Social Webinar Failures, Mistakes To Avoid

I attend webinars on a regular basis as they are a great way to keep learning.  These webinars are generally focused on social solutions and technologies, given by the experts of our day.  Webinars have traditionally been a one-way communication vehicle but many take time for some Q&A near the end of the webinar, introducing some level of interaction, some level of social engagement.

Here are some of the social failures I have seen as well as my thoughts on simple changes that would make the webinars a social success.  I share these examples because it’s important that you understand that there are few true experts in the space.  We are all learning as we go, don’t be afraid to jump in and make a mistake or two.

Failing to engage with live streams

I will often tweet during webinars I attend.  As a rule I will note the Twitter names of the participants and tweet the key points of the webinar.  I include the expert’s name so they are tipped off that there is a conversation about them taking place.  If you are running the webinar you should:

• Check out your Twitter streams, your Facebook page, and any other social channels you use.  If you see your name being used, jump in and thank people for helping spread the message of the webinar.  It’s a small effort and people appreciate it.
• If you do not have the the time during the webinar take the time after the webinar to respond to all the social traffic that took place during the webinar.  Again, people are taking their time to participate in your webinar, recognize this, respond to questions, thank your promoters and engage your detractors.

Over the course of several webinars I have seen the following:

• After a recent IDC webinar the analyst took the time to thank me following the webinar. Simple touch, big social win as it was very much appreciated.
• After a recent Radian6 webinar, focused on listening and responding on social media, …..  Remember those crickets…  Sometimes the experts are the worst at actually following through.  I am not singling out Radian6 or the webinar expert but I did find the silence ironic.
• After a Helpstream webinar I was initially very impressed as the CEO took the time to respond to nearly every tweet.  However, I noted that none of my tweets questioning Social CRM, asking about Social Support Communities, were ever responded too.  In fact, while the CEO did great work by thanking and responding to the “supporters”, the detractor was completely ignored. 
  • To be fair, the CEO did eventually leave a note on my blog about the difficulty he had responding to every tweet.  Of course, when I responded back asking for his thoughts on Social CRM, Social Support Communities, etc…  Well, do you remember those  crickets….

Differentiate your response

Following a webinar you generally receive an email thanking you for participating and providing you with links to additional information.  This is a great way to follow up and extend the value of your webinar.    However, build in some logic to take into account participation during the webinar (those that ask questions) and around the webinar (the social streams).  Different mailing lists, different messages, big wins.

Keep adding value, don’t go into a selling frenzy

After attending a webinar from Lithium I had a sales person pester me via e-mail to chat about the Lithium solution, looking to quickly turn a positive webinar experience into a sale.  I was frustrated with the approach but decided to take the time to let the sales person know I wanted to learn more about the company and pointed them to my blog….  Remember those crickets, never heard another word from the sales person.

Webinars are great educational tools and can be good lead generators for your business.  Recognize that the world is changing and that you must participate socially as part of your webinar efforts.  Remember too that the sales tactics of the past don’t work when it comes to social software…  Focus on adding value and the leads will come.

Do you have other ways that webinars can become more social?

John

Hey, shut up and listen… Please

I attended a very good webinar today, led by Amber Naslund at Radian6, on listening and engaging with social media. The conversation was timely in light of the recent statistics I saw, and blogged about, on how CIOs are erecting walls around their businesses.

While Amber covered a lot of ground the one topic I wanted to build on was the simple act of passive listening… Let me remind of you something, I am a geek. I am a CTO and SVP of Engineering and have run Engineering, IT, and Support organizations. I understand security risks and also understand the benefits of being social. Passive listening is a safe starting point that balances the benefits of being social with the risk of drilling holes into those corporate walls.

Passive listening is also relevent to any business in any industry across any geography. The benefits of passive listening is you do not need to be outgoing nor do you have to spend hours analyzing data. Dip your toes into the social waters as little, or as much, as time permits…

Building off of Amber’s points I would recommend that every business invest at least one hour a week passively listening/monitoring for information on your company, the competition, your industry. Plenty of people have given advice on where to start, how to start, so I won’t attempt at compiling a comprehensive list. However, here’s what I do when I have very little time:

• Scan my RSS feeds in Google Reader.
• Monitor what is happening with all of my contacts using Gist.

Yes, there are many other things you can do but the benefit of targeted RSS feeds (in Google Reader) and following up on key companies and people (in Gist) get me the most important data with the least investment. Hey, it works for me, it might even work for you.

What do you think? How do you passively listen today?

John

The end of marketing? Nah…

I’ve seen a few people speculating about the end of marketing as the role of social media takes increases in Corporate America.   While anything is possible I don’t see this as a likely outcome of companies embracing Social Business Design.  Here a few simple reasons why:

• Social businesses must focus on customer engagement first. This does not mean making friends, it’s business afterall, but it means being as transparent as is possible and working to co-create value for the entire customer community.  Simply put, customers and companies will produce knowledge base articles, engage with other customers that are having problems, etc..  This is the domain of account managers and support teams.  These are your caregivers who are passionate about helping you grow a successful and satisfied customer base.  Social Support Communities to the rescue.
• Social Businesses will naturally seek to convert potential customers (leads) into new business.  You do want new business, right?  Your marketing team wants to  bring these new customers on board.  Your marketing team wants to extend your brand, shout your praises.  Social Support Communities are not the place for marketers, they need other channels, public channels.

Your support team will focus on semi-private communities (SSC).  Your marketing team will focus on public channels (Twitter, Facebook, etc..).

What happens if marketing starts to spend too much time in your SSC environment?  Existing customers begun to feel less trust in the company they are working with.  Instead of co-creating value they are worried about what the marketing team is trying to convince them to buy.  This natural separation of function is needed for businesses to be successful.  Two teams, to different communities in which they engage.

Yes, I know the social universe will evolve and the solutions will enable selective targeting, on-demand delivery of information to the right people, and time machines….Yes, we need time machines…  Even with all of the magic that awaits us in the future you still have caregiver mentality vs. hunter mentality.  You need both, right?

John

Pip.io.. Yet another Social Support Community option for SMBs?

As I continue to think about the framework that is Social Business Design I continue to grapple with how companies will practically manage the various social streams that they will want to leverage.  It is clear that Social Support Communities (SSC) will be a critical tool that many companies will want to deploy, but the question, of course, is what is the right tool my company.  For Small and Medium sized businesses with relatively small customer bases you would be foolish to spend a lot of money, right?  That’s where Pip.io may play a part in your future…

I had the pleasure of chatting with Leo Shimizu, CEO of Pip.io, last night.  For those of you who have never heard of Pip.io, check out an interview from Robert Scoble from six days ago.  Leo shared a couple of interesting thoughts with me:

“Pip.io is a social OS that is made up of two distinct domains: the “social” and the “OS” aspects. The “social” aspect refers to our own native real-time communications platform. To define communication, we focused on understanding the real-world privacy spectrum and representing those scopes of privacy digitally. The spectrum ranges from the most private and intimate (for example: 1-on-1 IM chats) to what we refer to as global voyeurism (for example: Facebook & twitter). But what about all the privacy scopes in between? That’s exactly what your brain is wondering if you’ve gone to Facebook or Twitter to find yourself holding back what you wanted to say because you were worried about who would ultimately see that post. Pip.io helps you easily and simply define your audience so you can communicate on the web as you normally do in the real world.”

While I think Leo might be stretching things a bit by using the term OS (operating system) I do feel that Pip.io is onto something.  They are building towards something much broader than simple aggregation of social content.  You can be very selective with your content distribution so that the right audience receives the right information.  You can communicate with other users within the Pip.io platform, with user’s in your various twitter accounts, your various facebook accounts, heck, even Netflix…  To that end, Leo points out:

“We treat the different scopes of privacy as abstract concepts. It just happens that our native ecosystem uses these privacy scopes to create environments to facilitate conversations. However, a third-party can use these privacy scopes to facilitate anything they want. For example, we have an area called “Rooms”. In it’s purest form, it is an environment where you invite people and people accept the invitations to join. For example, Netflix could use the “Rooms” API to facilitate the invitation process for their group synchronous watching feature.  The traditional definition of an operating system has been software that connects third-party applications with hardware resources. With what we’re seeing with virtualization and cloud computing, the consumer computing experience will revert back to a terminal form. So when hardware resources are gone, what is the next logical resource we could help mediate that would benefit both the consumer and third-party developers: social resources. We essentially created APIs for different scopes on a real world privacy spectrum, thus the “OS” aspect of Pip.io.  Developers will be able to use our API to create rich applications that take advantage of Pip.io’s real-time platform and enable users to communicate exactly how and with whomever they want.”

Wow, great concepts that could make it easy for any individual user, or SMB to fully leverage social channels via Social Support Communities.  Segment your customer communities across appropriate Twitter Accounts, Pip.io rooms and channels, and bam, you’re off to the races.  Okay, so what is a channel and what is a room in Pip.io terms?

• A channel is a one-way distribution channel.  You can add various social accounts and individual users to a channel, designating that they will receive the content you push out through that channel.  For example, if you know of a problem with one of your products there is no reason to notify all of your customers.  Push the message out to that one channel and you have very easily pushed the word out to just those users.
• Think of a room as a live meeting.  You invite people in for a two-way conversation.  I need to spend more time with rooms but the example that Leo discusses above ( the Netflix example) is interesting, great way to do training in real-time.

Even more exciting to me is the geo-capabilities.  You can watch global updates by dragging around the map (or leaving it at its default location of your home) and see who is on-line and what they are chatting about (for public discussions).  This is cool, no doubt about it, but I am really excited about the ability (not yet available) to selectively reach out to people by geography.  If I was a club and wanted to blast out to everyone in the local area about upcoming shows, select the area, message out… So many possibilities.

It is a beta product though and, while evolving rapidly, is not yet ready to be considered for SSC usage for a business (yet).  Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• On my Windows 7 machine I ran into several problems with Internet Explorer 8.  However, I switched back to Firefox 3.5.3 and it is working great.
• The Twitter client functionality is very weak today.  However, Leo assured me that they will soon be on par with Tweetdeck.  I am sure Leo is probably a bit optimistic but it was good to hear that they intend to make this  interface much richer than it is today.
• There are still far too few people in Pip.io to make it a product you want to live in today.  Much like Google Wave this way only wave is adding people at a fairly reasonable pace.

While Leo and I chatted about other things as well I’ll hold back a few things for now.  As I keep playing with this environment I’ll share more.

John

A customer review of the Parature Social Support Community

I asked my good friends at Sonicbids for their thoughts on the Parature Social Support Community (SSC) that they deployed to replace their home-grown customer support solution.  My primary reason for chatting with Sonicbids was to cut through the marketing hype that you sometimes experience with referenced customers.  I will continue to identify customers of other SSC vendors as I seek to provide more information for you.  Stay tuned.

Q.  How do you measure if the solution is a success?  Has it been a success?

• Overall, the implementation of Parature has been a success for Sonicbids.  As of my last analysis of the effectiveness of Parature in December of 2008, the percentage of ticketing was decreased by 31.96%.  Also, the percentage of man hours needed to handle support was decreased by 56%.  This helped lower company cost for salary/benefits, creates tighter communication within department (providing a higher quality of support), and gives me a smaller management overhead.

Q.  What do you like about the Parature SSC solution?

• Member Relations has control over the knowledge base and can update it in real time.  Previously, we had to rely on engineering to update FAQs which meant that content was sometimes out of date and that time was taken away from other company projects.
•  There are quick ways to keyword search our knowledge base articles when we respond to our members.  So, it’s much easier to say to a member when answering a question, “Thanks for writing in, we have a help article about this and you can click here to view it…”  Previously, we just had to look through a long list of these help articles which took a very long time unless you were extremely familiar with them.
• Parature also has helpful reporting software to measure incoming tickets, support center activity, etc. that we did not previously have easy access to
   

Q.  What would you like to see changed, improved, in the Parature SSC solution?

• Parature does not have some basic customizable options that I’d like to see them have. For example, I can’t customize what articles are ‘featured’ on our Support Center homepage (I can only show recently added or most popular).  Also, I usually have to make a feature request when I want to do something on my portal rather than doing that myself, which is annoying from an efficiency and options standpoint
• There are other features internally that are frustrating from an efficiency perspective as well.  The text editing and WYSIWYG editor is extremely buggy and antiquated and there is no simple way to apply text styles to all support center articles.   Also, there are certain views into ticket information that I can’t re-order without changing these on the customer ticket form view.
• Parature has a lot of sporadic downtime, which is frustrating when using a third party software, because we cannot control something like that, but it looks from the customer’s perspective that Sonicbids is the one experiencing issues
• Ironically, I have not been pleased with their customer support as of late. For example, after I had gone to their user conference I wanted to implement some new things to better the member experience and increase efficiency.  However, when a request could not be fulfilled, instead of saying it could not be done I felt like they were dodging my requests.  Also, one of the things I wanted to implement (an Email to Ticket conversion tool) was a large additional fee.  These are just a few scenarios of how working with a third party can be frustrating. 

 
If you have questions that I should follow up on please let me know.

John

How to prepare for a lay-off

I asked my Twitter community for their thoughts on what people should do to be in a position to best handle being layed off.  I put together this simple slide show to cover the collective thoughts.  I hope you find this helpful.

John

Reflections on a week of being social

I am very lucky to be able to chat with many interesting people each and every week on topics ranging from the use of social media in business to CRM to leadership to telepathic blogging.  Okay, I did throw the last one in just to see if you were paying attention.  As I reflected on my week during my Saturday morning run this is what crossed my mind.

 

Social Support Communities (SSC), Social Business Design/Strategy 

• Helpstream is delivering some real value to SMB SSC users but can it make it as a stand-alone business.  The jury is out in my mind.  Pricing is on par with Salesforce.com and I think it’s more likely that Salesforce will ultimately eat their lunch.  Time will tell.
• Lithium is doing a great job on the marketing front and has one some major Enterprise customers.  I have not actually played with their product so it’s still unclear to me if they will find a parallel niche to a company like Parature or eventually go head to head.
• I was excited by the focus on customer success that I heard about from Parature.  While they are not a thought leader in the Social space they are bringing a common sense approach to meeting their customer needs.  I like their chances to take the lead in this space.
• I am more impressed with Gist the longer I use it.  If you want a really good tool for the individual to use to for social aggregation and engagement consider this tool.  It’s a contender for marketing and sales and, depending on where they want to take the product, could be an important company to watch.  I’ll be chatting with their CEO soon to learn more.
• TeamSupport contacted me to chat about their offering.  While they appear to have a traditional SSC approach their backend is more focused on tying into source control and bug systems.  Interested to learn more as could be a good choice for companies focused on delivering technology.  Time will tell.

Definitions 

• Filiberto Selvas had a great post this week on not letting the hype around Social CRM dilute its potential.  Read his post here.
• Social Business Design.  It is easy to be impressed with the focus the Dachis group is putting behind Social Business Design, stay tuned.
• Pragmatic anything.  Michael Krigsman introduced term Pragmatic to Enterprise 2.0.  The guy knows about project success and avoiding failures.    While others have suggested applying the word Pragmatic elsewhere I am not loving it.

 

Social amplifies everything 

• The good.  I am happy to see the great effort that many in the Twitter community are putting into #workwednesday.  Kudos to all of you.
• The bad.  I made the mistake of questioning the need for the word Pragmatic in our definitions this week.  When I questioned it by tweeting something like “More definitions?” I was bluntly told that it would make sense if I took the time to read the post.  You guessed it… I had read the post and I jokingly said something to the effect of “Love you but response was rude”…  Oh well, sometimes those crickets can be loud on social networks.
• The ugly.  Balloon Boy…. Enough said.

What were your take-aways this week?

John

Is it time for your business to “go social”?

Simple question, should be a simple answer.  Before answering, though, let’s take a second and remind ourselves why we want to “go social” in the first place:

• Engage with your customers.  I often hear this as a reason but, lean in for a minute while I share a secret with you….   Businesses survive only if they are making money…..   I know, I know, I probably burst a bubble or two but this is true… Don’t believe me?  Look it up, they taught me that in macroeconomics.    While engaging with your users MAY ultimately lead to loyal customers that MAY ultimately lead to references and sales this is a long-term investment.  In today’s economic conditions you better be investing in solutions that will show immediate value while building towards long-term gains.
• Raise brand awareness.  Much better than the old “engage with customers” answer.  I think this is important but I would argue that if this is your only reason for going social, stop.  Ask yourself if this is where your customers, and potential customers, are currently residing.  If yes, invest some time brand building on social networks.  Don’t go overboard though as you could spend a lot of time in the short-term, time you need to spend on generating leads for your sales team.
• Reduce operational costs by engaging customers, employees, and super-users to reduce overall support costs.  Okay, Social Support Communities make sense and this is a good reason to go social.  Keep in mind that you will not always see cost savings, at least not initially.  Sometimes the value comes in the form of higher customer satisfaction scores which do translate into higher customer retention rates, potential leads, sometimes more sales.
• Increase sales through more leads.  In my opinion this is not yet an area where most companies will have success.  Meaning:
  • You need to meet customers where they are.  Find out where they are and meet them there.   Okay, business 101, right? 
  • If your customers are on social networks you need to explore this area.  While I have yet to see convincing case studies on lead generation I am impressed by the 173,000 Facebook fans Honda has recently achieved.  The idea of 170 thousand people who can be directly marketed to with timely and relevant content without worries of your message getting stuck in a SPAM filter….  Interesting.  Note that the 173,000 fan # comes from the comments to this post.
  • There is a steep investment with social channels to get to the point where you become a reputable, trusted source.  Other channels, I contend, are still cheaper investments.

…..Okay, so why do you want to go social? 

 

John

A software company that understands the intersection of Social and CRM

I had the pleasure of chatting with Gary McNeil, VP of Marketing at Parature.  While I expected to hear more of the standard industry hype around Social CRM I was deeply impressed to hear a common sense perspective on Social Support Communities, Customer Service, and the current role of social media in business today.

Who is Parature?

Parature is a provider of customer support solution software (a flavor of CRM, yes) focused on delivering value for companies ranging in size from mid-sized companies to the enterprise.  I would further define their solution as a Social Support Community (SSC) offering that ties together various channels to paint a complete picture of a customer.

How does Parature’s integration with social networks compare to other solutions?

Parature is not taking a visionary approach to tying social media into their SSC, delivering solutions for a couple of customers on an as-requested basis instead.  These solutions are based upon APIs from Twitter and Parature and currently require custom development.  You’re probably asking….. If this is the case, how can they be an SSC?  Parature has a very robust solution that ties together the following social channels into a picture of a customer:

• Forums
• Chat
• Phone
• Twitter when requested

In chatting with Gary about this approach I feel they are on the right path.  Parature is very customer-focused and works closely with a customer advisory group to determine what their customers are looking for.  The board, made up of a mix of mid-size to Enterprise-sized companies that are in the B2C, B2B, and Higher Education space.  This includes companies like Linden Labs, Rosetta Stone, Hitachi, and T-Mobile.  Truth is, customers are just starting to ask about social and seeking out how to leverage it with their customers.    According to Gary it was rare six months ago to hear any customer asking about twitter integration.  Now, a lot of companies are asking about social media, the time is nearing where this will be a standard part of nearly every customer support solution.

How does Parature measure the value of their solution internally?

This is an area where I feel it is important for Parature to improve dramatically.  Gary’s answer, which I buy, at least in part, is that the increased customer engagement is the return on investment.  I only buy it in part, though, and I am looking for Parature to more clearly articulate the ROI of integrating social media with CRM solutions.  The ROI is there, Parature simply needs to more clearly articulate it.

What else is Parature up to?

While, as I mentioned, I do not view Parature as a visionary in the SSC, social, or CRM space I do view them as a leader in the space.  They understand the important items that go beyond much of the current hype and are delivering a good solution.  Here are some of the things that Parature is doing that makes them a leader in the space:

• Parature focuses on customer success from the point of sale through out the lifetime of the product.  I buy this, not just because Gary said so, but because I know people using the Parature solution.  Gary and I discussed the high failure rates associated with most CRM solutions and here are some important steps Parature takes to reduce failure rates:
  • Prior to the sale a documented set of goals are defined for each customer.
  • As the deal is closed sales and account managers on the Parature side do a visible hand-off with the customer, ensuring goals are clearly understood.
  • The account managers perform regular check-ins with all Parature customers at the 90-day, 180-day, and 270-day of the deployment.  Goals are again clarified and satisfaction is confirmed (or not).  Any changes are managed through a change management process to try and satisfy any changed goals/needs.
• Parature has invested in their mobile solutions, building a fairly robust iPhone application with location awareness, photo integration, as well as basic support ticket management.
• Their SSC does not require that you spend money on purchasing another CRM Product or spend consulting dollars integrating with your CRM solution.  It is a real CRM solution out of the box, as it should be.

What’s the final word?

If you are looking for a company that seems to truly understand customer service and SSCs, one that utilizes their own solutions, works closely with their customers, consider Parature.  They have been the most responsive vendor to this point in my investigations, showing they are listening to social channels, not just speaking into the microphone preaching the word of Social CRM.  Isn’t that what customer engagement is all about afterall?  Listening that is…

John

Summary of today’s project success panel

As I noted to the Twitterverse I had the great pleasure of sitting on a panel, moderated by Michael Krigsman, covering the topic of how to best measure project success.  The audience and my co-panelist were great and it was a fantastic experience.  While I won’t capture everything from the meeting I wanted to take  a moment and share some of my takeaways from the meeting.  Some of these concepts/ideas are mine, some are thoughts/ideas that came from other panelist, audience members, and Michael. 

• Project failure is often the result of cultural/political issues.  We’ve all been part of those projects where it seems the main goal is for everyone to cover their butts.  These are the projects that are failures right from the beginning and are likely to be deemed failures by everyone in the company after all is said and done.  If you are in a position to address this (executive stakeholder) you own fixing this.
• There is far more to a successful project than the standard 3 dimensions of scope, cost, schedule.  You must understand the goals the business is expecting to achieve as a result of this project.  Measure this as early and often as you can.
• Alright, hopefully you do establish the guidelines of success at the beginning of the project.  Continue to validate this definition throughout the project.  If you are working on a project that runs me than 3 months the definition of success is likely to change, even slightly, from the original.
• Consider an iterative approach to your project.  Deliver small chunks of work as frequently as you can to avoid surprising stakeholders.  To often people only have vague pictures of the project outcomes at the beginning.  If you want to avoid surprises and reinforce success, avoid surprises.
• My personal statement for all of you, do not let fear rule your decision making.  Once you allow fear to guide your decisions, you have already failed.
• Be a project cheerleader.  Yes, blow your teams horn, let management know about all the great work that’s going on.  Too often executives notice the project managers that are fighting fires, working overtime, making a lot of noise.  It is often the case that the projects are in this state because of their failures.  However, the project manager that is quietly getting done is often not noticed and is sometimes not rewarded for the fact that things are running smoothly.  Cheer on your team, spread the message to everyone.

I hope this provides some useful insights, tips, thoughts.  What other things would you recommend your fellow project leaders focus on to achieve project success?

John