Marketers see many studies like one of the Morgan Stanley reports which state that there are more social network users than email users. And especially in the B2B sphere the research makes clear that 80% of business buyers today say that they find their vendors as opposed to vendors finding them. Tony Sambito writes advices that compasnies and brands plan for the Social Buyer before it is too late. I absolutely agree with him…
Business decision makers often ask me how much I think Social Media goals have to be linked to business goals to drive success. A new report, “The State of Social Media in Credit Unions: Opportunities and Challenges,” from 187 credit unions of varying size and composition across the United States and Canada now allows some insights in that question. According to the study, companies using Social Media with more than two years of experience are the most likely to report success (57%), while those that have three months or less are least likely (17%).
Still thinking what will be the Social Media trends for this summer? Tim Gray has an answer for you. Find the 5 trends that he advices to watch out for. Location based topics, group buying, “swiming in the stream” (social stream), social search and mobile. Don’t know if this is really social only but still good in terms of your web-strategy.
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Is Social Media a sales tool for retailers? A study by Forrester Research and GSI Commerce says Social Media has almost no influence on online purchasing behavior. The survey shows that social media rarely leads directly to purchases online — less than 2% of orders were the result of shoppers coming from a social network. The question is what the ideology of Social Media is for companies… and there are examples like Threadless that can deny such studies. If retailers see it more like listen-to-act approach, pre-selling, sensitising and serving their consumers, then they will be successful in also selling through Social Media.
C-Level is engaging in Social Media! A recent study by Useful Social Media – State of Corporate Social Media 2011 – gives us some compelling charts that describe the trend how the C-Level increasingly gets into Social Media.
Although the European managers are still not completely behind the Social Media vision, the following chart suggests that it won’t be long until European senior C-Levels understand the advantages of Social Media.
How does the future of shopping look like? Mobile will definitely play a massive role for the consumer 2.0, or 3.0?! Where can I get the best bargains? Which company or retailer has the product I want in stock – now and not in 5 days? Sumi Das explores the “ultimate personal shoppers” of tomorrow.
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In the US, almost 80% of children between the ages of 0 and 5 use the Internet on (at least) a weekly basis. This is the results from a report by Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop. The report, assembling data of seven studies, also illustrates the increasing parallel consumption of different formats of media at the same time. Some key findings: 60% of kids under the age three watch video online, 47% is the amount television accounts for those using all formats of media and 36% of kids between 2 and 11 use internet and TV simultaneously. It is also interesting to see how the use of mobile phones is on the rise in the young age target group. Of children ages 6 to 11, 20% own cell phones,
compared with less than 12% five years ago.
Stop talking to your mobile, talk to me! This could be the message that arises from a post that Rohit Bargava posted under the title “Overtweeting: Are We Becoming Socially Antisocial?”. And I think this is a valid question to ask ourselves these days: Is social media becoming a conversation killer and going against the odds of the Cluetrain Manifesto? I would say: No! It will just take some time to find the right balance. Let the hype period move on. Let people understand that the world is changing. Then we are becoming Socially Social. It is just a matter of accepting that the world is changing, that technology will become our bred and butter, and that we see how much more we could participate in information around people we know. Agree?
Old school versus new school. This was the motto when Mike Ferry met Matthew Ferrara at the Coldwell Banker Generation Blue Conference where they had an intense debate if “social media is stupid”…
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John Hernandez is General Manager of the Customer Collaboration Business Unit (CCBU) at Cisco, which provides contact center and interactive voice applications to enterprises and service providers. In this capacity he oversees product and market development, and is closely involved in the business with the Cisco sales force and partners.
The Strategy Web spoke with him about the launch and benefits of their new customer care product SocialMiner.
What were Cisco’s most successful social medias tactics in the last 2 years? How did Cisco came across the new solution SocialMiner? Why is social media monitoring so important from a strategic point of view for businesses?
Cisco is very active in social media. Our employees were some of the earliest adopters of Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social sites. We have tens of thousands of active social media users in our company, as well as a robust and vibrant corporate presence on the social web.
Social media monitoring can become a key strategic advantage for businesses. From a contact center perspective, social media could be treated as “just another channel” in a multichannel approach. However, the public nature of social media, along with the sheer volume of social media postings, makes social media as much a business intelligence tool as a new way to engage with customers. Cisco believes that proactive social media customer care will have a transformative impact on how companies engage and serve their customers.
The concept of the SocialMiner product came from our observation of the changing communication habits and Internet usage of consumers. As consumers have adopted social media channels for their individual communications on an ever-increasing basis over the past couple years, it is only natural that they would consider interacting with a business via social media. This concept of social impacting customer relationships is a very active topic within the emerging “Social CRM” community.
Is SocialMiner just a Customer Service product? Bearing in mind that social conversations on the web affects the whole business…
Cisco SocialMiner is an engagement product, not a “listening product.” SocialMiner is designed to scale the quality and quantity of social media interactions performed by a business. SocialMiner can be used for a variety of business functions such as Support or Sales, but we believe the customers that derive the most value from social media will also use these engagements to drive business process change. For example, an organization could use SocialMiner as a source of business intelligence to provide real-time customer appreciation or criticism of a product or service (or of a competitors’ product/service). Social media can direct their business strategy. Cisco believes that companies that learn from social media will become closer to meeting their customers’ expectations and this will drive overall business success.
Which three benefits do business users have using SocialMiner compared to other tools in the market (Radian6, Alterian, etc.)
1. Cisco SocialMiner is complementary to brand monitoring dashboard solutions. It is designed to support scaling social media by leveraging the best practices from contact center type operational models: Queuing, Service Level Metrics (Average Speed of Answer), and productivity metrics for users. By contrast, many of the brand monitoring dashboards have pieces of workflow capability, but these capabilities are either relatively limited or recently introduced functions.
2. Cisco SocialMiner is a component of the Cisco contact center portfolio which currently includes an installed base of over 10,000 customers. SocialMiner is packaged, priced, and delivered along with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise solutions, and therefore it supports the same installation, deployment, serviceability, and user experience as these other Cisco collaboration solutions.
3. Cisco SocialMiner is a very easy to install and operate software appliance. It runs on premise or in a customer controlled data-center hosting facility and offers unlimited capture capability. Cisco SocialMiner is an API-first product with 100% of functionality available via REST API’s and all user interface delivered as OpenSocial gadgets with documented source that can be modified by Cisco channel or customers. This model supports the preferred consumption model of most enterprise organizations along with a broad customization capability.
Can it be used as a stand-alone product or only in combination with other Cisco products for customer service? Do you have any case studies of success?
Cisco SocialMiner can be used as a stand-alone solution. We have several case studies that illustrate SocialMiner’s success. Zone Labs is one of them. The small wellness company was looking to accelerate revenues & grow 1000% in next 3 years, implemented Cisco SocialMiner to increase customer engagement, customer satisfaction and sales. Zone Labs started developing social communities on their own website as well as Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets. They used Cisco SocialMiner to route and queue contacts to experts within their organization.
Using SocialMiner, experts were able to proactively answer health and wellness questions via Twitter, providing encouragement to consumers on the Zone Diet, customer service and expert advice on questions such as vitamins and healthy recipes. Zone Labs saw improved agent productivity by automating capturing and responding to social media posts (currently estimated at ~10x). They gained greater customer satisfaction & brand mind-share from faster first inquiry resolution on the web, and were able to compete on comparable scale with larger companies. Their social media activity reduced their customer acquisition cost and created a larger funnel with more leads, that were converted more easily and more quickly than before.
Within 4 months of using SocialMiner, Zone Labs saw tremendous results:
– Web site transactions up 189%
– Revenue up 203%
– 202% increase in total visitors to www.zonediet.com
Thank you for your time, John. And by the way: I like your commercial for the product…
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How will the future of the workplace look like? I have my views: flexible working hours, mobile offices and driving busness by networking outside of the office. Generally speaking, I love to share ideas and thoughts that I come across like these work displacements. Now that Porsche and VW (partly) banned access to social networking sites, it is interesting to see the other side of the medal. Maybe social networking becomes the main corporate sales strategy in the future. This example shows why the use of Salesforce Chatter could become an optimization of the future workplace.
The good thing about Social Media? People blog about events you could not take part in as they took place when you had meetings, where not in the country, etc. They share their new knowledge and some good case studies of social media campaigns like Juan Martinez who took part in the Social Ad Summit ’10. He tells us about the 5 Dos and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing, he learned from Aaron Shapiro, partner at Huge, Inc..#
One of the succesful modern virals was the Old Spice campaign. AdNews interviewed Isaiah Mustafa on the future of media and on becoming an internet sensation.
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Am liebsten würde ich diesen Post anfangen mit “Es war einmal…”. Denn es fällt einem schwer zu glauben, dass diese Geschichte in der heutigen Zeit nicht erfunden ist. Ist sie aber nicht…!
Es geht um den Kundenservice der Sky Deutschland Fernsehen GmbH & Co. KG. Und würde ich mich nicht seit mehr als einem Jahr über den Kundenservice wundern, so hätte ich mir diesen Post erspart. Es ist ein Fallbeispiel der ganz besonderen Art und Wert, geteilt zu werden.
Zur Vorgeschichte…
Vor einem Jahr wollte ich auf HD Receiver und Empfang “upgraden”. Ein Anruf bei der Sky ließ mich wissen, dass es derzeit keine HD-Empfänger für Kabelempfang gäbe. Deshalb könne man derzeit meinen Vertrag nicht gleich hoch stufen. Es würden Gespräche geführt mit dem Hardwarelieferanten HUMAX und solange müsse man eben dann auf seinen HD Empfang warten. Was soviel hieß wie, man könne eigentlich keine neuen Umsätze mit Kabelempfängern machen in Deutschland. Man fragte sich, wie eine Firma unter solchen Umständen ordentliche Umsätze schreiben kann.
Ungläubig gegenüber dieser Information versuchte ich mein Glück über einen Saturn Markt in München und siehe da: Ein Verkäufer am Sky-Stand berichtete nach einem ausführlichen Telefonat von der Option, dass ich zwei Wochen später eine Promotion nutzen könne, die mir den HD-Empfang und Erhalt eines HD-Receivers ermöglichen würde. Ich müsse nur am Telefon in zwei Wochen alles erklären und dann wäre ich auf HD-Empfang.
Zwei Wochen später bestellte ich am Telefon das Angebot, welches die Dame eingab und mir versicherte, in ein paar Tagen sei der Empfänger samt HD-Empfang da. Ich nehme es vorweg. Nein, er kam nicht… Er kam nie.
Wie ich später erfuhr, hatte die Dame nämlich offensichtlich gar nichts eingegeben (oder vergessen zu speichern), denn im CMS gab es zu dem Telefonat keinen Eintrag, als ich zwei Wochen später nachfragte. Auch drei Wochen später, als ich einen zweiten Versuch wagte, klappte es nicht. Wiedermals kein Eintrag auf Nachfrage. Das Special war inzwischen abgelaufen und ich gab auf.
Als ich noch einmal zufällig im selbigen Media-Markt war, fragte ich einen neuen Verkäufer, was man eigentlich mit Premiere Kunden mache, die immer noch einen alten Vertrag haben. Der Sky-Verkäufer sagte stolz, dass im nächsten Jahr alle Verträge -und es seien doch noch zahlreiche- auf Sky umgestellt und die alten aufgelöst werden. Das zweifelte ich an mit dem Argument anzunehmender schwindender Umsätze und hohem Kundenrückgang. Das könne Herrn Murdoch wohl nicht egal sein, bemerkte ich. Zu meinem Erstaunen erwiderte er: “Deutschland ist ein Abschreibungsland für Herrn Murdoch. Da machen Sie sich mal keine Sorgen. Springen die Leute ab, macht Hr. Murdoch das wenig aus.” (Staunen meinerseits.) Aha…!
Ich werde also mal abwarten, ob mein Vertrag nun im kommenden Jahr ausläuft.
Das alles geschah vor ungefähr einem halben Jahr.
Die Gegenwart…
Nun war ich vor einer Woche in London im Hotel und wollte mich auf meinem iPad auf der App auf Sky einloggen. Es war ein Champions League Abend und ich wollte den kostenlosen iPad Service “Alle Inhalte jetzt bis 31. Dezember 2010 kostenlos.” nutzen.
Einloggen ging auch, aber mehr nicht… Nach dem Laden der App gab es lediglich eine Trailer von Sky und danach ging nichts mehr…
“Auf diesem Kanal wird zur Zeit nicht gesendet ” teilte die App mir mit.
Ein Anruf bei der Hotline sagte mir, ich solle schnell eine Mail schreiben, denn für alle Onlinebelange und -mängel sei der Online Kundendienst zuständig. Der Telefonservice könne da nichts machen. “Hier sitzen zahlreiche Menschen für Onlineanfragen vor ihren Rechnern, genauso wie ich am Telefon”, meinte die freundliche Damenstimme. Gesagt, getan – die Anfrage ging an die Online-Hotline. Das war an einem Dienstag! Ich wartete also auf Feedback per Mail. Natürlich wartete ich auf ein Feedback in gewissem Masse in Echtzeit…
Feedback kam – am Samstag darauf. 5 Tage später. Per Post…! Kein Scherz!!! Nachfolgend der Brief – lest bitte selbst…
Jetzt fehlen mir die Worte im Zeitalter Abschreibungsland 2.0…
(Aus Datenschutzgründen wurden bestimmte Nummern und Namen aus dem Schreiben von mir entfernt.)
Spot On!
Sehr passend kommt mir da eine Befragung von novomind heute vor die Augen. Offensichtlich ist Online-Kundenservice in Deutschland immernoch im Hintertreffen. Ergebnisse der Studie zeigen, dass es nach Ansicht der Befragten in 50% der Unternehmen keine Online-Strategie für den Kundenservice gäbe – geschweige denn im Social Web: Bislang würden im Schnitt gerade einmal 2% der deutschen Kontaktaufnahmestellen für Firmen in sozialen Netzwerken agieren, bei externen Dienstleistern wären es immerhin 5%.
Erscheinen nur mir die Zahlen für den Online-Kundendienst in Deutschland erschreckend niedrig? Ist hier nicht schnellstens Nachholbedarf angesagt? Oder greift der Deutsche noch gerne zum Telefon (wie auch ich zuerst)?
When the the iPad certainly was introduced by Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs it was said to be “a truly magical and revolutionary product.” This week I have bought an iPad myself and have tried to understand what the tablet is capable as a mobile business device. I cannot really say it failed. And a new study by Nielsen asking 5.000 mobile users shows us how the iPad is delivering businesses from the perspective of a new ad platform.
The Nielsen findings from their new “Connected Devices Playbook” suggest that the iPad owners are more open and responsive to advertising than mobile users of other devices – even those of the iPhone. The study shows that iPad users are more likely to buy products after being introduced to ads. And 60% of the respondents of users across the iPad, iPhone and all other connected devices responded they were “OK with advertising if it means I can access content for free.”
The magic formula for making ads for iPad users effective are interactive features: 45% of iPad owners said they were more likely to click on ads that included multimedia than 26% of iPhone subscribers and 27% of other connected device owners. Isn’t this perfect news for the launch of Apple’s iAd platform?
What makes marketers even more happy is that iPad users indicate that they buy a product via their mobile device because of an ad. 24% of iPad users made an in-store purchase compared to 10% of those who use other devices. It seems that the iPad and other mobile devices might offer a helping hand as a revenue driver to all retailers or shop-owners. Nevertheless, we might ask the question whether this is as of the new product and the hype around it, or if this will last in the future. The final question could be how Apple will change their single app sales strategy to make the use of the iPad more cost-friendly for users.
So, who is the typical iPad user? The Nielsen study says they tend to be younger and more male than users of other devices like users of the Acer Aspire One, the Kindle, the iPhone, iPod touch or the Sony PlayStation Portable. 65% of iPad users were male and under the age of 35.
Spot On!
Sometimes it is funny when you read these studies and remember your own shopping experience. Some weeks ago, when the iPad was not even available I remember a 45 year old posh women rushing into the Apple shop. She did not even realize that the sales guy next to me was explaining the benefits of an iPad to me. She just asked when the iPad will be available, got her answer and rushed out with the same urgency she came in. The sales guy was shaking his head that day, saying some of our clients are weird. When you think about how eager she was to buy the product, I can understand that advertising is still effective… not only on an iPad.
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What are good case studies for viral productions? A question, I get asked quite frequently. Please find the link to a selection by AdAge which I would also recommend.
The recruiting business will have changed in 2020. Job Boards have to improve their services and social media could be one solution for it. HR managers should be looking at this list of 10 excellent innovations.
Managers think about how to use LinkedIn effectively. This video gives some advice by Mark Perl and Louis Gray on how to leverage social marketing and networking with LinkedIn.
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Die aktuelle Studie „netz98 fragt nach – Einfluss sozialer Elemente im E-Commerce auf das Kaufverhalten“ des Marktforschungsunternehmens eResult GmbH im Auftrag der Internetagentur netz98 new media GmbH besagt, daß für fast 50% der Internet-Kunden Bewertungen und Empfehlungen anderer Kunden ein wichtiges Argument sind, überhaupt online einzukaufen. Gegenüber dem traditionellen Shopping biete Online Shopping mit dem Zugriff auf die Meinungen unabhängiger Verbraucher einen klaren Mehrwert.
Bei aller Euphorie sind Bewertungsmöglichkeiten für die meisten User kein zwingendes Element, wenn auch ein wichtiger Baustein eines Online-Shops. 70% sehen es nicht negativ, wenn die Bewertungskriterien in einem Online-Shop fehlen. Man möchte anfügen, das die Gefahr auf ein anderes Portal zu wechseln, wo Bewertungskriterien angegeben werden, dennoch durchaus gegeben ist. Und von dort zum Kauf ist es dann nicht mehr weit… Die Frage wäre also, was ist entscheidender für den finalen Kauf. Die Bewertungen oder das Vertrauen in den Shop?
Die Frage beantwortet sich teilweise mit den Rezensions-Optionen, die für mehr als ein Viertel der Befragten wichtig sind. Diese Nutzer weichen im Zweifel auf andere Online-Angebote aus, die diese Funktionen bieten. Denn: Wenn 45% der Teilnehmer angeben, Produkte oder Dienstleistungen sogar regelmäßig zu kommentieren oder zu bewerten, dann sollten Shopbetreiber dies Ernst nehmen.
Der Sharing Trend ist hingegen verhalten. Nur von etwa 10% werden die Weiterleiten Funktionen wiederholt genutzt. Frauen (13%) nutzen sie mehr als Männer (9%).
„Wir halten es für sehr wichtig, uns auch wissenschaftlich und quantitativ mit dem E-Commerce zu beschäftigen. Viele aktuelle Fragestellungen können eben nur die Nutzer selbst beantworten. Davon profitieren nicht zuletzt unsere eigenen Kunden – denn die Ergebnisse der Studie fließen unmittelbar in unsere tägliche Arbeit ein.“ Tim Hahn, Geschäftsführer, netz98
Spot On!
Interessant ist aber auch ein weiteres Ergebnis. Nahezu 40% der Befragten können sich vorstellen, unmittelbar in einem sozialen Netzwerk über eine Shopping App einzukaufen. Mit einer Einschränkung… Der Shop, bei dem eingekauft wird, muss dem Käufer bekannt und vertraut sein. Wer also eine App baut, sollte bei der Konzeption mit Check-out sowohl vertrauensbildende Maßnahmen (z.B. Gütesiegel) als auch die transparente Darstellung des übergeordneten Shops klar kenntlich machen.
Although Facebook and Twitter are highly rated from internet consumers, blogs are the standard approach for marketers in the business world (b2b).
eMarketer just released a study that states 34% of all US companies are running a public blog. The outlook for 2012 is even more promissing: The study projects an increase by 11 points to a total of 45% by 2012. In 2007 only 16% of companies used a blog for their communication strategy.
“Studies have shown that marketers perceive blogs to have the highest value of any social media in driving site traffic, brand awareness, lead generation and sales—as well as improving customer service.” Paul Verna, senior analyst, eMarketer
Especially smaller companies with less marketing bucks see the potential of blogs. Short sign-of processes, faster internal dynamics and more flexibility in choosing social technology make it easier for a managing director of an SMB company to set up a blog. Larger companies like stock listed companies have more restricted options to go live on WordPress, Blogger or Typepad in terms of potential legal, IR-related and logistical issues.
Though Twitter and Facebook are easier to set up and kick off the conversation with clients, the impact of blogs is manifold. Blog posts are indexable and searchable on Google as well as on other search engines. And blogging has a long-lasting effect. While tweets cannot talk about complex topics and disappear quite quickly from search engines, blog post stay – no matter if you are looking for that information today ot in five years time.
Spot On!
If companies can manage it from a resources perspective, the best way to go forward is to set up many social media access points. The professionals have identified by web analysis and social media monitoring where client engagement takes place and where their clients are talking. In a perfect world, users will find the blog post via Twitter and then use the “Like” button to get to the Facebook page – and ideally find some interesting and relevant content there again. But creating different content for different access points is the biggest challenge…, bigger than writing a blog post. Don’t you think…?
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Marketers see many studies like one of the Morgan Stanley reports which state that there are more social network users than email users. And especially in the B2B sphere the research makes clear that 80% of business buyers today say that they find their vendors as opposed to vendors finding them. Tony Sambito writes advices that compasnies and brands plan for the Social Buyer before it is too late. I absolutely agree with him…
According to the study, companies using Social Media with more than two years of experience are the most likely to report success (57%), while those that have three months or less are least likely (17%).
One-on-one interview with John Hernandez
