Contact Centers disconnected!

This week I had the pleasure of sitting in a panel at the Belgian national conference for contact centers.  Since the theme of the conference was “look who is talking”, it seemed appropriate the discussion touched on social media.  To my big surprise, social media seems to be an unknown and much feared topic within the contact centers environment.

Will virtual communities replace contact centers?

The biggest fear seems to come from the fact that people are going to switch from a contact center to virtual communities to get their questions answered or to find information.  To a certain degree this is true but I am convinced that there will always be a place for these contact centers.  Not everyone is online and some of us rather talk to a human being via the phone. Some companies are using Skype-like solutions to talk with their customers as Rabo Bank from Holland demonstrated.

Conclusion 1: Customers will use the channel that fits their needs and behaviors to find information.  After the hype, a new balance between will established and social media will be part of it.

Conclusion 2: Contact centers should add the social media channel to their product offering to be more attractive to both the company and the customers.

Contact centers are not connected to social media while their clients and employees are.

My quick research and market study project confirmed that less than 50% of the members of the Belgian contact center association (90 companies strong) have a social media profile.  Of those who do have one we can safely say that they operate in an international environment.  Checking some of the monitoring, the results are in line with my previously published study (40% twitter response and less than 5% Facebook response)  Keep in mind that most of the companies that replied are international companies.

The main reason for this disconnect seems to be the fear of the negativism.  Contact centers do have a “bad” reputation and they are not looking for yet another channel to get bashed.  Plus there are not that many public success stories around social media in contact centers.  The fear of the unknown and inexperience are a close second and third in terms of why contact centers are not on social media.

Conclusion: It is safe to state, that these most of the companies are not connected to or do not even monitor what is being said about them in social media.  It is certainly not a service they offer to their clients. An opportunity lost? Or a unique selling point for further business?

Modern media and technology require a super agents in the contact center.

Here it becomes really clear that contact centers underestimate the qualities and skills of the people they hire.  They forget that most people (and there are over 3.5 million Belgians on Facebook – just to name one) are taking part in social media before or after working hours. I am sure that some even take part during working hours through their mobile devices.

Conclusion: What is really needed is a good code of conduct, call it is a social media policy, and some advice on how to behave correctly on behalf of the company (language, tone of voice, etc.) in the same manner they get when they are behind a phone.

What is next?

In the new balance of contact channels, it is clear that social media will find its place.  It will not replace the contact center but it will help further redefine their operational model.  Contact centers should embrace social media to both serve their client companies as well as find new employees that understand fully this medium.

Implementing a social media policy and monitoring tools should be at the top of the agenda of priorities for 2011. These are going to be key to the success and level of professionalism of the contact centers.

There is no way around it, join or lose customers!

I would love to hear you your feedback, experiences and comments.

Mic Adam

Is Obama checking in into the White House…

Using Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook Places?  Or does Sarkozy at the Elysée? The Queen at Buckingham Palace?  Or even closer to home, Yves Leterme at the Lambertmont #1?  We are sure of one thing: Bart De Wever and Elio Di Rupo are not using it to plan their “secret location” meetings to form a government.

What is this all about?

Location based social network applications are among the fastest growing sectors of the digital world and getting a lot of attention.  Where as Facebook answers the question “What is on your mind?” and Twitter “What is happening?”, location based software answers the question “Where are you?”.

Foursquare and Gowalla are today’s leading players.  They have quickly understood that check-ins need more than just telling people “where” you are.  They are offering badges and mayorships to maintain competitiveness and keep users interested.  Facebook is now also joining the race with the introduction of Facebook Places.

Today, location based social media is a narcissistic tool focusing on bragging rights tied to a leader board, number of check-ins and mayorships. But the business potential it holds is enormous.  Just image that when you check-in at a store on the high street, you can get an 10% extra discount on the spot if you show them the message you get back from the software.

Personal implications

Location based services are a great tool to bring the old and traditional networking back to life. Whenever you check-in using this type of service, you will get a list of friends in the neighborhood – as well as their location – inviting you to go and see them.

Of course, with every upside there is a downside.  When you are checking in, you are making your location public and wave the right to privacy.  Linking this update to your other social media profiles amplifies the reach of this message.  When you check-in, you tell the world you are not home and should keep in mind that there are people in the world that will take advantage of this piece of information (www.pleaserobme.com).

Business implications

Attracting clients to a retail business might be fine, but in a B2B environment the benefits are more difficult to demonstrate.  Yes, you can get clients to come to your booth at a show, get info on your client’s preferences, etc.

Mentioning the clients where you are might be great advertising (you think), though checking in at these clients might not be the best practice since other people might be listening in and finding new prospects. On another note, you might be violating your client’s confidentially or they might not want their name mentioned in connection to you.  Personally, I feel that you should not mention client and project names and this should be clearly stated in your social media policy.

But what about me?

Let me take you back to the mid-80’s when I had to spend 7 weeks in the USA for a product training.  At that time, I made the decision to never go and eat twice at the same restaurant.  I ended up after those 7 weeks with a document of restaurants which I had rated.  My list became a hot ticket for the people in the training department since they were able to advice their trainees on different places.

Of course, I use location based software today, however my social media policy the guideline says that I should never mention the client or their building on this service.  So, when giving away my location, I tend to name the restaurant or hotel in the neighborhood where I have lunch, coffee or a break.  My connections get the benefit of where I am, but my client’s privacy is protected.

The future?

More and more devices will have built-in location aware technology and this will fuel the growth of this software application area.  I even want to go so far as to say that the location based software will become the front-end to most of our social media platforms.  Where B2C will initially rake in the benefits of this technology, B2B will soon follow. I wonder how fast the evolution in this field will be..

BTW, The Answer…

To the question posed at the beginning of this article is NO.  Obama does not check in at the White House, nor does Sarkozy or the Queen at their work residences.  Even Yves Leterme doesn’t.  But who does?  People looking for their 15 minutes of fame!

Mic Adam

Social Media Policy Creator, Vanguard Leadership

Originally appeared in De Tijd in september 2010

Are your tweets being answered?

Over the course of the summer months, Vanguard Leadership did a social media monitoring study and found that 40% of all companies have a company Twitter account (sample size: 540 companies).  It is one thing to have an account, but listening and using it is a different thing.  The research, confirmed by a study done in the UK by Wildfire PR in April 2010, that only 40% of the tweets are answered.

Maybe a few simple guidelines may make of Twitter a true engagement tool.

1. Create a Twitter account but use a meaningful but short Twitter name.  This will allow you to create longer messages and easier for retweets mentioning your name.
2. Don’t be cryptic knowing that you only have 140 characters to get your message across.
3. Use URL shorteners when tweeting web addresses.
4. Respond to tweets quickly.
5. Give followers a reason to follow you.
6. Add value and  retweet interesting messages.

One thing you should stay away from is to use Twitter as just another one-way broadcasting channel.  It is the quickest way to loosing your followers.

Are you one of those companies that is answering its tweets?  I love to hear from you on what other tips you want to share?  You do not agree with my points?  Let me know.

Making your company more visible

The company website is the main point of activity for most companies.  But since this is a somewhat static environment, companies are joining social media in the hope that they will be able to get closer to their customers and create a two-way conversation.

From research done by Vanguard Leadership in Belgium and Wildfire PR in the UK, companies are creating social media profiles but few make them public on their website.  Only 25% have such links on their website and are thus loosing opportunities to direct their customers to their social media sites.

Why do companies not advertize these profiles?  One could say that social media is not part of the company’s strategy; others will say that IT does not want to put this on the website; even more others will just say they do not care but the main reason is that no one thought about doing this!

So once you joined Social Media as company, here are some tips for you:

1. Claim your social media profiles in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others.  Do not let others squat your social media names and pages.
2. Display your social media links on your landing page – highly visible!  Do not hide them somewhere in “Links” or “Contact us”.
3. Why not add social media profiles of your staff (especially when you are in recruitment).  Professionally looking LinkedIn profiles will be great image builders for the person and the company.
4. Give people reasons to sign up and follow you on social media.
5. Add a “Share” button to your website to encourage further sharing
6. Use email signatures to promote your company’s social media profiles.

Increasing your visibility and it will eventually lead to new opportunities and increased sales.

If you have any comments, you can post a comment or contact me by mail at adammic@vanguard-leadership.be

Are companies listening to their social media accounts?

Social media is growing at phenomenal rate.  The popularity of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, Video and Photo platforms together with the ease of use of technology is now making social media a great tool for companies and their marketers to get closer to their customers.  So many companies are taking steps towards social media.

However, social media implies two-way communication (interaction with/engagement of the customers) and presents therefore a number of new challenges for companies: visibility, monitoring and engagement.  When these 3 elements are ignored, a lot of opportunities are lost.  It also demonstrates that social media is not integrated into the company strategy.  The market study looks at all 3 areas.

Limited visibility.

Many companies (71%) do have some kind of presence in social media meaning a business profile, but less 1 in 4 (25%) make that visible on their website.  LinkedIn seems to be most popular social media platform where companies have such a profile.  Facebook and Twitter are still not much used by companies.

Are you really listening?

When it comes to listening, there are 3 types that should be covered: (1) What is said in the “cloud of social media platforms” about the company, its brands and its people; (2) What is posted on the social media platforms/profiles of the companies (opportunities to engage) (3) What are your own employees posting on social media platforms .  The research revealed that companies are not listening… Twitter is the best monitored social media platform, while Facebook is really used as additional advertising channel.

No, Lack of engagement!

Social media platforms are mainly used as a marketing tool and messages left on company pages are a lot of the time left unanswered.  Only 45% of all Twitter messages were responded to while less than 5% of the messages on Facebook were answered!

Individuals responsible for corporate social media accounts – if companies have appointed them – treat the company social media profiles with far less respect and professionalism than their own personal accounts.

This research is the result of a market study done by Vanguard Leadership in August 2010.  In this market study we have used social media and the internet to build the dataset.  We have analyzed 540 websites of companies (from Bel-20 over Trends Gazellen to general companies across all sectors).  Monitoring was done by posting messages on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin to check the monitoring behavior and response of companies.  The complete report and the presentation can be found on slideshare (report:
http://slidesha.re/cN7RF9
or
http://scr.bi/9LrqbO
– presentation:
http://slidesha.re/8XeWhg
or
http://scr.bi/cxifMV
).

Contact:

Mic Adam

Social Media Policy Creator/General Manager

Adammic@vanguard-leadership.be

Phone: +32 478 50 41 35

Are you a conversationalist on LinkedIn?

As part of my social media monitoring research I have also analyzed the conversation activity on LinkedIn.  Conversations happen at Group, Poll and Answer level.  For groups I focused attention on Belgian groups (with 800+ members) to find out how good a tool LinkedIn is to leverage the knowledge of the crowd.

Here are some remarkable results:

• Groups: 78% of all discussion posts remain UNANSWERED.  15% have less than 5 answers.
• Polls: 71% of polls get between 1 and 20 votes.  Only 2% remain unaswered!
• Answers: Only 12% go “Unanswered” while 44% get less than 5 and 35% between 6 and 20 answers.

The group statistics intrigued me and asked for some more explanation.  I challenged a few groups by posting a discussion about the fact that LinkedIn Groups are a waste of time.  I got 12 answers (in 5 groups – proving my point?).  I want to share the content of these answers with you:

• There are the non-believers (and I am NOT one of them) because of their lack of persistence or success and they gave up.
• LinkedIn is really a tool used to CONNECT with other people which explains why the post “Who will directly connect with me and I will not reject you” is the most popular discussions in a large number of groups (even worldwide!).
• People are TOO BUSY to read and react to the posts or they get too many mails with updates from the groups they below to.
• Discussion topics are started in the WRONG GROUP and with the wrong audience.
• People feel the point of the discussion topic is either to SELL you something or to be proven right and thus refuse to react.
• People do not feel comfortable SHARING their ideas or COMMENTING on ideas with strangers.

So the conclusion is really that LinkedIn is the perfect business tool to connect with other people who you might meet face-to-face to sell your product or service to but not to share ideas with on large scale online.

Enough of the negativism and let’s be positive…

In order to improve the quality of LinkedIn for you and your peers, it is my recommendation that every time you login to LinkedIn you take the time to comment on and contribute to at least one post, vote on one poll and answer one question – total time investment: 15 minutes!  There will be a return on this investment by more people connecting with you which is why you were there to begin with.

Just imagine if in a group of 800 members that log on once a week and follow the recommendations from above, the wealth of information we would have access to? Is that to much to ask?

I love to hear from you with comments, feedback, push back and suggestions.  You can also reach me by mail (adammic@vanguard-leadership.be).

How and where are Belgian companies in social media visibility?

This week the article on “B2B marketers gain ground with social media” (http://bit.ly/byf7PK) got published in one of the groups that I belong to in LinkedIn and opened up for discussion.  The upshot of the article is that 46% of the B2B marketers said that social media is irrelevant to their organization. And more even did not monitor social media.  So engaging customers is still not on the radar of many companies and marketers

This falls in line with some research I am doing during the summer months on social monitoring.  From looking at 540+ Belgian companies of all sizes but mostly in the B2B world, one gets a very mixed message.

Presence in social media?

It is great to see that 71% have some presence in social media, meaning they have a “company profile, page, twitter name, RSS feed, etc.”.

Where in social media?

The most popular social media site is LinkedIn where 2 out the 3 companies have a “company profile”.  Facebook is far less popular with 1 on 2 and twitter drops even further down to 1 in 3.

Visibility?

However, only one in four actually has a link to their social media pages on their website!  And that is typically the responsibility of marketing.   So as a customers who wants to interact with his supplier you will have to put in a good amount of effort to find them.

With these numbers in mind, it is clear that companies and marketers have a long way to go when it comes down engaging with the client.

.  So as a customer you really need to put in a lot of effort into finding and using them.  It adds another level of frustration once you found them that there is no response.  The consequence of this is that clients will post a lot of negative comments about the brand, the company and the product or service.

I would like to illustrate this with a personal example whereby I switched from one mobile phone subscription to another at Mobistar.  It took them a week to get my new subscription up and running (and I could not call out!). I tried to use Facebook, Twitter, and yes even Email and got NO response.  It got fixed but at the cost of a few negative posts on Facebook and Twitter and they now have someone who will advice against their brand at any possible opportunity (and I am not alone I am sure).  Even this post is another stab at them.

I challenge you to post a message on the wall o your favorite Facebook fan page and see if you have a reaction… Out of 55 I got 2!

The conclusion is surely that you need in social media (not everywhere – strategize); easily findable (put it on your website – execute) and most importantly engage your customer (monitor and respond).

More research data coming in upcoming blog posts.  Reaction, feedback, push back or other input welcome.

Are you visible?

Companies are deciding to embrace social media and are creating different social media profiles such as Twitter handle, Facebook Fan page, LinkedIn company profile, Youtube channel, etc.  But companies seem to forget is that you need to make these visible otherwise you miss the point.

From intermediate research results of a study done by Vanguard Leadership, I can see that 2 out the 3 companies (sample is 450 belgian companies of all sizes) do NOT have any links to social media on their website.

Recently I have read that most marketers are monitoring what is being said in the social media space.  So I have looked into this with my study find interesting facts which I will detail later this month. The biggest challenge is to find company Twitter handles and this for a number of reasons.

However, looking beyond the initial numbers, I investigated whether companies are actually listening to what shows up on these social media platform.  Using Twitter I am finding that under 50% are even responding to a message.

The conclusions and recommendations are then:

• Choose your social media that fit your business
• Create the profiles you can manage
• Make sure they easily be found – use obvious names
• Put a link to your social media on your website
• Be open to and welcome interaction and dialogue

Have comments? Feel like reacting?  Why hesitate?

Social media and e-learning survey results

It seems that the training and education departments can greatly benefit from social media.  But are they?  In order to see what the knowledge and acceptance is by training professionals (in the Benelux), I have conducted a market survey. Below you will find the a summary of the results.  For the full document, I would like to refer you to Slideshare where the document will be uploaded.

1. Shaping the future

Today, social media is only at the entrance gate of training departments.  The adoption rate is very small but picking up speed.  This is largely thanks to 3 trends fueled by LinkedIn, Twitter/Facebook and YouTube.

The first trend is that some social media is getting a professional label stuck on it and provides the platform to distribute content (LinkedIn).  The second trend is driven by the buzz generated for social media by platforms such as Twitter or Facebook fuelling fabulous growth to create a connected world.  The third trend is the acceptance of low(er) grade video materials.  Thanks to platforms such as YouTube democratizing video creation by the end user, people are now not expecting “not top notch” videos in a learning environment.

2. Social media and e-learning

When we look at social media and e-learning, we can see 3 different angles appear:

• Use e-learning to understand and use social media
• Use social media to create content for e-learning materials
• Use social media to distribute and offer e-learning materials

3. Overall findings

A large majority (90%) are using social media today, but mainly for private use.  Social media is seen a digital platform (40%) to connect/network (60%+)and share experiences (50%).  The use of social media today is limited (in order of importance) to business networking, personal networking and some video.  In terms of usage it seems a weekly activity (vs a daily activity) where people spend between 1 and 2h.

In terms of usage of social media, training professionals seem to think that social media is not a good vehicle for e-learning, but do see some use for getting content for developing e-learning modules.  When asked where social media could help them in their jobs, close to 60% could not see any use

Finally, when asking about the sources for content to develop e-learning materials, the training professionals tend to lean towards asking people or using specific websites. And not social media.

4. Some issues

During a number of face-to-face conversation, I have tried to get a sense of what some of the issues are that stop social media to become mainstream in the training departments.

1. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and others are considered toys by “the business”.
2. Social media is seen as a “timewaster”
3. The lack of understanding and experience creates a lot of aversion to the technology
4. The general attitude within social media (=give and get back attitude for FREE) is not understood
5. The influence of negative news and stories create a bad atmosphere around the topic

None of this is new and limited to the training/education departments but also true for other departments within a company.

5. Challenges

The challenges that are awaiting e-learning and social media are:

• How to learn socially?
• How to effectively use the different platforms?
• Finding success stories?
• Defining social media return on investment for e-learning?
• Management buy-in?
• Whether to create a private social network vs. public social networks?

Social media will become mainstream in e-learning but it will take some time and some good success stories to fuel this evolution.

For more a more detailed report please go to
http://slidesha.re/bhEyks

Reaction, Comments, Feedback, etc. are welcome!  Need more info? contact me “Mic Adam”

Email: adammic@vanguard-leadership.be

Mob. +32 478 50 41 35

Twitter: @micadam

Website: www.vanguard-leadership.be

Find me also on Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Xing, Viadeo, Ecademy Netlog, etc.

3 more items to add to your social media policy

A few weeks ago, I covered 3 items that could not be missing from a social media policy (Company philosophy towards social media, handling conflict and identity).  In a more recent post, I covered the reading and acceptance of the “terms of service”.  Today, I would like to add 3 more items to the list: disclaimers, ownership and hardware/software usage.

Starting with disclaimers, it sounds obvious but any personal blog should have clear disclaimer stating that the views expressed by the author in the blog is the author’s alone and do not represent the views of the company. Be clear and write in first person. Make your writing clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of the company.

When it comes to ownership, this area of the policy will clarify who owns what in terms of groups, fans, pictures, etc.  It is clear that anything created under the company’s logo and identity (email address included) is company property and should be transferable.

Finally, it is important to add a paragraph on hardware and software since the user will probably use a mix of platforms (work PC, home PC and/or mobile device).  These need to be protected against attacks and intrusions in order to protect the data of the company in profiles and others.  The use of company assets (computers, Internet access, email, etc.) is intended for purposes relevant to the responsibilities assigned to each employee. A clear statement about where what can be used at all time is a must and gives clear direction.

It is also a good idea for the company to provide information on what resources (eg. bandwidth used by YouTube) is taken up by different applications so that people are aware of the limitations and limit themselves the usage of certain platforms.

By implementing these 7 items, you are well on your way to creating a social media policy.  It is by far not all what can or needs to be such in a policy.  In future posts I will expand on more topics.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me.

Email: adammic@vanguard-leadership.be

Mob. +32 478 50 41 35

Website: www.vanguard-leadership.be

Blog:
http://micvadam.wordpress.com/

Find me also on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Netlog, etc.