How many gazillions would you need?

Nada.

But how is it possible?

Marketing can be tough
When you think of doing 10,000 events across the world that can bring a drop of sweat to most seasoned marketers.

How did they do it?

Like all magnificent things, it’s very simple

They used the help of their incredible brand advocates.

What is a brand advocate?

Brand advocates are your passionate customers.

In Microsoft’s own words – “They typically have a deep commitment to helping others, voluntarily sharing their passion.”

While there are more than 100 million social and technical community members, only a small portion are selected to be recognized as MVPs. Each year, around 4,000 MVPs are honored. They are nominated by Microsoft, other community individuals, or in some cases themselves. Candidates are rigorously evaluated for their technical expertise, community leadership, and voluntary community contributions for the previous year. They come from more than 90 countries, speak over 40 different languages, and are awarded in more than 90 Microsoft technologies. Together, they answer more than 10 million questions a year!

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2014/07/01/new-and-renewed-mvps-announced-today.aspx

Across the world in six months to January 2009, more than 2,500 MVPs took part in 229 events, reaching out to over 900,000 people in events principally about SQL Server 2008, Internet Explorer and Visual Studio. Both in the virtual space — through podcasts, for example — and face-to-face through user groups and other networking spaces, MVPs share their passion, their knowledge and their know-how.

(text abbreviated)

Nearly 200 MVPs ran almost 10,000 events on SQL Server 2008 and virtualization around the world.

(Italics and bold formatting is mine.)

Astonishing isn’t it? How most companies don’t do this!

I’m amazed each time. Not by reading the example given above, but amazed at how companies even today try to reach out to customers on their own without using the help of their brand advocates. Its just plain silly. The trust factor when connected via someone you know is far higher than a corporate sales person.

Being a truly social business
Companies co-creating with their customers and using their help to increase word of mouth are saving themselves tons of money and are establishing real solid relationships with their most cherished customers.

Brand Advocacy is not a fad, it’s a principle which has been in use since cave men times, it’s been used by religious organizations worldwide (remember the Christian Evangelists).

It’s the most cost effective and helps build a truly social business.

It simplifies the challenge of reaching global audiences by involving the most passionate (brand advocates) members of the audience themselves.

10,000 events organized globally
Nearly 200 MVPs ran almost 10,000 events globally enabling Microsoft to ensure that their content reaches the right global audiences at low costs. Globally their brand advocacy program encourages their brand advocates to reach out to customers on a consistent basis.

The best part the 200 MVP’s volunteered their time at no cost.

Brand Advocacy is one of the most powerful ways that enterprises can ensure that their content reaches the right global audiences at low or no cost.

P.s. If you’d like to learn how to implement a brand advocacy program, grab a preview copy of the brand advocacy book (Limited stocks).

The only place I can buy shoes my size is the United States of America… sounds crazy right… we don’t have large size shoes in stores back home (India). Now what does large shoes have to do with your brand advocacy program and with social media? Everything!

Brand Advocates and Social Media

Do they sound like strange bedfellows? Well they’re not. Being social involves engaging with customers across a huge number of social channels where your customers are. However, it’s difficult for any organization to manage this on their own, considering the limited resources, the volume of conversations and the myriad social channels out there. And if they are doing this, then they’re seriously not leveraging the power of the social network. Social proof causes people to find a third party independent advocate much more credible than an official company representative. That’s the reason why you and I take the time to read a review on sites like Amazon by complete strangers and tend to believe the unknown reviewer.

Moreover, brand advocates, your raving fans, brand defenders, evangelists are the voice of the community and they help amplify your voice across the social networks. A social program without brand advocacy as part of the strategy is missing a crucial ingredient.

The problem with brand advocacy programs

There are very few successful brand advocacy programs. Yep I know it sounds like a strange contradiction considering what I just said about social media and brand advocates. Most brand advocacy programs are challenged with low participation from brand advocates and quite a few are lying dormant after the initial euphoria of signing up the first few brand advocates. But why? There are multiple reasons why this could happen, and I’m going to talk about the segmentation challenge as it’s the most important from the brand advocate point of view.

What’s shoes got to do with it?

You might see a great shoe in the window display of a store, you might go into the store, but unless they have a shoe which exactly fits your feet, you’re not going to buy it, right?

Segmentation is the solution
What is segmentation? Segmentation is the act of creating a product which is relevant to a particular person (target profile). You might have one core product, shoes, but you need to produce it in different sizes targeting the differently sized feet of your customers.

Yawn! How does segmenting help my brand advocacy program? 

Most brand advocacy programs are designed keeping in mind the organizations requirements and objectives and misses out on keeping in mind the motivations and requirements of the brand advocates.

There are different kinds of people who do different activities: promote, review, comment, rate or share with others. If you want to be relevant to these different people you need to segment your program to help them do those activities easily.

What other advantages does segmenting bring to your brand advocacy program?

1. Increase relevance of your content

Have you ever received mail or product content which is just not relevant to you? Raise your hand if you have ( hint hint: the way to do that virtually is to add your comment below

Well, as soon as you think about the various segments or kinds of people who comprise your brand advocates you can make your content more targeted and relevant to the appropriate people.

2. Ensures your messages are well received

I tend to pay more attention, retain and recollect information which is specially tailored to my tastes and requirements. Most of the general stuff I read I tend to forget very soon. Another perspective is it reduces the load and volume of content which I receive and read and hence content which is correctly segmented also ensures I pay more attention to.

What are the disadvantages of not segmenting your brand advocacy program?

Let me share an example:

You receive introductory information about a product which you’re already an experienced user off, and I keep sending you introductory information, instead of maybe best practices and ideas and add-ons to help you leverage the product further. What would happen very shortly? You’d tune off, You’d tend to ignore my messages won’t you? When you don’t segment your brand advocacy program you tend to alienate even your most faithful brand advocates.

Is there anything like too much segmentation?

Segmentation is an on-going process not a one-time activity. For example imagine you’re an enterprise with a number of products. You might initially segment your brand advocates based on the specific products they are customers / advocates about. Next you might segment based on the kind of activity they do, for e.g. some might be blog writers, some might be active on social channels some might be regularly speaking at conferences and meetings. Should one further segment based on the volume of speaking, sharing a person does? What do you think? You stop segmenting where there isn’t necessarily a large enough reason to segment as simple as that.

What to do when you’re unsure of your segmentation strategy?

Turn around the problem, ask your brand advocates, or even better see the kinds of questions they are asking support for, see what the popular articles or discussions are about around your products to identify the top segments. Listening on Social media channels like like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Google+, as well as various online forums and blogs enable you to understand your brand advocate and customer needs and get ideas on how to segment your brand advocacy program.

Example: Microsoft Segmenting their Brand Advocates

Microsoft has a large number of brand advocacy programs. They have brand advocates who write blogs, who support customers on various social channels etc. One of their programs is called the MVP (Most Valuable Professional Program). Microsoft segments the brand advocates in their MVP program based on the products the brand advocates specialize in. Further they have different programs based on whether they are targeting students and professionals. They even have segmentation based on reach versus depth activities the brand advocates do. They also have segmentation based on the kinds of activities the brand advocates do, for e.g. they have a large brand advocate base called Community Contributors who help in supporting other customers via online forums.

So what now?

Remember that one shoe doesn’t fit all, you can’t build a program focused on just one shoe size, people are people, and they have different needs and do different activities. Your brand advocates do a variety of activities on various social channels. Your brand advocate program can increase its relevance by ensuring that it is properly segmented to meet the needs of its brand advocates.

If you’ve found this interesting, and have ideas on segmenting your brand advocate program, please do share your ideas in the comments below, and I’d be happy to chat and possibly help you think thru your ideas.

Next steps? 

1. Managing a brand advocacy program can get lonely Join the Brand Advocacy Community on LinkedIn to get ideas and solutions to your brand advocacy queries.

2. Learn How To Segment your Brand Advocacy Program

3. Get more ideas once a week via our newsletter, enter your email id below to receive it.

This post was originally published on SmartBlog on Social Media.

Have you been in the above situation? Every community manager at some point of time faces the above situation.

5 ideas on how to handle a community member who shows their passion through sting language

Here are my thoughts:

1. One on one engagement might solve it completely. Meet in person or Pick the phone, yeah I know it sounds old fashioned, but it often gets to the heart of the matter the fastest. Or If phone isn’t feasible then go the email route.
2. Do you have a policy in place for the community about how you expect members to communicate? Now might be a good time to put it in place and point it to the membership overall. In fact make sure there is available an easy way for members to communicate back to the Community Manager(CM) about issues with other members. This way it becomes easier to approach the person saying not just you, but other members are also having an issue.
3. Don’t make it personal, sometimes in a rush people don’t realize that they’re being too critical or harsh. So when you connect one-on-one give them examples of how they could have responded to be more valuable to the person they were responding or by saying what they did. Give them examples, showing how they could have responded in each case.

Other considerations (If you as the community manager are new to the position):

4. The easiest way at times might be not for the manager, but a senior member of the community or a friend of the miscreant to do the one-on-one communication. The idea being that when a peer communicates sometimes that’s more effective than someone senior (a.k.a. community manager).

5. Ensure your community platform has a ratings engine, that way the community can self-moderate and down rate members who are unhelpful, too critical, or just stingy

Finally, there are times when you need to take stronger action(removal of the member, legal, etc.) however, the points given here are especially for the situation given in the introductory paragraph, where the member uses stingy language. Simply taking the initiative to immediately talk to the concerned member usually goes a long way in solving the issue.

What has worked for you? How have you handled negative/problem community members? Would you stop being a consumer and share yeah I know I’m asking you to stretch and share… but please do share in the comments below.

Read more:

• http://laurelpapworth.com/8-ways-to-deal-with-negative-comments-on-blogs-and-social-media/
• http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-deal-with-a-negative-situation-within-an-on.html

Read on to learn how you can leverage the power of Brand Advocates and Communities who can provide a formidable high wall of defence to protect you in a crisis, often nipping it in the bud.

Nipping Crisis in the bud… but first lets understand the kinds of issues which companies face:

Not all issues are crisis, and sometimes a timely intervention can prevent a crisis. However one needs to examine the root of the problem before one reaches the stage of leveraging brand advocates and communities.

There are two kind of issues a company faces:

1. Social Media Issues and 2. Social Media Crisis.

Social Media Issues

Social media issues are typically the voices of customers who’re either not satisfied, or not happy with rising prices or are facing a disruption in service or a late shipment etc.

In the normal course of a companies operations, these kind of issues are handled by the customer service team. The social media team can help connect or lead customers to the respective channels to get their requests serviced and typically just an acknowledgement of the issue and some guidance is enough to diffuse it.

Really Large Organization Issues

When it comes to the Fortune 500, the problem is a different one, the sheer number of customers can at times mean that your large internal support teams are just not able to service customer support requests. Can you even begin to imagine the size of the problem faced by an organization the size of Microsoft?

Communities and Brand Advocates to the Rescue

Microsoft leverages communities/ user groups extensively. It has built custom communities for the sole purpose of enabling peer to peer support. Customers helping each other.

I’ve included below details from the Microsoft Frequently Asked Questions section of the site.

Q1. What is the Microsoft® Community Contributor Award?
A1. It is an award offered by Microsoft which is designed to recognize notable contributions to Microsoft online community forums such as TechNet, MSDN®, and Answers.

Q2. Do Microsoft Community Contributor Award recipients represent Microsoft?
A2. No. Awardees are not Microsoft employees, nor do they speak on Microsoft’s behalf. Awardees are independent third-party individuals who have received an award from Microsoft that recognizes their notable contributions to Microsoft online technical communities.

Q4. Do Microsoft Community Contributor Award recipients receive any payment from Microsoft?
A4. No. Recipients of the Microsoft Community Contributor Award receive a small benefit which can serve as a resource for their participation in technical forums, but they do not receive any monetary payment from Microsoft.

Amazing isn’t it, the possibilities, customers helping each other. This is a tiny snapshot of how Microsoft leverages communities and brand advocates.

As of current estimates there are more than 2000 independent user groups and a few thousand brand advocates supporting the company. Each of these help nip issues in the bud before they become a crisis.

Social Media Crisis

If the issue is faced by a large number of frustrated/angry customers with strong negative emotional responses then the issue can often escalate into a crisis. Most savvy companies typically have teams which handle these crises. However sometimes the problem is even bigger.

When normal intervention by Customer Service or PR Teams Fail

Here one is looking at extremely strong wide spread negative emotional responses, it’s like a crusade, one media outlet after the other carries the story, bloggers, online publications, heck it even flows to offline media channels.

Brand Advocates: The Secret Weapons of Crisis Management

From a company perspective its like an all out battle, with exhausted internal and external agencies messing things further. Or the classic deer in the headlights syndrome where the key decision makers don’t know what to do. A single brand advocate can turn the tide.

E.g. Samsung faced a recent crisis, they had cancelled a blogger’s airplane ticket on a press trip for refusing to write about the brand. The social fabric was like ripped from under their feet as they story bounced all over the web across a large number of publications with people across the web voicing extremely strong opinions.

A Single Calming Voice

However, a single brand advocate sharing his side of the story seemed to be like a calming balm in cyberspace. Now people could see multiple perspectives from someone who they identified with, someone who is not a company employee or from the PR agency. A third party who shared the same dais but had a different perspective and experience. The point here is not to say that either party was right or wrong. However, one single advocate seemed to turn the tide.

What about malicious campaigns run by others?

A competitor may tweet or post malicious information either on

- Their own site

- A social media channel

- Or third party channels

In either case the rules are quite straight forward:

There are things you can do on an individual basis and use the help of your community and brand advocates. In either case, the first step is acknowledging the issue, and not denying it. Making sure that you communicate on those channels where the campaign is being run, but leading people to a detailed clarification on your channel.

A recent example of this was where Microsoft attempted to address a campaign by Apple. In addition to traditional media which they ran campaigns on, they were supported by thousands of Microsoft’s Brand Advocates who charged right in, to defend their favorite platform. This time it wasn’t a cacophony but the sweet sound of music sung by the brand advocates in their favor. It wasn’t so much as trying to win a war against Apple, the point was rather to rally their customers around their platform.

The bottom line being that in this social era you need all the help you can, especially when crisis can springs up on you, due to a variety of reasons. You can’t do it alone.

Your brand advocates and communities can be an invaluable support ecosystem in helping you manage both issues as well as crisis.

Your Turn: Do share your experiences where you’ve leveraged brand advocates and communities especially in crisis management.

Relationships are the life blood of your brand advocacy program especially in the social business era. However, you need to cultivate and build those individual relationships.

This can prove challenging as the size of your brand advocacy program grows. Read on to learn how you can refuel your brand advocacy program with the fuel of the Social Economy – Individual Relationships.

Brand Advocacy: Why focus on building individual relationships?

Brand Advocates are people, people are individuals, having different goals, styles of working and preferences. Painting them with one common brush is ineffective. Brand Advocates are individuals first, they may have similar needs but expect and deserve to be treated as individuals.

The Corporate Challenge – Treating advocates like sheep

To be successful with Brand Advocates, you don’t need to be Colin Powell (they are not an army to be commanded) or St. Paul (they are not sheep to be herded). You need to be sorta like Casanova (they are to be treated as individuals).

Advocates are looked upon as external to the organization and hence one often finds the approach to building relationships like that of herding sheep. This is a big mistake and it’s often just because the organization hasn’t thought thru the process of a brand advocacy program or is experimenting with it or just testing the waters. Don’t do this, as it kills the spirit of the relationship even before it begins.

How do you build individual relationships with Brand Advocates?

Every relationship has a beginning, a middle and and end or a continuity. Cultivating a relationship mean that one works on nurturing the relationship through the lifecycle of the relationship.

Stage 1: The Beginning of a relationship

• Boy Sees Girl
• Boy smitten by Girl
• Boy meets Girl

Map this to how you discover, and how your advocates interact with you. Maybe the first look happens when you observe them tweeting sweet nothings on Twitter about you. Or  when they come across your program on your website. Or they physically meet you the brand advocate manager. Yeah believe it or not physical meetings still happen.

- Each interaction point provides an opportunity. It might begin on the advocacy page on your website or at a networking event. You need to specifically design this to encourage relationships with the brand advocate. You need to plan out how they will be welcomed into your brand advocate program.

Stage 2: The mid path – Boy meets her again

- You need to plan and have regular interactions/meetings. It’s a dance you have to do, as it enables you to be comfortable with each other and helps you establish rapport and a relationship. Without regular interactions one loses sight and touch which is necessary in building an individual relationship.

- You need to nurture the relationship. It’s like dating all over again, and then some. You need to cater to their expectations and that brings up the next challenge.

What if your brand advocates run in the hundreds? Will individual relationships work then?

I could literally hear that big BUT come up. How do you scale your operations in the enterprise?

Here are some quick ways to get started (advanced tactics below)

- Regular telephone conference calls (works up to 30 people). 30 per week, works out to 120 a month, and 360 per quarter.

- Offline physical meetings – at events or conferences or even hold periodic roundtables. (works up to 100-200 people)

- Online webcasts – ( works up to 100-200 people at one go). You could do this weekly for advocates across different regions, states, countries etc. (200 a week, 800 people a month)

Important: Not all advocates will be comfortable with each of these mediums, some will prefer physical meetings, some online interactions. Don’t expect all of them to turn up just because you’re making yourself available.

What if you have thousands of brand advocates? How can you scale building individual relationships?

There are various ways in which organizations can scale to building individual relationships.

Multiple Brand Advocacy Managers

Most large organizations have a ratio of 1:80 or 1:100 i.e. one brand advocate manager per 100 brand advocates. This ensures that the individual relationship is maintained between the organization and the brand advocates.

Incorporate a Buddy System or a Council

No matter how many brand advocate managers you have, you can’t be everywhere all the time. A Buddy System is the way out. Older brand advocates act as mentors supporting newer brand advocates. This helps in the initiation process of  building relationships between the organization and the individual. This greatly speeds up the relationship building and provides the added value of extra hands to manage the growing brand advocate ecosystem. The biggest value added is the building of relationships amongst the brand advocates themselves, reducing the load on the brand advocacy manager.

Similarly Councils, are like an advisory board comprising brand advocates who primarily play a role in easing and speeding up the individual relationship building:
- initiating new brand advocates,
- familiarising them with the brand advocacy program,
- providing support and also help in
- facilitating relationships amongst brand advocates and
- providing structured feedback back to the organization.

Both the buddy system and the council help in easing the process of building individual relationships between brand advocates and the organization.

Stage 3? What when the relationship ends?

Brand advocates needs are going to change over a period of time, some may just not be able to participate due to work or other constraints. Most organizations provide a path back and to be connected with these brand advocates. This is typically done by maintaining informal communities of ex-brand advocates.

How to build a deeper individual relationship?

To build a deeper relationship you need to ensure that certain minimum activities are performed by you.

• Segmentation - Different people have different relationship triggers. On a program level you need to make sure you’ve segmented your audience in order that the right people get the right messages. This is crucial especially as the size of your brand advocacy program increases. (Learn more about Segmentation)
• Evangelism – Reciprocity – When you praise or do something for others, it tells them you care. Additionally, it automatically ensures a similar return gesture from them, thereby deepening the relationship.
• Frequency of interactions – People often suss over this and I find that more than frequency it is the consistency in interactions which matter. Take a pick whether it’s weekly or even monthly interactions, stick to your schedule and vary it to accommodate their requests.
• Face to Face – Nothing, I repeat nothing beats face to face interactions. You need to ensure that these interactions happen. I’m not going to even bother to elaborate on this, however this is possibly the most important part of building a deep individual relationship.

Summary

In the social business era cultivating these individual relationships will decide the success of your brand advocacy program. Individual relationships are the life blood of your brand advocacy program. You need to design your program to nurture the relationship. The least of the benefits would be to avoid incidents like the Samsung blogger mishap.

Next Step?

Please do drop a note in the comments below to share how you’re cultivating individual relationships with your brand advocates and let me know if you have any questions.

The brand advocates in the program are not clear of what they are really supposed to do as part of the program, and the brand advocacy program managers are themselves unclear and frustrated not knowing what to do and how to motivate their advocates.

There are many reasons why these problems exist, one of them is the lack of segmentation of the brand advocates in the brand advocacy program.

SEGMENTATION

Have you been in a store which just sells women’s clothes? Have you been in a store which just sells clothes for pregnant women, and have you been in a store which sells clothes just for girls?

Well if you have seen or been to these stores, you’ve witnessed segmentation in the clothes market. The first level or segment being for women, the next for a more specific segment which is women who are pregnant and the third for girls.

Why your brand advocate program lacks zing! The Power of Focus and Relevance

Segmenting a market enables you to focus on the subset of prospects/ customers/ participants that have similar needs. If done properly this will help to ensure the highest return for your brand advocacy efforts as it helps you focus your offering to the individual advocates thereby ensuring greater relevancy for both parties (you and your brand advocates). Suddenly new life will spring into your program and the participation from the brand advocates.

Hold on to your horses, don’t rush to chop up, I mean segment your program yet, cause there’s this little bit about… “YOUR” program…

How to Segment your brand advocacy program?

You see that word up there “your”, that’s the tricky devil. Segmentation is a double edged sword, what I mean is that the segmentation of your program depends on a whole lot of specific factors. Marketers segment based on gender, social status, age, size, religion, the list of factors you can segment on is well really long. So I’m going to take a very specific generic example you’ll know shortly…

The Great BIG Software Product Company

Please don’t google this, seriously there is no such company called “The Great BIG Software Product Company”. So how would a software products development company segment it’s brand advocacy program? I’m using the example of a particular type of company in the computer industry, which is a software company, focussing on building software products. Clever me, I just showed you another example of segmentation.

Well, how could the software product company segment its advocacy program?

What if we segmented the brand advocates based on their presence on or participation in…

OR

What if we segmented the brand advocates slightly more based on a much more macro level.

OR

Since I’ve taken the example of a software product development company, the most relevant segmentation might be, segmentation based on how the advocate participates in the different stages of the software product development.

This approach helps the organization leverage brand advocates across the software product development lifecycle.

STOP

Don’t get sucked into this. If you recollect I said “I’m going to take a very specific generic example you’ll know shortly…”. The reason I said this was if you contemplate this a little more it should hit you like a bolt of lightning. What you might realize that in this context a combination is what you need and at different time periods in the lifecycle of your product. You need the “Analyser” category of brand advocates to be involved in the first two stages of software product ideation and the alpha stage of your software product development.

And then at the Beta stage maybe you want to involve another category which is the “Supporter” and in the rollout and support stage you want to probably involve the other two segments which is the “Sharer” and the “Categorizer”. Do you think that would get the zing back into the advocacy program, and make it more relevant to the advocates and your company?

Just one more thing super important thing… what is your business objective of starting the advocacy program? Your brand advocacy program ultimately originates from some business objective. The shape and segments in your program need to ensure that business objective is met.

Did the above para just zip out of your brain?

Ok, lets assume your company had the business objective to shorten the time to market for it’s products. That objective is the end goal, and hence you will need to segment your brand advocacy program to ensure that it fulfils that objective. In this specific case, I wouldn’t bother to have a segment called the “Analyser”. Capisci?(pronounced as Kapish/Kapeesh)

What Now? Segmentation is that magic ingredient which can spice up and boost your brand advocate program, making it more relevant to your organization and your brand advocates. Drop me a line in the comments below, do share if this resonates with you and/or if you’ve been using segmentation in your brand advocacy program. Get notified of the Brand Advocacy Segmentation eBook

Almost sounds illogical and questionable, however when you step inside a large organization you begin to get a little clarity in terms of the reasons why companies face this challenge.

Why are companies not able to effectively handle customer complaints?

Here’s a question for you, “Which team handles Customer Complaints?”

…

…

…

Customer Service, you got that right didn’t you.

Ok here’s one more question, (bear with me please), Which team in an organization typically initiates Social Media initiatives?

…

…

…

Marketing, Corporate Communication, PR all correct answers!

I’m sure you’re able to see the disconnect as illustrated below here.

Unfortunately for most organizations their Customer Service teams and  their Corporate Communication / PR teams are not in sync. Typically within an organization Marketing interacts with PR, however, not with the Customer Service team. The customer service team is typically sitting in a call centre handling customer service calls. Even if they do interact it’s not necessarily smooth.

Solutions?

The solution seems obvious, connect the two, make the teams work with each other.

However, this is a big challenge for most organizations, as it means that they need to do a large internal change not just in process and systems but also in culture in order for teams which traditionally might have not interacted in the past to work together.

Customer Services and PR / Corporate Communications are just some of the teams which need to be connected. It’s definitely doable but also requires intervention at the C-suite level.

I’m sure you’re wondering – Can’t the PR/Marketing teams at least apologize to the customer to possibly placate them and then possibly direct the conversation to the appropriate customer service personnel?

After all,  the advantage to focusing on handling customer complaints is huge. 86 percent customers will pay more for a better customer experience. (Source: RightNow survey) In the instances when an organization responded to a customer’s negative comment:

-46 percent of consumers were pleased.

- 22 percent posted a positive comment about the organization.

Hmm think about it, how would you make this work?

Option 1: Step 1. would be to apologize and Step 2. might be to direct the customer to the appropriate customer service channel.

This is probably by far the simplest and easiest solution. However, it’s definitely not a great long term solution. The reality is that more and more customers are using social channels and you need to be there servicing them. On the other hand compared to Option 1, Option 2 below can be scary.

Option 2:Have dedicated customer service representatives handle complaints on social media accounts. Now this is not as simple as it sounds cause big organizations can have on average 170+ accounts on social channels(See figure below: Source: Altimeter Group). This option would require quite a bit of system and process intervention.

The integration challenge can be huge, and the tools available currently are not really up to the mark. The Altimeter report highlights quite a few of these challenges.

Additionally, there are many a slip between the cup and the lip, as a new kind of customer service representatives are needed. That brings us on to the next challenge –

New Skillsets

A bunch of new skillsets are needed to make this happen.

You need people who are comfortable with multi-channel, two way communications. Moreover consumers expect you to respond in near real time.

Traditional corporate communication and PR teams are just not trained in this.

Additionally, they need new competencies, understanding on how Word of Mouth communication spreads, reputation monitoring, community and influencer management

Solutions?

New kind of Social Customer Service Reps, Training, Process change and integration is needed and while all that is happening possibly move the customer conversation to your private support channel. Which brings me to one of the last and probably the biggest challenge.

Culture & the C-Suite – You need all hands on the deck.

The C-suite needs to drive the organizational and cultural changes needed. This involves multiple things, connected internal teams, leveraging partners and leveraging brand advocates to support your customers, you obviously can’t do this without intelligent software and without new integrated systems and processes.

Consumers have more power than ever today, customer satisfaction is going to be the deciding factor which will shape the future of your organization. Lest you forget 86 percent customers will pay more for a better customer experience. (Source: RightNow survey). However, you can’t do this alone, you need your teams to work together, with partners and most importantly involve other key customers, i.e. brand advocates in helping you handle customer complaints.

Your turn: What’s worked for your organization? What idea above resonated the most with you? Please do drop a line in the comments below.

Okay, hang on now, I know you’ve got a bunch of thoughts which have just come to your head. Let me show you what relevance this has to software product development. A typical software product goes thru the following stages.

Software product lifecycle

You begin with ideation, create an alpha build, a beta build, launch the product do a rollout and then support customers who’ve bought the product. Yep I’ve purposely simplified it a bit.

Along with this is the challenge of …

The software product marketing challenge – Time and Budgets

The big enemies of the modern organization are time and budgets. Product development can be a long and expensive affair and time to market is very low. Additionally, it is challenging to give your product the face time it deserves with your current and potential new customers.

How to give your software product the face time it deserves with clients?

Creating a brand advocacy program and involving brand advocates during each stage of the software product lifecycle ensures that your product gets the face time it deserves. Brand Advocates are your staunchest supporters and promoters, your most loyal customers, involve them as early as possible. Let me dive into specifics.

How can brand advocates help reduce time to market and marketing budget requirements?

1. Involving brand advocates at each stage of product development ensures that you build deep relations over a period of time with customers. They help you in ideating, evaluating, testing and providing feedback about your products. Seeing you incorporate their feedback and suggestions gives them a sense of belonging. The investment of their time in getting to know your product, and providing feedback to your production / development teams is a high level of commitment which eventually results in a sale. Yep it could happen that they date you for the longest time and then part ways. But I’m willing to bet that’s a real tiny percentage.

2. Additionally, advocates often generate a volume of content which helps educate and provide invaluable third party validation about your product, a.k.a. Word of Mouth publicity.

The combination of the above, helps you get early feedback, and greatly improve your product. Their word of mouth publicity if correctly channelled helps reduce your time to market and the marketing budget itself.

But doesn’t a brand advocacy program cost money itself?

Duh! Yes.

Here’s a question to ask yourself, you’ve got a band of enthusiastic, passionate volunteers (i.e. brand advocates) who driven by their passion:

• help you ideate and
• test and evaluate your products,
• blog, tweet, promote and
• recommend it to their friends in person and across various social networks and

What is the value of the above? Your investment is towards the management of the brand advocacy program. Do you think that would generate a positive ROI?

It definitely does, the benefits far outweigh the costs, you be the judge while you read through some of the benefits of brand advocates to your company.

• It cost the average company 5 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing customer happy.
• An increase in customer retention of only 5 percent can lead to profit gains of anywhere from 35 percent to 125 percent.
• The average unsatisfied customer will tell three other people to avoid the company responsible for the dissatisfaction. In other words, the offending company stands not only to lose the lifetime customer value (LCV) of one unhappy customer, but (at least potentially) the LCV of three others as well.
• In contrast, customers who are happy enough to recommend a product or service to others –brand advocates – contribute an astonishing 25 times their LCV to the top line.

Source: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/siebel/oracle-custadvocate-351029.pdf

And if that’s not all

A single brand advocate for a business software company is worth $565,000, according to Richard Owen and Lauren Brook, authors of “Answering The Ultimate Question.”

To Summarize: Brand advocacy programs if correctly leveraged can help you save money & reduce your time to market. There are other various other considerations for e.g. advocate segmentation and managing confidentiality. However, involving brand advocates during each stage of your software product lifecycle will prove to be a great time and cost saver for software product companies.

Next Steps: Evaluate if you’re truly engaging brand advocates across your software product lifecycle. I’d love to hear how you are leveraging them, so please share in the comments section below.

Samsung cancels blogger’s airplane ticket on press trip for refusing to write about brand. Nokia picks up tab (Source Tweet)

This is a clear public relations(PR) disaster and I aim to suggest options which can help one handle this better, and possibly prevent it in the future.
Samsung tried to force two Indian bloggers attending the IFA trade show in Berlin, to operate as Samsung representatives against their will. Essentially telling them, “Promote our products at IFA or walk home”. Yep you read that right, a blogger was told by a PR representative from Samsung India allegedly over the phone that “you can either be a part of this and wear the uniform, or you’ll have to get your own tickets back home and handle your hotel stay from the moment this call ends.”

Note: Every story has multiple sides, I’m sure Samsung has its own story as does the blogger, however, I hope to highlight things which one can learn.

This is a PR Disaster

I think the correct place to begin is in understanding and acknowledging that this is a public relations disaster. Samsung and it’s agency were clearly not geared to handle this. The story has become quite popular and Samsung’s competitor Nokia has definitely gained some good PR due to this, by helping the stranded blogger. As you’ll learn thru this article, Samsung isn’t a stranger to such a debacle. This isn’t the first time Samsung has trended up the social media channels for the wrong reasons.

The rest of the post is dedicated to answering two questions:

1. How could this Public Relations nightmare been handled better?
2. How can one avoid such a Public Relations nightmare ?

How could this Public Relations nightmare been handled better?

1. PR 101 would teach that you cannot threaten people. It’s so obviously lame, that one would think that Samsung obviously needs to make a public apology. However, nothing seems to be out there.
2. PR 101 would also teach that you can’t have separate messaging which will be publicly displayed. In an email to the blogger they expressed apology, but in the public release claimed that it was a misunderstanding. This was a mistake, they needed to come out and apologize in public not just in a private email.
3. Escalation of online articles and tweets could have been reduced if there was an immediate (in couple of hours) response by the Samsung team.
   1. Ideally this response can also be made on the same forums / places where the issue is highlighted with additional publicly available response on one’s own social channels. (Responding on the same channel(s) can at times be difficult and hence the suggestion to move the conversation if possible.)
   2. The most important part being responding to the story in Internet Time (couple of hours). This is necessary to prevent others taking advantage of the situation.
4. In this case looks like Samsung got to know about Nokia helping out the blogger after the incident was publicly published.
   1. Samsung could have publicly done two things; offered to compensate for the inconvenience. I’m not saying that they need to spell out how, all I’m saying is specify that you’re willing to take action, in this case compensate. Secondly, they should have expressed regret, not try to pass it off as just a misunderstanding. You obviously can’t avoid the competition from taking advantage, though you can work on negating the effect.

However, there is more to this story, it appears to be that Samsung’s marketing and PR have faced a similar issue in the past. It seems to be a systemic issue and answers to the next question will help address this.

How can one avoid such a Public Relations nightmare?

I’ve listed the key challenges in this story and below that taken each challenge and listed possible resolutions, some obvious and some not so obvious things:

1. Code of conduct.
2. Multiple differing communication.
3. Response time and system
4. Crisis Management System
   1. Response System
      1. The one idea that can turn the tide
   2. Leverage Social Media.
   3. Leverage Brand Advocates.
   4. What kind of people need to handle this? What skills do they need?
5. Long term solutions
   A. Brand Advocacy programs
   B. Communities & Independent Associations

1. Code of Conduct: Samsung and it’s agencies need to take a hard look at the guidance provided to employees as well as to their agencies in regards to dealing with brand advocates/influencers/reporters. There are some things which are a strict “No” and people need to be made aware of that. They need to get this revised code of conduct ratified by some of the senior members in their advocate/influencer/communication programs and also via a suitable external consultant.

Rectification? In this particular case Samsung needs to show that they are apologetic. There are multiple things they need to do:

• Samsung needs to take action right away against the erring personnel(I’m not saying one needs to single out the supposed person who asked the blogger to figure his own way back alone).
• Make sure that this message is publicly communicated via relevant public social channels. This isn’t just a matter of doing justice to the person concerned, it also reaches out to people who’re reading these stories across various channels.

2. Multiple differing communication: Ensuring that unified messages go out, is a function of the systems and processes you have in place to handle communications and PR. In this particular case I’m willing to give Samsung the benefit of doubt that they meant to apologies however, in handling this challenging situation they messed up by not apologizing publicly.

Rectification? I think an apology and compensation would have gone a long way in placating people. However, in order to do this effectively they needed to communicate in near real time and leverage the same channels which were causing the bad PR. More on that in the next points.

3. Response time: I can’t overstress the importance of responding fast. Unlike traditional media where one typically had a day at least to respond to a breaking story, Social Media necessitates that one responds in as close to real time as possible 24/7. There are two parts to this and you really can’t do this without having both these parts in place:

Monitoring: One needs to monitor conversations in real time and have systems in place which auto-notify one in case certain pre-set conditions are met. For e.g. if you’re suddenly becoming a trending topic on twitter or are appearing on multiple blog posts, news sites, appropriate personnel within your company/agency need to be notified automatically. I’m not debating here whether an organization should have an in-house or external agency to handle monitoring, but suffice to say there needs to be a system in place and that brings me to the next point.

Response System: People will be people and stressed out as most communication personnel are, without a system, communication plans will go haywire. Additionally, communication happens at multiple levels: Strategic, Operational and Tactical, and you’ll have program specific variations, for e.g. what is alright in terms of communication with the press v/s brand advocates etc. Your response system can help you determine how you need to react in different circumstances. Oh there is the people factor in terms of who is appropriate for such a role as well and I’ll talk about that in the next point. Below I’ve highlighted certain elements which can be part of your Crisis management response system.

Rectification? I would imagine a company the size of Samsung has a monitoring system in place. However, there seems to be a lack of a response system. At the time of the writing of this article, I couldn’t find significant indications of an adequate response system.

4. Crisis Management System: In the social media age, you need a crisis management system in place no excuses at all.

In terms of a system you might have the following process/steps (note this is just for illustration purposes but I hope you get the picture.)

Step 1: Acknowledge the problem if there is one publicly and describe what steps you’re taking to uncover details. Apologise publicly if it’s an obvious mistake.

Step 2: Establish communication Channels: Provide a publicly visible landing page where people can be made aware of the issue and how you’re handling it.

Step 2: Communicate about rectification being done: … etc..

4. A. The one idea that can turn the tide: Ask your audience how you should rectify the issue basically moving the discussion away from talking about the problem to how to solve it. You’re killing three birds with one stone here:

• Moving the conversation to a solution mode.
• You might actually get some good ideas
• You will be looked at positively

Note: You can’t do this just for the sake of doing it, just to put up a show that you’re concerned. You need to mean it else this will boomerang on you.

Winning people over: Once the crisis begins to die down, create a best practice guide for internal consumption and one for external use highlighting the issue, and the way you’ve solved it and how you’re ensuring this doesn’t repeat in the future. Basically providing closure to people.

The key idea here is that your people need to have a step by step system which guides them on how to handle and respond a crisis situation. You’re obviously not going to cover each and every situation, however, you’ll enable saner responses and possibly ending the crisis in a swift manner, dissipating peoples anger.

Doing the above would help, however if you want to turbo charge your efforts two more things need to be in place.

4.B. Leverage Social Networks

You need to be ready to respond and leverage the same social media channels which are spreading the bad blood. So for instance if twitter is where the conversation is happening, respond out there in real time, share your side of the story, lead people your landing page where they are informed about how you’re fixing this. Just having a press release or an isolated blog post might not suffice, you might need to go down in to the trenches and be able to avert the crisis on those social networks. Needless to say the faster your participate in the conversation, the better the chances of dissipating the crisis.

4.C. Leverage your Brand Advocates

Your resources to handle these crisis are limited to your staff and agency. However, if your company has a good brand advocacy program in place this helps extend your reach.  It enables you to literally turn the tide by leveraging your brand advocates to help spread the word and provide your side of the story. You’d be surprised at what all they’d do to support you.

4.D. What kind of people need to handle this? What skills do they need?

Not everyone is cut out for this role. You need people who have a bunch of new competencies:

• Understanding of Word of Mouth Marketing
• Reputation Management
• Community Management
• Influencer/ Brand Advocate Management
• and a level headed cool personality to go with.

Additionally, they need to be comfortable with multiple channel, two way, instantaneous communications.

Rectification? This section on Crisis management just covered an amazing amount of stuff… oh there’s just so much Samsung could have done… I hope I’ve given you some things to think about… (let me know your thoughts in the comments below). There was only one lone other blogger(a Samsung advocate) who I found, who tried to give a neutral picture. There is just so much Samsung could have enabled out here.

5. Long term solutions: The volume of conversations, the number of social media channels on which these conversations happen and the limited resources you have means that you need to really think hard in terms of long term solutions beyond your individual capabilities.

5.A. Brand Advocacy programs: Brand advocacy programs give you the reach and third party validation you need. However, they are not just as simple as reaching out to a bunch of people and expecting that just because you’re giving them an exclusive peek or extra privileges that they’re supposed to do what you say. Watch this video to learn about how to build a brand advocacy program (or read)and avoid some of the most common mistakes in engaging with brand advocates. Moreover, a well developed Brand advocacy program might have indicated to Samsung that maybe this blogger was not the target profile they wanted in their program. There are so many different sources for discovering your brand advocates, you need to really think hard in terms of who are ideal candidates for inclusion in which program.

Rectification? My analysis as an external entity with the limited data I know, indicates to me that the root problem which Samsung needs to fix is re-defining who are ideal candidates for which of their programs. Also executives of the program need to undergo training to effectively understand how to manage expectations and secure acceptance from their brand advocates. Most importantly what is evident is that the executive interacting with the blogger in this case didn’t have a relationship with the blogger. This is probably the Achilles heel of any brand advocate program. A brand advocacy program is extremely dependent on the relations built between the company, the managers of the program and the brand advocate. In Samsung’s case it seems that there was no meaningful relationship, other than I scratch your back you scratch mine.

5.B. Communities & Independent Associations

Just like brand advocates, nurturing independent communities and associations is the next logical step forward and many organizations invest in building this. This is a much more advanced topic. Suffice to say communities and associations focussed around your company products and services provide another level of armoury which can help in tackling such crisis.

In summary, I hope I’ve been able to give enough ideas and pointers both in Samsung’s case and in terms of things which are applicable to your organization. Have you had or heard of similar experiences, what has worked there? Has a particular idea I’ve illustrated resonated with you? I would love to know your thoughts so please do post in the comments below.

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References:

• http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/09/02/heres-samsung-flew-bloggers-halfway-around-world-threatened-leave/
• http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/09/03/samsung-we-regret-misunderstanding-bloggers-forced-promote-products/
• http://asia.cnet.com/samsung-to-bloggers-promote-our-products-at-ifa-or-walk-home-62218564.htm
• http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-mobilers-clinton-jeff-2012-9
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/03/samsung-tech-bloggers
• http://www.amitbhawani.com/blog/samsung-mobilers-ifa-2012/

Why just 9 items on this list, why not 10? I’d love to read at least any one article you might have found interesting in cyberspace this week, do share in the comments below.