I had one of my most memorable dining experiences ever last week. Sure, the food was superb and the service was excellent – after all, I live in Portland OR, one of the best foodie cities in the nation! Nope, our experience was memorable because the restaurant made us feel special.

I made dinner reservations at Metrovino to celebrate my partner’s birthday. After booking my reservation, I tweeted how excited I was to celebrate her birthday at Metrovino. I was really chuffed when Chef Greg Denton responded to my tweet. We hadn’t yet stepped into his restaurant, but his personal touch had already made me feel special.

Our dinner was superb – the food was excellent and the service was attentive and unobtrusive. But what really made it memorable was all of the personal touches that came along with our meal.

• The maitre d arriving with a complimentary glass of wine and birthday greetings

• Chef Denton visiting with us at our table. He spent several minutes chatting about our entrees, local food events and how he came up with some of the flavor pairings in his dishes.

• Chef Denton recommending and then preparing a cheese plate he thought we would enjoy

• Being presented with a delicious espresso cake complete with a birthday candle and “happy birthday” spelled out in chocolate on the plate

So thanks to Chef Denton and to  the gracious staff at Metrovino for making our birthday celebration a memorable event. And you can bet that we are letting all of our friends know that Metrovino is one of the best restaurants in Portland!

Walgreens’ mobile app is a great example of how technology can improve the customer experience. Available for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry, this handy app epitomizes convenience.

Need to refill your prescription? Simply use your phone’s camera to scan the bar code and send in your order. Want to know when your prescription is ready for pick-up? No problem-o, just sign up for text alerts. Have to order photo prints? Piece of cake!

Simple, easy-to-use, convenient – a winning combination!

The metrics you gather will provide important insight for your organization. Although there are differences between Social Marketing and Social Customer Service, there is overlap.  I have worked closely with our Marketing team to determine what to measure and what our “success metrics” should look like. 

Here is what we currently measure:

Total # of Mentions – We use a line graph so we can monitor the trend over time. Our expectation is that the line will trend up now that we are more engaged. The line also trends up when an unusual incident occurs (e.g.: a system problem) and it gives us a new way to convey the customer impact.

Mentions categorized by type -We categorize these into 3 specific types: Inquiries, Complaints, and Positive Mentions. We also have sub-categories for New Sale or Cancel-Save that allows us to track potential revenue impact. Although revenue is not one of our success metrics, we do track these and if we can save a frustrated customer from canceling it is definitely a win!

Mentions by Product – We use a pie graph with a percentage breakdown by product. This gives us insight into which products spark the most conversation.

Mentions by Social Media Platform – We use a pie graph with a percentage breakdown by Social Media platform. This gives us insight into where our customers are having conversations. Twitter is (by far) the most popular platform for our customers.

Complaints versus Positive Mentions – We use a line graph with a separate line for each. Our goal is a minimum 1:1 ratio.  Before we started responding, the number of complaints far exceeded the number of positive mentions (which was expected because we were not involved in the conversation). Now we are seeing this ratio turn more in our favor because our customers are thrilled that we are listening and responding to them.

Mentions versus “Resolved by Us” – We use a line graph with a separate line for each. This metric is used to measure our productivity and effectiveness. Because we don’t respond to every mention (e.g.: community may have resolved it and we don’t respond to Trolls or Ragers), we are not expecting a 1:1 ratio. But we do expect to see that we are responding and resolving to an increasing number of mentions.

Success Stories - In addition to cold, hard data, we also include “success stories”.  Screen shots of positive Twitter mentions help convey and humanize the positive customer impact of Social Customer Service.

It’s important to remember that as you gather more data and gain more experience, your metrics will evolve too. Our metrics have changed and I expect that to continue.

Are there other measures you think should be included? Let me know – thanks!

It’s a tough question to answer because Social Media ROI is not always easily broken out in dollars & cents. What’s the cost of a complaint that goes unanswered? What’s the revenue impact of a positive mention?

I spent a good chunk of time investigating this question from a customer service perspective. In the end, I think the best answer comes from Frank Eliason, the man who started Comcast’s Social Media customer service program, Comcastcares.

See if you agree with how Frank answers the ROI question – I do!

You have two choices: either join the conversation or ignore it. I am convinced that it’s better to participate than hang out on the sidelines. This point is driven home by a customer service presentation given by Christine Timmins Barry, Senior Vice President, Global Operations, Convergys.

Over the last couple of months, I have led a project to incorporate Social Media into our Customer Service efforts. Like many start-up efforts, we have a minimal budget available at the onset. Therefore, we have focused on building a low-cost Social Media toolkit that allows us to “get into the game”. After listening for a couple of months, we found that the vast majority of our “hits” happen on Twitter, blogs and our company’s Facebook page which seems to be typical for many companies.  

While we are still in the pilot phase of this project, we have made significant headway in refining our toolkit. Most of these tools are free and effective – just what you need to get started on your Social Media listening efforts!

Our toolkit includes:

• RSS feeds of Twitter Search results – We have found RSS feeds to be very reliable in finding all mentions of specific keywords or keyword phrases. We have set up RSS feeds for each of several keyword and keyword phrases. (Free)
• Yahoo! Pipes -  We have found Pipes to be fairly reliable but they sometimes yield incomplete results. This is especially true when we try to use more than one keyword across multiple Social Media platforms. For this reason, we keep our Pipes simple and make a separate Pipe for each keyword or keyword phrase. (Free)
• Tweetdeck -  Great tool for getting real-time results on specific keyword searches. We use Tweetdeck primarily to alert us for customer-service related tweets coming to our official Marketing twitter account. (Free)
• Google Blog Search - Invaluable tool for searching blogs. When people are really mad, it seems their Social Media platform of choice is Twitter and/or blogs. For the major customer service issue, blogs will light up! Google Blog Search will find it for you. (Free)
• Addictomatic – Useful Social Media dashboard listening tool that  searches across multiple Social Media platforms including ones that do not normally come to mind. e.g.: Twingly Blog Search. (Free)
• socialmention – While not one of our primary tools, we do check this regularly. There have been a few times when socialmention’s website was not accessible which is the major reason why we do not rely on it as a primary tool. (Free)
• Yammer – You found a mention, now you need to track who is handling it and how you ultimately responded to it. We use Yammer as a “poor man’s CRM” tool. Tracking mentions and responses  is easy using their FaceBook style interface. (Free for basic functions, low-cost option on a per-user basis for reporting and advance Admin features)

So there you have it! Don’t let cost get in your way – start listening now!

Are you using these tools? Have you found other effective tools for low-cost monitoring? I’d love to hear what you think!

THEY are………… the Plate Snatchers!   Bwahaha!

THEY will swoop in and snatch your plate away.

THEY don’t care if they invade your personal space.

THEY don’t care if others are still eating, your plate is theirs.

THEY only care that any empty (or almost empty) plates have vanished.

THEY must not ruin our dining adventures. Hold tight to your plate with both hands.

Defend your Plate!

(So now you know what my pet peeve is when dining out. What’s yours?)

As we picked up the closing check at our bank (also happens to hold our current mortgage), the teller asked “Why didn’t you use us?” This guy asked the wrong question! What he should have asked is “What could we have done to win your business?”

Doing business with your customers is NOT the same as having a relationship with them. If you want to win my business, then cultivate a relationship with me. No relationship = zero loyalty.

How do you cultivate customer loyalty? What makes you a loyal customer? Leave a comment and share your tips on cultivating customer loyalty.

I believe in the power of Social Media to improve customer service. I’ve used it to resolve my own customer service problems so I know it works! Gone are the days when Customer Service dictates how and when a customer contacts them for help.  Now, we must go to where our customers are and make things right when our products or services fall short of their expectations.

In my mind, it is a no-brainer. But there are skeptics that need convincing so I am building a business case to persuade them that the investment is necessary. During my research, I came across this video from Socialnomics that states my case perfectly (and the music is cool too).

What really sticks with me is the notion “Word of Mouth -> World of Mouth”. Take the time to watch it and let me know what you think.

Earlier this week, I spent some time researching Best Buy’s Twelpforce.

I liked what I saw because:

• Their Social Media motto is realistic and concise: “Be smart. Be respectful. Be human.”
• Their Social Media Policy is concise, clear, and hits all the right points.
• Their Social Media Participation Guidelines are inclusive and open.
• It is not a silo within one department
• They have a mentorship program to help new Twelpforce members be successful
• Twelpforce members seem to be very responsive, transparent, sincere and human

The other night, I tweeted that I loved the simplicity of Best Buy’s Social Media motto. Less than 10 minutes later, @Coral_BestBuy responded with a friendly tweet that included the link to their publicly available Social Media policy.

We exchanged a few more tweets and Coral was very gracious in answering my questions on what it was like to be a Twelpforce member and which tools they use. I was not a customer looking for assistance or information, yet they responded quickly and interacted with me in a very human and friendly way. It felt good that they not only noticed my little tweet; but they actually responded!

This interaction shows how powerful and positive Twitter can be in an organization’s efforts to strengthen bonds with their customers. I knew they were listening, Coral was sincerely helpful and she made a very positive impression with me. I felt good afterwards – and that is a very good thing!

As I continue to work within my own organization on growing our Social Media outreach efforts, I will definitely use Twelpforce as an example of how to do it the right way. As the saying goes, “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery”.

• I am a huge fan of OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting).
• I am one of the 120,000 contributors who believe that the service and programming OPB provides is necessary and valuable.
• I am a proud OPB member.
• I am a little bit miffed at OPB’s Membership Team.

Earlier this week, two emails from OPB hit my inbox. The first email was an invitation for a behind-the-scenes tour of the OPB station. I knew that I had received this invitation in error, because it started out with “Dear 20 Year Club Member” and I have not been a member that long.

It was easy to forgive the error. Anyone who has done email blasts knows that if you aren’t careful, then a batch of emails can get sent to the wrong group. I knew the tour invitation was not intended for me and I was ok with that.

However, the second email (from John Bell, OPB Membership Team) rubbed me the wrong way. The intention was to correct the error and rescind the invitation. But the execution fell flat. Here’s John’s email:

Maybe John Bell was trying to be witty but he flubbed it. First, I don’t think it was necessary to call Julie out for sending the email to the wrong member list.

But more importantly, John’s email ends by thanking me for my understanding. But he doesn’t thank me for being an OPB member.

Hey John – where’s the love? I may not be a 20 Year Member, but I am an OPB member.

So please join Julie at the blackboard and write “I will not forget to thank my members” 62,475 times. Thank You.