Week 7: Misuse of Social Technology

Social media is great for connecting with customers, but what happens when something goes wrong? HMV experienced many business' worst nightmare during a particularly difficult time for the company.

The Incident

HMV is an entertainment retailer primarily based in the UK, selling movies, music, games and electronics. In January 2013, the business went into administration, causing the company to fire employees to reduce costs. On the 31^st of January, Poppy Rose, the (ex) HMV community manager, who ran the business’ Twitter and Facebook, live tweeted the firing of herself and 59 other employees from HMV’s head office on their official account, using the hashtag ‘#hmvXFactorFiring’, which quickly began trending. In her tweets, which later continued on her personal account, she expressed her dislike of how the company was being run and her frustrations with her employers for refusing to learn about the importance of social media.

From The Guardian and Poppy Rose’s Twitter

Later, the new administrator of the account deleted the offending tweets, and posted a response, shown below.

Our @hmvtweets picked up a lot of attention today, it’s clearly been a tough day for us all at hmv, please stick with us #hmvxfactorfiring

There have been job losses today, but not in our stores. We are still open for business, thx for your continued support #savehmv

One of our departing colleagues was understandably upset. We’re still here thou, thx for supporting hmv thro these challenging times

The Fallout

These tweets were clearly not good for the business, showing just how bad the situation within the company was at the time, as well as highlighting Ms Rose’s point of how very few within the company had a good understanding of social media. It also gained HMV some very bad press, mocked the company for the incident, which could have been easily avoided. However, the issue wasn’t without a silver lining for HMV, with their Twitter gaining around 12,000 followers.

The Future

This sort of embarrassment could be easily avoided in the future, both by HMV again or any other company. Once Ms Rose had handed over the account details (which had happened earlier that day), and had set up the new administrator, the company should have immediately changed the passwords and removed her from admin, clearly neither of which they did. They were also very slow in their response to the situation, with it taking around 20 minutes for the tweets to be removed and the response to be posted, by which time it had already gone viral. If this incident were to somehow happen again to any company, their social media team should be quick to respond and begin to rebuild its image.

What other embarrassing corporate social media screw ups do you know about? Tell me in the comments, I’d love to hear about it!

Week 5: Case Study

For this post, I’ll be looking at how Coles, a supermarket retailer operating in Australia, has been using social media, especially to communicate with their customers.

Social Media

The social media that Coles is most active on is Facebook. Here, the company has two accounts, on for Coles and another for recipes. The main account's page is focused on posting a wide range of content including information about new offerings in store, product recalls, sales, information about charities Coles involved with, as well as contests and giveaways. It also has some recipes, although Coles also has another page dedicated to them. Their main Facebook also links to a part of their website for online customer service, however any issues or queries customers have don’t appear to be addressed on the Facebook page itself.

Google+ is another area of social media Coles is using. This appears to be basically an ‘edited’ version of the company’s Facebook page, showing some of the more important posts and not updating as frequently. On this service, just like with Facebook, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of interaction with and between customers.

Coles also has accounts on Twitter. One is the main Coles profile, which generally serves the same purpose and tweets the (exact) same posts as Facebook. There is also an account for Coles Online, the company’s online store. The tweets from this account are usually to let users know about any technical issues the system may be experiencing which would affect them, however, there are also tweets about sales available through the store or competitions the company is running. However, both accounts also answer a lot of customer queries, in a casual yet professional way, and it does a lot to both help those people and humanise the company.

Another area where Coles is quite active is on YouTube. Here, they have a range of content available, including cooking technique tutorials, videos from and about competitions they have run, reports about the company from the media, and advertisements, both current ones and 'classic' old ones for the nostalgic user. Here, the company is putting then platform to good use, providing their subscribers with a wide range of content and most are sure to find something that interests them.

Another website that Coles is using well is Pinterest. Mainly this is used as another platform to share their recipes, however it worked especially effectively here. Coles is able to sort those recipes into various categories by pinning them to different boards. It also places the focus on pictures of the food, rather than the written recipe, making exploring the board very visually appealing. Coles has also has created some original content for this platform, rewarding those which track them on this social media tool instead of spamming them with posts the have already seen on other sites.  A great example of this which I especially enjoyed is the pictures of the carved fruit.

Coles also has a blog on their website. This contains longer posts than their other social media platforms, allowing for those who are interested to learn more about the subject to do so. The blog includes a wide range of post subjects, although they are mainly about new products. They also include posts about various charities the company is involved with, cooking or food tips and posts about their supplier farmers. The blog has a good mix of posts that have already featured in other places as well as ones exclusive to the blog.

McKinsey Value Levers

Coles is using their social media to help achieve two of their organisation functions, marketing and sales, as well as customer service. Of the value levers which fall under marketing and sales, the one that Coles is implementing the most effectively is ‘use social technologies for marketing communication/interaction’, however, they do really need to work on their interaction in most platforms. The company is almost certainly also trying to leverage ‘generate and foster sale leads’, and ‘derive customer insights’, and they have a great opportunity and the ability to do these effectively.

Coles is also beginning to utilise the ‘provide customer care via social technologies’ lever in customer service. However, Coles still has a lot of work to do in this area on certain platforms, as well as generally fostering more connection and interactions with their customers.

Do you know of any retail companies using social media and other social technologies more effectively than Coles? Let me know in the comments.

Week 4: Internal Blogs

As I wrote in my last post, a report from the McKinsey Global Institute outlines 10 value levers relating to social technology implementation within business and the 5 parts of the business value chain which they fall under. This time, I will be writing about a different lever, collaboration and communication, which fall under enterprise wide levers. This lever is about how a company can simplify communications; reduce in-person meetings; and increasing collaboration and the sharing of internal knowledge. A great way of achieving this is through the implementation of an internal blog.

So how and why should you write an internal blog? Well firstly it’s a good way to foster collaboration within the company. Not only are people already more likely to communicate with others they already know virtually than in person, but it can also connect people from different departments or shifts that would normally have never encountered each other before. This means that a more diverse set of people are able to collaborate together on various projects. Internal blogs are also a great way to store and share company knowledge. They are an easy way for employees to stay up to date with news from within the company or quickly send out their own knowledge which they feel others should hear about, such as what happened in a meeting or what they have been doing on a project. Unlike emails, blogs cannot become lost, buried or forgotten to be sent and are a lot easier to search. Blogs also generally aren’t deleted when someone quits or is fired, and therefore that employee’s knowledge isn’t lost with them. Internal blogs work well for many types of workers. Those who may be viewed slightly narcissistic or attention seeking have an outlet where they can write about all the good work they feel everyone should know they’ve done and their co-workers who dislike them can easily not follow or ignore the blog (which is a lot harder to do if they are constantly clogging your inbox). Meanwhile, those who are more modest may just use their blog as a way to keep others informed or as a way of organising themselves. Finally, many workers may already use this technology in their personal lives and have some great ideas about how it could be used within the company, or may even already be doing so without their boss’ knowledge. Therefore it would be a great idea to begin listening to what the employees want by implementing a company policy on how these technologies could be used for improvement throughout the business.

IBM is a technology company, notable for its usage of internal blogs. The business has a long history with social media, starting in the 1970s with forums being created for mainframe programmers. They now, among many other products, sell social software for implementation within businesses, such as IBM Connections (which they even have their own employees using). Using internal blogs within the company was the idea of Luis Benitez, IBM’s social software product manager. He found it hard to keep up with his work and emails and already ran a personal blog, so he decided to create one for work as well. He found that this eventually greatly reduced his emails. This is especially important as not only are blogs preferable to emails for a number of reasons I discussed earlier, but also because IBM, like almost every other email provider, has a storage quota placed on its employee’s accounts. This means that if they are sent too many or receive a number of large files, this limit can be quickly met and workers are forced to spend precious time on sorting through and deleting old emails, reducing their productivity. In 2005, the company as a whole began embracing blogging technologies, with a blogging policy and guidelines being written over two weeks on an internal wiki by the same employees who would later be using the blogs. Now, the company has 17000 blogs as well as microblogging capabilities within Connections and the company has implemented an online course on how to use their blog appropriately.

That’s all for this post. Do you know of any other companies using internal blogs? Let me know in the comments.

Week 3: Social Media and Customer Service

According to a report published by the McKinsey Global Institute, various applications of social technologies within a business can produce value for that business via 10 ‘value levers’. These 10 value levers fall under 5 areas of the business’ value chain: product development; operations and distribution; marketing and sales; customer service; and enterprise-wide levers. One of these levers, which falls under customer service, is ‘provide customer care via social technologies’.

When customers receive bad service or unforseen inconveniences, they often turn to their social media of choice to vent their frustrations. It is now becoming expected that a company replies to these customers or it may become a PR issue, damaging the company’s reputation.

By implementing customer service solutions, businesses can reap many benefits. It reduces the workload on traditional call centre staff, as the answers provided become available for other customers to search through and other customers or certified experts from outside the company can also help out those in need. These technologies also allow companies to react to or control issues which could have the potential to damage the company’s public image.

As previously mentioned on this blog, Twitter is becoming a great way for companies to interact with their customers. Some businesses now have Twitter accounts devoted to helping and responding to customer issues. Twitter is an effective method of communicating with customers as both the customer and employee are able to view information about the other, making the experience more personal and answers are approximately real time. However, around 70% of customer issues raised on Twitter aren’t responded to. There are also certain legal issues, such as in America,  banks are only able to take a customer’s name and  zip code via a direct or private message.

T-Mobile is a mobile network provider which is using social tools for customer service in an effective manner. The company has Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and forums where customers are able to contact the company. T-Mobile is one of the best business users of these tools in the customer care area, with an average response time on Facebook of 51 minutes and a response rate of 70.4%. The company also has a Facebook app titled T-Mobile Support, which allows a customer to live chat with a member of the support staff. In 2013, the company ran a campaign where they removed their contract termination fees, meaning that the business had to provide a high quality customer experience to retain their business. As Scott Tweedy, the vice president of customer services at T-Mobile stated, “that meant putting our customers at the centre of everything”. Part of this initiative was implementing the social media tools, as stated above. The company found that customer satisfaction increased by 31%, call deflection increased by 40%, call backs decreased by 10% and the support team’s productivity increased by 21%.

As you can see, it isn’t just ‘keeping up with the times’ when a business uses social media to interact with their customers, it also makes great business sense. Many more companies should begin implementing tools like T-Mobile did, and they will see results! Do you know of any other companies which give great customer support via social media? Tell me in the comments.

Week 2: Business and Social Technologies

So if you’re on this blog, you probably think that enterprise 2.0 technologies are great, but who is actually using them? Here are two major companies who are using them in very different ways to achieve their business objectives.

Disney is the company that made all those amazing animated films from your childhood, but did you know that they also have a high quality social media presence? Disney and its child companies (ABC, Marvel, etc.) are in charge of over 1000 social media accounts for their various television programs, movies, characters and other properties. They are the second most popular company in social media (behind Samsung), and with a small amount of browsing it is easy to see why. As well as the standard Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, they are involved in many other networks as well.

The other major player in social media, YouTube, is being put to great use by Disney. Their various channels are littered with a wide range of videos, from cooking tutorials, to various behind the scenes videos, and an online series aimed at encouraging young children to learn a second language.

Vine, the other video sharing site, notable for providing the most damning evidence when baby boomers say that younger generations “have no attention span”, is also being utilised very effectively by Disney Parks. Though these videos are very rough and basic, they are still able to convey the company’s trademark humour. They are also able to interact with their audience, running competitions and ‘revine-ing’ videos other users took at Disney theme parks.

Disney has also taken to Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Their posts/boards include a wide variety of topics, from visually appealing pictures from their productions, to plugs for their theme parks and merchandise as well as more tutorials and fashion advice.

What makes these accounts so noteworthy is how well they are managed. Disney walks the line between casual and professional, creating a sense of loyalty and community with their followers. They listen to their customers and appear to genuinely care about their feelings towards the company. Disney also creates high quality content, not all of their posts are outrageously obvious advertisements, many are actually interesting and informative. These include posts from actual employees, further humanising the company and further fostering the link between the content producer and consumer.

Coca-Cola is another company making great use of social technologies. Most notably, Coke has been a great supporter of crowdsourcing, posting various projects, on sites including eYeka. Most notably, these have included advertising initiatives. One of these competitions garnered around 3600 responses and the winning advertisement was shown in Asia. The company also found that their new initiative made economic sense, there was an approximately 900% productivity gain when compared to traditional means of creating advertisements.

It isn’t just marketing that Coca-Cola is turning to crowdsourcing for though. The German arm of the company asked the public to help design a new bottle crate. Their goal was to create a new crate which had an improved designed, was more user friendly, and better for the environment. Whilst not as popular as their advertising initiatives, gaining ‘only’ 438 responses, Coke still received a wide variety of designs from many innovators.

Both of these companies are aligning themselves with some of the business models outlined in Wikinomics. Both Disney and Coca-Cola are creating prosumers, Disney by re-tweeting/vine-ing/pinning/blogging appropriate fan generated content and Coca-Cola by utilising their audience to create advertisements. This means that the people consuming there are also producing them. This also links to the other model they are making use of, open and global platforms. The content these companies are publishing are being made across the world, however they are still trying to ‘act local’, with various regional differences (such as dedicated social media pages for different countries, and different advertisements and flavours being sold across the world).

What did you think of this blog? What companies do you think are using social media and crowdsourcing particularly uniquely or well? Tell me about it, I’d love to know!