Can you identify the influencers in your market?

Is it possible to identify the true influencers in your market?  Can you identify the true influencers within your own company?  Can you identify those people who influence your own decisions?

If we can identify these influencers they would play a major role in the success of your business.  Working proactively with these influencers would allow you to maximize your customer service activities as you deploy your Social Support Communities.  These influencers would act as lead generators for your business and might be ideal, if they are companies, as partners to help close business.

How hard could it be to obtain this magical nugget of information?  I tried Twitalyzer as I know they suggest your influencers.  Unfortunately, they only listed one person who I even knew, none of them directly influence me in any way.

I don’t have the answers and would love to hear your thoughts..  Do you identify influencers?  How do you do it?

John

Your 2010 Social Media Plan: Who needs guidelines? We all do…

Before you read this post I would encourage reviewing the starting point of this series.  The need for social conversation guidelines exists for all companies but the guidelines need not be complicated.  Best Buy has done a great job of publicly posting their Twelpforce Twitter guidelines and they are a good starting point for you to review.  I love these guidelines for a couple of reasons:

• They are publicly available providing a level of transparency, something you should consider for your guidelines.
• Since the Twelpforce initiative is still an experiment in progress, they are evolving these guidelines as Best Buy learns more.  These documents need to be living documents, do not expect to write it once and have it hold up forever.
• Twelpforce members self-police and participate in the evolution of these guidelines.  Employee buy-in, true buy-in, cannot be mandated, involve employees in the process.

Read these, leverage these, they do a great job of hitting the key items you need to consider.  Also, remember that I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.  You should chat with your legal team about the guidelines you put in place.  I won’t replicate the great work Best Buy has already done, but I do want to note some other key points you should consider as part of pulling together your guidelines.

Where do you start?

If you already have internal guidelines for code of conduct you should dust those off.  Those, combined with the Best Buy guidelines I noted in the beginning of this post, will make building your guidelines straight-forward.

Clarify who “owns” the accounts being used for your social media efforts.  This includes:

• Who owns the content created and distributed by the social accounts.
• Who owns the social accounts themselves?  Does the person who uses the account own it if they move onto another job or does the company?  Be clear as it will benefit everyone as not all accounts are created equal.  My recommendation is that:
  • Corporate accounts, those that include the company name in the account name (not description) need to remain in the hands of the business when employees move on. 
  • Accounts that are named to match individuals, like my JohnFMoore Twitter account, are owned by the individuals themselves.

Should you monitor compliance?

Yes, yes, yes.  If you have the right people on board they will self-police themselves, ensuring great service for everyone involved in your social conversations.  However, you still need to monitor that these conversations.  You can use free tools like Tweetdeck and Google Reader, or paid tools like Radian6, each have their pluses and minuses. However, if you are just getting started, download Tweetdeck and:

• Follow all of your company’s accounts, group them to more easily monitor the conversations taking place.
• Add Twitter search columns for your company name and/or your products.

Monitor and correct behaviors as needed.  Mistakes made on social channels are extremely visible.  Monitoring of conversations combined with a regular review process will ensure any small issues are corrected before they become large issues.

Do you have a social media policy in place today?  Am I leaving out anything that’s important to your business, government agency, personal brand?

John

Why do we insist on complicating CRM?

A couple of recent conversations have prompted me to ask this simple question… Why do we insist on complicating CRM?  While CRM means many things to many people (part of the problem, I guess) , we use our CRM systems to:

• Model relationships with customers, prospects, and others that matter to the success of our business.
• Store data that we collect from multiple channels to guide our actions and decision-making about how to work with those people, those relationships.

That is, at a very high-level, the purpose of our CRM, CEM, CIM, CMR, Social CRM, (“acronym do jour here”) systems.  CRM is also a strategy, another reason for the confusion when you discuss CRM with anyone other than those of us in the know.  Paul Greenberg, over this past summer, noted this excellent definition of Social CRM:

“CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.”

Keeping it simple, the CRM strategy involves defining the right channels (phone, email, Twitter, Facebook, conferences, etc..), making the channels bi-directional (yes, customers need value in return), measuring results, refining, and doing it all over again.

While Paul says Social CRM is an extension of CRM I say it is simply taking those bi-directional channels and incorporating that information into your strategy, your tools….  Seems simple, seems right….

How these simple requirements are met, of course, require deep thought and requires new ways of interacting, new processes, and yes, new tools.  As I was discussing with someone on the Enterprise 2.0 site recently, you need to begin to recognize that your company resides in a very large ecosystem and that you must consider: 

• Conversations, social engagements, relationships, must be dynamically segmented based upon security needs, roles being played at the moment, sentiment, etc.. to ensure that the right participants are brought to conversations at the time they are needed, no earlier, no later. 
• As individuals are connected in real-time, historical data relevant to that conversion must be made available too.
• On all channels, social or other, companies must determine who the person is, the persona they are playing, and the right manner in which to respond to the user.  This might mean handing the conversation off to customer service, marketing, support, a combination of all parties.
• All conversations need to be mapped back to a central system, I’ll say CRM, and tagged according to the persona, the sentiment/tone of the end user, etc..
• As the end-user persona changes, even within a given engagement/conversation, the correct people on the company side must be brought in, again, with the necessary information to be immdiately useful.  In other words, you are not transferring them to yet another service agent where the customer must repeat everything they have already said.  Data is available immediately and people are brought in with that data at their fingertips.

My CRM friend, Wim Rampen, points out that I may have taken a wrong turn on my way to CRM enlightenment.  What do you think?

John

Team Support is bringing your engineers to your customers

One of the greatest parts of writing this blog is the opportunity to meet with passionate people who are focused on helping customers more easily participate in the success of the products they use every day.  I recently chatted with Robert Johnson and Eric Harrington, CEO and COO of TeamSupport, respectively.  Robert has a great saying, which is also highlighted on their website:

“Great Customer Support = Happy Customers = More Customers!”

Robert not only says it but I sense that he truly means it.  You can’t fake customer centricity.

So what is TeamSupport?

The TeamSupport solution focuses on closing the loop between the customer, the support team, and the product development organization.  It does this by capturing customer issues and requests for product changes that are coming in from e-mail, web forms, standard phone support.    While support data collection is not a differentiator for this product, the workflows that are enabled, and the transparency that is achieved, is where the power of the solution resides.

Understand that the solution is fairly new and still immature in many areas.  The product is a little more than 18 months old and it shows in the user interface.  However, it has promise as a SAAS-based support solution.

Understand that TeamSupport is not a Social Support Community (SSC) and is not trying to be a “social” solution, it just wants to be a great support solution.

Who is using it today?
TeamSupport currently has over 250 customers today. The price point is very good, just $25 per month per seat.  This is cheap, trust me.  I have been speaking with a lot of companies lately and most are significantly higher.

How does it work?

Support engineers process issues as they are coming in, following the standard processes already established by the company.  If the support team cannot resolve an issue for the customer they immediately enter it into the built-in bug system so that the product team can immediately be aware of the issues.

Here are a few of the things I really like about TeamSupport:

•  The system acts as a bug system, ties into source control systems like Subversion, and can feed data back out to your Salesforce or HighRise CRM system.
• The system has solid support for controlling the visibility of individual issues.  This enables development/support to open up the status of issues directly to customers, as they are processed through the system.  You don’t always want this level of visibility, of course, but it’s available when you do want it.
• Search works across the entire system:  Tickets, Knowledgebase, Wiki.  For added value I would love to see them take search to the next level, searching into your uploaded documents, source control, CRM systems. 
• Can report on time spent on a customers, on a certain ticket, a product.  Do have a restful API if you want to pull this data out and push into a real-time and billing system.
• You can easily define various SLAs for different customers, products, etc..  When SLAs are not achieved, alerting makes this obvious to the team so the issue can be resolved.

Where do I feel TeamSupport needs improvements?

The is plenty of room for usability improvements and user interface polishing.  These issues do not block your customers from being successful but could slow down, slightly, your support and product teams. 

Keep an eye on team support if you are looking for a basic support system, it’s worth checking out.

John

Social Support Communities, A Pathway To Customer Success

I have written a lot about Social Support Communities (SSC), CRM, and Social CRM. All companies need to be where the customers are, and more and more customers are spending time on social networks, discussing their experiences with products, customers, services. If your customers are there, having conversations, you had better be there too. 

I am hoping to speak at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston this coming summer and am hoping you can help support my effort to get this important topic on the agenda.  If you’re up for it, please stop by the site and leave a comment about wanting to learn more. 

Yes, this is social begging, I am so ashamed.

John

How Dell Outlet utilizes Social Conversations to generate revenue

Yes, you’ve caught on by now that I’m using the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday’s as an opportunity to take a short break from being completely insightful and witty.  Hey, I still am, but I figured I’d give you a little longer break while I share some more interviews from the leaders in the social world.  I had the great pleasure of chatting with Stefanie Nelson who manages marketing communications for the US Dell Outlet.

Stefanie, thanks again for taking your time to share this information, it’s helpful and I know it will benefit everyone to learn more about how Dell is achieving results through social channels.

What is your role with Dell?
I manage the marketing communications for the U.S. Dell Outlet, serving both business and consumer audiences.

How does social media fit in with your job?
For Dell Outlet, we are always looking for cost-effective vehicles with short lead times to help us communicate special offers. Social Media is a natural fit, as sites like Twitter and Facebook allow us to quickly post coupons and help sell excess inventory.

How do your customers react to you being social?
When we first started posting on Twitter as @DellOutlet in 2007, we intended to only post offers. We didn’t really understand the potential until customers started replying and asking questions. When we responded, the Twitter audience seemed very surprised and got really excited. It was clear that they really wanted to engage with us, and we were encouraged by the reaction, so we expanded our Dell Outlet social media objectives to include “improving customer experience”. We’ve been using Twitter to answer questions ever since. 

Do you use software, beyond Twitter, to monitor and engage on social channels?
I’m currently using CoTweet to manage @DellOutlet conversations on Twitter, and Dell also partners with Radian 6 for more qualitative monitoring and analysis across the blogisphere. In addition, Dell tracks sales, when applicable, via proprietary tracking URLs.

What return on investment have you seen for Dell Outlet by investing in social channels?
In addition to revenue (we announced in June that we surpassed $3 million from @DellOutlet Twitter links alone), we have also benefitted greatly from the increase in awareness. The press we’ve received has helped us put Dell Outlet on the radar of many potential customers that would not have otherwise know about us. While it’s not something we can replicate, I think it illustrates the importance of always looking for innovative ways to approach new media and new technologies. There are many opportunities to be “first” or “best” if you keep your eyes peeled. Combine that with a great Corporate Communications team, and enjoy the ride!

How many people are involved in social channels within Dell Outlet?
Currently, I’m a one-woman show for the U.S. Dell Outlet social media, which I manage in addition to  other demand generation  activities including email marketing, search engine marketing, online advertising, and affiliate advertising. It’s manageable, but not sustainable, so we are implementing processes that incorporate help from other Dell teams to handle questions related to customer care and tech support. Finding the right people and the right tools is critical to the success of such processes. 

How do customers react as transition them from social channels to the in-person experience?
In social media, it’s all about personal attention. The use of our “AtDell” Twitter handle naming convention (StefanieAtDell, LionelAtDell, RichardAtDell, etc.) helps to communicate that we are not a cold, impersonal corporate logo, but real people ready to answer questions and point you in the right direction. As a result, we are not necessarily transitioning customers from social channels, but are merely and extension of the entire in-person experience.

Any great stories from the real world to share?
I knew I really had to behave when I logged on one day to read “God is now following you on Twitter”. 

Stefanie, you had better be good with that kind of audience.

John

Your 2010 Social Media Plan, Start Your Blogging Engines…

Before you read this post I would encourage reviewing the starting point of this series. If you have already read it you still may want to review again as I added a little more background and the comments for the first post are great.

While Twitter is the doorway for social conversations, your blog is your house, a place where you can engage in deeper conversations with all that come over to visit.  As with all channels you employ for social conversations, your blog should continue to reflect who you are in a transparent fashion, should focus on engagement by avoiding one-way blogging, and should seek to add value to the entire marketplace.  In short, it’s not about a rabid focus on selling and shameless self-promotion.  If you want that, just buy some air time and run TV or radio commercials.

How do you get started?

There are some great post throughout the web that cover this subject at length.  The key points I want you to keep in mind, however, are:

• Work with your IT team to identify a blogging platform that you can bring in-house and maintain yourself.  If you do not have the technical team in place, find a blogging platform that allows you to fully customize the look and feel of your content and that provides you with plenty of storage space for images, videos, and podcasts.  You may need it.
• If you have branding and user interface guidelines start to use those to determine the look and feel of your blog.  Before you go live with any blog make sure it represents the business, don’t do it half way.
• Get a domain name for your blog and work with your IT team, or the hosting provider, to ensure that people coming to your blog will see something like yourcompanyname.com, it’s your name, show it.
• Ensure your blog enables sharing of content, place tools for bookmarking, retweeting, digging, of your content.  Make sure your messages are shared with minimal effort on your readers part.

Boring, I want to start blogging

While personal bloggers can “wing it”, your business should not “wing it”.     Your social conversationalist, the employee we hired earlier in the series, should pull together marketing and customer support/services to come up with a plan for your blog, a strategy, a series of measurable metrics.  Remember, the social conversation is led by marketing and customer service, do not leave them out of this conversation.

Your blog, as we have noted, should focus on adding value to your market place and as such should include this type of content:

• Guest posts by experts in your market.  These guest posts should not focus exclusively on how great your solutions are.  If your solutions fit the topic, highlight that fact, of course, but make the focus of these posts be on education.
• Include posts from your employees about their jobs.  Remember, people connect with other people, not nameless businesses.  Put faces to your business so that customers, and potential customers, can make these connections.
• Get your executives into the mix.  The executive team should occasionally weigh in, people want to hear from them too.
• Provide reactions to what is happening in the market as it happens.  As news about your key personnel, your company, your market,  is developing, react to it by providing your insights.

We have set the bar very low by stating you need to be delivering a blog post a week.  You should be able to deliver compelling content once a week, if not, why are you in business?

What should you be measuring?  For year one of this plan, let’s keep it simple as we will learn more, throughout the year, about what metrics are critical to your business success.  However, some simple metrics that should always be paid attention to include:

• Number of posts.  Hit those targets I gave you.
• Number of comments.  Comments and postbacks provide some insights into your influence.
• Standard web metrics like traffic, time spent viewing pages, etc, should also be measured.  You want your blog to be “sticky”, a destination people that people regularly visit.
• Subscribers to your blog via e-mail, through google reader, through any other source you can measure.  These are your “fans”, keep them coming back.
• Visitor source.  How successful are your other channels, like Twitter as an example, at bringing traffic to your blog.
• Visitor destination. Is your blog leading people into your corporate web site where they can learn more about you, becoming leads.  After all, this does come back to helping you generate leads, reducing support traffic, not just about making you a social media rock star.

While there is much more that could be said about your 2010 blogging approach, this will get you started. 

John

On the floor with Twelpforce

I had the pleasure of interviewing John Bernier, who heads up the Best Buy Twelpforce Program, the other day.  Today’s interview is with Scott Hagemeyer, a Best Buy employee, an in-store Apple Expert, and is a member of the Twelpforce program.  His in-the-trenches viewpoint provides another perspective on this program, a perspective worth understanding.  While Best Buy is still in the early experimental stages, feeling their way for what works, and what doesn’t, I am excited by what I have heard.  Early leaders, like Best Buy, are demonstrating the value of social media.  It’s time for others to start getting on board.

What is your role with Best Buy?

Within Best Buy my official job title is “Apple Expert/Computers Specialist”. I’m one of the go-to people in my department for any questions regarding the product within. My knowledge covers the entire department, with special focus on Apple products, software, and accessories, but I don’t neglect the Windows side of things and am well versed on them as well.

More recently I have taken on another role with the company by joining the Twelpforce. As a part of the Twelpforce, I help meet the needs of customers in a new, and exciting way; via Twitter. One of the most interesting parts of the Twelpforce is that someone doesn’t have to be a Best Buy customer to use it. I respond to questions regardless of who you are or where you shop. While I naturally rely on Best Buy’s resources (BBY Forum, BBY.com product pages, etc), I also link to external sources to make sure I can provide the most complete answer possible.

How does social media fit in with your job?

My role with the Twelpforce meshes my job with social media pretty well. I have yet to meet anyone that I’ve twelped in person, but I think that as more and more people turn to social media the possibility of this is growing. I can eventually see our customers doing some initial research and getting answers via Twitter, then stopping in to the store to visit with me in person before making a final decision. More and more customers are already coming into the store with printed research; emails from friends/family, online reviews from CNET, etc. As a part of the Twelpforce, I can assist those customers with their research in an highly engaging way providing quick, succinct answers to any question they may encounter.

Were you involved with setting of the social policies in place today?

No, I wasn’t involved with setting any of the policies. The policies were already set in place before the Twelpforce was ever introduced.  The guidelines for the Twelpforce are pretty minimal and open-ended. There are some definite no-no’s in there, but for the most part the policies encourage me to be myself and make my experience with the Twelpforce my own. Here’s what they’ve laid out:  http://bbyconnect.appspot.com/participation_guidelines  They definitely want us to be ourselves, and put our own individual personalities into our responses, while still remembering that we are acting on behalf of Best Buy and need to maintain a certain level of professionalism.  What’s great about this is that since this is an experiment of sorts, the rules are able to be changed as the project evolves. My input on how the Twelpforce is going is greatly valued by those who are overseeing it. Since this is a very public experiment, they want a lot of feedback. If I think something could work better, I can suggest it. If I think something isn’t working, I can voice my concern.

Another interesting part of the policies is that the community really regulates itself. If we see another user making questionable comments or posts, we let them know to be careful and to remember the guidelines that are in place.  Those who have been twelping for a while sort of all follow the same set of un-written guidelines for our posts. We try to help out the new members as best we can to make sure the Twelpforce continues to be as successful as it has been.  Currently, John is working with myself as well as a few of the other top twelpers on developing a mentoring program for those who are new to the Twelpforce. Currently, this program is in its extreme infant phase. If it comes to fruition, it will be experimental and a work-in-progress. Through this program, someone who is new to the team would be paired with a veteran of the team. We would provide them with insight as to how the flow of things goes, while encouraging them to get their feet wet and start posting.

How do you decide who to interact with from a social perspective for Best Buy?

Anyone who takes the time to send a tweet, whether it’s a question, a comment, or a concern, deserves to be heard. In that regard, I try to respond to everyone that I can. Luckily for me, the Twelpforce currently sits at about 2,300 employees strong (although it seems like only several dozen tweet on a regular basis) and can get to those that I miss. In my opinion, one of the best parts of the Twelpforce is that it allows for someone to get multiple responses. If asking what type of computer to buy, for example, that person may get 4 – 6 recommendations from different Twelpers. Each one typically lays out their reasoning for why they chose the products they did, but what’s really important is that we allow the customer to take all of that information in and make the best decision for themselves.  So far, I haven’t heard of anyone suffering from information overload by getting too many responses, but this could be a possibility at some point. Luckily, the majority of Twelpforce members look to see who else has responded before adding their input.

How do your customers react to you being social?

So far I would say that customers are reacting very well to it. In the couple of months that I’ve been doing this, I’ve noticed that the number of tweets we receive on a daily/weekly basis has been increasing. Customers definitely like how quickly we are able to respond. One of the promises the Twelpforce makes is “To let you know what we know. As fast as we know it.” While I’m twelping, I can generally respond to questions within 5 to 10 minutes at most. I get a lot of reply tweets from customers who are surprised I got back to them so quickly.  (I wonder if maybe John has some stats for you on exactly what our typical response time is….)

How do customers react as you transition them from social channels to the in-person experience?
As I said earlier, I have yet to actually meet anyone whom I’ve twelped so far, but I think that time is not too far off. In general, customers have been very receptive to the idea of heading into an actual Best Buy store after an exchange of tweets. Even in this digital age, most of our customers are still pretty tactile and still want to physically see and/or use what they plan on buying. Customers are doing more and more of their research through other channels, like the Twelpforce, rather than visiting with a product specialist in a store.

Any great stories from the real world to share?

One of my most memorable Twelping experiences thus far was an exchange that took place between myself and @Viper_Tim on the evening of November 1st, 2009. He was having a problem with the color of his television (too much green and not enough red) after having disassembled his home theater to move his furniture.  He had tried everything he could think of, including most of the things I would suggest, and was at a total loss. Fortunately, I was able to completely resolve his issue via tweet.

The exchange proceeded as follows:
@TWELPFORCE Panasonic TC-P42C1 Plasma / Colors are off and cannot figure out how to adjust…too much green and no red…help?
@Viper_Tim #twelpforce Sounds like it could be an issue with your Tint setting. Manual available here (http://bit.ly/2WoHIx) if you need it.
@ApplExpert50 #twelpforce I have the manual, and have played with the tint (and everything else) for an hour w/o luck…thanks though!
@Viper_Tim In that case, have you tried checking your A/V Mode setting? Most TVs have settings like Std, Game, Movie, PC, and Dynamic.
@ApplExpert50 I had to unhook everything to move my furniture, and when I hooked it back up it was crappy…I’m sure I did it right though.
@Viper_Tim If it was un-hooked for too long, it may have factory reset itself back to Dynamic, which would give it a funny color.
@ApplExpert50 no luck…I’m at a loss
@Viper_Tim Hhhmmm. It sounds simple, but have you tried re-seating all of the cable connections on both TV & device sides?
@ApplExpert50 Thanks a million…I just need someone to help me see the giant “THIS IS THE PROBLEM!” sign in front of me. lol
@Viper_Tim AWESOME! You are very welcome I’m happy to help! Troubleshooting step 1: Is it plugged in? =) Enjoy your TV in it’s proper color!

While I didn’t ever get to know his real name or where he lives, and I will probably never meet him in person, it gave me a great feeling of pride and accomplishment to be able to provide support when he needed it most.

I could fill many, many pages with success stories from my experiences in-store. One of my favorite things about my job is being able to show people how technology can benefit their lives. I grew up with a computer and the Internet, so these things are like second nature to me. However, to most of the customers I deal with on a daily basis technology can be confusing, intimidating, or even scary. Nothing makes me happier than seeing the faces of my customers once they’ve learned that technology can actually benefit their lives. The Twelpforce is just another way for me to extend my love of helping people understand technology.

Social Converation Monitoring and Execution: Twelpforce

I reached out to John Bernier, who is the marketing manager at Best Buy who is leading the Twelpforce efforts, to learn more about the thoughts behind the effort, the processes being used, and the results.  Best Buy is an innovator in this area and I learned a thing or two from John, I hope you do as well.

How does social media fit in at the highest levels of your business?

Our internal culture is inherently social, because we’re made up of humans.  150,000+ of them, in fact.  At the highest levels, our leadership is involved in the medium in large part because they share the common theme that our employees share:  curiosity.  We’re not a company that has ever been afraid to experiment, learn, adapt and change, and social is a good place for us to extend that attitude.

 Why did it make sense for you to “go social”?

Quite simply, our customers expect it from our people, and our brand.  There are thousands of conversations out there that involve our brand, and for a while, we weren’t invited to be a part of those because we hadn’t been invited.  By establishing our presence, creating value and acting like a normal human being instead of how you might traditionally expect a brand to act, we’re finding ourselves invited into the conversation much more frequently.  It’s a great opportunity to truly connect with people on a 1:1 basis.

What processes did you put in place to enable going social?

Like most brands who have had some success in this space, we didn’t just try something and get it right the first time out of the gate. We had been experimenting with the idea of “being social” for a while.  Blue Shirt Nation  allowed our employees to learn to socialize with each other, and Bazzaar Blue Shirt Nation allowed employees to socialize with our vendor partners.   

When Twitter came along and captured our attention, Ben Hedrington (a bestbuy.com site engineer) had the vision to develop a tool called “Spy”) that allowed people inside Best Buy to see what others were saying about Best Buy in the social world. Wow – what an eye opener.  It made us painfully aware of our relative lack of a presence in these conversations….and directly led to the roll out of a connecttweet powered twitter feed (@bestbuy) that was designed to let our employees get their feet wet with twitter.  All these were necessary experiments, and helped us understand how to operate in the space.  Because of these learnings, we felt that we were ready to turn our efforts towards….”the customer”, and we began the journey of developing and building consumer facing initiatives like the Twelpforce platform, our Best Buy Community Forums, and our Facebook presence.   
 

How did you go about tool selection?

Selecting the tools we’d use/build were secondary to creating our objectives (Be Relevant), and identifying the needs of the customer we wanted to address.  Once we had those needs identified, it was a matter of selecting the channel, and building the interface to engage, and measure.  Worth noting, most of the tools we use were designed and built internally by some really smart people I work with…we do have some partners who help us along the way, but are actively cultivating knowledge within Best Buy so we inherently know what we’re doing, and how to recognize opportunity when it presents itself vs waiting for someone to package it and present it to us. 

What social communication policies have you put in place?

You can view them here..  Really, they are bumpers vs a document designed to dictate behavior.  Certainly there are some no-no’s laid out, but the key is that we are giving employees the liberty to try new things, and create their own path that perhaps all of us can learn something from.

How many people do you have monitoring the social channels today?

Hard to say exactly…we have over 2,200 Twelpforce members, numerous Community Forum “Connectors”, and we also have ears to the ground in the form of curious employees who are simply active in the space.  If there’s a “disturbance in the force”, we’re likely to hear about it pretty quickly, whether it be via twitter, Facebook or someplace else. More often than not, we can step in and handle a situation before it gets anywhere near the danger zone.  The key is that we’re able to engage, which seems to calm a situation down pretty quick.

How does the social channel fit within your overall communication and monitoring process and strategy?

Social is another way we can engage consumers.  I wish there was some magic answer I could give you, but we recognize it’s important to keep tabs on what customers are saying, and asking of us.  We’ve got tools in place that help us get directional feedback on how we’re doing, and what we’re being asked to do or change by consumers (Have you seen Best Buy Ideas??)  Reporting on “social” is a regular and important part of the weekly and monthly metrics reporting we filter to leaders in the building and field.

Do you measure ROI today?  If yes, how?  What have been the early results?

ROI is tricky, and I’d be hard pressed to say anyone has it completely figured out.  “Going Social” has required relatively little capital investment, and intuitively, we feel it’s an important place for us to be moving forward.  But, we haven’t come across a tool that measures exactly what we want to look at across all the places we have a social presence, so we’re very busy building out our own metrics using a variety of proprietary measurement tools, as well as publically available tools.  

How do your customers react to you being social?

This is a broad question, and I don’t want to generalize too much, but because we make sure to take our time and look at what a customer wants from us in a particular space, we seem to be getting a positive response in most cases.  Luckily, we’ve avoided any of the “bull in a china shop” mistakes that seem to happen to those that don’t take the time to evaluate the environment they are in to adjust their purpose and presence accordingly.  

How, if at all, do your social media tools fit in with your other backend systems like CRM, ERP, HRIS, etc..?

N/A for the most part.  We’ve incorporated some widgets into our intranet to make accessing social media easier, and employees have terminals that allow them access to these sites.  So, it’s not really about putting links to our back-end in place, it’s about removing barriers to access these places and making sure they are prepared to engage the customer in a smart way through training. 

10 things that I think I know I know

While I am but a student of learning, not a master of anything in particular, there are a few things I know for certain (I think ).

• Companies often do a poor job of determining the value of their customers. I love this post that Arie Goldshlager shared with me today. It discusses how to predict the lifetime value of your customers, check it out.
• It is more important than ever to monitor the conversations that are taking place on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, on blogs, in discussion groups. Barry Dalton shares with us how his company went about finding the right tool for their social conversation monitoring needs.
• I know that Facebook will never be an enterprise-level CRM system that is worth companies investing in.
• I know that Facebook is a social platform that you need to consider as part of your social media plan.
• I know that Salesforce’s Chatter platform has potential to be the only viable social CRM platform for Salesforce.
• I know that social platforms like Twitter and Facebook run the risk of supporting group think. As Roger Sessions tweeted me today, “Nuture the disturbers”. Yes, they will keep the real conversations flowing.
• I know that LinkedIn and CoTweet have lost their minds in understanding the value of their offerings. Both are great platforms but $50,000 a month for custom LinkedIn groups and $1500 a month for CoTweet Enterprise are examples of losing sight of the value of your solution.
• I know that there are some great people on Twitter who are trying to help people find jobs each and every Wednesday as part of our #workwednesday efforts.

Wait, that’s only 8 things… Guess I don’t know all that I thought I did… What do you think you know you know?

John