Why should corporations put resources into connecting with customers at a personal level? Why should you dedicate a part of your day to giving personalized value to individuals in your community?
The answer: brand advocacy. Each personal interaction between a company and a customer or between you and a member of your community presents an opportunity to gain an advocate for your brand.
I haven’t been to Applebees recently but I had seen the ads about it being a neighborhood bar and thought they were BS. Now that I’ve heard about Chris Brogan’s experience, there’s a chance that I’ll move toward positive ground in how I percieve the restaurant. Depending on what my past experience is with Applebees and how much I trust Chris, there’s a chance that I’ll try the restaurant again. I didn’t have a dining experience or chat with an Applebees customer service rep to warm me up to the brand, but there’s a part of me that wants to be a fan. Why? Because Applebees was recommended during a conversation with somebody I respect.
When you hold a conversation with a customer or a community member in a public arena like Twitter, a blog, forum, or conference, you make it possible to not only gain an advocate, but to impress all those observing your conversation. Social media allows businesses and individuals to jump past all the advertising initiatives aimed at stirring up word-of-mouth conversations and jump right into the conversations themselves.
Companies like Ford, Comcast, and Zappos are leveraging social media into a positive brand-building machine that allows them to enter into many conversations at once. They don’t need to answer every question or customer complaint. It only matters that the questions they do answer are given careful consideration and publicized in a way that allows others with similar questions to benefit from that interaction.
What’s your take?
photo credit: kamshots
Very nice illustration of the principle of conversation and interaction in relationship to branding. More organizations ought to think this way!
I hear a lot of discussions about how “this doesn’t scale”. When you begin to think in terms of the multiple levels of interaction a company can have when they entertain open discussions, things begin to scale nicely.
Say you talk to a customer about their web design question. If you have that conversation on the phone or through email, there’s obviously no way to scale that interaction. But if you take that conversation into an open forum and give your answers some context, not only do you help the person with the question but you also win points with the “lurkers” who have the same question but didn’t take the time to ask. There’s your scale!
I was a big fan of CB’s applebees post and can’t help but keep that in mind AND the above every time I get a plea from a PR rep to review or promote their product on my site.
It seems so often the companies want bloggers to do your final bolded bidding *for* them (in this economy of scaled back advertising) which is/can be bad enough but too often they think of their email (since it isn’t a mass tweet) as hitting ONE person and can be less than Applebee-like.
There are also (sorry so long) a few companies who tweet where I think ‘really, People? That’s your tweet: blahblahblah UPC code blah’
They could do so much more were they to read your post.
Off to RT.
Why ever would you apologize for sharing your thoughts! Don’t! You’re not forgiven! =)
For those who use social media to build their business, interaction levels can only go down. For instance, right now, I responded to your comment in less than 5 minutes. You’re not surprised because it makes sense that I’d be aware of my blog. It’s nice that I respond but you probably won’t go breaking down your friends doors to tell them about me.
However, If you left a comment on Coca-Cola’s blog and they responded in less than five minutes with a solution to your question… there’s a possibility that you’d do a happy dance and drink more Coke for the rest of your life. Why? Because people have low expectations of large and established brands. It may take me 50 interactions to win an advocate for my brand. All a company like Coke needs to do is have one.
I think we’ll begin to see this catch on in the future. Yes?
Seth,
Great post. This whole scalability thing. Brands need to be reactive to conversation but there are also other ways of addressing the scale issue. Listening to conversations and using that intelligence to define content / info on their own properties is one. Most big brands think about content plans in months rather than days or hours. This needs to change.
>> However, If you left a comment on Coca-Cola’s blog and they responded in less than five minutes with a solution to your question… there’s a possibility that you’d do a happy dance and drink more Coke for the rest of your life.
I would be jigging a merry jig. On the flip side – if Coke responded to your post and ignored mine, would I (and all the others who they didn’t) be annoyed and think about buying a Pepsi next time?
Yes, it certainly needs to change. I think one of the things that makes real-time conversations scary to companies is the possible legal ramifications of an employee saying the wrong thing in a public forum. This is taken care of, like you say, by listening to conversations and discovering what topics are most often covered. If you asked a legal team to come up with answers to 50 questions, it would bring the conversation into manageable form instead of a looming mass of terrifying gray area.
Perhaps, but only if we had posed different questions showing our dissatisfaction with the brand. Applebees gained an advocate in Chris because he entered the restaurant under a negative assumption and left feeling like his dissatisfaction had been fixed by a positive experience. If Chris had already liked Applebees, he’d be okay with the bartender taking a bit long to get his beer.
You have a flexibility with previously-satisfied customers that you don’t get with the angry ones. So if we both responded to a post on Coke’s blog and they “ignored” my praise but responded to your complaint, I wouldn’t switch to Pepsi because “my” brand had confirmed my loyalty by responding to you and making you happy as well.
I make that 18 mins response time. Consider yourself followed and subscribed to
>> Perhaps, but only if we had posed different questions showing our dissatisfaction with the brand.
As you rightly say, most complaints stem from common issues so it’s highly possible we’ll be complaining about the same thing. It’s great in one sense I get to read about the solution to my problem via reading the response to yours – but do I feel like I also deserve a response or even have a right to one? Maybe.
What brands should and can do better right away is ensuring that common issues are resolved or addressed before they fester. With more complex customer issues (related to product development and service performance), it’s about the brand working hard to put them right and being open enough to say it isn’t infallible.
Totally agree with your last point although I would venture it’s never reasonable to have to wait for beer…
It makes sense that you’d want your own answer…and if you’ve made it clear that you’re a dissatisfied customer then a sensitive company will make sure you get it.
If you switch to drinking wine, you’ll take delays better in stride. Just think of the delay as time for the wine to breathe! =)
Thanks for your kind remarks. They’re very much-appreciated.
Interesting piece. You’ve captured well the power of humanized brands. And, as you note, what humanizes them best is a conversation with a representative of that brand. I applaud those companies you mention in your post for their willingness to jump into the big social gatherings on Twitter and elsewhere. I repect those brands for their courage and willingness to chat with us folks.
Keep focusing, Seth, on the not-so-obvious in what should be obvious.
Thank you, Richard. I shall do my best!
Everyone else, if you’ve not check out Richard’s blog, click on “Pocket Change” in the links list over —–>
I think you’ll enjoy what you find!