What lessons are worth learning from in next gen customer experience?
How do you calculate the ROI of providing customer service in social channels?
How do you handle the complexity of finding the people who will buy your product and service via the right media?
When there is so much shift from the accepted ways of doing things, observing and thinking to understand what to do next can lead to tremendous opportunity.
Next Gen Customer Experience, Social Customer ROI, and Why Digital Marketing Strategy is so Hard
Unless you learn to frame issues for action, you will be trapped in the spiral of analysis paralysis instead of riding the infinite loop of customer conversation.
The three stories that caught my eye this week are:
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How to go from first to last in customer service, R "Ray" Wang talks about Continental in a post United world in lessons learned in next gen customer experience:
[…] it was obvious the airline had taken away the tools to empower employees to deliver an awesome customer experience.
[…] Sadly, even the tools of communication have also been taken away or ignored.
[…] Unfortunately, what’s made the situation worse, the advent of social media. A quick scan on Twitter for #united lands a slew of complaints, mostly unanswered (see Figure 5). What kind of customer experience do you create when you fail to respond to legitimate customer complaints and allow the public to so publicly express their outrage. What kind of customer service on twitter is 9 to 5? […] insiders tell me that the management team believes that their lock on the routes and command of corporate accounts gives them the leeway to treat customers poorly. Others tell me that since the customer backlash from United customers on the potential removal of Economy+, they’ve been afraid to engage in social.
A recent email from United asking members of their Mileage Plus program to sign into their accounts to get their new account number is a strong indication of the company's direction — you're on your own.
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What's the ROI of customer service in social? Is the oft-asked question from management. Kathy Herrmann responds by outlining costs and sample calculations of gains:
Say that you deflect a total of 1,755 issues out of 6,500 new social conversations per month, that leaves 4,745 cases that still require agent assistance per month, or 56,940 per year.
Example case shows ROI = 22.5%
See the savings and costs outlined in the deck.
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Greg Satell explains why digital marketing strategy is so hard:
The marketing industry has spent the last several decades becoming more modular and efficient, but now finds it needs to become more integrated and innovative. That’s the essence of the digital strategy problem. An industry that manages billions of dollars of investment every year can’t simply turn on a dime.
What they can do, however, is recognize the problem. Creative agencies, media houses and digital shops all have specific skills that will serve them well in the digital age. They also have serious deficiencies that they must overcome.
Everything needs to work in concert.
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Are you hiring and working with pattern seekers and execution synthesizers? Why not?