• If You Say You’re Going To Listen, Then Listen

    Posted on April 28th, 2011 by and currently 1 commenting.

    “Listening” to your customers has become quite the trend in marketing practice, especially when social media channels are utilized. It’s incredible when you think about it – there are people talking about your brand, and you can see those statements and conversations happening – in real time. Now, the influence of offline conversations is still more influential than social media online, but these new technologies have given marketers insights that simply weren’t available before. Very cool stuff.

    But what happens when a brand wants to use ‘listening platforms’ to broadcast marketing messages to their customers they same way they have in the past? Many companies who employ the broadcast mentality find themselves repeating a familiar cycle in a new venue: coming up with catchy hooks over and over to keep people excited. (The traditional model isn’t wrong, it just leaves a whole lotta potential on the table.)

    Other companies take a more precarious route, making the claim that they want to listen, but not acting on the exchange they have with their customers. Many brands actually make this work, but it can turn and bite you if you don’t keep a very careful hand on the leash.

    Motorola provided a shining example of this recently. They asked their 300,000+ fans, “What cool Android apps would you like to see next from developers?” (1)

    Many people expected requests for music players or a Netflix streaming app, but unfortunately, this opened up a deeper issue for Motorola. Their users want more control of their Android devices. (Bear with me through the nerdy paragraph below.)

    Specifically, they want an ‘unlocked bootloader.’ (Don’t raise your hand if you know what that is.) I’ll spare you the nerd details, but essentially, Motorola and other phone manufacturers leverage Android’s open-source operating system to install their own user interfaces on devices. Motorola’s version is called ‘Motoblur,’ HTC’s version is called ‘HTC Sense,’ and so on. Some versions include some pretty slick interface features.

    For many users (yes, lots of geeks), the downside to a slick interface is that the phone manufacturer locks you in, limiting your control of the device. pocketnow.com, one of the sites that broke this story (2), says that an unlocked bootloader gives you ” the ability to do what you want with your phone.”

    Here’s the fascinating part: as far as I can tell, Motorola didn’t respond.

    I lack the technological knowledge to if Motorola has a legitimate reason to manage software the way that they do, but not responding to an overwhelming response (around 10,000 people requested an unlocked bootloader (3)) raises a lot of questions in customers minds about whether Motorola really wants to listen, and whether they will do anything with the feedback that they do get.

    Maybe opening the poll to user suggestions wasn’t such a good idea.

    We’ve been known to recommend that clients not engage in social media because they weren’t ready to put the work in that is required to have a real conversation.

    If you say you’re going to listen, listen.

    • (1) You can find Motorola’s Facebook Question about Android apps here.
    • (2) You can see the original pocketnow.com article here.
    • (3) The article citing 10,000 responses is here.

  • Less Diagnosis, More Scalpel

    Posted on March 22nd, 2011 by and currently 13 commenting.

    Wondering why no one listens to your good ideas? Start making them happen and you’ll have people’s undivided attention. –Jesse Gardner (1)

    Have you noticed a proliferation of diagnosticians in the last few years? Think about it – if the fans at the sports bar were coach, they wouldn’t have made that horrible substitution. If politicians could just understand the oh-so-simple solutions touted by blog commenters, our country’s problems would be righted in short order. And if that self-made social-media-blogger were in charge of social media for that Fortune 100 brand, they wouldn’t have made that big mistake, and fans would flock to the brand’s conversation by the thousands. Right?

    This is an age old problem – people have always had opinions and shared them in some form or another. As communication has become faster, shortened to soundbites, and shrouded by anonymity, though, it seems that people have taken to their soapboxes en masse to make their stance known and vie for their share of audience. They are creating a vast sea of digital diagnosis.

    How many diagnosticians does it take to fix a problem, though?

    In my experience, diagnosticians aren’t the ones who fix things. Surgeons fix the actual problems, diagnosticians define them. (Many surgeons do both.) The role of defining shouldn’t be downplayed – accurately understanding the problem is crucial to a safe and successful procedure. But if it stops at diagnosis and a skilled professional doesn’t wield a scalpel at some point, the problem isn’t really addressed.

    Many of the most talented and successful people I know don’t pay much attention to their soapboxes because they are simply too busy using good diagnosis to fix problems or implement solutions to be overly concerned with what people think of their perspective. At the end of the day, their beliefs will be clearly evident in the trail of solutions they create as they move forward.

    In 2011, my goal is less diagnosis and more scalpel. A lot more.

    —————-

    (1) See the original quotation from Joshua Blankenship’s blog here.

  • Remember: It’s the User

    Posted on January 5th, 2011 by and currently 1 commenting.

    When is the last time someone told you something similar to this:

    I wanted to apologize for dropping the ball and not reading your 3 urgent emails that were really critical to meeting the deadline. I’m busy and sometimes I get flooded with messages, but the real problem is that I let those excuses persuade me to ignore email or procrastinate as opposed to really putting forth the effort to efficiently manage my time and communication.

    Once? Never? The confession is admittedly over-stated, and I’m still earning my spurs, but I can count the number of times I’ve seen someone so deliberately shift responsibility from external factors to their own responsibility (or lack thereof) on one hand.

    A friend told me a story recently about communication that was ignored and a narrow escape from the tragedy of letting a client down. (Unfortunately not so rare in agency life.) In the aftermath, the response he received went something like this: “Sorry I didn’t catch that message yesterday. That’s why I hate email sometimes.”

    What?

    The phrase sounds familiar, but look at it a little more closely. What’s the source of the problem? Exactly. Not the medium.

    My friend described the problem brilliantly: “I can’t tell my mortgage company, ‘Oh, I didn’t see that bill. That’s why I hate letters so much.’ Do yourself a favor and don’t ever blame email when your repeated decision not to manage it well is actually at fault.” Ouch. (It reminds me of hearing a great musician make my cheap guitar sound phenomenal while I complain about how thick the strings are.)

    But the problem goes deeper than email, doesn’t it? Why do I think that a project I’m working on could be really successful if the issues with other team members would get out of my way? Why have I tried two handfuls of different to-do list methods in the last year and thought each time that I would be magically propelled closer to deadlines ? I think it’s because my gut reaction is to reach for things that won’t make me ask hard questions about my own leadership or procrastination.

    The hard truth is that it’s simply easier to blame things around us rather than take full responsibility for doing the things we need to do and changing the things we need to change. Remember, it’s the user.

  • Boots on the Ground: Another Case for Offline

    Posted on December 1st, 2010 by and currently 5 commenting.

    Joe Taylor seems like a pretty sharp guy. He’s on the front lines of figuring out how musicians can navigate the stormy seas of the new music landscape, and he’s written four books on the subject (1). I recently ran across a really interesting article he wrote about how crucial offline relationships are for those in the music industry (2).

    Joe agrees that musicians are required to be multi-talented multi-taskers now more than ever. If you think there is high pressure on businesses to navigate the stormy sea of the social internet, take a peek over the edge of the deck and see what musicians are having to do to raise the sails and move their vessels. If the internet has changed the world of marketing, it has taken the world of music to another planet. Increasingly, artists are forced into self management and the frustrations of streaming, stealing, leaking, promotion, scheduling, touring, and awareness, not to mention having to actually write and record good music. They must face the problems that the web poses and the opportunity it creates.

    Not surprisingly, many artists have progressively invested more and more of their time in online resources, spreading their music and networking across the industry. But, as Joe points out, that might not be the best allocation of resources in the long run:

    Don’t let social media gurus fool you. Online connections can get you access to some significant advisors, but the face to face connections you make will turn into significant partnerships much faster. This isn’t your excuse to start expensing trips to every music conference under the sun, either. It’s about developing the skills to get the people you meet under everyday circumstances interested in your project and involved in your network, so you can help your artists find their perfect audience.

    Joe, you’re a kindred spirit, and thanks for the reminder that the internet isn’t a quick fix to the issues we’ve faced all along.

    (1) – You can find Joe’s books here.

    (2) – You can read Joe’s article, “Music Management Skills: Network in person, not just online.” here.

  • What is Realistic? (An Internal Brains on Fire Conversation)

    Posted on November 17th, 2010 by and currently 9 commenting.

    Yesterday I keyed out an idea for a blog post that has been floating around in my head for a while. When I finished the piece it felt a little weird upon reading, so I sent it to the sharp-minded Alexis Bass for feedback. The conversation that ensued was really interesting, and garnered a few more members when it moved from email to several people gathered at Alexis’ desk. For today’s post, I thought it would be interesting to simply share the original post and the email exchange. The thoughts are unedited and there isn’t a synthesized conclusion, but hopefully it will serve to inspire thinking and conversation.

    NOW!

    The original post:

    I’ve been thinking lately about realistic expectations, primarily expectations that customers place on companies.

    I started formalizing my thoughts in an article in called, “A Salute to Companies Sticking to Their Guns, (1)” where I made a few points about customer complaints and the internet:

    • ” the knowledge that a company can hear your voice has also given people the ability to complain like they’ve never complained before,”
    • “customers have hijacked the idea that “the customer is always right” as an excuse to complain about or demand unreasonable things en masse, using the information swarm of the internet as the vehicle for their voices.”

    I’m starting to think, though, that those complaints are an expression, or symptom, of unrealistic expectations. (It’s a multi-faceted problem, I think, stemming not only from increased ability to communicate, but also from our culture’s quest for instant gratification and immediacy.) Justin Gammon and I laugh at the classic heavy-social-media-user example: someone has a bad experience on an airplane, sends a Tweet to the carrier’s account, and becomes outraged when they aren’t quickly tended to by a manager with a handful of freebies. It’s even more disappointing (and comical) when the detractor is a ‘marketing expert’ and claims that things would be completely different if they ran the show.

    Hyperbole (kind of) aside, have you seen these unrealistic expectations surface here and there? It’s almost as if some people think the communication capacity of the internet in itself is a mandate for companies to respond to every question and complaint this instant.

    I think some level of expectation happens naturally when a brand enters a venue – if you are going to be an absent participant, then it’s probably not a good idea to step into the medium.

    But some of our recent work has involved actually handling customer inquiries via social media, and I can tell you that it ain’t no walk in the park to navigate a huge organization of busy people with a customer request. I have developed a much, much higher appreciation for people whose job it is to field these types of customer issues. Especially since it’s not in the job description of many of the people who take on the responsibility.

    So, to those of you who put the time, effort, and hard work into answering customer demands via social media, our heart goes out to you. You deserve a huge high-five (and much more) for what you do.

    To those of you who need assistance right now via Twitter, please know that sometimes it takes a while (days, not hours) to find the right person to get information from, even in extremely efficient organizations. You should expect great customer service, but remember that it comes from very busy human beings who often don’t have the answer right in front of them. And their job probably doesn’t allow them to spend all day on social media. (And they probably want to go home at a decent hour tonight, just like you do).

    The emails:

    Alexis’ first response:

    • Devil’s advocate pov:
    • I think the reason companies exist is because of customers and companies are the worst offenders at forgetting who they really work for. To me, this is an issue in any service industry. Companies demand we pay our bills by a certain date they dictate and when we demand for service on a certain day and time…you are met with “our technicians don’t work then”, “they need a two hour window” or “that doesn’t work for us”. The demands of consumers on companies are driven by the demands they face in their everyday lives. A reality it seems companies have forgotten. I can’t be home from 10-12pm waiting on a technician to fix my HVAC because….I have a job too!
    • Sorry for the rant. Would love to talk more about it. Interesting topic.

    Eric’s reply:

    • Mmm, now that’s what I was looking for – I love me some devil’s advocate feedback! Very good food for thought that I definitely need to think through.

    Another response from Alexis:

    • Oh and about immediacy of response, I think that is driven by the way consumers use technology in their own lives. We have SMS and IM and email and Skype…our lives are about instant response. Again, reiterating that companies are forgetting that they deal with real people, not just “consumers”. Being a consumer is just a sliver of my life.

    Eric’s reply:

    • I agree – your point about our lives involving instant response is a good one. I’m not sure how healthy it is, but it is the place our society finds itself.
    • It is very true that companies forget that they deal with humans, not just consumers. And they generally are the worse offenders when it comes to that mindset. At the same time, though, (and this might be a better way to make my point), many customers forget that they are dealing with humans, not a giant machine, and I think the barrier of technology can influence that relationship. I.e., if you ask an employee in a store about a product in the department they work in, your perception / expectations might be different than if you blast a tweet to the company’s Twitter handle.
    • The idea for a post arose from a discussion I had with [Client] about doing [Project work things] and answering all of the customer questions that have come with them. We were talking about how much work goes into answering one stinking question – we’ve (and rightly so) set up an entire workflow for dealing with requests, so what seems like a small thing to someone on [token social network] is actually a huge process behind the scenes in the organization.
    • Great, great conversation and food for thought – I love talking with you about this stuff because your perspective is informed, human, and just smart.

    (1) – You can read the original article, “A Salute to Companies Sticking to Their Guns,” here.

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