From the category archives:

Social CRM

Zeebox - the companion app that could drive social TV and two-screen in 2012

January 9, 2012

in Social CRM, Social TV, television

Social TV is a personal interest of mine.  Although not blogged here, I have presented my thoughts on social TV and have been fortunate enough to work on projects for clients such as BBC (Strictly Come Dancing), UKTV Gold, Alibi, Dave and the successful Dynamo: Magician Impossible on Watch; to developing Call of Duty TV for Activision to support the promotion of Black Ops and MW3 using Facebook as the broadcasting platform.

The area of focus for this post is the consumption of the TV companion app, in particular Zeebox. The announcement today (09.01.12) that BSkyB have invested in the app is exciting for broadcasters and advertisers alike.  Not to mention for us - the marketer and end user.

From an innovation perspective, Zeebox as a companion app falls into the strategic evolution quadrant of the innovation framework.  It does not revolutionise per se, rather it takes advantage of already revolutionary technologies such as smart phones/tablets (iOS, Android) social networks (Twitter/Facebook), broadband, app stores (cloud technology), all of which contribute to the ecosystem of social TV.

Zeebox however, does have the opportunity to further disrupt marketing and the TV industry which I will briefly focus on further down.

To date, there are a plethora of TV companion apps out there that compete with Zeebox.  What sits in Zeebox’s favour is not just the investment from BSkyB (tapping into a 15 million user base is a clear advantage) but the pedigree of their founders (Anthony Rose, Designer of the iPlayer and Ernesto Schmitt founder of peoplesound).  Both of these guys have disrupted the music and television industry before, and are looking to do so again.

This coupled with ripe tech market conditions, should make Zeebox a success not just here in the UK, but I hope also in the US too.

One only has to analyse the 2012 trends from the many sources that exist, to understand that 2012 is apparently the year for smart phones, tablets, and apps to hit critical mass.

Where I personally think Zeebox has the potential to disrupt marketing is in the following areas (please refer to PONBE and the marketing comms framework for the following):

Owned/Borrowed Media

Agencies and broadcasters will look to partner with Zeebox to customise their show page (borrowed media) and simultaneously develop both owned and borrowed media (Facebook/Twitter) campaigns to compliment their show page on Zeebox.

One current example of a broadcaster opening up Zeebox’s API is E4’s Desperate Scousewives.  The show page (borrowed media) has been customised and owned media (E4 web content and bespoke content) has been incorporated.

Marketers should not regard Zeebox as THE destination, rather a platform where owned and borrowed media converge during broadcast, and engagement can be facilitated.

As with setting up any borrowed media property, it is imperative that a strategy and objectives are in place for using the platform as some shows will benefit from a 2 screen experience better than others.

Paid media

TV spend still dominates big brand budgets.  So there is no doubt that media agencies on behalf of broadcasters and brands will be looking to test budget on Zeebox ads.  The fact that you can measure engagement through the platform will help. But, more importantly, I’d be really interested to know if Zeebox themselves will sell ‘Zeetag’ social data directly to media companies and broadcasters?  This business model is already in place for similar companion apps in the US e.g. Social Guide, and there is a huge market for more intelligent social data by media companies that will compliment Neilsen, especially when it comes to television advertising and audience engagement.  Check out Bluefin labs in the US for more info on leading edge social TV data.

For me personally, the opportunity is for broadcasters and brands to work in partnership on paid media content that could use audio watermarking technology built into the Zeebox app during adverts.

Because the app also allows users to login via Facebook, social commerce via audio watermarked ads could easily be facilitated, and therefore social CRM can be executed.  Think of the UK show ‘Come Dine With Me’, which is a social TV favourite and Hardys Wine whom sponsor this show.  Not only is there an opportunity to serve up bespoke content via Zeebox using audio watermarking, but you can drive users through to Facebook to purchase custom wine bottles at a discount during that time window, therefore linking TV, to social commerce to social CRM which is all measurable!

Real-time marketing

The biggest opportunity for disruption lies with real-time marketing.  Brands (advertisers) have the opportunity to hi-jack conversations on Zeebox show pages by producing ads in real-time that are contextually relevant to the show’s content.

IKEA has already shown the success in 2011 of iterative, real time ads as part of their 2011 365 campaign.  Let’s see what brands will do this year to further develop on this marketing activity.

Whilst the above examples are not an exhaustive list, I could have delved into the buzzwords of storytelling and dare I say it ‘transmedia’ (shit it’s typed now).  The creative possibilities for tinkering with the platform are endless, and coupled with positive network effects (tipping the app into Sky’s user base), 2012 could be a good year for Zeebox.

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The social customer, social CRM and social business

December 1, 2009

in Collaboration, Community Marketing, Crowdsourcing, Reputation Management, Social Business, Social CRM, Social Media, Tribe, Twitter

The following is taken from a key-note speech I delivered at B2B Marketing event in London on 18th November 2009. All slides were images so thought I’d share the script and will look to add v/o to slide deck on SlideShare shortly… please feel free to add your thoughts as this is a fast-growth area that is definitely one for discussion.

Introducing the social customer
We the customer have now evolved, we were never stupid, businesses just kept us that way. Social media powered by technology has enabled us to break free and provided us with a voice.

Previously businesses only managed the post-purchase relationship that was used largely for loyalty: to grow value of existing relationships (be that through spend or uptrading) or to reduce defection. Although designed to help drive conversion through the entire marketing cycle, It wasn’t as efficient to use pre-purchase in converting more leads to customers. In short, it had limited application to what was a largely linear process.

We have invested in ways not to engage with customers but keep the communication channels open through providing customer support centres, direct mail and e-mail newsletters.

Now that customers have access to social tools they are no longer just consumers they are also producers and can create video, blogs, use Twitter and connect with one another forming tribes.

Social shopping has brought immense change in how people short list, research and engage with products and services. We now have insight into what triggers and influences consideration and purchase actions and grow greater loyalty and value from it.

It’s not just purchase decisions that people are turning to digital for – they are increasingly turning to it when they have a customer service issue or complaint. If they cannot find the answer on your site they will turn to Google to seek out the problem and Twitter to bash the hell out of a company.

An example of the power of the social customer is Karl Havard’s experience with Aviva. In June 2009 Karl received a renewal notification for his motor insurance policy. Although Aleksandr the meerkat is very charming, Karl decided that for the sake of a few pounds he would stick with Aviva as he couldn’t be bothered with the hassle and all he needed to do was update his direct debit details - as Aleksandr would say ’simples’. So you would have thought!!
In Karl’s case to make a simple change to his direct debit bank details he was presented with a Mission Impossible. He found himself talking to voice recognition technology that had a hearing impediment; a call centre with people offering awkward silences and you have to check whether or not they are still there; 30 minutes plus of horrendous library hold music; and an online portal that presents him with “run time server errors” and when it did work….sent him back to the call centre. What is more interesting is that at this time Aviva’s marketing communications consisted of an ATL A-List celebrities focussed on individual care and attention!
So what did Karl do? Well he wrote a letter to the CEO of Aviva explaining the problem. That was not all, being digitally savvy he decided to share his bad experience by seeding this issue on his blog and embedded a copy of his letter within his post using slideshare for all to see. He also decided to tweet about this too and share his experience within customer service forums such as Plebble, customer communities and money saving expert. The result was that the letter on slideshare was picked up by Aviva and posted internally within their intranet, this then resulted in the issue being picked up by Sales and Marketing Director who personally contacted Karl to resolve the issue. The CEO of Aviva UK wrote a personal letter to Karl addressing the issue and many employees responded to his Twitter feed and blog post with comments to apologise. Furthermore the real damage is evident through searching ‘aviva customer service’ in google which now displays negative results that influence the contextual picture of the brand.

To respond to each customer as Aviva has done is definitely not cost effective. So how can we reduce cost, churn, develop new leads, maintain existing relationships using social media brand outposts and activities that may/may not be already in place?

This is where social CRM now can also play an important role…

Introducing social CRM
By definition, social CRM is understood as the integration of social media and CRM systems.

CRM in the social age becomes advantageous across the whole of marketing activity. It benefits from conversations prospective customers have through platforms and provides opportunities for authentic conversations.

CRM in the social age means building relationships much earlier in the traditional marketing cycle based on real-time value exchange with individuals and communities, converting more prospects to leads, more leads to customers.

It is vital to understand that social CRM should not exist as a silo but should be an integral part of social business.
If you want to be social you need to start with your customers and their conversations - simple.

I use Lithium as a great example of technology used to simplify this process by:
- Turning customers into problem solvers
- Sourcing new innovations and ideas from customers
- Generating word-of-mouth referrals from customers and generate support

I’ll provide you with some examples:
Promote - customers talking together about the products they want to buy on your site/community. The more enthusiastic customers are about your products and services the more you will sell. Reviews and recommendations are an example of this, and you can look to create a customer network around service.

Innovate - Intel connect this is a recent example. Apparently there are 15 billion devices connected to the internet of which Intel have a large share so they are looking for ways to best increase. This use of ideation is very similar to Starbucks and Dell Idea Storm but with Intel and they are looking to pay out for great ideas to get customers exchanging ideas on their behalf. If you’ve read Wikinomics, Don Tapscott provides more depth to the subject of crowd sourcing and co-creation.

Support - the most common use for social CRM. With traditional CRM it is very much focussed on internal processes. With social CRM it is focussed on external and social dynamics for example understanding user behaviour and why they would support users amongst the community for free.

Introducing the social business
Begin by building a vibrant customer community and then leverage the community to generate leads and ultimately transactions.
First step is to start off with social search engine optimisation looking for people based on what they search for, and social media monitoring to understand where to find people talking.

Look at Social SEO within the community as the more content you have within the community you need to ensure that it can easily be found through search.

Make sure that you build communities that dont exist in silos but that they can all collaborate and talk with one another.
Again great customer service starts with search. Your search within your site/community must return all results federated so that they do not have to search in multiple places.

With regard to management information, in practise you can monitor from a customer service point of view those problems asked, problems answered by existing content, resolved by community and resolved by agent. As the community evolves you should solve more problems with existing content thus increasing the return on investment.

To measure success of community you use metrics such as page views, posts, registrations, searches, new threads, accepted solutions, user sessions. Improvements can be made based on content, interaction, traffic, members and responsiveness.
The main question for marketers at the moment is how do I connect social web technologies to my own CRM? As social sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Communities scale in terms of positive network effects you cannot expect to have your employees watching this all this time.

You can use tools such as Lithium (I promise I’m not being paid by Lithium). They have technology that allows you to take a tweet and set it up as a thread within your own community to continue the conversation.
This technology taps into social behaviour aswWhen people use Twitter they want it to become a social response. A twitter user may not think that anyone is listening to their complaint, enquiry but instead they are alerted that their tweet is now visible and being listened to by a whole community so they should receive a response to their tweet.

You can then take that conversation which may be discussing purchasing a product or service and integrate it into your CRM system such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics.

In summary you need to integrate your social media strategy to your CRM strategy to become a social business. You can listen, leverage brand outposts, engage, create conversation, manage reputations and build social media community through the use of technologies and then link this to your CRM strategy.

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Brands beware: the social media backlash

October 13, 2009

in Community Marketing, Reputation Management, Social CRM, Word of Mouth Marketing

Monitoring, listening and engaging with social media is a hot topic for brands with their ongoing quest to get closer to customers, build trusted relationships and extend their customer lifecycle. There is a conference for that which I would have liked to participate in: Monitoring Social Media
I personally have been involved in monitoring the social media sphere for clients at Headstream as part of the listen and engage methodology from the Social Media Strategic Framework.

From my own perspective what each audit has highlighted is not only the wealth of conversation taking place about individual brands within social media, especially on certain platforms; but the need for organisations to place more importance on customer service and online reputation management.
In short organisations looking to be more successful need to become customer centric and take into account the social consumer – pretty obvious. You can read my thoughts on social CRM and online reputation management.

Back to the post in hand… Today I received latest the research conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by Tealeaf that looks at the social customer and the powerful effect they have on a brand’s reputation. More specifically how customers respond to their experiences of online transactions. Do check out the slide deck and if you require further information visit http://www.tealeaf.com/harris-uk

Brands beware: the social media backlash
View more presentations from Dave Ewart.

The research was carried out amongst UK consumers who had participated in online transactions and those who had experienced online problems with transactions.

The findings for those who closely follow the social media world and indeed marketing in general are not ground breaking, but they further re-affirm the importance of digital marketing, social media marketing, online reputation management with regard to consumer purchasing decisions. I have extracted some of the key findings from the research below:

• When customers experience problems attempting to conduct an online transaction, 78% share their experience with others.
Furthermore 46% of those customers would then abandon a transaction entirely or switch to a competitor.
I am certain that you have witnessed many a tweet complaining about airline ticket bookings which is why in the UK profiles such as @easyjetCare exist to respond to customer issues. I do not need to mention @comcastcares or @zappos

• 51% state that social media has influenced their online transactions.
This finding further supports research from DEI Worldwide in 2008 that I have referenced within client presentations particularly for the consumer electronic and game verticals placing importance on search and social media.

• 74% said when they read a negative comment online, it influences their likelihood to do business with the company.
Would love to know what the sales figures were like around the @HabitatUK backlash which scattered across all social media. Out of curiosity it would be great to see if the figures underpin the above findings and understand brand perception through the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

• 52% used a particular website after reading good reviews.
Encouraging result that supports the need for brands to identify key influencers and form trusted relationships with them.

In summary the underlying message from the research is to monitor, react and respond. This focuses on listening to the conversation within social media, reacting to the conversation in the appropriate way through a considered response.

Going back to basics it makes perfect sense to actually sort out the website sales funnel and indentify where in the transaction the problem are occurring, usability testing would not go a miss.
This is also an opoprtunity to engage your community and get them to play their part in helping to contribute to research and development of new platforms. Without covering old ground Dell IdeaStorm exists for this very reason.

Essentially the research places the importance on digital reputation management for brands and looking toward a customer centric business model – cue the social business and more importantly the implementation of social CRM.

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Radian 6 integrates with social CRM

July 7, 2009

in Social CRM, Social Media

Following my previous post ‘Social CRM - the next big thing?‘, I wanted to share with you the latest news from Radian 6 a social media monitoring and analysis provider, whom we at Headstream have used in support of social media analysis on behalf of client brands:

“Radian6 now brings users a social CRM solution to integrate with the SalesForce.com service cloud. Social media, customer support, and sales teams can use these capabilities to associate and cross-reference social web content with customer and prospect information.”

What prompted me to write is that social CRM appears to be a buzz topic at the moment (I’m caught up in this too) - so much so that there was even a  ’Rockstars of Social CRM‘ conference hosted by social media marketing guy Chris Brogan and sponsored by Radian 6 back in June 2009.  My only criticism is that they used Rock Band 2 instead of Guitar Hero Hero World Tour as entertainment at the event, but then I’m brand loyal.

Furthermore, I personally am very impressed by the way in which SalesForce.com is rapidly integrating the social web into its products and testing, improving and partnering with providers such as Radian 6 to keep ahead of the curve.  Software as a Service and cloud based computing is really where it is at.

For more information about Radian 6 and social CRM check out the slide deck below:

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Social CRM - the next big thing?

June 13, 2009

in Social CRM, Social Graph, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter

In April 2009, Jeremiah Owyang and Forrester released their latest report, ‘Future of the Social Web‘, which illustrates how social networks and marketers will have to change their strategies going forward.

The report suggests that within approximately two years, social networks will be more powerful than corporate websites and CRM systems – this can be further defined as the ‘era of social commerce’. One significant finding that marketers should make sense of and start planning for is Social CRM.

What exactly is Social CRM?

The traditional CRM system assists an organisation by bringing together data from all areas of an organisation, giving a 360-degree view of a customer for marketing and sales to make informed decisions on cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. At the same time, this data can be used to shape marketing strategies and corporate communications.

Social CRM, on the other hand, is your existing CRM that has the ability to leverage the social web and automate the conversation process. The social CRM can be used by marketing and sales teams to listen to conversations, craft appropriate messages, join in immediately with customer conversation and offer them value in terms of information and solutions.

Social CRM has the ability to:

  • Convert content to conversations therefore humanising a company so that customers regard the organisation as a trusted peer.
  • Extend conversations into collaborative experiences, putting the customer at the core of a company’s strategy.
  • Transform these experiences into meaningful relationships based upon real customer engagement.

When thinking in terms of ROI for setting up this system, the value is in developing relationships and long term loyalty that serve your business over time.   Social CRM will help generate marketing intelligence, providing the marketing department with insight that will assist your company to source better leads and reduce customer support costs through self-helping communities.

Adopting the Social CRM mindset

To begin with, marketers should dedicate time to working with brand advocates, involving them in shaping the product and communications. This is how social CRM is supposed to work; through the integration of customer social networks.

You should find that your existing customers belong to social networks and openly add more information to their profile than what you have in your traditional CRM system. Therefore you should think creatively of ways to integrate your customer’s networks into your current CRM.

If you think about it, a customer’s LinkedIn profile probably has more information than your CRM system would ever accommodate. A LinkedIn profile for example, would feature education, awards, associated groups customers identify with, furthermore their personal/company blog and Twitter feed can be fed into their profile. Most important is that you have sight of their entire business social network, including colleagues, suppliers and partners.

Now is the time to give some thought on how to connect social networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter to your existing CRM and look to share information in a two-way manner. At the same time, it is important to be mindful that your customers should be able to control what information is shared with you, as social media best practice is all about giving customer control over the dialogue.

Going forward

Marketers need to understand that social networks and communities will influence CRM; resulting in corporate sites and marketing communications being able to recognise social relationships and customers preferences and deliver customised experiences to them in real-time. We are still some distance from this scenario; however companies such as Appiro and Salesforce are already leading the way in Social CRM.

Earlier this year, Appiro developed a Facebook application that can easily be rebranded by marketers for campaign activity. This application can be distributed at the same time sharing information, recommending information to peers, and used for other purposes such as recruiting, word of mouth, and other typical social network activities. As the information is shared, it can then be passed to a landing page where users can submit information in a web form that is stored on Salesforce.

Social CRM is both exciting and daunting, but by taking tiny steps to understand social media, and experimenting through integrating social tools into your CRM system now, then testing and improving, you will be very well prepared.

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