Klout and social customer care: When is someone influential? (via Posterous)
Having not really Tweeted at all over the Christmas period I thought I would check out my Klout score. Prior to Christmas it was around 57 I think, but two weeks later it’s now at 53. I’ve gone from being a Specialist to an Explorer. Whilst I don’t take Klout and similar types of tools too seriously, I do think these tools will become more sophisticated and play an important role in time. We are even seeing a few companies take note of people’s Klout scores and provide different levels of service based on it.
What this has got me thinking about, however, is that Klout reflects a person’s activity. It does not provide a fixed view of a customer or potential customer. It is a movable view of a customer at a particular moment in time; a snapshot in a sense. Customer service, on the other hand, is not set up in this way. It is fixed. The process is fixed, and the resolution for the most part is fixed.
If you are a company that provides a service based on a person’s Klout score, at what point do you decide to ignore or to pay attention to someone’s Klout score? A Klout score may not necessarily provide a true indication of someone’s influence.
Reminds me of a radio programme I listened to yesterday with Susan Maushart talking about her new book – The Winter of our Disconnect. The book is about ‘how one family pulled the plug on their technology and lived to tell/text/tweet the tale’.
Hi Guy,
You make a great point about how activity can change someone’s profile and thus it offers a lesson, I think, on profiling and segmentation that this should be done over time to allow for variance and consistency and should be reviewed over time to make sure things have not changed.
Adrian
It’s an interesting one. What we might find is that the profiles and the segments remain fairly static, but the customers who fall into the different segments need to be reviewed to ensure they remain in the correct one(s).
Your closing sentence is interesting – to make sure things have not changed. Perhaps we need to look at it in terms of accepting that things will change. Companies don’t like change, customers do change. Somewhere in between lies the answer.
Hi Guy,
I professionally Tweet for a number of small businesses and individuals. With the system I’m currently using they all sit around the same score. I personally sit between expert and explorer depending on what I am up to. If I am arranging a Tweet-Up I become an explorer and the rest of the month expert.
This reminds me of a customer’s journey it can become a bit uncomfortable at times but hopefully the overall experience is consistent?
Wendy