UpYourSocial

This is a guest post by John Andrews. John Andrews is Managing Partner of Collective Bias, a social shopper marketing company helping connect brands, retailers and consumers in conversation. He can be reached at johnandrews@collectivebias.com or at his personal blog.

The Social phone is ringing, is anyone picking up?

Where can I get the new James Bond DVD?
Hey, I have a problem with my iPod.
I heard Macaroni Grill has a great new dish, should we go there?
Will avocado affect my blood pressure?

Where’s the closest CVS?

Every Google search is a hand being raised.  So is a blog post, Facebook or Twitter with a complaint or question.  How are brands and retailers recognizing this fundamental shift in consumer expectations?

I think of the old adage “if a tree falls in the woods…”, the problem is, people are hearing the tree fall and if no one is responding (or even aware), the effects on the brand can be detrimental at best. These kinds of comments are visible, relevant and actionable and brands of all kinds need to have a plan to engage.

Try this, search your favorite brand (or your brand) on Twitter (several easy and free tools including Twitter Search, Twitalyzer or socialmention make this easy). See anything interesting? Now try the name of your favorite retailer, what do you see? Some good, some bad and some that need immediate attention.

Here’s a recent Twitter comment about a large grocery chain, Totofigo90: Cashier at Vons got pist because I asked her “Why isn’t Vons just called Safeway, they’re the same?” she answers “Because it’s Vons”.  I wonder if that person got a response or an inquiry? In a 12 hour period, there were 6-8 comments among the 20-30 about Safeway that like this, deserve some sort of response.

What great brand engagement opportunities to build a relationship and grow loyalty. We know from multiple studies that an unhappy consumer will influence 5-10 others on average but what about a consumer who had a problem fixed? Many times that person becomes an amazing brand advocate.

Google and many free and paid tools make these conversations easy to identify and potentially to help.  Search any restaurant or retailer on Google maps and you’ll receive local level ratings and reviews.  How should your brand be engaging with its advocates and detractors?  After all, there are many tools that make hand raisers of all types easily reachable.

To help them, companies should radically transform their customer service departments from passive to pro-active extensions of their marketing departments. Brand’s 866 numbers and help@mybrand.com email address are not enough, consumers expect them to be listening to their conversations when and where they are happening.

Google search of Raleigh area Walmart stores with consumer ratings and reviews.

Not only can companies help hand raisers but so can other customers, suppliers and even non-customers.  This collective many helping the many provides a richer more valuable context as well. Some companies are already far along with this endeavor. Zappos, Dell, Comcast and Crocs are great examples of brands that are answering the social phone call by empowering their associates to monitor, engage and react to customer interaction.

Six Steps to Better Engagement

1. Listen & Learn – Simply being aware of what is going on is the best first step. Set up a monitoring plan that extends across multiple functional areas (Marketing/PR, Operations, Legal and Customer Service). Have the team discuss potential ways to respond/react to various issues.
2. Build a listening platform – Start with Google reader and a few free tools and build a daily listening regimen. Multiple input streams will allow you to monitor quickly and efficiently and even send you alerts.
3. Look for trends – Large scale deficiencies with products and services can usually be identified rather quickly. Identify larger issues and develop a plan to address.
4. Connect With Some Advocates (and detractors) – There are some natural advocates for your brand talking about you right now. They are most likely highly aware of issues and opportunities and can be invaluable at alerting you to problems and ideas. Your brand advocates will probably enjoy being part of the process as well and develop a sense of brand ownership.
5. Empower self-help – Ratings and reviews and question and answer are great tools for customers to help themselves and each other. Turbo-tax does a great job of enabling its customers to help each other and even rate the advice being given leveraging the wisdom of crowds.
6. Put a face on your help stream – Richard at Dell is widely known across the social-sphere as someone who can help you with your CS issues making Dell much more approachable and authentic. Have a face (or better yet many faces) for your help.

With some relatively simple tweaks, marketing and customer service departments can be aligned to answer the call and even extend brand engagement by involving groups of brand passionate customers.  The social phone is ringing, pick it up!

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