Customer Service on Twitter– Handling Negativity

I’ve been using Twitter for a while now and follow a whole host of different people both from a personal interest point of view and for more professional, work related reasons. It’s an amazing source of information and a highly effective means of sharing thoughts with like-minded people.

What I have noticed with increasing regularity though is the pack mentality that seems to proliferate on Twitter around contentious or divisive issues. Whilst often the tweets posted by the Twitter community can be humorous, occasionally they can become a little “close to the mark” with users seemingly attempting to outdo each other with more and more witty or scathing comments.

It occurred to me that the relative anonymity of Twitter may be somewhat responsible for this phenomenon and perhaps users feel able to say things that they almost certainly wouldn’t in a face to face, real world scenario.

I have to be honest and admit that I have been guilty of the odd ranting tweet, especially when I first started using Twitter. One or two were directed at a brand with whom I’d had a poor interaction and others where simply because I felt able to sound-off with impunity. The difference being with the former is I expected some form of a response from the brand in question in order to address the issue I had raised. What surprised me were the differing levels of engagement I experienced. One in particular responded quickly and managed my issue through to resolution very efficiently, whereas at the opposite end of the scale, I was simply ignored.

Somewhere in the middle of this scale is not responding to a disgruntled person effectively, which on Twitter is in some ways worse than not responding at all. Given the immediacy of the format, any interactions deemed to below standard can quickly proliferate around the Twitterverse, particularly if the user is well connected with a large following.

Avoiding the envelopment of negative press requires effective management of company Twitter accounts. From what I have viewed and experienced in both a personal and professional context, effectiveness can be achieved primarily by providing an adequate response that diffuses the situation quickly.

Responding to negative press often requires tact and judgment. It is as fine balancing act with humour and empathy on one hand and the corporate identity on the other. Understandably ensuring your tweets are in line with brand communications is a constant for any company hoping to establish a consistent online/offline presence.

Of course there is always a significant chance that finding resolution through Twitter will be impossible. In these instances it is important to recognise when to take the matter offline, using a one to one method of communication such as email, the phone or even a face to face meeting to resolve the issue away from the public world of Twitter.

Twitter isn’t simply about playing a combative role however; equally important is promoting and engaging with those customers that have had a positive experience with your brand. Re-tweeting positive comments (particularly after resolving a customer issue) is an excellent method, although it is crucial to make any positive promotion look and feel organic and never forced.

For better or worse, Twitter has provided us all with the means vocalise our opinions. Whilst some users may go too far, using Twitter to voice concerns about a company is wholly legitimate and responding to these concerns swiftly and effectively is now a responsibility for customer service professionals.

Should an agency be judged on more than just their results?

New business at a marketing agency can be a funny business sometimes. Part of my pitch always focuses on results as that’s primarily what any business that employs an agency like ours is looking for. But in order to get results, a good working partnership needs to be established. A great client/agency relationship leads to better insight, understanding and most importantly trust.

A call from the senior salesperson at the online marketing agency we use (and that’s quite a unique relationship, an agency using an agency) prompted this particular blog. The salesperson in question asked me to act as a reference site for a new prospect. “It’s all about conversions” he told me. “If you can focus in on that, it should clinch the deal for us”. Now I had no problem at all acting as a reference site or indeed talking to his prospective client about the excellent results they have delivered for us but personally, I rank the relationship I have with our agency as highly as I do the results.

Which led me to the question, if I didn’t get on as well with the staff who work on our account and if they didn’t have a really good understanding of our business, would we still see the results we do?

Well of course the answer is no (I’d be contradicting myself a little if it was yes!) But that led to another question… If we were getting results but they were a pain to work with, would I be looking elsewhere for another agency? And the answer to that question is probably yes. No one wants to work with an agency or indeed an individual with whom they don’t have a good relationship.

If though, the results are good and you feel you get value for money then small misdemeanours can be over-looked sometimes. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time but in my experience, it’s how you go about fixing those mistakes that really counts. If done well there is no need for a relationship to suffer and often it can become stronger as a result.

So next time you’re on the hunt for a new agency or a new business manager (like me!) is pitching to you, take a second to look beyond all the ROI metrics and ask yourself the question – “do I like this person and can I work with them?” Hopefully, if it is me in front of you, the answer will be yes!

As always, what do you think? Is it all about getting bangs for your bucks or should a good working relationship be as, if not more, important?

What are the factors behind a good client/agency relationship?

What are the main elements that go to making a good, long term client/agency relationship? Tough question isn’t it? Cultural match, ROI, outstanding creativity, awards even perhaps… all have their place but sometimes it can be a little more intangible than that.

I was presenting to a prospective new client recently and was asked how long on average our clients had been with us. In our case it’s around 5 or 6 years which I think is pretty darn good for a CRM agency such as ourselves (we currently have clients that have been with us for as long as 15 years). But the question got me thinking, why do our clients remain so loyal to us and why have we been successful in developing their accounts? Well I’m not about to reveal our secrets or bore you to death with a diatribe on our approach to Account Management. What I will do though, is tell you what factors I believe make a good client/agency relationship and some of the things to look for if you are searching for a new partner.

Trust – The foundation upon which any good relationship is built and by far the most important factor in forming a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership. If there is no trust between a client and their marketing agency every project, idea, suggestion or piece of work will be second guessed or viewed with suspicion. A client has to believe and trust that their agency has their best interests (and those of their brand) at heart in order to produce the best results.

Cultural Match – Without exception, every business has a distinct identity, a culture and a work ethic. If the relationship is to be successful it’s important that the business finds an agency whose culture mirrors or complements their own. That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be differences as often the best work or campaign can be produced when ideas and the established status quo are challenged by both parties.

Personalities – Never underestimate the importance of matching account management staff with the client, if the two get on both on a professional and personal level then the relationship will undoubtedly flourish. Get it wrong and the exact opposite will happen, trust won’t be established and creativity will be stifled.

Honesty – We all get things wrong from time to time but if your agency is honest enough to own up to mistakes and they go the extra mile to put them right, then that can only be a good thing. Honesty is also important when it comes to communication and feedback which leads me to my next point…

Communication – Open and honest communication, particularly feedback is essential in the client/agency relationship. As a CRM agency, feedback whether positive or constructive (no one likes negative!) is invaluable if we are to continue to innovate and drive the client’s communication strategy forward. We do our upmost to ensure that the key stakeholders on any project are talking all the time and that any little ripples are ironed out along the way.

Value for Money – A topic that can be highly subjective to say the least! An agency and their client may well disagree on what constitutes value for money but what can’t be disputed is the more accurate measurement of Return on Investment (ROI). As an agency, ROI is all important and if we’re to retain our clients then we must be able to accurately measure and demonstrate ROI. That is why each programme we implement has metrics built in whether it’s establishing control groups to measure the impact of an eCRM campaign or KPIs for contact centre performance.

And finally…

Shared Objectives – We’re all in business to make money (well most of us are anyway). If we’re honest about this and don’t try to screw every little last piece of discount or margin from each and every deal then the trust and relationship that we worked so hard to establish won’t be affected. By all means challenge your agency to justify their charges (and hopefully they’ll be honest about them) but don’t be surprised if the quality of work begins to slide if you’ve beaten them down to a rock-bottom price. Likewise from an agency perspective, if a client gets even the slightest whiff that they’re being taken for a ride, they won’t be a client for much longer.

In Summary

So there we have it, what I believe to be seven important elements that go together in making the foundation of a solid client agency relationship. Clearly the list is not exhaustive and there are many other less fundamental factors which cumulatively can have a dramatic effect. But what do you think - are there any other major factors I have missed, would you like to challenge any of the statements I have made? All feedback (well most!) will be gratefully received.

Exhibitions and making your data work for you

The aim of this blog is to try to give some advice and help people avoid one of the biggest errors made while taking part in events or exhibitions. Based on my previous experiences, I hope to give you some pointers which will enable you to make the most of any future events.

Exhibitors spend a huge amount of money on stands for exhibitions to make sure they look state of the art; they make sure they have their best sales personnel present to establish and build new customer relationships, and finally they make sure they gather as much data as possible on prospects. However, all of this time and money can be wasted if you do not act on a few key points!

The key objective for exhibitors when venturing in to any event should be to gain a deeper customer insight, generate leads that can be turned into monetary value, and increase their company’s profit.

Exhibitors normally gauge how successful a show has been by the amount of data and leads they collect. All this is extremely valuable, but unless this data is used quickly and accurately, it could be a waste of time collecting it in the first place.

Making better use of the data you worked so keenly to collect can be the hardest part about taking part in a show. It’s sometimes difficult to find the time or resources within your company to do simple things such as data capture the information from an exhibition into your sales and marketing database when you get back to the office. However, what people often do not realise is within that data can be the key to your future success.

Information that can be extracted from data and information captured can offer customer insight that will open your client base in so many ways. Handled by the right people, it can be of significant benefit to your company, placing you leagues ahead of any competitors.

By enhancing this data you can build relevant propositions, it can affect future decision making, you can cross sell, track the behaviour of your clients and know when they are more likely to place orders with you.

What you do at the show does not have to change, you know what you are selling, you are the expert in that, what needs to change is what you do after, so let an expert get the most out of the hard work you put in.

At the show make sure you are asking for the correct information from your prospects so you can make the most of your data. If in doubt ask an expert for some advice on the data to be captured and how to go about it, it can make the process a lot less painful in the long run and remove the need for manual data capture.

You have spent a lot of money on the show so you need to get the best return on your investment; by allocating a small amount of your budget to outsource your data management really will bring you the return you deserve.

If you have any event advice or tips please post them for us all to learn from.

Project Management – The Language Barrier

Would you go to a foreign country without learning a bit of the language or understanding the culture? No probably not, or if you did, then you would be at risk from looking slightly ignorant or embarrassed every time you tried to order a drink! Project Management can work in the same way and it’s essential to understand the language that’s spoken by those that you’re working with both within your own organisation and perhaps more importantly, with the client.

This doesn’t of course mean that for a Project Manager to speak to a Customer Insight colleague they need to have detailed knowledge of how to build a propensity model, understand neural networks or determine the most appropriate regression model. But, it does help if they can have dialogue which the ‘analysts’ are comfortable with and translates well to the client. If language and terminology is used that the Project Manager doesn’t understand, they shouldn’t dismiss it as a foreign language, they should attempt to talk ‘pigeon analytics’ until a common ground is found. I’m sure you’ve all been on holiday trying to order that dish from the menu that you have no idea what it is, but with a bit of patience from you and the native waiter, you work it out together.

Once the language is established and understood, the Project Manager can then be clear when detailing the clients’ requirements. It is essential that these are understood and consensus is reached to be confident that project efficiency is maximised. When managing a Print and Fulfilment campaign, it’s essential that the correct inserts go with the correct personalised letter – it matters to that individual what is received. Or another analogy would be to go back to the international dish, if you don’t understand what that foreign ingredient is – then on your taste buds be it!

Should any problems arise through the course of a project, the Project Manager is responsible for working the challenge through with the person who will essentially resolve it whether that is the client or internal colleagues. This will have a positive impact as the solution will support the overall project objectives and also enhance understanding. When managing a Database Marketing project, decisions and choices can be vast and the wrong one made through miscommunication could have a big impact of the overall deliverables.

As our core business is Customer Relationship Management, the skills required to work efficiently and effectively with clients and colleagues alike are ingrained in all our Project Management staff. A Project Manager needs to have skills to perform a range of duties from sales, to accountancy, to business analysis and even diplomacy as well as a firm understanding of the importance of when in a service department, do as that service department does!

How much do you REALLY know about your customers?

How much do you REALLY know about your customers?

I recently met a new client who told me that he knows very little about his customers or the reasons they buy one product in preference to another. As shocking as this might sound, I’m almost certain he’s not alone. A great number of businesses we speak to can tell you all about their sales figures, about their average order values or about the number of new customers they have acquired. But when it comes to actually knowing what a customer thinks of them or perhaps more importantly, the business’ perception of themselves compared to that of their customers, then very few have a clear understanding of what makes their customers tick.

Perception mapping

In our experience, a simple solution to this problem can be to conduct a questionnaire to both internal stakeholders and a business’ customers and then analysing the results using perception mapping. Perception mapping uses survey data to provide a visual representation of the perceptions of diverse segments, in particular, highlighting key differences. It is particularly useful when analysing the differences in perceptions from a company and customer point of view in areas such as service levels and product quality. Perception mapping can help prove or disprove the perceptions or assumptions of a business and identify gaps in the service or product offering.

Are customer survey’s a little “old hat”?

People may argue however, that customer surveys are a little “old hat” or that they struggle to get significant enough responses to allow accurate analysis. Again in our experience, if the right questions are asked in a non-intrusive way, using the most appropriate medium and to the right customers (and by that I mean ones who have an existing relationship with the business), then response rates can be surprising. We have seen response rates from online customer surveys as high as 75% and that’s without offering an incentive to respond. Clearly it helps to have a very receptive and loyal customer base in order to see response rates that high but other surveys we have run on behalf of clients regularly get response rates in excess of 25% which gives more than enough accurate data to perform detailed analysis… providing enough questionnaires were sent in the first place obviously!

Questionnaires…a great way of getting customer insight

Questionnaires are also a great tool for cleansing or filling gaps in your customer profile information… without customers feeling as though they are being interrogated by the Spanish Inquisition. Any analyst will tell you that having information like date of birth, occupation or postcode in customer data is invaluable when it comes to accurate profiling and segmentation or building customer insight initiatives such as propensity models. By clearly stating the purpose of the questionnaire (i.e. to improve customer service or help with product development) and asking carefully planned, relevant questions, detailed information on customers can be built-up and incorporated into database profiles.

…And to conclude

So in summary, here are a few points to remember and some advice about the successful use of customer questionnaires and surveys:

• Planning – think about why you want to perform a survey in the first place. Is it to address a specific business objective, to prove or disprove a theory or to gather valuable profiling data?

• Relevance – Make sure the questions reflect the information you want to gather and that they are relevant to the customers purchase behaviour… there is no point in asking a question if no action can result from its answer!

• Objectivity – Try and make your surveys and questionnaire as objective as possible, after all you want your customers to be honest in their responses even if the results make for difficult reading.

• Channel – If all your customer interactions are conducted online or via email, then it’s a good idea (if not an obvious one!) to conduct a survey via the same channels. Online surveys give the added benefit of direction integration into marketing database systems without the need to data capture the results.

• Format – Complicated questions in a poorly designed format will only serve to dissuade customers from responding. Equally, complicated questionnaires with lots of free text will make data

• Analysis – Most companies would say that they analyse the results of the surveys they have conducted but in our experience, very few actually get the most from the data they capture. Using a specialist data analyst or customer insight company can really help unlock intelligence in data and help you get the most from a customer survey.

But what do you think? What response rates have you seen and how successful have your surveys been?

Propensity Modelling: The Green Option

The advantages of propensity modelling are well documented: it allows you to score and target the right customers, optimise resources and avoid indiscriminate mass marketing. However, the impact on the environment should not be overlooked.

In 2006, direct mail accounted for 500,000 tonnes of paper. That’s a big impact on the environment, especially considering the significant amount that would have been thrown away unopened, let alone unread.

Of course, the materials used, accurate suppressing and the cleanliness of data are viewed as playing a significant role in lessening the environmental impact of direct mail. Propensity modelling should be viewed in the same way.

Propensity modelling allows an organisation and its marketing department to score and target customers based on their propensity to act in a certain way, for example, the propensity of a customer to take up an offer or respond to your call to action.

By sending direct mail to only the customers you believe your message or offer will be relevant to, not only will you see better response rates from your campaigns, potentially maximising profitability, you can also reduce your below the line spend and your impact on the environment. Truly targeted and relevant direct mail means a reduction in paper usage, production of printed material, printing inks, delivery fuel and use of packing machinery (and related energy consumption), thereby helping the environment.

And ‘Green’ credentials or environmental impact are becoming increasingly important to consumers who are looking to make an informed choice about their purchases. Recent research has shown that people are more likely to buy from companies who are carbon neutral, fair trade, or involved with charitable work.

Publicising your company’s investment in areas such as sustainable consumption, environmental management systems, environmental accreditation and charitable donations can all help reinforce your brand values and develop productive customer relationships.

What are your thoughts on Propensity Modelling?

Welcome to the new blog of EWA Bespoke Communications

EWA is an award winning relationship management agency and we specialise in providing outsourced marketing services including:

• Database Marketing
• Customer Insight
• Contact Centres
• Response Handling
• Print & Fulfilment
• Relationship Management

We have been in business for over twenty five years and provide outsourced customer relationship management programmes for clients such as M&S, Nissan, adidas and Merial Animal Health.

As an outsourcing agency, return on investment is ingrained in everything we do at EWA and clients need to see a return on the trust and financial commitment they place with us. That is why every campaign we handle is strictly managed to agreed service levels and outcomes are analysed to gauge their effectiveness.

To give an example; approximately three years ago EWA highlighted to M&S the need for a customer retention programme in order to help reduce customer churn. The programme that was developed and put in place by our Systems and Customer Insight team has today seen customer churn levels reduce by 20% which represents an additional £750,000 worth of orders since the programme’s inception… impressive results we hope you’ll agree.

The reason for launching our new blog is simple… we have a lot to say! EWA has been a market leader in customer relationship management since 1981 and we want to share our knowledge, create debate and discuss areas of work which we are passionate about. As with all blogs, it will be a work in practice so please check back regularly and feel free to send us your feedback on any of the topics we write about.

The blog will become the voice of EWA and will be contributed to by experienced staff in senior positions across the company. We’ll be discussing topics as varied as customer service and the benefits of outsourced contact centres to getting the most from your data and how eMarketing impacts our lives.

We believe we have expertise in supporting outsourced marketing services for our clients and our blog is an opportunity to tell you about what we do; for you to question us; challenge us; learn about us and most importantly engage with us!

We’re looking forward to your thoughts and comments and welcome anyone to join the online conversation!