messages and DMs) with the public (what is said can be seen by all and re-tweeted to reach many more people), the very fact that they are on Twitter means that they’ve committed to listening to their consumers and solving their problems in a personal way.



VIII. Integrating Social Media with Total Customer

Experience

Figure 11: A Horizontal Integration - Social Media across the Customer Lifecycle

“I will organize the silos into an integrated whole. To look at an organization meaningfully, we must first derive the importance levels of social media on each customer life stage during the entire lifecycle. Besides the horizontal perspective in a natural time sequence, we also have to dive deeply into the vertical perspective by weighting the influence of social media in delivering experiences at each life stage among all customer-facing channels. Only with both the horizontal and vertical perspectives, can you have a comprehensive and strategic view of how to allocate resources to various social media.”

Horizontal Integration: Across Multiple Touch-point Experiences So far, we have read social media stories told by Wendy, Karl, Jim, Axel, Rick, and Guy related to research & development, branding/PR, marketing, sales, operations, and customer service. Although each of them addresses only one aspect, this doesn’t imply that social media are silos in effecting individual customer life stages. On the contrary, social media are influencing multiple touch-point experiences across the entire customer lifecycle. For instance, besides what Wendy Soucie mentions regarding co-creation with customers (and prospects) during the product development stage, Xeesm utilized social media in branding/PR, marketing, and sales. She quoted an example, “In addition to the research and development side, another area where Xeesm is using social media, is for the product launch. The Xeesm team used Pitchengine, Twitter, Xeesm Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn Groups and LinkedIn Q&A, and Slideshare for the heavy lifting of getting the message out. The beta users and early customers magnified the excitement using the same tools and added Digg, Delicious, BlipTV, and Vimeo for multimedia mix.”


Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model Similarly, Axel Schultze was guiding the B2B company EMANON Group towards a horizontal integration of social media across marketing, sales, operations, strategy formation, measurement metrics, and product development: “What started with an accidental experiment by a single person ended with a corporate-wide customer engagement strategy leveraging social media in most customer-facing departments. The company allowed only 8 weeks from strategy development to first step of execution. While several people in the departments were skeptical, only a very small number in sales were actually against the change. It took 6 months during the execution phase to polish processes and develop a set of operational KPIs, such as network size, relationship strength, forecast accuracy improvement and a few others, whereby the whole team was measured.” Social Media are Not Equally Important at Different Customer Life Stages Social media do not carry the same weight at different life stages; their importance levels vary by life stages. For example, social media are extremely important in the research & development stage at Xeesm, but they do not carry that same weight in customer service and operations. Social media help sales at the EMANON Group, but do not matter much to branding or PR. So, how do we identify the importance of social media in different life stages? Primary Objectives and Importance Levels To be precise, the key to defining importance is in relation to your target objectives. Your business objectives might be driving acquisition, retention, referrals, sales, repeat sales, cross sales, satisfaction, brand differentiation, NPS (Net Promoter Score) – you name it. Yet, you can’t achieve all your objectives at once, you have to prioritize them. Let’s assume the primary objective for your company in the coming fiscal year is to retain the existing customers and boost NPS. As Figure 11 shows, the star denotes importance in driving both retention and NPS, the square denotes importance in driving retention only, the circle denotes importance in driving NPS only, and the triangle denotes the lack of importance in driving retention or NPS. In addition to importance levels, you need to evaluate whether the use of social media aligns with your corporate targets. Resource Allocation across the Customer Lifecycle So now you are able to identify the most important social media that align with your most critical business objectives. For example, in Figure 11, across the entire customer lifecycle, you should allocate most resources to social media affecting R&D and Sales, since they are most important in driving both your objectives; allocate moderately more resources to Marketing, Branding/PR and Customer Service, since they are important in driving either one of the target objectives; and significantly fewer resources on Operations, since it is unimportant in driving either objective. You end up with a clear picture of how to allocate resources among social media for different life stages across the customer lifecycle. Spending without aligning to your target objectives is just wasting your limited resources.


Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model Vertical Integration: Across Multiple Customer-Facing Channels We’ve taken a horizontal perspective in Figure 11 as to how social media affect different customer life stages and multiple touch-points. Figure 12 shows the vertical perspective as to how different customer-facing channels influence a single customer life stage. Social media is just one of the customer-facing channels to deliver the touch-point experience. There are others; the most common being face-to-face, such as retail stores, call centers, web, advertising, DM, and perhaps even warehouse, logistics, accounting, administration.

Figure 12: A Vertical Integration - Multiple Channels across a Single Customer Life Stage

Customer-facing Channels are Not Equally Important As in the cases of the IT firm and Carphone Warehouse stated by Rick Mans and Guy Stephens, social media is just one new way to deliver the operations and customer service experiences. The existing customer-facing channels are call center, web, and face-to-face. Similar to social media, all customer-facing channels are not equally important in driving your company objectives. Some are more important than the others. In Figure 12, taking the customer life stage ‘Sales’ as an example, the sales experience is delivered by various customer-facing channels. We can see clearly which customer-facing channels are important in driving the target objectives, say retention and the NPS, and which are not.


Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model Resource Allocation among Customer-facing Channels Now, you are able to identify the most important customer-facing channels in delivering the sales experience and to align them with your most critical business objectives. In Figure 12, at the sales experience, among the customer-facing channels, you should allocate the most resources to Call and Social Media, since it is important in driving both objectives; allocate moderately more to Face-to-face and Web channels, since they are important to driving one of the target objectives; and significantly less to AD & DM and Others, since they are unimportant in driving either objective. You have a clear picture of how to allocate resources among customer-facing channels for a particular customer life stage.

Figure 13: A Total Integration - Multiple Channels across the Customer Lifecycle

Total Integration: Across Multiple Customer-facing Channels and Customer Life Stages Now you have an idea of how the horizontal and vertical integration works. When we combine these two perspectives into Figure 13, we have a comprehensive view of how each customer-facing channel affects the multiple touch-point experience, how multiple customer-facing channels affect the single touch-point experience at each customer life stage, and of course, how multiple customer-facing channels affect the multiple touch-point experience across the entire customer lifecycle. We call this conceptual framework the TCE (Total Customer Experience) model.



XI. Managing Your Brand and Social Media with One

System

Figure 14: The TCE (Total Customer Experience) Model - A Simplified Version of a Credit Card Issuing Bank

What is the TCE (Total Customer Experience) Model? Figure 13 in the previous section shows a conceptual framework of the TCE model. Figure 14 illustrates a pragmatic view based on our work with a client (a global financial institution) and our global research8. For confidentiality, the TCE model and the data shown in Figure 14 are disguised and simplified for ease of explanation and understanding. Figure 14 shows a simplified version of the total customer experience model for a credit card-issuing bank. Credit card customers experience their entire lifecycle with the financial services provider by interacting across numerous touch-points (denoted T1 to T39) at different stages (i.e. Image, Application, Card Usage, Promotions, Gift Redemption, Repayment, and Service.) The respective touch-point experiences are delivered not by a single entity, but by various channels (denoted by C1 to C27), under various functions or departments (Face-to-face, Call, Web, Social Media, AD & DM, and Others.)


Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model The importance level of each touch-point / channel in driving customer retention and the NPS (Net Promoter Scores) are identified. Stars denote the touch-points that are important to retention and NPS, squares are important to retention only, circles are important to NPS only, while triangles are unimportant to both retention and NPS. A TCE model is an integrated and quantifiable management system based on our patent-pending CEM methodologies9, to map the total customer experience across all touch-points throughout the entire customer lifecycle, as various channels and functions within or outside an organization deliver the experience. This is a truly outside-in approach, as the mapping sequence, selection of touch-points, and channel identification are customer-centered and not company- or process-centric. Integrating Social Media with the TCE Model Figure 14 is a perfect example showing how social media fits in a TCE model for a credit card issuing bank. Along with other customer-facing channels, social media is positioned to deliver a touch-point experience. Similar to other channels, such as the channel Call which can have sub-channels such as in-bound, out-bound, IVR, agent, SMS, etc., social media is composed of several sub-channels, denoted by C16, C17, C18, and C19 in the simplified model. These might be Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or MySpace, and each of them might be further broken down into public spaces or the company’s network. When we map and relate each sub-channel with each touch-point experience, we have a fully integrated view of social media in the credit card customers’ entire lifecycle; in other words, we put social media under one roof. Say ‘Goodbye’ to Silos Who owns social media? Of course, the correct answer is your customers. But in the real business environment, somebody inside the organization has to take care of this new and important channel. Whether it is an ‘extension’ of each function – for example, adding a company tweeter within the service department to handle customer complaints or setting up a new dedicated team to manage all related social media activities – chaos and silos are often the outcome as neither approach provides a clear view of what others are doing. These extensions usually end up creating more silos and difficulties in communications and workflows. At the firm of our client, a global financial services provider, the marketing department takes the lead in building a TCE model and coordinating all relevant departments and functions for touch-point mapping and model development. This is the first time that each function or department of their organization can see how they influence the total customer experience and how they interact with other functions or departments in delivering a specific touch-point experience. Though politically they still have many hurdles to overcome, conceptually, visually, and strategically they are moving towards becoming a single entity servicing their customers. Putting social media under one roof migrates organizations from un-integrated silos to integration with a ‘One Team’ approach. “Show me the money.” Whenever you ask for a budget to support your customer experience or social media initiatives, this is what your boss or CFO would like to say to you. In general nowadays, I think no one will deny the importance of social media in influencing a firm’s reputation and operations. The key is understanding how much money should be invested and how to justify this spending. It’s about the ROI. Unless you are in the minority who are lucky enough to have top management buy-in already, you cannot get the support you need if you don’t have a business case. There are always better ways and better approaches competing to achieve company targets.


Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model Justify your Investment All companies have limited resources, especially in a slow economy. An increase in spending on social media means the reduction of resources allocated to other touch-points and channels. A struggle among functions to go after a limited budget is the natural outcome. How you justify your spending or even gain more support from your management for social media is about more than painting a beautiful picture with empty promises. A quantifiable approach supported by strong numerical assumptions aligned with business results is the perfect way to go. Putting social media under one roof justifies and optimizes resource allocation for social media. We have another client who is a regional market leader in mobile network operations. Their CEO doesn’t buy in to an increase in spending on social media. The main objectives of this mobile network operator in the coming twelve months are to retain their most valuable customers and to improve their brand differentiation in the market. When we align these defined business objectives to the TCE model for specific target customer segments, the subjective arguments about social media budget are replaced by objective outcomes and data generated from the customers’ voices during the multiple touch-point experiences – what we call X-VOC, Voice-of-Customer @ Experience. Businessmen, especially top management, are practical people. They agree with you if you demonstrate and, at the same time quantify, how your proposed investment in a specific social media strategy and its execution aligns with and helps to achieve business results. Things get much easier when you talk to them using a quantifiable approach. See the Trees and Forest We should aim to win the war, not just the battles. Excelling in some touch-points means you are winning some battles, it doesn’t mean you are winning the war – delivering an experience which helps you to achieve your business objectives effectively. Pick the right fights. Pick fights that are crucial to leading to victory. There are so many social media; you will drown in the sea of social media and exhaust your resources and yourself, if you don’t create a comprehensive picture. How can you manage the total customer experience before you have a full view of what it covers? One of our clients is responsible for the online business of their B2B customers. They invested a lot in user experience initiatives to ensure their corporate customers are happy at all online touch-point experiences and to drive them to invest more money in their bank to enhance positive word-of-mouth. However, the outcome is only to provide a ‘me-too’ homogeneous experience; almost all their competitors are doing the same thing and deploying the same user experience practices in serving their customers. Everything is more complicated with the emergence of social media as a new touch-point. The TCE model grants them a new perspective – they now look at the forest, rather than just the trees. And most importantly, they have a new strategy and execution plan to drive sales and WOM by reallocating resources from the least important to the most important touch-points, which, of course, include numerous social media. Putting social media under one roof aligns the strategy and execution of social media with corporate objectives.


Social Media under One Roof: Integrate Social Media with the TCE Model Branding by TCE (Total Customer Experience)

“Products are built in factories,

brands are built in the mind” “Brand as the intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging and price, its

history, its reputation and the way it’s advertised.” David Ogilvy

“Brand

is a perception, generated by the aggregate customer experience

across all touch-points and covering the entire customer lifecycle.”

Sampson Lee

Successful brand management is much more than just advertising or marketing. You need to jump out of the conventional branding and marketing silos to get a broader and more pragmatic perspective. As David Ogilvy said, “Products are built in factories, brands are built in the mind.” Brand is a perception, generated by the aggregate customer experience across all touch-points and covering the entire customer lifecycle. Of course, social media, as one of the critical channels, have their role and impact how your customers perceive your brand. In 2010, we completed a global survey of the city visiting experience in ten cities: Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, London, New York City, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo. We built the TCE model, which covers the entire visitors’ touch-point experience including city image, pre-arrival, arrival, city, people, enjoyment and departure as delivered by various customer-facing functions. In this case, some touch-points are managed by commercial organizations and some are government departments or related entities. Not surprisingly, social media plays a very important role in word-of-mouth, which is one of the most important attributes influencing respondents to visit a city for the first time and to come back again. A highly ‘branded’ city like Paris is not built by advertising or some particular touch-point the visitors experience. It is affected by the outcomes of the whole visitor experience across all touch-points and covering the entire visitor lifecycle. Brand is in our mind and is a perception. You see, branding is created by the Total Customer Experience. Putting social media under one roof nurtures your brand using a quantifiable management system. This is much more than a touch-point mapping exercise. When you build the model; when you derive the importance levels of various touch-points in achieving your target objectives; when you assess their performance levels – you develop the dashboard, KPIs and measurement metrics and put up a permanent system for continuous monitoring and enhancement. Don’t get me wrong; TCE only gives you a bird’s-eye view. It is the top-level architecture. You won’t be able to deliver a branded and effective experience until you also build the low-level architecture; you need to derive the emotion curve10 of those critical touch-points delivered by specific channels or functions. It is the TCE model that guides you to focus on those touch-points, which are important in achieving your target objectives, whether they are acquisition, retention, or growth.



Footnotes 1 “Global Credit Card Customer Experience Research,” CustomerThink Corp. (U.S.) and Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM),

July 2009. 2 “Global Mobile Communications Customer Experience Research,” CustomerThink Corp. (U.S.) and Global Customer Experience Management

Organization (G-CEM), April~May 2009. 3 “Global City Visiting Experience Research,” CustomerThink Corp. (U.S.) and Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM),

December 2009~January 2010. 4 “Global B2B Purchase Experience (IT Solution) Research,” CustomerThink Corp. (U.S.) and Global Customer Experience Management Organization

(G-CEM), February 2008. 5 “Mainland China B2B Purchase Experience (IT Solution) Research”, Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM) and

CustomerCentric Selling (U.S.), July~August 2007. 6 “How 'BT Sarah' spies on your Facebook account: secret new software allows BT and other firms to trawl internet looking for disgruntled customers”, Daily

Mail, June 6, 2010. 7 Carphone Warehouse on Twitter: Service with a Virtual Smile, by Anjali Ramachandran,

http://anjalir.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/carphone-warehouse-on-twitter-service-with-a-virtual-smile/8 “Global Credit Card Customer Experience Research,” CustomerThink Corp. (U.S.) and Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM),

July 2009. 9 TCE (Total Customer Experience) Model is based on the United States patent-pending Branded Customer Experience Management Method invented by

Sampson Lee, president of Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM), in 2007. 10 The Emotion Curve was invented and first put into practice by Mr. Sampson Lee, president of Global Customer Experience Management Organization

(G-CEM), in 2006. It is one of the experience assessment and management tools of the U.S. patent-pending Branded Customer Experience

Management Method registered by G-CEM. Emotion Curves map the customer emotions generated at each touch-point or sub-process and links them to

form a curve reflecting the perceived experience across the entire customer lifecycle (covering all touch-points at stages of pre-purchase, at-purchase, and

post-purchase) or at a specific touch-point (e.g. retail, call center, website, etc.). Unlike conventional approaches, which focus on enhancing efficiency and

are process-centric, emotion curves represent genuine customer feelings by addressing emotions and the five senses in a natural time sequence from an

experience perspective. It is a truly customer-centric experience assessment and management method. The statistical data represented by emotion curves

is derived from a statictically significant number of X-VOC surveys and from the experience ratings for each touch-point or sub-process, and then evaluated

by different target customer segments. The definitions and selection criteria for touch-points and sub-processes are based on vigorous and scientific

research, methods, and sequential steps. An Emotion Curve shows how customers perceive an experience. It is a powerful tool for creating a branded

customer experience strategy. Furthermore, with a simple curve, from CEO to receptionist, in the boardroom or in the mailroom, everyone in a company

can easily understand and communicate customer experience levels using a common graphical language.


http://anjalir.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/carphone-warehouse-on-twitter-service-with-a-virtual-smile/


About the Author and the Contributors

The Author

Sampson Lee, the founder of Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM), created the U.S. patent-pending Branded CEM Methodology, and recently has authored an article for Harvard Business Review. Lee and his international partner team deliver the Global CEM Certification Program in 11 cities in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America [ Email | LinkedIn | Twitter ]

Foreword

Bob Thompson is CEO of CustomerThink Corp., an independent firm specializing in customer-centric business management. He is also founder of CustomerThink.com, the world’s largest online community dedicated to helping business leaders improve customer-centric business strategies. Thompson is a popular keynote speaker at conferences worldwide and has written dozens of articles, reports and papers, including

Getting Ahead of the Curve: Social Business at an Inflection Point. Before starting CustomerThink, he had 15 years of experience in the IT industry, including positions as business unit executive and IT strategy consultant at IBM. For more information, visit CustomerThink or contact Thompson at [email protected].

The Contributors

Wendy Soucie, Principal at Wendy Soucie Consulting, LLC, is a connected and innovative social media and marketing professional. She has her own consulting practice, Wendy Soucie Consulting LLC (www.wendysoucie.com), that works with small and midsized B2B companies who are interested in engaging in social business relationships and conversation with their current and future clients. Her past work

experience with a Fortune 500 company, manufacturer, fluid handling equipment distributor, and professional services firms (engineering, architecture information technology and accounting) gives her a broad background to understand implicitly the clients she works with today. She is a business partner with Xeequa on the Social CRM tool Xeesm-Edge. Wendy has a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, Kingston Rhode Island. Find all her social connection points at http://xeesm.com/wendysoucie.

Karl Havard has been involved in the online world for 12 years plus and is primarily focused on consumer behavior and interactions between individuals and organizations. He is the founder of pownum and of Somatica Digital, a small but beautifully-formed consumer brand trust consultancy. He speaks at industry events and provides training for individuals undertaking various courses (including post-graduate degrees)

provided by econsultancy, MMUBS and ESCP Europe. He regularly takes part in various types of adrenalin-fueled activities, even though he is knocking on a bit; he likes to think he can still mix it with the best of them. He lives in Northampton and rides around on his 1965 Lambretta Li150. He’s been married for over 23 years and has four beautiful daughters. Contact Details: @KarlHavard - [email protected]


http://www.customerthink.com/user/bob_thompson

http://www.g-cem.org/

http://www.cemcertification.org/customerthink

mailto:[email protected]

http://hk.linkedin.com/in/sampsonlee

http://twitter.com/Sampson_Lee

http://www.customerthink.com/


http://www.wendysoucie.com/

http://xeesm.com/wendysoucie

http://www.pownum.com/

http://www.somatica.co.uk/

http://econsultancy.com/

http://www.business.mmu.ac.uk/programmes/postgraduate/coursedetail.php?uref=73

http://www.escpeurope.eu/campus/escp-europe-campus-london/programmes-escp-europe/master-in-marketing-and-creativity/overview/

http://www.toughguy.co.uk/

http://twitter.com/karlhavard


Jim Sterne is an international speaker on electronic marketing and customer interaction. A consultant to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurs, Sterne focuses his twenty-five years in sales and marketing on measuring the value of the Internet as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships. Sterne has written six books on Internet advertising, marketing and customer service including, Social Media

Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment. Sterne is the producer of the international eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits www.emetrics.org and is the co-founder and current Chairman of the Web Analytics Association www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org Sterne was named one of the 50 most influential people in digital marketing by Revolution, the United Kingdom's premier interactive marketing magazine and one of the top 25 Hot Speakers by the National Speakers Association.

Axel Schultze, Social Media Academy. Social media practitioner, CEO of , founder of the

, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, book author of Xeesm Social

Media Academy Channel Excellence, frequent speaker at industry events, and winner of the 2008 SF Entrepreneur award. Former CEO of BlueRoads, Infinigate, Computer2000. Axel's social links = http://xeesm.com/AxelS.

Rick Mans is a social media strategist at Capgemini, working on national and international cases for several (Fortune 500) customers. He lives and loves social media, helping people and enterprises in using social media in a way that adds value for them. He also gives guest lectures at several universities to make students aware of the impact social media will have on their life in general and on enterprises in particular in

the near and not so near future. Online he shares his knowledge via Twitter (@rickmans) and he aggregates all his (online) publications on his personal blog.

Guy Stephens is a champion of the use of social media for customer service. He is a Senior Consultant at Foviance, helping brands define their social media customer service strategy within a context of organizational change. He was the Customer Knowledge Manager at The Carphone Warehouse responsible for setting up their use of social media to provide customer service. He is the Founder of the LinkedIn group -

where social media meets customer service. Guy has worked in the online space for twelve years, is a Founding Council member of BestServiceOne.com, regular contributor to online sites and publications, as well as conference speaker. He is an avid tweeter (@guy1067) and blogger on various sites.


http://www.emetrics.org/

http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/

http://www.socialmedia-academy.com/

http://xeesm.com/



http://xeesm.com/AxelS

http://twitter.com/rickmans

http://dontmindrick.com/

http://dontmindrick.com/


About Global Customer Experience Management

Organization (G-CEM)

Global Customer Experience Management Organization (G-CEM) helps companies to create effective customer experiences. Our patent-pending methodologies combine the art and science of CEM in assessing and delivering branded and total customer experience (TCE). G-CEM International Partners are located in Europe, Asia, and North America. Our services include TCE Evaluation and CEM Certification. Visit Us: http://www.G-CEM.org.

Total Customer Experience (TCE) Evaluation The TCE Evaluation consists of two parts: TCE Model Building sets a comprehensive blueprint and renders a complete architecture to measure, manage, and improve the total customer experience as perceived at multiple touch-points and among multiple channels across the entire customer lifecycle. The TCE Assessment measures the effectiveness of experience in driving customer satisfaction, brand differentiation, sales transactions and creating advocates. The combination of TCE model building and assessment helps companies deliver a branded and effective total customer experience. Please contact [email protected] for details. .

Global CEM Certification Program

The Global CEM (Customer Experience Management) Certification Program is designed and co-delivered by G-CEM International Partners and endorsed by nine authorities. Since January 2006, G-CEM has run the program in Barcelona, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Dubai, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, San Francisco, and Johannesburg with clients from 44 countries across five continents. For details, please visit: http://www.CEMCertification.org.



social media under_one_roof_%20_integratae_social_media_with_the_tce_model

Business

net promoter

wendy soucie

social media

social media

social media

emerging social

integrating

putting social