Social customer care: Hypotheses, notions of failure and freedom
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about ‘trial and error’. I’ve also been reading Henry Petroski’s book ‘To Engineer is Human: The role of failure in successful design‘. I’ve also been thinking about this in the context of social customer care and how so many companies who are looking to go down this route are looking for answers to some of the following questions:
- What’s the ROI?
- How do I scale it?
- What skillsets do my agents need?
- Who owns it?
- Where should I start: Twitter, Facebook or communities?
In his book, Petroski gives many examples of engineering failures, where bridges have twisted or buildings collapsed. But what intrigued me, and continues to do so, was the fact that none of these ‘failures’ set out to be. These buildings and bridges were designed with the utmost rigour, by engineers with expertise, experience and knowledge. And yet, a combination of events conspired resulting in ‘failure’. This notion of ‘failure’ is an interesting one.
Petroski writes (p43): “…engineers hypothesize about assemblages of concrete and steel that they arrange into a world of their own making. Thus each new building or bridge may be considered to be a hypothesis in its own right. In particular, one hypothesis of a structural engineer might be that so and so bridge across such and such river under these and those conditions of traffic and maintenance will stand for so many years without collapsing. Now if such a bridge were built and were to carry traffic year after year without trouble, the hypothesis would be confirmed time and time again – but it will never be proven until the so many years under the original plan had elapsed. But should the bridge collapse suddenly under no extraordinary conditions before those so many years were up, there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the original hypothesis was incontrovertibly wrong.”
He continues (p44): “The process of engineering design may be considered a succession of hypotheses that such and such an arrangement of parts will perform a desired function without fail. As each hypothetical arrangement of parts is sketched literally or figuratively on the calculation pad or computer screen, the candidate structure must be checked by analysis. The analysis consists of a series of questions about the behavior of the parts under the imagined conditions of use after construction. These questions may be easily answered for designs that are not particularly innovative, but a computer may be required to perform all the calculations needed to analyze a bold new design. If any of the parts fails the test of analysis, then the design itserlf may be said to be a failure. A design can be altered by strengthening the weak link and then analyzing the new design. The process continues until the designer can imagine no possible way in which the structure can fail under the anticipated use. Of course, if the designer makes an error in calculation or overlooks the possibility of failure or does not program the computer to ask the right question, then the hypothesis will erroneously be thought to have been verified when in fact it should have been disproved. Absolute certainty about the fail-proofness of a design can never be attained, for we can never be certain that we have been exhaustive in asking questions about its future.
“The fundamental feature of all engineering hypotheses is that they state, implicitly if not explicitly, that a designed structure will not fail if it is used as intended. Engineering failures may then be viewed as disproved hypotheses. …On the other hand, the past success of an engineering structure confirms the hypothesis of its function only to the same extent that the historical rising of the sun each morning has reassured us of a predictable future. The structural soundness of the Brooklyn Bridge only proves to us that it has stood for over one hundred years; that it will be standing tomorrow is a matter of probability, albeit high probability, rather than one of certainty’”
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Over the past few years a different type of customer service has emerged. One that is more intimate and humane. The challenge facing many eager to participate is, as that incredibly prescient book The Cluetrain Manifesto points out in the Introduction (pXXXI):
“Though corporations insist on seeing it as one, the new marketplace is not necessarily a market at all. To its inhabitants, it is primarily a place in which all participants are audience to each other. The entertainment is not packaged; it is intrinsic. Unlike the lockstep conformity imposed by television, advertising, and corporate propaganda, the Net has given new legitimacy – and free rein – to play. Many of those drawn into this world find themselves exploring a freedom never before imagined: to indulge their curiosity, to debate, to disagree, to laugh at themselves, to compare visions, to learn, to create new art, new knowledge.”
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Social media is a journey. The journey you make – individual or corporate – is intrinsic in finding the answer to your questions.
And when you do set out on your bold new journey, do you set out looking to prove or disprove the ‘failure’ or ‘success’ of your hypothesis? How do you know you have the right hypothesis? What’s your next hypothesis? How do you hypothesise about a ‘ freedom you never before imagined?
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,100 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.
Social customer care becomes a verb
I met up with Joshua March earlier today of Conversocial, who are doing some excellent things in the social media customer service space at the moment. Conversocial’s platform sets out to ‘manage customer service at scale in Facebook and Twitter’. They have identified a niche and are building up a solid and robust proposition. Meeting with Joshua today reminded me that I’ve not blogged for a few weeks, and that I had a number of half-written posts which I needed to finish. So keeping with the Facebook theme…
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Over the last eight to twelve months or so the use of Facebook as a customer service platform has gained increasing popularity amongst organisations willing to expand their social customer care repertoire beyond Twitter.
There is no doubt that Facebook is becoming more and more embedded into the social landscape that many of us now increasingly inhabit. When I first noticed organisations, such as Thomas Cook, using Facebook for customer service I was somewhat perplexed: I couldn’t understand how it could be used or why someone would use it.
After deciding to spend a bit of time trying to understand this ‘F-space’ a bit more, I came to the realisation that Facebook was simply a platform that enabled people to ask a question, write a complaint or help someone else out. Since then, I have seen Facebook used for customer service in a number of different ways:
- Native functionality: Responding to complaints and questions posted to a company’s ‘Wall’
- Plug-in: Lithium allows their community platform to be directly plugged into Facebook (BT), while Get Satisfaction allows customers to ask a question, share an idea, report a problem or give praise (Thomas Cook). Requires that a specific tab is set up
- Info-tab: O2 adopts a slightly different approach and via their ‘O2 Gurus’ tab provides a number of short videos with handy tips and hints
- Interface: Providing a series of links back to the company’s FAQs or Help homepage from a customer support tab (Dell)
- Directory: List of relevant email addresses or phone numbers (Tesco) from a customer support tab
The purpose of this post is not to provide an analysis of these different approaches (I’ll leave that for an upcoming piece I’m writing looking at the use of Facebook as a customer service platform in more depth), but rather something that intrigued me following on from the recent announcements coming out of Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference. And that was the use of ‘verbs’ to describe someone’s activity. This is part of Facebook’s play for the ‘open graph’. Interestingly, and this is an aside, Lithium seems to overlook the power of the ‘open graph’ and the potential to exploit it, by not integrating its proposition into the Wall itself. Lithium’s approach creates another activity stream that itself needs to be resourced.
I like the idea of this ‘open graph’ and I like the idea of almost treating verbs as a hashtag or a trigger for an event or activity. But it made me think that in doing so, Facebook was also potentially rendering customer service itself to the level of a verb. Perhaps the verb becomes the service?
Resolve, fix, return, deliver, hate, solve, help, repair, complain, dislike, dissatisfied, fail…
In this way, the space (or disconnect) between the service required and the verb used to express it condenses; they become inextricably linked.
I’m not sure what the implications of this are yet, if anything, but it strikes me that words in the online/virtual space may well take on more meaning. In the same way, a QR code unlocks additional information about a product or service, so too the ‘verb’ within a Facebook context may unlock a further action or information, whether that is a resolution, a complaint or a question…
Social customer care: Service without email
I was watching this video a moment ago – Productivity Future Vision (2011) – and it made me think about the way we make decisions.
I am used to making decisions and asking for decisions via email. Once I send an email, I do not necessarily expect an immediate answer. A sense of ‘delay’ has been built into email’s DNA. Yet email by its very nature is not really about decision-making. Email is about considering and thinking about the decision that needs to be made. It is about conveying the information, or at least a version of the information, that is required in making a decision at some future point. It is about storing and archiving. There is a permanence to it. The decision that needs to be made, the product or service in question, the people involved all seem to be discrete parts, that somehow come together to make the decision.
In the video, we see a different kind of decision-making take place. Decision-making becomes much more flexible, more agile, more immediate, more tangible in a sense. This does not mean it becomes more impulsive or spontaneous (although there is perhaps a greater requirement for responsibility on both the part of the sender and receiver to be a bit more discerning). Decision-making becomes an integral part of my behaviour as it becomes increasingly tied to my activity or conversation stream. The space between the decision and the object of the decision condenses. The time between between the decision made and the decision asked reduces. A decision, admittedly not always, is not something I park to one side to think at length about, to come back to later. In the context of this video, decision-making becomes more collaborative, more iterative, more participative, more integral, more immediate to the world around me.
As our decision-making possibly becomes increasingly and inextricably linked to activity or conversation streams, what is the implication of this on how customer service is provided? This question is not about the death of email, it is perhaps more about the rise of other types of communication channels. Email may well still have its place, in the same way that the fax machine does. But when decision-making becomes more agile, more participative, more iterative, more about the ‘now’, how will that affect the need for a knowledge base, a single customer view, a content management system, the type of customer service agent skillset that is required?
Social customer care: Four quotes and a global conversation
In 1999, the Cluetrain Manifesto was written by Rick Levine, Doc Searls, Christopher Locke and David Wienberger. The authors put forward the idea of the ‘global conversation’:
“A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter – and getting smarter faster than most companies.”
In 2007, Wikinomics was written by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. The authors write about the idea of the ‘shared canvas’:
“The new Web is…a shared canvas where every splash of paint contributed by one user provides a richer tapestry for the next user to modify or build on. Whether people are creating, sharing, or socializing, the new Web is principally about participating rather than about passively receiving information.”
In 2010, Clay Shirky wrote Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. The author writes:
“We are increasingly becoming one another’s infrastructure.”
In 2011, Lyle Fong, CEO and Founder of Lithium Technologies, in an interview with Ray Wang (Constellation Group) says:
“What happens when we treat customers as part of the company?”
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In a little over a decade we have passed from the global conversation as an idea to something that we take for granted. Within the context of this daily global conversation we are brought in closer proximity to people, the majority of whom we will never meet in real life. We are increasingly reliant on their knowledge and their help. We seek them out. We trust these people, the majority of whom we will never meet.
We are living in a time of change in which technology is no longer the end game. Technology has become the facilitator of the myriad of global conversations that take place every day. Technology allows us to create and curate the global conversations that we take part in. We no longer just read or watch, we write and publish. But we do so in the knowledge that whoever chooses to participate in our conversation can take what we have created and turn it into something more useful, more beautiful, more accessible, more intimate, more personal, simply more.
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In the first quote, a divide is apparent between the organisation and its customers. Two separate systems exist alongside each other. That of the customer is all that the organisation is not. The customer’s world is about discovery and invention, sharing and speed of delivery.
As we read the other quotes, the divide between organisation and customer blurs. By the time we have reached the final quote, the division has seemingly disappeared, or at least the possibility of it doing so is raised. Whether the customer has moved from the outside to the inside, or whether the organisation has moved from the inside to the outside, indeed which is inside and which outside, we are unsure. Either way, the two have moved closer together than ever before.
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This is a global conversation that customer service is now taking part in. A conversation that is 24/7, amongst equals, open to anyone willing to participate in, receptive to help from whoever can provide it, willing to seek out information wherever it resides. A customer service that is no longer technology-driven, but recognises impulsiveness and spontaneity. A customer service that responds to customer behaviour, but is not a slave to its every whim.
It points to a customer service that is of necessity increasingly more adaptive, more agile, more participative, more intimate and humane, potentially more personalisable, perhaps more open to being put together ‘on the fly’. This is the global conversation that customer service is taking part in today. The global conversation that it will participate in, in ten year’s time may well be a different one.
Social customer care: When Twitter and Facebook become traditional
I was having an interesting chat the other morning with Hans Grefte, Product Director at iCasework, a company that provides case management solutions to mainly public sector companies. Hans was kindly showing me how they had extended their case management offering into the social sphere through the use of Twitter and #hashtags.
During the latter part of the discussion, we began talking about the impact social media was having on case management and customer service. The way people complain and provide feedback is changing, the time between the cause of the complaint and making the complaint itself has condensed to seconds, and the fact that complaining or providing feedback is very much a shared experience now. Such changes are providing new opportunities and challenges to companies.
This conversation got me thinking about how we think about the future and the changes that may result. From a customer service perspective, we think about that future in terms of what a contact centre might look like, what skillset will agents require, or what role will apps play. Our tendency in many respects is to take what we know today and simply fast forward that five, ten or twenty years.
But what if we approached this in a slightly different way and asked, what will customer service look like when:
- Twitter, Facebook and Google Hangouts are the traditional channels of customer service?
- badges, QR Codes, Klout or PeerIndex-type scores, #hashtags, apps and Augmented Reality are the traditional mechanics of customer service?
- Google search is your help homepage?
For those companies which operate within a regulated environment what will:
- complaint management look like when Groubal, Trip Advisor, YouTube or Google Maps are the traditional places customers go to complain?
- customer service look like when online communities are the traditional places customers go to for medical or financial advice?
What are the implications on organisations of these questions? What might your customer service (if it’s still called that) look like in a world that has moved on from email, IVR, the phone, live chat and web sites as we know it?
The question isn’t necessarily about whether these specific technologies will exist, but rather what will customer service look like when these types of communication and mechanics have become the norm? It seems to me that this question has far greater implications than whether three Tweets equates to a phone call.
I was fixing my dishwasher this morning. Well, looking at it intently with the vain hope of fixing it at the back of my mind, and knowing that fixing it was highly unlikely at the front of my mind.
I Googled what I was looking for. (Do we ‘search the internet’ any more?). Found various forums with the same questions I was asking, and a variety of answers that spanned the whole gamut from simple and unhelpful through to too complicated and undecipherable. Finally I resorted to trying to find the manual that came with the dishwasher.
In the manual I found a section called ‘Fault finding’ and there was a section with the problem I was having, but none of the answers helped. So I am stuck with a dishwasher with a problem that is more of an annoyance than a problem. But this got me thinking about instruction manuals and what an instruction manual might look like in a social media world?
I am not discounting the need for an instruction manual, just wondering how else a company might present the information.
- One idea is to use QR codes. The beauty about QR codes is that you can embed the information about a product into the machine itself. So imagine putting QR codes at the specific points on the machine where issues might occur. The resolution of the issue becomes part of the machine itself. There’s no reason you couldn’t extend this to being able to order the replacement then and there, speaking to an agent about the issue, perhaps even offering live chat or a link through to a community, self-help videos published to YouTube.
- Another is to create instruction manuals for viewing on mobile phones that provide relevant links and YouTube videos.
- Enabling someone to ring a number which converts the voice message into an email which is posted into a community.
- Or simply offering Twitter, YouTube or Google as part of your customer service proposition, in addition to your FAQ page.
Companies have a vast array of options at their disposal now to create instruction manuals, not only those they create themselves, but also those that allow them to leverage videos or content created by others. Add an element of game mechanics in to the mix where appropriate, and the whole experience potentially becomes more engaging.
How could you create a more engaging instruction manual that brings together the elements of discovery, intuition, functionality and design? Notwithstanding, that I’m only ever likely to read it or need it when I need it.
Social customer care: @Jowyang, customer care hasn’t changed
I was reading/listening to @Jowyang‘s recent post/webinar – Video Replay: 10 Reasons Customer Care Has Changed and How to Build a Strategy. Whilst I may not agree with everything he says, he always makes me think and question my own thinking and assumptions.
As I was listening I made various notes and the two main thoughts I came away with were:
- The sooner companies stop making a distinction between social media strategy and business strategy the better. Yes, social has its own unique characteristics, but so too does email, telephone and IVR. Do I have an IVR strategy? Live chat strategy? Email strategy? Why would a company provide a fundamentally different resolution because it comes in through Twitter or Facebook or Google+, than it would if it came in via email or the telephone? If a company does respond differently what is the message it is sending out to its customers?
- Why should ‘responding to customers in the social channels reinforce the behaviour of complaining in public’? People complain! Whether they complain in public or private is irrelevant. What is important is how the company deals with the complaint. Not whether a complaint takes place in public or private spaces. By offering email are we training people to use email to complain in private? By offering the phone are we training people to use the phone to complain in private? By offering chat are we training people to use chat to complain on in private? If a company stops offering all of these channels are they training people not to complain? Companies get things wrong, the ability to complain is a form of constructive feedback. It is a type of conversation. It is a check and balance. Embrace your complaints wherever they might come in from. A company’s complaints are an opportunity to engage, to make something better. It may be the only time you are ever in contact with your customer. If a customer has taken the trouble to let you know you’ve got it wrong, take the trouble to listen. Focus on what is important.
The final thought I had was around whether customer care itself had changed, as the title of the post suggested. Personally, I don’t think customer care has changed. The same basic premise remains, the same basic process remains: customer has problem, company fixes problem. Whether customer care is the new marketing or the new black is of little meaning to your customer when their car breaks down, or they lose their credit card, or a delivery you promised them doesn’t arrive on time.
What has fundamentally changed, however, is the opportunity for companies to get down from their camels and openly engage with their customers. The question you need to ask yourself is not whether I can, but rather: do I dare?
Social customer care: The power of apps
I’ve come across a few apps recently which allow people to report a whole variety of issues from potholes in the road, graffiti, problems with street lighting, fallen branches, abandoned vehicles and more. You can also follow the progress of the issue you reported. I think the fact that local councils are using social media to reach out to people in this way is fantastic.
The thought I am left with, however, is: why use an app in the first place? Why not simply provide a #hashtag for a person to use? I understand that from a council’s perspective providing an app ensures that the report will get to the right place so it can be dealt with. But from my perspective, unless I have a huge sense of civic responsibility, I’m not sure if I would download an app that I might use on the odd occasion to report a pothole or an abandoned vehicle. However, I know, if I simply had to add a #hashtag to a Tweet I would be far more likely to report problems I happened to come across.
Sometimes, the real power of technology comes from knowing when to use it and not from the technology itself. Sometimes it’s about learning from watching people to see how they do things, rather than trying to teach them your ways. Don’t kid yourself that simply by creating an app you’re talking the same language as the people you’re trying to communicate with. Social is a way of thinking, with new currencies and new languages for all of us to learn and try out.
So your organisation wants to use Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Yammer, Posterous, wikis, forums, communities as part of your customer service proposition or perhaps to only use those channels. You prepare a business case, because that’s what your organisation has always done. You secure the resource you require – 2 FTE, because from a practical point of view, one of your call centre agents might go on holiday. You create your Twitter account, because Twitter is what everyone starts with. You’ve decided to go for a dedicated social customer care Twitter account using the ‘@nameofcompany+cares’ approach. Because we all care for our customers. The social customer care Twitter team sits within your customer service department and is forging close ties with PR and marketing. You’ve even talked to compliance, and you’ve got a ‘firestorm’ strategy worked out. You’ve also put together your social media guidelines, and yes, you’ve had a look at IBM’s social media computing guidelines. You’ve even got a Twitter customer satisfaction survey in place which can be sent via Twitter. You’re all set to send your first Tweet.
But engaging with your customers and responding to their complaints and queries is actually the easy bit. Have you thought about what it means internally to -
- work collaboratively
- empower your call centre agents or employees to converse with your customers directly
- act openly and transparently
- accept mistakes will be made
- make decisions more quickly
- be on public display 24/7
- not be in absolute control of your brand
- be part of the audience and not the ringmaster
Social customer care is Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google+. But that’s the traditional way of looking at social as simply a set of tools.
The challenge is to move beyond this. To understand that social is a way of thinking, an approach, a philosophy, a way of working. It is a way of engaging with your customers. It is a way of speaking to them in a shared and common language.
Brian Solis talks about benevolence. How do you teach your employees – benevolence, empathy and openness? How do you account for benevolence, empathy and openness on your P&L? How do you measure the productivity of your employees in terms of benevolence, empathy and openness?
New currencies are emerging alongside existing ones. We may not fully understand them, we may not fully accept them, but they are no less valid. We may not get ‘social’ on a personal level, but that shouldn’t stop our organisations becoming more social, more in tune with our customers, more able to talk to them in their language. The time has come, in the words of The Cluetrain Manifesto, for organisations to ‘get down off that camel!’
