The Herculean Effort to Stop Ignoring Customers

If social is but a channel, then the real issue for companies lies in embracing feedback from their most important stakeholders: Their customers.
That was the focus of the Forrester Customer Experience Forum last week in New York City (photos here).

Organizations struggle with corporate barriers to moving towards their customers. Controlling the experience has long been the domain of various departments from product marketing to customer service. Giving stakeholders a voice in that process — via phones, email, mail, participation and yes, social media — has been the antithesis of many corporate cultures for decades. Yet according to Forrester, by failing to embrace their customers and bulwarking their experience, companies are denying themselves serious benefits:

• 14.4% of customers would purchase more
• 15.8% of customers would be less likely to switch brands
• 16.6% of customers would refer the brand more often

Yet in spite of these beneficial numbers, progress seems daunting. During the Chief Customer Officer panel (yes, this is apparently a title), two panelists indicated they were making progress, meeting with company executives as often as once a month or more… Once a month? That’s it?

But for every ten companies haltingly talking to and listening to their customers, there is a Virgin America. The entire company seems to be built around creating the ultimate, enjoyable (gulp) airline experience. As CEO David Cush went through his session, you couldn’t help but smile and admire the audacious brilliance of Richard Branson as he turns the American airline industry on its ear. This is how companies should be built.

Barriers to Adoption

We’ve discussed this before here on the Buzz Bin. There are serious cultural barriers to adopting social media, and in general, customer feedback (find a link to a white paper here). Siloed corporate structures prevent companies from listening to and embracing their customers.

Forrester outlined a five stage process that organizations need to go through to foster the evolutionary change towards a customer-centric organization:

1) Interest - Discuss that there may be a problem with customer interaction and that the company may need to research its stakeholders

2) Invest - Upon realizing that there is a lack of understanding about customer needs, get the company to invest in a “voice of the customer” program

3) Commit - This is where getting C-Suite buy-in is absolutely necessary for success. The company must commit to responding to customer feedback.

4) Engage - Take the feedback from customers, and apply it across the line. Change the experience.

5) Embed - Make the customer experience feedback loop and product innovation part of the actual cultural lifeblood of the organization.

According to Forrester, most American companies are either in stage one or two of the five stages. I think part of the failure to adapt has to do with the tendency to use old ways to affect change. Consider the siloesque idea of a customer department or initiative, rather than realizing customer centric behavior affects a company across the line.

Consider how David Armano and the team at Dachis are starting to address the challenges of cultural barriers to customer interaction (pictured above). They see multiple nodes touching hubs throughout an organization. Similarly, Charlene Li’s latest research is focusing on how companies embrace their customers to become socialprises.

The challenge to becoming a customer-centric organization is not as easy as simply listening. It involves reinventing many an organization’s actual structure and workflow. Cultural barriers to success cannot be underestimated.

The Social Backlash

Throughout the conference there was a very clear and present resistance to social media hype. Every single discussion around our new media certainly recognized its value as a great way to converse with customers. Every successful company featured at the Forum had some kind of social component, even if it was just listening to feedback.

But more and more, you heard executives rejecting social media as a panacea for customer ills and feedback. In fact, there were discussions about the viability of Twitter in the long term as a scaleable tool, and whether it really could supplant news organizations for information.

While companies recognize social media for its value as a toolset, they don’t see it as the cure all for an actual experience, and don’t see it as the alpha and omega for customer contact points. Instead it is one of several ways customers discuss their experiences from calls, web site chats, email, etc. There was a huge emphasis on multichannel integration of customer voices throughout the conference.

This backlash seems to me be a result of overhype. A smart communicator can see this. Customers don’t touch a company in one, singular channel. They have many touches from ads, news, web sites (standard and mobile) and packaging all the way through to the actual product experience. To think that social media is it for a company is a horrific error. And the implication of the current hype cycle would only have companies communicating in 140 character sound bytes. Thus the very natural backlash.

Related Buzz Bin Posts

• Cultural Challenge to Integration
• Moving from Siloes to Hives
• Examining Siloed Processes
• There Is No Social Media Department
• The Socialprise: A White Paper

Person 1: "You've never heard of [insert name of social media "rock star" of your choice here]??" (I'm leaving the name out to protect the innocent)

Person 2: "When my mother has heard of him, then you know he's famous."

But let's not kid ourselves. Using social media as part of your marketing mix is far more than recruiting some uber-connected individual who can bring attention to your brand. It starts with crafting a strategy and understanding what your business objectives are. And it means never, ever taking your eye off the customer and doing what matters - providing value to them. After all, isn't that what you're in business for?

A poignant reminder from Seth Godin (as interviewed by Debbie Weil) on that very topic here:


(Facebook readers, click through for the video)

Photo source: ovaratli (Flickr)

According to a recent Mintel study cited by eMarketer, people who bought a product based on a

recommendation did so based on this breakdown:

#hotmen And to prove it, I'm late with this blog post.

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by the never predictable, always thoughtful Dave Delaney with a scheme that I can only describe as hairbrained inspired. I've known Dave to go to bat for individuals before, raising money for good causes. Many were local businesses or colleagues, but Dave's passion always rang true and led him to success.

So that's where the latest idea came in. Dave decided to plant his tongue firmly in his cheek and ask a number of us (18, to be exact), to pose for the Hottest Men on Twitter Calendar. No lie.

But if it were all about just seeing (cough) hot guys, we wouldn't sell a single copy. Well, that's not entirely true - Jason Falls would buy one so he could hang Mr. April in his office.

But there had to be a hook. Dave's angle: 40% of the proceeds of the calendar (the net after production costs) will go to DonorsChoose.org, where teachers post projects and how much they cost, and you can choose what to fund. It's a great cause.

So, if you're in the market for 18 months worth of photos, including a hot & sweaty new media consultant, a buff and bronzed mobile marketer, a fearless community leader, a voice-over guy like no other, a humorist extraordinaire, a woodcrafter-cum-social media marketer, a podcaster across borders, and possibly the bravest geek I know - then this is the purchase for you. Even the Village Voice is taking notice. Oh. Wait.

"But I have absolutely no interest in this kind of thing," I hear you saying. Fine. Don't make me pull a National Lampoon. Do it for the children, for I believe the children are our future. Here's what you can do:

1. Please purchase the calendar by clicking here.

2. And share the link around, using the hashtag: #hotmen.

And just for fun, vote for your favorite "hot" man on Twitter. I haven't got any favorites, but I hear there's an October surprise. (Not-so-subtle hint: I'll reward you with many fine blog posts).

Thanks for joining in the fun here. Let's work together so we can help raise enough money to give these deserving teachers and children some resources they need.

Want proof?

One need look no further than Michael Richards, who was caught via cellphone video making a racist rant at a comedy club. It's still the #1 search result on YouTube for "Michael Richards." And President Ronald Reagan made a famous gaffe during a microphone check, unaware that he was being broadcast live:



How does that apply online or in social media? Every tweet you make, every blog post you write, every video you record - it all adds up to showing the world who you are. And since content is easily discoverable by Google, the content you (or your company) produce needs to reflect what you want it to. For example, just the other day, I was told that I was the subject of someone's presentation, and they showed my Twitter feed up on a big screen. If I were careless about what I wrote, my stream might have been embarrassing. Luckily, that's not the case.

Since you never get a second chance to make a first impression, every single piece of copy, every minute of video, every utterance you make can become a decision point for someone. It may be a potential customer, a prospective employer, maybe even a family member. Make your actions count.

Have you run into a situation where you you either gave someone an impression you didn't intend to, or you discovered something about someone that made you think twice about them? I'd be interested in hearing from you.

Photo credit: iNafih