#JobHunt Lessons Learned in Early Age of Social Business
By michaelpace on April 23, 2013
AOL, getting film developed, Blockbuster stores, paper maps, the classifieds, pay phones and phone books, fax machines, record stores, …
AND how you searched for a job 3 years ago.
If you don’t know what all these things have in common, put your flip phone down and hit pause on your VCR or CD player. For everyone else, you know all of the above are obsolete. Sure, they exist somewhere out there in the world, but either they are highly inefficient or just broken.
This week, I will be beginning my next great adventure at PerkStreet Financial, and finding this fit was an adventure all on its own. The past several months have been a roller coaster unequalled by anything I would have predicted. The highs of freedom and new opportunities were amazing. The trials of hope rejected pushed my mental boundaries. Throughout the ride, I’ve kept a running list of what worked, what didn’t, what was broken, and other lessons learned from the ride.
LinkedIn is the most important social networking tool. (PERIOD) – It is also your most valuable job search tool.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, WhatsApp and whatever else can go away or be replaced without much impact, but LinkedIn is the PDA, rolodex, resume, community, business card, job search site, search engine, presentation portfolio, and subtle introduction of today. No other tool is as powerful and useful to a person in search of a position. Whether you are employed or looking, you should be maintaining LinkedIn DAILY. No, it is not the sexiest application, and you don’t get to play games or see what your ex-girlfriend is up to today, but unless you plan on never being downsized, laid off, fired, bored with your current company, or change your mind, it is critical to your career.
My best LinkedIn practices:
- Always start with the company search, and see who you know or who you know has influential relationships. If you see posting from another site, never apply without exhausting all of your LinkedIn resources first.
- Pay for the Premium Job Seeker services – you end up higher in recruiter search results, can see who has viewed your profile, see if changes to profile change your views/day, prioritized applications upon submission, job seeker badge
- Link In with every person you meet and have a conversation with at an event. Make sure to write a note in the LinkedIn invite relating to your meeting.
- I found their job search functionality as strong as the best job search sites
- Provides fantastic research on companies and people you may be interviewing with
- Becoming a “go-to” place to curate content from (especially with new mobile app)
- Groups and the discussions within groups provide great ways to make introductions to people
- If you have presentations available to view, add to slideshare.net and you can add it to your profile
- Follow the companies you are interested in working for, content is pushed to you
Learn how to Inbound Market yourself
When you are looking for a position in your field, you are essentially trying to sell yourself. Just like a Marketing/Sales funnel, you need to create awareness, develop consideration, create intent, and hopefully sell the interview and yourself. Mailing a copy of a resume makes as much sense as direct mail. Sending your resume to someone in a company without a relationship is a kin to spam. Finally, banner ads have a better success rate than randomly submitting information to Monster or Careerbuilder. Hubspot defines inbound marketing as the process of using content, social media, search engine optimization, email, lead nurturing, and marketing automation to attract and retain customers. In the job hunt process, the companies are your customers. Individuals or companies that come to you based on prior experience or word of mouth are much more likely to consider you for hire, even when they do not have the current need.
Inbound Marketing should start well before you ever need or go looking to be employed. During the past couple years, I have made a number of relationships (and friends) that stemmed from a piece of content I created or curated. Many of those relationships help make introductions to influential hiring personnel or were the hiring managers. The content you create or curate helps develop your credibility and trust with peers and individuals within your industry.
Best Practices in Inbound Marketing for hire
- Re-read everything you just read about LinkedIn above
- I am assuming you have something to say about your industry, find a platform that allows you to express your thought leadership (blog, video blogs, speaking opportunities, use slideshare to show off your presentations, comment in communities, twitter chats, speak up at events, etc…) Not only will this build your resume, your content repository, your digital rolodex, but it will give you something to do during the doldrums of the job search.
- Curate content – use tools like Flipboard or Feedly to find articles from other authors you find to be thought provoking, and share on or with your professional networks. Thought leadership by association.
- Just like Marketing and Search Engine Optimization, your information need to be searchable. Make sure your information and resume is available on the major job search sites, such as Monster, Careerbuilder, ZipRecruiter, and Experteer. Make sure you resume includes the keywords that you believe will drive the recruiters to your phone.
Other Quick Lessons Learned
Know Your Audience:
- Are they a progressive company with a casual dress code?
- Even if they are a progressive company, is the person or people you are meeting with more traditional?
- Do you know someone at the company who can give you an inside to the company’s hot topics?
- Find something you have in common with the people you are interviewing
Job Search Sites: Use job search site email subscriptions and job alerts to help you learn about new companies and to learn who is hiring, but use your relationships and research to apply. Applying online for through the company’s website or a job site should be your last resort to engage a company.
Job Title Discrimination: Don’t pass over a company because the job title is “beneath your level” or “too far above your current level”. If the company is interested in acquiring great talent, they will gladly have the conversation with you. You can always negotiate title.
Priorities: Before you even start your search, be clear with your priorities in your next great opportunity. For me, my priorities were as follows:
- A company with a culture and values that fit my own
- A role with the right scope and velocity (velocity – I wanted high growth)
- A company and a role where I can do work that is bigger than myself
Mobile: There are plenty of tool to conduct your job search on the run. Go ahead, hit the beach or go skiing; you will not have time later, and most apps are fully functional.
Human Resources has forgotten they are a customer facing part of the organization: This topic will need a whole customer service post on its own. Take a minute to understand how many people apply to a company in a year, these are all potential customers or people who can refer your company, how are you treating them? Do you even acknowledge their application beyond the automatic email reply?
Finally – it’s a mental game. Find resources to help you with the ups and downs.
I hope these lessons I have learned will help you in your eventual search. Odds are you will not be with the company you are currently with for the rest of your worklife.
And the Winner is ….
By michaelpace on April 18, 2013
Drum roll please …
And the Winner is …
Ladies and Gentlemen we have a tie, a three way tie. The winner of an amazing opportunity goes to PerkStreet Financial, Me, and Everyone who is tired of broken banking as usual.
PerkStreet Financial (located at 114 State Street, Boston, MA) will be my new home away from home, and I couldn’t be more excited. PerkStreet Financial is changing the way we can bank. If there ever was an industry that needed to be disrupted, it’s Banking and Financial Services.
- Get rewards for using your debit card, rather than going into debt (Hmm … that would be nice)
- Reach a person 24/7 (Stuff happens, we’re there to help)
- Use social media to create community (Yes it is possible in Financial Services)
People say things happen for reason, and while the search for the right opportunity took longer than anticipated, PerkStreet is a perfect fit for my customer service experience, social and community management skills, and financial services background. PerkStreet doesn’t approach business with typical functional silos like marketing, operations and customer service. Instead, they organize around the business objective* with team members with different skills working together in stand alone teams. My job will be to spearhead Customer Care and Cultivation in 4 critical areas:
- Customer Dialogue – How do we engage with prospects and customers across channels to help them get the most out of PerkStreet?
- Issue Diagnosis – It isn’t enough to fix things that go wrong, we are applying analytics to our customer interactions to understand how we fix things that went wrong and take friction out of the process.
- Scale and Flex – How do we grow without losing the human touch?
- People Leadership – All great businesses have cultures that drive success, how do we maintain and build upon a strong foundation, particularly when we leverage outside parties?
Banking customers and their money deserve better, and I intend on changing their perceptions and realities.
Special thanks to Jennifer Spencer for advocating internally for me to bring me in to speak with such a great team!
*Discussion regarding the need for change in traditional organizations from 2012
How to Get Promoted – for Managers and Reports
By michaelpace on April 2, 2013
Want to make your manager uncomfortable? Try one of these below out on them.
“When am I going to get promoted?”
”I’ve been in this position for two years, I should have been promoted by now.”
”Why does <insert first and last name here> get promoted, and I get looked over every single time?”
Want to NOT get promoted? Try one of these above out on them.
In my 12+ years in being a people leader, promotion conversations are some of the most difficult to have with an associate. After all, these promotion questions and statements are almost always difficult conversations where the manager needs to explain to a (usually) solid employee that a promotion is not in their near future. Possible promotion talk is a welcomed conversation to a manager. Many managers “give away” the promotion news too early because they too are excited about the news. Odds are if you have to ask, you are not ready in your manager’s eyes.
Promotions feel a little bit out of your control. Sure you can work hard, smart, and long, but that will not ensure a promotion. You need to understand what a manager looks at to promote you, regardless where you are on the corporate ladder. I have never seen this written down in a book, and most managers don’t understand it themselves; therefore, they will not be able to tell you.
In general, there are 5 requirements for an associate to receive a promotion.
- Results in your current role are reflective of potential success
- Competencies demonstrated at the NEXT level to compete with your new peers
- You possess the technical or job specific skills for the role
- The role and scope of the role is available
- You have advocates, preferably influential ones
Results in your current role reflective of potential success
If you want to get promoted, be awesome at your day job. Yes, this appears as a “Captain Obvious” statement. However, so many think their current role is beneath them. Once an associate takes their role for granted, their best rarely comes out. Don’t drop your day job.
One of my most valuable lessons in business came in my first “professional” job at Tiffany & Co.. I was a phone agent in the Customer Authorizations Department setting up private label credit cards for our customers. I could do it in my sleep after about six months; it felt natural to me as a combination of art and science. I was faster than others in my group. I was more accurate than others in my group. I was consistently requested by our internal customers to help them out. I could have breezed, beat everyone out with a minimal amount of effort. I did the opposite. I busted out twice as much work, and volunteered and “Leaned In” while keeping up the pace. I put in a lot of hours that were never recorded. I never mentioned a promotion, but discussed my future. I got promoted. If I skated through, I may have been promoted at some time, but I could have just as easy been passed over for an external candidate.
Competencies demonstrated at the NEXT level to compete with new peers
Competencies are about how you get work done. How you get the work done is just as important as the results. Let me provide an example. A Project Manager could get a lot done and possibly good results by being a ruthless barbarian of a leader. It will not last long, as their relationships will suffer. Most likely they are not showing strong communication or teamwork skills. Competencies must be demonstrated at the next level or role.
Competencies most managers look for:
- Communication skills – oral, written, and presentation
- Results Driven
- Teamwork – intra-team and cross functional
- Understands and integrates data to make decisions
- Ability to influence others
- Focuses on the customer
- Lives the Values of the organization
- Can work autonomously
- Efficiently leverages resources
- Looks the part
Alright, looks the part is not a competency. But portraying an image of someone who belongs at the next level is critical. If you are fantastic in every way but look like you just woke up and threw on he sweatpants, you are adding an extra hurdle. Even if the sweatpants fit in your corporate dress policy, you are doing the bare minimum. Take pride in your appearance, and give yourselves a pant leg up, no shorts please.
You possess the technical skills or job specific skills for the role
Odds are if you are getting a promotion, you will have new responsibilities. These new responsibilities may be managing associates, managing 10X the number of current associates, use a specific technology, budgetary, able to communicate to large audiences or public speaking, build strategies, negotiate a deal, understand influences on stock price, project or program management, etc… It will be different for every role and level. Find out what are the technical skills your manager does today. Offer to help them next time they need to accomplish a like task. Create a personal development action plan. If you are promoted, you may need to use this skill on day 1.
The role and the scope of the role is available
You may be promotable for every reason, but if your organization does not need a person in that role, promotion is rare. When this is the case, you have four choices:
- Influence the need
- Create a new role that is needed
- Suck it up
- Leave the department or company
You have advocates, preferably influential ones
Promotion is rarely decided entirely by one person in medium to large size organizations. Most often, your manager’s manager is involved. If there are multiple people at that level, each one may be included in the promotion thought process. Most organizations, at least, include Human Resources in the promotion process. Key take away: you need more than just your direct manager as an advocate.
How do you acquire advocates? Here are a number of different ways to build advocacy:
- Find mentors to build on your weaker competencies
- Go above and beyond in your normal job so that you are impossible to miss
- Join cross functional teams
- Ask good thoughtful questions, perhaps over a cup of coffee
- Lunch
- Get out of your cube/office and make a physical presence
- Buy doughnuts, and walk around meeting new people
- Be visible
Understanding the key drivers of promotions puts you in control, removes the victim tonality out promotion conversations, and stops putting your manager in an awkward position. Be awesome at your current role. Build and demonstrate competencies at the next level. Acquire the job specific skills needed for that new role. Make sure it will or is available. Find your advocates or make them.
Using Communities for Customer Support
By michaelpace on March 18, 2013
Overview:
A majority of organizations are using some sort of community based support model or have considered doing such. The question is, are you seeing the results and cultivating real relationships with your customers?
It is known customer communities can be an incredible source of support, for both your customers and your organization.
In this episode, I have invited Michael Pace (Customer Support & Community Management Executive) to join myself on Voice of the Customer Radio to discuss “Community”.
Objectives:
- Learn about communities and community management for all levels of the enterprise
- Uncover the tremendous benefits of this unique “self” service tool
- Step by step assessment guide on how to get started
- Technical options available for you
How do they impact engagement? C-Sat? Reducing Costs? Driving top line growth?
How did you get involved in communities?
Where do you start?
Once you are up and running, how do you keep your customers engaged?
Metrics?
How do you get executive buy in to pursue?
People – what kind of people do you need to be community managers? How do you hire?
What kinds of tools are available?
Are there any resources to help get folks started?
Execs In The Know promotes the capabilities of global “Customer Experience” or “Service Leadership” professionals around the world. Their model is to “serve” and be an “advocate” for providing awareness, facilitating networking opportunities, offering talent reach and highlighting the significant accomplishments this industry has to offer.
Community Manager: Help Yourself
By michaelpace on March 14, 2013
As Tom Jones says,
“We are always told repeatedly
The very best in life is free
And if you want to prove it’s true
Baby I’m telling you
This is what you should do
Just help yourself … ”
Community Management is a new and exponentially growing career field. And because it is new and growing so fast, it is hard to understand how others are building their infrastructures, creating best practices, lessons learned, and how to fail fast. Today’s guest post is from Rachel Happe, Principal of the Community Roundtable, and she needs your help to help yourself.
(Note: I am a member of the Community Roundtable, and a HUGE supporter and promoter of their services; you should check them out.) I’ll let Rachel take it from here:
Many of The Community Roundtable Network members and the organizations we work with struggle with some of the following questions:
- What is the benefit of a community strategy?
- When should I expect to see those benefits at a meaningful scale?
- What difference does community management make?
- What are the standard roles and responsibilities of community managers?
- How does the performance of internal communities differ from external communities?
- How big should I expect my community program budget to be?
Our annual State of Community Management has covered qualitative best practices over the years – in 2011 the SOCM covered practices related to the competencies of the community management discipline and in 2012 the SOCM covered how organizations mature with the common initiatives and milestones organizations take in each stage. This year we are looking for organizations willing to help us understand the underlying performance data from their community initiatives. Does this describe you?
- Your organization has been working to develop a social or community competency for over a year.
- Your organization has the ambition to have an enterprise wide approach to how it coordinates and manages its communities, both internal and external.
- Organizational demographics
- Community program profile
- Community management profile
- Profile of the performance of one specific community
We will select three participants to receive a custom research presentation that includes performance benchmarks for their organization, worth $7,500 each.
Are you ready to help move the industry forward? Do you want to know where you stand? Are you game for the challenge? We want you!
First: Download the 2013 SOCM Workbook
Second: Complete the online 2013 SOCM Survey
Rachel is a Principal and Co-Founder at The Community Roundtable - A company dedicated to advancing the business of community which offers a monthly subscription report, a membership based peer network, a community management training program and advisory services for corporations and individuals.The Best Medicine for Customer Success – Prescription
By michaelpace on February 26, 2013
- Take two of these every 4 hours for 5 days
- Go home and rest
- Drink plenty of fluids
- Make some chicken soup
- Take ibuprofen to reduce fever
- Gargle salt water for a sore throat
- Steam to loosen congestion
- Etc…
x
Identify the most common paths to Customer Success or “Happy Paths” (no more than 5) – As the doctor has learned from years of training and experience, you must understand the best practices of customers to achieve success. While product training and experience will be helpful, I believe, you should be leveraging the best practices of BPM (Business Process Management) to clearly understand your customers needs.Map out how your current processes are actually working. The two best tools from BPM for this activity are SIPOC and Swimlane tools. These tools will help you understand the people and tools involved in the processes, and will help identify overlaps, holes, and general inefficiencies. You will probably come out of this exercise with a number of opportunities.- Map out how your current processes are actually working. The two best tools from BPM for this activity are SIPOC and Swimlane tools. These tools will help you understand the people and tools involved in the processes, and will help identify overlaps, holes, and general inefficiencies. You will probably come out of this exercise with a number of opportunities.
- Determine what is Critical to Quality for your customer. A very helpful tool process managers use to flesh out who your customer is, what they care about, and how to measure what they care about.
- Get deep into your analytics. Hopefully, in this age of Big Data, you are collecting information about your customer’s habits and trends. You need to understand what your most successful customers are doing, and how they are doing it. Examples: How often do they log in? What activities are they doing? Are they contacting Support or are they using Forums? At my previous employer, we saw an incredibly strong correlation of success with the amount of times they contacted Support. They more the better (odd but true). Do they use your product or service in a specific way? Understanding your data will assist in the Success Path creation.
x
The critical handoff(s) after purchase. As I just stated, you must provide evident value quickly. Hopefully, within your Sales process you are able to demonstrate real value to your customer. This is one of the huge benefits of providing trial periods. If you are lucky enough to have a fast sales cycle, you may need to take additional steps to ensure the handoff of post sales to implementation or support is done incredibly well. In fact, the harder it is for the purchase to be made (financial, complexity, etc..) the more time and money you need to spend in designing handoffs that ensure effectiveness. I highly recommend adding a Customer Success team to identify struggling customers. If your customers just purchased, their will to achieve the skill is at its highest. A Customer Success team is charged with developing exception reporting to understand customer usage gaps, and remedy the situation through a mixture of well placed content and some courtesy calls. The behavioral analysis you conducted previously should provide what’s needed for understanding your exception reporting.x
Monitor behavioral and emotional responses. A low amount of companies are collecting behavioral information about their customer’s actions. A much larger portion is monitoring emotional ties to your company (Customer Satisfaction and/or NPS). Guess what? You need to be measuring both simultaneously. Let me give an example: I am a customer of a cable company that provides my phone, internet, and cable. Behaviorally, I am a great customer; I buy all of their services and upgrades. Emotionally, I can’t stand them. My NPS for them would definitely be in the detractor category. Conversely, I am a customer of an internet based music collection company. I have them on my mobile devices and desktop, but I forget to use it 99% of the time. I love the service and function, but I forget all about it. You need to be able to monitor both to prescribe the right action.x
Action. Action. Action. Sometimes we end up in analysis paralysis, and forget to do something with all this data. Regardless, if you are collecting only NPS or behavioral scoring, or both, you need to do something with the info. If you are scoring low on CSAT or NPS, you do not have a strong relationship with your customer or they do not trust you. If you are scoring low behaviorally, you may need to increase awareness or education. Regardless, you will need to determine strategies to move the needle on your customer. Make sure your post sale marketing is directed to their particular issue. Make sure your customer service agents can see their scoring and have effective means at their disposal to correct the situation.x
Customer Success is complex, and has been overlooked for many years. If you leverage process management tools, recognize your Sales team is deeply involved and it doesn’t start at Support, ensure solid handoffs, monitor behavioral and emotional responses, and take action, you have the prescription for Customer Success.Everyone can be a Community Manager & Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day
By michaelpace on January 28, 2013
If you are a “registered” or “titled” Community Manager, have a great Community Manager Appreciation Day – whether others folks in your company know it, we all love and appreciate your work. Throughout the day, I have seen amazing content being produced and curated by a number of social rockstars and community managers. But…
I am seeing so many different definitions and roles of community managers; some I wholly agree with, some I can see the connection, and some I just don’t get. I wish I could ask a number of these incredibly smart people to get there take on a bunch of questions.
• If you work in social marketing, are you a Community Manager?
• If you work in social customer service, are you a Community Manager?
• I’m assuming if you work with an actual community platform on a daily basis, you are a Community Manager?
• Do Community Managers only work with social online channels?
• Do Community Managers manage top of the funnel metrics? Support and advocacy metrics? Across the whole value chain?
• Do you have to be a designated Community Manager to do community management work?
Here are my thoughts:
Community Management is a discipline.
Discipline (def): activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training Other disciplines in business – Project Management, Process Management, People Management, Financial Management, Organizational Management, etc… Every day, I employ business solutions that include a mix of many of the disciplines, and others not mentioned. It is about HOW I work. To put Community Management in context to other terms:
Anyone can be skilled and proficient in Community Management; from Call Center Associates to CEO’s. Anyone can use the methodologies and tools to achieve a broader outcome. Everyone can be involved in Community Management. It also means not everyone should be involved. “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
If you start thinking about Community Management as a discipline, many of the (continuing) lingering questions, concerns, and issues become a bit easier to address.
• Where do Community Managers fit in an organization?
• Why do Community Managers feel so stressed?
• Why is allocation of resources so difficult?
• What are they responsible for?
• Why do so many people in the organization not understand what Community Managers do?
Ok, these questions are still difficult to address. However, it’s difficult because organizations are not all the same. Each may have a different answer based on the objectives, values, and strategies of the company. Many different areas within a company can use or need to leverage the discipline, methodologies, and tools of a Community Manager. At the same time, folks who are “titled” as a Community Manager need many of the same skills as other business areas, such as People Management, Block & Tackle organizational design, influencing competencies (I am not talking about social influence here), results oriented, Process Management, Project Management, how to develop a business case, communication skills, ability to work in “white space”, etc…
It’s not about the social media tools and individual tactics of marketing or platforms. Community Management is an amazingly effective, efficient, and powerful discipline to get things done (or achieve a goal). Anyone can be a Community Manager.
For all of those who consider yourselves Community Managers, I applaud you. Not everyone gets what you do, sees the value of your efforts, and can empathize with your struggles. Much of our knowledge is still tacit, and it is difficult to articulate. Remember that we work (and live) in a social bubble that not everyone has entered yet or will, their understanding is still nascent. But try not exclude, try to include more. Help others understand the discipline of Community Management, and how they can contribute to broader objectives. Also, let them help you with your broader competency, discipline, and skill development. I think it will help everyone appreciate what you do a little bit more.
This was definitely a “soapbox” post, just needed to let a rant out.
High five image credit: http://www.wilterdink.com/Internet_High_Five.jpgUsual, Great, and Future Leading Companies
By michaelpace on January 14, 2013
How Most Companies Sell & Add Value:
How Great Companies Sell & Add Value:
How Future Leading Companies Help, Add Value & Sell:
Repeat
“Well, it’s all about Trust”
By michaelpace on January 8, 2013
Last week my friend passed away. He wasn’t only my friend; he was a peer, my manager, a career changer, a mentor, and overall great guy. Larry (Streeter) and I had met up the Friday before Christmas to catch up and talk customer service and leadership shop. As it often did, the conversation turned to retention strategies, support, loyalty, and advocacy programs.
x
Me: “Well, it’s all about trust.”
x
Larry: “But what does that really mean? You sound like someone who has guru at end of your title.”
x
(Good point)
x
Me: “What does trust mean to you? And you can’t say what it is not, or how you break it or earn it. That’s not a definition buddy.”
x
We continued on for about another hour, until we started going off on tangents that will remain our own business. But, looking back it is fitting that one of our last conversations was about Trust.
So what is Trust? How do you impact it? And is it important to almost every facet of your business?
x
My Definition: Trust is the confidence that a party/company/person/group is sincere, competent and reliable to meet the customer/person or affected group’s expectations.
x
Sincerity, Competency and Reliability – I like to think these drivers are analogous to a 3 legged stool. If one of the “legs” is broken, the stool is going to rock or come crashing down (just like your trust).
x
Sincerity: Asking your “customers” if they believe you care about them, are not deceitful, honest or have their interest at heart.
x
Competency: Do you or your company have the ability (or competency) to deliver as expected? I am sure we all run across someone or a company that has the best intentions and is always available but their end product or service is just lacking. Sometimes lacking in this driver is due to poor operational processes, training, general knowledge or expertise.
x
Reliability: Do you deliver on time, per spec, within budget of your customer’s expectations consistently? This key driver is probably the easiest for you or your “customer” to measure, because it is very tangible. Did the delivery company show up on time? Has a company given you the right product? Did it cost more than the sticker on the box? Internally, companies can ask if they met their SLA’s (service level agreements) and how often. They can look at their uptime/downtime of their website. They can monitor and track billing issues.
x
3 Critical Use Cases involving Trust
People & Talent Management
I can do a lot of amazing things, but I cannot do them all myself. Great leaders have people they can trust to get things done, and done well. But have you ever stopped yourself from delegating a task to someone? Why? Somewhere along the line, you do not trust that associate to complete the task as you believe it should be done. One or more of the key drivers of trust is not meeting your expectations. Do you believe the person/team wants to complete the assignment to a high degree of quality or do they care about the initiative? (Sincerity) Do the individuals have the competency or skills to get it done? Have they failed you in the past on a similar project? (Reliability)
x
Understanding where you feel an individual or team is falling short here, is critical to their development. If Reliability or Sincerity (or both) are not up to your standards, an open conversation about your fears is needed. If Competency is lacking, find ways to develop those skills within the project or outside of it for the future.
x
Building a Social Business
You cannot build a social business without Trust; simple. A social business requires that the organization trusts its associates to conduct its business over social networks with a high degree of autonomy and structure. Usually Sincerity is not the main issue here, except in those incidents of associates ripping the company in public. Usually, “the owners” of the social channels do not believe individuals, teams, or departments have the Competency (social and community management skills) and the Reliability (or consistency) to work in a highly competent manner.
x
The great news is that both Competency and Reliability can be corrected. Developing Competency is all about continuous learning and training. Create training programs that give them the ability to work socially. Build process and governance models that outlines boundaries. Once competent, provide lower risk opportunities to prove Reliability (then audit and measure for quality).
x
Customer Trust
Maybe the Ultimate Question is not “How likely are you to refer Company X to your friends, family and colleagues?”, maybe the new ultimate question in today’s world is “Do you trust us?” After all, you probably would not refer anyone to a company you do not trust. In this social landscape, trust may be the most valuable commodity your company can offer.
x
As mentioned before:
Sincerity: Asking your customers if they believe you care about them, are not deceitful, honest or have their interest at heart. You may ask them to review your site, materials, products, etc.. to learn if they believe you have their interests top of mind or even if you understand them. Audit yourself as well. Drug and Oil companies seem to consistently fall short on this driver.
Competency: Do you or your company have the ability (or competency) to deliver as expected? I am sure we all run across someone or a company that has the best intentions and is always available but their end product or service is just lacking. Sometimes lacking in this driver is due to poor operational processes, training, general knowledge or expertise. I see consultants and inexperienced people/companies falling down on this attribute most often.
Reliability: Do you deliver on time, per spec, within budget of your customer’s expectations consistently? This key driver is probably the easiest for you or your customer to measure, because it is very tangible. Did the delivery company show up on time? Has a company given you the right product? Did it cost more than the sticker on the box? Internally, companies can ask if they met their SLA’s (service level agreements) and how often. They can look at their uptime/downtime of their website. They can monitor and track billing issues. We trust FedEx here; rarely do we trust the USPS.
x
Yes, I understand there may not be a silver bullet metric for trust. The customer service world as a whole is the same, no one metric can provide the clearest indication if you are doing it well. However with Customer Service, we do have proxies, and we do understand what drives exceptional service. At a conference I recently attended, it was clear the wave of social media talk (within our social media bubble-very important distinction) is ending, and the discussion is moving to the question of “How do you operationalize and manage this space well?” We will need to stop saying things like “You need to build trust with your customers”, and move to “How are you defining and measuring the trust your customers have of you?”
x
More on measuring Trust
I’m sad that I won’t be able to have another conversation like this with my friend, but I trust that he is looking down now and is happy the conversation continues.
Are there any other factors you think that drives Trust?
How many times in a day/week/month are you not delegating, because you do not trust someone on your team?
Can “Do you Trust us?” be the next ultimate customer question?
It’s Time to Grade My 2012 Predictions – Customer Service Fortune Cookies for 2012
By michaelpace on December 19, 2012
Before I let my crazy cousin Pacefucious make any predictions for 2013, we need to hold him accountable for his previous Confucius-like prophecies.
Complete, wild guess predictions and thoughts by my cousin Pacefucious about the trends in Customer Service for 2012.
Note: The practice of adding “in bed” may or may not work with the following fortunes.
Pacefucious said: “Transactional social customer service is like making out with pretty cousin” - I hope my crazy cousin isn’t talking about me, but he does have a point about social customer service (somewhere in there). I believe he is saying, you get your customer’s immediate need resolved, but you are not forming a relationship. Once a company receives a comment or issue (positive or negative), they should realize the customer has opened up a channel that you share. Just handling their immediate transactional need is good, following up with that customer with content that is of value to them, starts to create a relationship, and is phenomenal customer service. More about this kind of proactive customer service see Is Your Social Customer Service Missing the “Social” Point?
Grade: B+
Rationale: Pacefucious is still ahead of his time on this prediction. 2012 did not prove to be the year that Customer Service and Support teams grabbed the social customer service brass ring. Per @marketingprof’s recent article “Top Brands Using Twitter for Customer Support”, only 23% of big brands have a dedicated Customer Service group. Don’t even get me started on how poor the response times and service levels appeared. You must be able to crawl before you walk, and Customer Support is still getting the basics of social media support down. Hopefully, this prediction will improve its accuracy in 2013.
Pacefucious said: “Social CRM platform is silver bullet made of ice” - In 2012, SCRM (definitions) will continue to be a hot topic, but currently it is overpriced (for this economy), overpromising and being mostly sold by people who still believe in traditional sales models and have no understanding of social business. Don’t get me or my cousin wrong, SCRM can and will be a very important tool for businesses, but I don’t think most businesses (or people running those businesses) will be ready for full blown SCRM tools. SCRM will not help you understand social business language, develop your strategy for using social media tools or establish governance. I would love to see more distributors or sales people of SCRM platforms get a firm understanding of social business and practices in 2012 before trying to sell their “silver bullets”.
Grade: B-
Rationale: Pacefucious was correct on the economy, but was slightly harsh on the (S)CRM industry. Consolidation and platform integration has helped the large CRM companies broaden their product suite, but also brought in more people who understand social business and the needs of their customers. While Pacefucious’ prediction wasn’t his best, the industry is moving in the right direction.
Pacefucious said: “Benchmark data and metrics make your service taste like cheap Chinese food” - – I always get a little worried when people ask me if I have any benchmark data on customer service or contact center metrics. I will try to provide what I think a particular industry considers benchmark data (example: X% of calls answered in X seconds), but that is really just averages. If you are interested in average customer service, which pretty much sucks, benchmark data and metrics is perfect for you. If you are interested in providing outstanding service, go understand what your customer finds important or critical to quality, and deliver that and more.
Grade: You tell me
Rationale: How has any benchmark data helped you deliver awe-inspiring service? It usually gives you a number or metric that makes sense to do better. Be a differentiator, not a trend follower.
Pacefucious said: “Your customers will be your most valuable customer service agents” - I still find it puzzling that so many customer service organizations do not utilize communities to help solve their customers questions or problems. Some customer service organizations do not even have relationships with the people in their organization who manage their communities. I am not sure I have ever even been to a customer service conference where community management was a topic. Your customers, especially your advocates and superusers, have (collectively) considerably more knowledge than your support agents; why not let them help your customers too? I am not advocating for the end of phone or chat service (maybe email – see below), but having a shared community and knowledge base that can be added to and used by your customers is both incredibly efficient and can provide awesome service.
Grade: A-
Rationale: A collective “AAAAHHHHH” is being shouted by community managers around the world. In 2012, the value of the community manager, their platforms, and the discipline of community management was beginning to be realized. Communities deliver more content for SEO, helps retain customers, educate prospects and new customers to gain the fullest out of your product, and provides your organization immense scale. The awareness, desire, and knowledge of communities still has tremendous opportunity within the Customer Support world, but innovative leaders are catching on fast.
Pacefucious said: “Email customer service sucks, your lucky numbers are 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42” – Again, don’t get my cousin wrong, email doesn’t suck, but customer service through email is RARELY good, and almost always includes extra work for your customers. Let’s take a typical email situation: question to company (waits), reply and clarification from company, customer clarifies (waits), company provides standard message to solve problem, customer needs more specific information, blah, blah, blah, blah etc… Now email can be valuable to a company as an off-business hour service, and possibly outsourced, but why even provide the subpar experience?
Grade: Not Rated
Rationale: Well, it really wasn’t a prediction, more of a customer service fact. Pacefu also did not guess the $500M Megaball numbers very well.
Pacefucious said: “Be social and transparent organization or soon no organization” – The companies that will succeed in 2012 and beyond will leverage social business principles internally and externally. It has already been proven during our recent recession; those companies that embraced social marketing and the use of social tools internally have performed significantly better. Those companies now also have an almost insurmountable time advantage over those companies who have not embraced the social organization. As I wrote earlier this year, I believe the social organization will be the most important advancement for business in the next 5 years – The Next Innovation in Social will come from … HR
Grade: A
Rationale: “…become a Social Business or die”, I don’t know if that was a mantra from 2012, but I did read it somewhere. While I agree, social business will be the next big business innovation, you probably won’t die. Traditional work organizational models have siloed departments, working on their individual goals to hopefully achieve a greater sum for the sake of acquiring and retaining customers. This model, generally, approaches internal and external customers as someone to talk at or to be spoken to. People, whether internal to your organization or external, are tired of being spoken to. Social Business is inclusive, collaborative and open. I believe people and relationships are every company’s most important and underutilized asset. We now have the technological ability to act/work/socialize/create relationships like we do in “real life”. By leveraging the relationships, new technology, and process, we can unleash the ultimate power – PEOPLE.
Big Prediction misses:
• Power of Visual Media (Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ changes, Facebook changes, etc…)
• Location Based Services pivot (less gamification, more exploration)
• Community funding – Kickstarter
• Mobile payments
• Mayan calendar
So, what does your fortune cookie say? (Don’t forget to add “in bed” afterwards)
Any other big prediction misses?
Pacefucious is only available via smoke signal or albatross mail, you can contact me with thoughts.
Image via Clutchcook- My 3 All Time Favorite Communities (& Why)
- Swinging a Hammer Does Not Make You a Carpenter; It Just Makes You Dangerous Or Smart Use of Social Media for your Contact Center
- Live Google+ Debate: Will Technology Kill the Call Center?
- The Power of the Social Business – presentation
- The Power of the Social Business – Why this is where your business needs to be
- Visual Service can be Proactive Customer Service
- 1 Social Business Post – 3 Feet – 3 Boobs
- How to Develop Rockstars in Your Organization
- Social’s First Real Customer Service Centric Platform? Product Review: Social Dynamx
- Customer Service Needs a Romper Room Magic Mirror or Transparency is Innovation
Connect with Michael