1. Got Governance?

    Friday, 27 Jan 2012 No Comments Posted by:

    With the new year, you might find yourself cleaning up from 2011. Have you ever cleaned up your processes? Do you find that you have a lot of processes that were necessary at one time and now are abandoned? What happened? Did the need for the process expire?

    Too often the process is still needed, but the energy behind the adoption and adherence of the process has relaxed. Usually the energy of the process shows up in the form of a individual who is very passionate about the process or more importantly the outcome. When this person relaxes, others tend to relax too.

    How many times have you known that you have an expense report to submit, but delay in getting it done. Why? Ignorance? Probably not. No one is harassing you to get the expense report submitted. Bingo (no one is watching)! Some tension is necessary until processes are second nature. Often the tension is governance. Governance is a critical element of managing processes to ensure compliance.

    At Ant’s Eye View, we work with top brands moving across the Social Engagement Journey. In the journey, there is process design and process implementation. After some period of continued activity in stages 2 and 3, process atrophy can settle in if you don’t have the right governance in place. Hoping for process outcomes is not enough. Audit and frequent review of operational metrics ensure that process (and more importantly the outcomes) don’t suffer from Social Process Atrophy (getting lax on social outreach service levels, infrequent content generation). Governance is a necessary audit function. Your governance model might be in need of a tune-up.

  2. Election day and manure?

    Tuesday, 2 Nov 2010 4 Comments Posted by:

    This election season is marred with anger, frustration, and controversy – just a bit more intense than elections of past.

    It is refreshing to find some creative marketing that reminds us about the election season without forcing campaign promises at us. In Texas we have an exciting campaign for governor. The incumbent Rick Perry is battling challenger Bill White. Of course there are plenty of annoying TV ads each claiming the other candidate is not right for Texas. But it took a creative and fun marketing program to let 100,000 people get close to the election during ACL Fest 2010 in October.

    Perry and White for governor

    close up of perry and whiteAt ACL fest, I learned about Cow Wow, a liquid compost concentrate product. What is a more appropriate product (than a pure and odorless liquid cow manure) to really help call attention to the Texas gubernatorial campaign? Cow Wow picked up on a visual difference in the candidates – their hair and then created huge heads with grass hair grown with the aid of Cow Wow. Concert goers could text for the candidate’s hair they liked best. No speeches, no promises, just a clever use of a political campaign to introduce a product with virtually no ties to politics, well almost no ties to politics.

    Remember to Vote today.

  3. Customer Feedback: How to Value It in Your Organization, Part 2 of a 3-Part Series

    Friday, 11 Jun 2010 2 Comments Posted by:

    “Well, that is just customer feedback and this [insert business policy] makes us [insert revenue number].”

    Sound familiar? As a S.P.I.C.Y. leader in your organization, you’ve worked hard to use customer feedback to break down barriers within your organization, as described in part 1 of this series. But, it is inevitable that you either have heard or will face a customer vs. shareholder debate when it comes to reporting out on customer feedback and the root causes driving it. Price, product and policy issues that drive sales and negative sentiment are particularly tricky to navigate within the context of large organizations.

    What makes these conversations so hard and the barriers between silos so thick is that different measures of success are in play. Customer experience measures, derived from customer feedback, usually come in the form of satisfaction, resolution rates and brand favorability while shareholder measures are, well, all about revenue, expenses and profit. And, the concept of missed revenue as a result of negative sentiment can feel very fuzzy for operations, finance and business unit leaders.

    Having an apples-to-apples discussion between the two camps is critical. At Intuit, we heavily used the Net Promoter methodology which asks a simple question – “how likely are you to recommend this [product, service, etc] to someone else”, and it is often used as a side-by-side measure with revenue. Over the last couple of years, Intuit’s research teams did extremely hard work to connect Net Promoter data to revenue.

    But, Net Promoter data is what people “say” they are going to do. What about what people actually say and actually do? Listening on the social web is the best way to understand this other side to the loyalty coin. Using tools like Radian 6 or Scout Labs, you can listen to what’s being said about your brand, apply sentiment scoring and use your real customers’ voice to show how they are, or are not recommending your products or services.

    In some cases, you have listen yourself in specific channels, like my team at Intuit did within Amazon. My team led the effort to have a 100% reply goal on Amazon reviews on Intuit’s flagship small business product, QuickBooks Pro 2010, and we developed a weekly dashboard, shared at senior staff, that showed key topics, number of reviews, sentiment and change over time.

    What that dashboard didn’t show was impact on sales. By adding in simple questions to several surveys that regularly go out to recent purchasers (and not) of QuickBooks, we were able to determine impact on sales.

    We found that online reviews had a double digit impact on sales – meaning that our customers said that reviews were the main & only source or the main but not only source of purchasing. Between the Net Promoter value work and the online review-to-sales research, our team had the opportunity to really connect customer and shareholder measures. Efforts like this enabled the team to drive closed-loop changes within the product that dramatically decreased negative sentiment.

    Valuing customer feedback is the second key step in breaking down the barriers within an organization. Next up, we’ll tackle responding to customer feedback!

  4. Wanted: a S.P.I.C.Y. Leader at Intuit

    Tuesday, 20 Apr 2010 13 Comments Posted by:

    Okay, I had to start my first blog post at Ant’s Eye View with a funny headline. In all seriousness though, as someone who’s just left a social media/community leadership role at a large company and was part of the interview team for my replacement at Intuit, the right person to lead a social media team is S.P.I.C.Y.

    Being a S.P.I.C.Y. leader is about successfully transforming corporate cultures to focus on customers while achieving company goals. It’s not about how many followers, fans, connections or Word with Friends’ games you have running. S.P.I.C.Y. attributes are:

    • Smart: Do you use good data to make decisions, and is the data fairly obtained and applied? I’ve seen a lot of snake oil, internally and externally, around data, or the lack thereof, and the social web, so smarts are required to make sense of it all. Smarts are also required to do the hard work of connecting the dots between customer success and your company’s success. Last but not least in the smarts category is rigor around the data. Are you rigorous in setting real business objectives or you do chase after shiny objects? And, if you’re someone who’s rigorously set priorities, then how do you adjust as you acquire new information?
    • Passionate: If you aren’t interested in talking about your products and services, then who the heck will be? It’s okay to care passionately about your products, services, company and, above all, your customers. In digital media, true passion, not smelly promotional passion, cuts through noise. Passion also cuts through the noise internally, especially when combined with the smarts mentioned above.
    • Interested: Are you naturally curious about the world around you, your customers’ lives and your products or services? Do you take a systematic approach for learning new “cultures” and new projects and, most importantly, then apply that learning to constantly improve on your teams and your work. And, my deep belief is that naturally interested people are naturally humble. We’re all learning our way here, and being humble goes a long way when operating in new cultures and partnering with internal teams. Speaking of…do you do more to recognize others than to gain recognition for yourself?
    • Caring:  A deep, enduring commitment to customers (and soon-to-be customers) is the hallmark of a S.P.I.C.Y leader at Intuit. Thanks to amazing folks like Roy Rosin and Scott Cook, I learned early on about the importance of caring for customers and prospects by learning from them directly – through follow-me-homes, Net Promoter studies and listening and responding to them on the social web. And, then taking that learning and doing something about it, even if it hurts.
    • Youthful: No, this isn’t when I tell you to hire someone who is 20 and has been using some form of digital device since birth. Not that there is anything wrong with those folks! In fact, what’s exciting about being youthful is the belief in the power of change. Change is a constant on the social web and in large corporations. Driving change, not be driven crazy by it, is the key to success in this role.

    Most importantly, spicy or no, be a leader. Whether you’re going to manage a large team or influence other teams, leading is key. Leadership encapsulates all of the above attributes with the critical addition of being willing to make tough decisions, stand up for your team and lead what is often significant change in a large organization. Leading is also about understanding that you can hold standards and goals high, while supporting your team and internal partners to make it happen. All too often, I’ve heard folks say that “you can’t do “x” because this is all new.” Well, if there was anything I learned from Battlestar Galactica, leadership is even more important when facing the unknown.

    Here are some examples of job descriptions for social media leaders, including the one I wrote for my replacement. And, in the great minds think alike category, here’s an excellent post from Christine Morrison, social lead at Intuit’s TurboTax on leadership qualities for social media folks inside companies.

    I’d love to hear about your experiences either hiring for social media/online engagement leaders at your organization or about trying to get one of those jobs. What did I miss? What’s off base?

  5. Is your Brain ready for Great Customer Service?

    Tuesday, 22 Dec 2009 No Comments Posted by:

    Great customer service starts with a healthy brain. I believe if your employees are happy, informed, engaged, and energized; then they produce better products and deliver great service. If your employees have negative feelings, this clogs the Prefrontal Cortex in the brain,  where empathy and reasoning reside.

    I attended a great workshop from the Hand in Hand organization (a non profit started by Patty Wipfler). Hand in Hand is a parenting resource, but I saw many parallels to adult business relationships. Hand in Hand’s approach is based on the principles of respect, listening, leadership development and the importance of interpersonal connections. The way to break thru the negative emotions is to Listen on a personal level. Bad behavior can be a request for help.

    Case in point: American Airlines – I have flown over 30 segments with American Airlines in last 6 months and have been paying a lot of attention to the flight attendants, gate agents, ticket counter agents, and pilots (greet you at end of the flight). My service experience has been either great or terrible. Why? It comes down to the employee’s attitude– some are enjoying their job and others hate it. Unfortunately over the last 30 flight segments, about 75% of my observations appear to be hating/regretting showing up for work. This comes across as some rude behavior in boarding and in flight service (“HURRY UP take your seat”  “we can’t take off because YOU are not seated”, “Turn off your device NOW”). December 3,  I was on a flight from AUS to DFW, they started loading the plane 12 minutes before scheduled departure, then complained that the passengers were holding up scheduled departure. The reason was the late arrival of the plane (inbound to AUS) and late loading delayed the departure. Compare this to stories of Virgin America or Southwest – customers talk about the positive experiences. I met one business traveler in San Francisco that has changed his schedule to fly Virgin America over other airlines. So I asked why? What does Virgin America do differently? Answer: “they are nice to me, say hello, they smile”.

    People smile when they are happy. People are happy when they are informed, empowered, and energized. Management has a lot of jobs and get dumped on a lot. A management philosophy I followed (while in the U.S. Navy and at Dell, Inc.) was to listen to my team, remove roadblocks, praise in public, and counsel when necessary. If you take care of your team, they take care of you. What is yours?

    American Airlines: if you happen to read this, I would be interested in discussing some ideas to improve your customer service. As a frequent flyer, it is in my best interest (along with millions of other flyers to improve the status quo).  I believe your employees are not the core problem. Improved communication and engagement can help.

  6. Time for Policy?

    Tuesday, 1 Dec 2009 No Comments Posted by:

    Policy makes most of us cringe. Too often policy is associated with “thou shall not…” But policy also informs and educates our workforce on appropriate behavior. Today  FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising goes into action. It is an 80+ page document, but here is the general message:

    Marketers have an obligation to advise participants in word of mouth or social marketing programs of their responsibilities to disclose their relationship with you and make accurate product claims.

    In essence Be Transparent, Be Truthful, Be Human. Don’t deceive your audience. It is the responsibility of marketing to have effective procedures in place to monitor. A policy is usually the starting point. A Social Media policy should inform your workforce and your customers what behaviors are acceptable and which ones will not be tolerated. The policy should encourage responsible participation, not scare the reader into paralysis. Also anytime you publish a policy, don’t forget about compliance. Policy plus Education are necessary steps to ensure your company is Operating responsibly.

    What are your suggestions for what to include in a company’s social media policy?

  7. Update on How-to content model…

    Wednesday, 2 Jan 2008 No Comments Posted by:

    A few days ago I blogged about the User Generated Help and How-to Content model.  Part of the challenging is managing the transition from static content forward into more dynamic or user generated content.  Today, this blog post was shared with me. This was written by a Directory Services Support Engineer at Microsoft and posted to the Directory Services team blog.  In this example, the experts behind the support scenes are using their blog as a tool to help organize and improve discoverability of the best knowledgebase content available on their topic. 

    Nice, simple idea to start bridging these two content worlds.

    Sean

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  8. Busy week ahead (actually 2 weeks…)

    Saturday, 13 Oct 2007 1 Comment Posted by:

    I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks.  I’m off Monday to the Bay area where I’ll be meeting Monday with Support Space and going onsite with the online team at Tivo.  To say I’m a fan of Tivo as a user would be an understatement and their community is legendary, so I’m anxious to learn about any secret sauce they might share.  I’ll have some 1:1 time Monday driving from Tivo to Downtown San Fran with peers from the LA Times, Citrix and Weather.com.

    Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be participating in a two day event hosted by Creative Good.  This event brings together senior leaders from a wide range of companies to discuss best practices, current challenges and networking for ongoing business collaboration.  Looking at the list of my fellow attendees, it promises to be an amazing 48 hrs.

    I close my trip to the bay area Wednesday night with Dinner with Bright Ideas.  I’m anxious to learn more about what they are doing to productize innovation via the "wisdom of the crowds."

    On Thursday I’m off to Orlando to attend and speak at the Consortium Member Summit put on by the Consortium for Service Innovation. 

    I’ll be happy to get back home to Seattle for the weekend ahead of leaving for MVP Events in South America the following week.

    I’m sure I’ll have some insights to share from these visits in the weeks ahead.

    Sean

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  9. Some word-of-mouth on “Word of Mouth Marketing”

    Monday, 3 Sep 2007 4 Comments Posted by:

    I’ve been on hiatus from online for most of the past two weeks – a bit of needed vacation.  I didn’t quite spend the time the way I had planned, but I think I spent it the right way.  I had planned to read a couple of books, stay on top of my blog, catch up on RSS feeds that I’d fallen behind on, and work on some longer range personal objectives.  Well, I read one book.  Beyond that, I frankly just relaxed and enjoyed the time with family and friends.  Good for me!!  Not sure why I thought I could or should try to do all that other stuff while on vacation!

    As I prepare to immerse tomorrow in my day job, I’m anxious to catch up on what I missed and get on with planning for what looks like a very busy fall schedule.

    The one book I did read was a good one.  Earlier this year I joined the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.  I certainly didn’t see myself as a marketer, but I felt it would be a good way to connect with some industry peers focused on similar issues involving social media.  Well, it was – and I certainly recommend it.  I have met many great thinkers and experts on the topic of WOM over the past several months.  I’ve been particularly taken by the convergence social media is driving between marketing, customer service, online support and product feedback functions – driving connections across these silos should be a top priority for any company that wants to continue to have long term success.

    A friend introduced me to Andy Sernovitz who I’ve had the pleasure of talking with now on several occasions.  Andy wrote an excellent book called Word of Mouth Marketing:  How Smart Companies get People Talking.  Andy has been a great contact for me and I certainly owe him a personal thanks for the conversations, but also want to recommend this book to anyone looking for smart, easy to follow guidance on how to implement Word of Mouth in your marketing strategy.

    WOM

    This is the book I wish I had read 3-4 years ago (though it wasn’t out then:)).  I can certainly see how this book would have changed how I thought about and implemented the programs, practices and internal negotiations I’ve been responsible for in recent years.  Andy brings nice structure to action planning through the 5 Ts:

    • Talkers:  Find the people talking about you
    • Topics:  Give people a reason to talk
    • Tools:  Help the message spread faster and farther
    • Taking part: Join the conversation
    • Tracking:  Measure and understand what people are saying

    Now, here I am "Word-of-Mouthing" on the book – uh, hmmm – nice job Andy.

    Hope to see you in November at the Word of Mouth Marketing Summit where I get to present this year!

    Sean

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  10. “Popfly:” I love it when we have a sense of humor…

    Friday, 18 May 2007 No Comments Posted by:

    I was reading a bit today about Popfly….

    Who is Popfly:

    The Non-Professional tools team builds software to enable new, hobbyist, and other non-professional programmers – as well as complete non-programmers – to build and share their work. Our team’s vision is to democratize development by making it approachable to an entire class of people that want to "create" without necessarily having to write code. We believe that if you can send an email, you should be able to build and personalize your own website, mashup, social networking site, or blog.

    I need to play with this a bit more before I comment on its coolness as a community / social networking / Mashup for non-pro developers.  Those who read my site regularly will know that the notion of "democratization" is a key principle for me around community development.

    But, what actually caught my eye was more to the notion of corporate transparency – in particular I’ve blogged here before about how new media enables a different kind of "corporate voice" to emerge than expected – one that is a bit more authentic.  The specific example that I liked was here in the FAQ:

    Why did you call it Popfly?

    Well, left to our own devices we would have called "Microsoft Visual Mashup Creator Express, May 2007 Community Tech Preview Internet Edition," but instead we asked some folks for help and they suggested some cool names and we all liked Popfly.

    This is beautiful!!  Nicely done.  Never hesitate to show a bit of personality and poke fun at yourselves a bit – this is just plain good web 2.0 authenticity.

    Learn more about Popfly on Channel9.

    Oh, and speaking of Channel 9…another great example of the unexpected, authentic voice is here in the ReadMe.txt:

    Channel 9 Doctrine #8:  Don’t be a jerk. Nobody likes mean people.

    This is not the language, tone and manner that users expected on corporate web sites….this unexpectedness is what makes it great and honest.

    Sean

     

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