Turning Buzzwords into Reality
As I reported on previously, last week I had the opportunity to moderate a panel entitled “Using Web 2.0 to Drive Top-Line Growth.” The panel did a great job, with several important themes coming out of the panel discussion and the networking afterwards.
We distribute feedback forms at every meeting and while the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, there were a couple obvious detractors. One comment in particular, caught my eye:
This Web 2.0 stuff is just too touchy-feely for me. It reminds me a lot of all the hype around the Internet pre-2000 and we all know what happened there…
Great comment, and one that was the genesis of this post. In truth, I had been thinking something along these lines for a while now. Not that Web 2.0 is a boom headed for a bust, but rather what is the fuss really all about? Skipping ahead to the answer (or at least my answer), it’s a forest for the trees paradox: too many people focus on the trees not the forest. It’s not about the tools, it’s about what they can do. And I contend that if you can get past the “touch-feely” nature of the tools, all Web 2.0 is doing is bringing back the good ‘ole days of doing business.
Read some of the thought leaders around the Internet on the subject of social networking and marketing. Try Chris Brogan. Try Seth Godin. Heck, try ProBloggerif you can get all the ads to load. You’ll find a lot of touchy-feely conversations about, well, conversations with your customers, getting your “message” out, using social media to build relationships and deliver value.
But forget for a minute the “social media” part, the blogs and the buzzspeak. Focus on what these guys are talking about, and think back to the way it used to be. I remember a time when my Dad knew the name of the guy who pumped his gas (yes, I’m dating myself here). That guy also owned the station. I remember a time when the same person who sold your parents their cars, was around to sell to their children also.
What’s the point here? The point is to not get so focused on the tools, but on the results. One of the results of “building relationships that deliver value via social media” is authentic customer relationships. Remember those? And what is the big deal about authentic customer relationships? I would contend two important aspects are revenue and repeat business, but that’s just me.
The other disconnect between Web 2.0 and senior business executives I think is that they all have been around long enough to know it’s simply not that easy. You don’t just start a blog and see an increase in sales. So while I can’t get inside the head of our member who left the “touchy-feely” comment, what I think he may have really been saying is “help me connect the dots between all this new technology and tangible business impact.”
Let’s say you wanted to take a shot at developing some “authentic business relationships” with your customers, and you decided that a post-sale survey process was the tactic you were going to use. If I was on the team to think this through, I might brainstorm something like the following:
- If you just want to do what everyone else is doing, take some sort of automated customer survey.
- If you want to stand out a bit from your competition, have actual people do the survey versus E-Mail.
- If you want start to differentiate yourself from your competition, make sure the people that perform the survey can speak articulately, are trained to listen and actually seem to care about the process and your customer (THEIR customer).
- If you want to surprise your customers, close the survey loop. If the response was positive thank them. If there were any issues, have someone who can fix the situation contact the customer, or better yet make sure the person that calls them fixes it during the call.
- If you want to prove to your employees you’re serious about this. save results and use them for continuous improvement.
- If you want to be an industry leader, publish your customer satisfaction score online.
- If you want to challenge your industry (and yourself), publish your survey details online, the good AND the bad.
- If you want to be world class, allow website visitors to drill down into your survey scores, seeing actual comments and how you handled negative customer experiences.
- Really getting crazy here, how about implementing a mechanism where the customers themselves could add their comments to their own survey. This could be especially powerful when you’ve successfully resolved a customer complaint. Use this review platform as a springboard to develop an online community for your customers.
So did you notice that I didn’t mention blogging, twitter, Facebook or social networking at all? But I could absolutely re-write every step above, using Web 2.0 tools every step of the way, and then some. The point is not what tools are used, but what the objective is.
Another point that gets lost in all the 2.0 buzzword concepts, is aspiration level. Most thought leaders talk at the level of highest aspiration – that’s their job in a sense, to inspire and imagine the future. As business leaders, we all have to balance our capabilities and resources against the forecasted benefits of the project to see at what level of excellence it makes sense to aim for. Just looking at the steps above for a simple customer satisfaction survey, it would take some serious commitments to implement all the steps above:
- Creation of survey, identification of delivery method, including budget allocations. Definition of baseline metrics. Strategic discussion on what to do with feedback. Who “owns” the process?
- Additional budget expense; potential management issues. Outsource versus hire decision.
- Probably implies resource hiring or internal re-alignment. If still outsourced, then will most likely entail even higher expense than #2 as more professional firm is retained. Ongoing training.
- Executive management commitment to quality. May be linked with strategic quality orientation, perhaps ISO or Six Sigma adoption.
- Creation of the database to store the results. Creation of metrics; new topic on director or executive agendas. Executive buy-in to continuous improvement.
- Official back-end system for surveys. Integration to website. Coordination with Marketing.
- See # 6, and add plenty of serious talks between Marketing, your C’s and probably your Board. Guts.
- More in-depth IT work on your site. Commitment from management to make sure resolutions are entered. More guts.
- Development of a full fledged review management system on your website, probably integrated into CRM and other backend systems.
Now I’m going overboard on purpose here to prove a point. If you’re going to implement systems to show your customers you care about them, then do that. How many of you came away from a provider’s survey process with lesser opinion of them than you started with? As the saying goes “it takes forever to build a good impression, a second to destroy it.” A lot of what Web 2.0 is about is building good impressions.
Are there Web 2.0 tools that could be used in this program? Absolutely. Some of which could be indispensable, and could even lower the overall program costs. Could this initiative be rolled out successfully without Web 2.0 tools. Again – absolutely. So to me, the issue is not so much getting caught up in specific Web 2.0 buzzwords or tools, but to look behind them to what the thought leaders are saying they should be used for. I think you would be surprised at the “old-fashioned” nature of many of those uses.
The fact is, technology has lowered the price of admission for everyone, allowing even small business to act in ways that took the resources of Fortune 500 companies just a few years ago. Many of you are feeling a bit overwhelmed not only by the jargon, but maybe by the choices. But the changes that are taking place online and the, dare I say it, “conversations” that are happening online are important, and they fit all the themes of this blog: growth, leadership and entrepreneurship.
So, how do you get started? I’ve talked way too much lately about Web 2.0 on this blog and I’m anxious to get back to entrepreneurship for a while. For a fantastic primer, I’d recommend this recent post by Chris Brogan: If I Started Today. Take a read and let me know what you think.
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