Customers are increasingly using social media for customer service issues ranging from complaints to questions to ordering.  Zappos, a company built on customer service, wrote, edited,  and published the playbook on social media use as a customer service tool.  Without going into well documented specifics,  Zappos uses social media outlets as companies use the phone or e-mail.  I have three thoughts to summarize/clarify social media use in customer service:

• Social media belongs partly in the hands of the customer service function to avoid unproductive and unnecessary handoffs.
• Complaints, questions and ordering are the ultimate example of engagement.
• Over the top, timely, and friendly customer service will always trump controlling the message (tone, personality, spelling, grammar) regardless of business size.

Training programs and the ease of social media use can accelerate the adoption of additional tools to satisfy customers and engage prospects meaningfully. Return on these efforts can be measured through correlated sales, customer service efficiencies, and customer satisfaction measurements.

As in previous posts  – we need to diagram the process and also add personnel considerations to our mobile solution.  Purchasing agents or personnel may be more familiar with specification or order numbers assigned by their ERP systems whereas supervisors or engineers may be familiar only with the manufacturer’s part numbers and the rough date the order was placed.  Sharing information via mobile applications within a buying team – purchasers,  engineers,  quality personnel,  and managers is also a significant consideration.

Since I began writing this blog,  the market has seen the evolution of the tablet device and many have speculated advances will convert PC buyers to tablet buyers.  An older but excellent article spells out some of the technical challenges to the conversion but none seem insurmountable – http://www.pcworld.com/article/211193-2/why_your_next_pc_will_be_a_tablet.html . Developers of mobile purchasing and support modules should pay close attention to this trend and plan to offer a familiar UI but one that utilizes the strengths of both devices.

The next article blog entry will discuss how to integrate mobile to the customers design processes to develop the next generation of products.

 Backing up a step,  it is worth diagramming the customer acquisition process as a whole and paying attention to transitions.  Can the customer transition seamlessly from the awareness phase to the trial or qualification phase and what might that include?

•  Is the complexity of the process following the previous mandate a shift from mobile to PC, voice, or in-person meeting? 
• How easily does the mobile UI handle these transitions? 
• Does the process need re-engineering to eliminate the need for a transition?

These questions are only a few top line considerations about transitions and each of these raises a subset of questions and considerations.  The failure to execute well in these transitions will reduce or eliminate any return on investment.  The next consideration is how a customer can utilize/benefit from an ability to qualify on the go. Understanding your customer and their use of mobile technology is the key to understand if the following actions are beneficial. 

• Efficiency in scheduling demonstrations for physical products and feedback loops
• Mobile demonstrations/qualifications for software and services

A good process to determine your mobile strategy starts with an understanding of the fundamental processes of customer acquisition and retention. This is the first blog entry of several that will discuss mobile strategy regarding mobile related awareness, qualification, purchase, repeat purchasing, and new business development.

Starting with awareness, I’ve outlined some key points to consider:

• Understand best practices in mobile search trends and user interfaces, many mobile focused marketing agencies can assist in this area.
• Survey customers decision makers and procurement personnel to determine travel load, duration, and patterns.
• Understand how customers maintain productivity in searching and sourcing while in travel mode.
• Determine the dominate equipment form factors and carrier preferences.
• Metrics

An understanding of the points listed above can lend themselves to the development of a mobile awareness strategy and realistic objectives and targets. Metrics are critical to assess performance and modify tactics as necessary. Future posts will discuss additional steps in the acquisition and retention process.

Marketing Sherpa’s 2009 Social Media and PR Benchmark delivers a few key findings regarding social media’s perceived effectiveness.  Overwhelmingly those B2B marketers surveyed believed social media effective at branding and search engine optimization/web traffic generation.  The perceived branding effectiveness is consistent with the ideas in the presentations I’ve seen where specifics like intimacy with the brand and brand personality were discussed. The measurement presentations tied in with the benefits to SEO and website awareness.

As a marketer focused on business-to-business communication strategies and efficiencies,  I believe it is important to consider the impact of social media to the product or corporate brand.  Implementation of a social media strategy and plan should be carefully mapped out prior to activities in this area. Frank discussions around the positive and negative impacts to branding, awareness, and resources are a key to managing expectations of social media.  Once the plan is executed, developing metrics are important to communicate the effectiveness (or lack of) to the organization. 

With the rapid growth of social media and the significant adoption of this medium by business communicators, the landscape is bound to shift in effectiveness.

Lean processes have a broad appeal – they are typically collaborative and common-sense based. Implementation and costs are, at the beginning, relatively easy and inexpensive. Mapping provides visualization of unnecessarily complicated or wasteful processes or inputs. Striving for additional cost savings, productivity gains, and overall profit improvements inevitably lead to infrastructure and personnel expenditures. Metrics are key to the assessment of continuous lean processes and must be multidimensional. For instance, a marketing organization may eliminate printed collateral materials for cost reduction purposes. The reduced costs may provide a positive metric but fail to assess the impacts to customer experience and sales effectiveness. Rethinking the Chain, in the July 2009 Marketing Management, by Robert Shaw and Phillip Kotler explores a strategic approach to lean marketing that can be a helpful start to marketing departments looking to go lean.

A place to start is setting expectations about the quality and quantity of leads with sales and other stakeholders in the outcome. These expectations include type of lead with qualifiers like company size, buying authority, location in sales cycle. The content and tone of the messaging has an impact on the type of lead. My experience in generating leads using strategic, managerial level messaging and imaging in advertising, events, e-mail, blogs, and web home pages taught me to expect non-sales ready leads. Over 90% of the leads generated met high quality standards in company, job title, customer project scope, and understanding of the company business model.