Social Experience Design « The Mountaintop

February 22, 2010

February 20, 2010

Paying it Forward – Human Behavior Online – Part 3 of 3

Filed under: Customer Experience,Human Behavior,Social Experience Design,Social Media — Jeff @ 2:47 pm

As a business, it is hard for us to selflessly think about others. Over the past ten years I have watched in fascination what to me looks like the slowest train wreck in history; at times i have watched from a safe distance, other times I have been a passenger, and sometimes the conductor. What I am talking about is that we as business seem to have lost touch with what it is to be human. What we see now, are numbers.

If we look at the incredible advances in data driven marketing and how it has helped us understand customer patterns and behavior has it also helped to dehumanize our approach to customers? We tend not to look at people, we look at “people” or we call them click, followers, fans, traffic, impressions, etc…

Has this been our biggest failing as marketers?

Oh to be Human Again

And then suddenly, in rides Social Media. A consumer nirvana; one place to reach hundreds of millions of customers. It is so close to us and yet remains out of reach for some many businesses. Why?

Maybe it’s that 800lb gorilla on our backs that’s saying, “How can we make money from this; what’s the ROI?” and because greed tends to create abhorrent behavior in the best of us we look at these consumers as dollar signs instead of people.

Perhaps as businesses we just don’t know how to act properly in an online social situation, like the drunk, obnoxious frat boy staggering around spilling his beer on everyone at the party. To him, he was the life of the party. To the rest of the party goers he was a jackass. His behavior screams look at me, but everyone that looks is turned off. Not that I would know of course…

I can’t help feeling that many times this is the way consumers perceive business which may explain why many business forays into Social Media become lightning rods for hostility and negativity. Of course, this is amplified many times by our deep seeded drive to control everything we touch.

Paying it Forward Works

I am not the first one to say this and certainly won’t be the last. The web is full of conventional wisdom on how to approach people, so maybe I can offer a different perspective to help advance the understanding of online human behavior in juxtaposition to Social Media and online relationships in general.

First, paying it forward is a simple, but powerful concept for a selfless act to benefit another human being or group of human beings. The belief is that paying forward will eventually reach back to us in some positive form. The key to paying it forward is to be selfless; in other words sincerely not expect anything back. Tough call for any business to make, let alone a single person.

Second, what does “Paying it forward” do? Well, let’s start with a little list:

It creates a good feeling in the recipient and if you believe like i do that emotions are contagious, this is a good thing. (I point back to Connected by Nicholas Christakis for an even more defensible argument on emotional contagion). A single person can help dozens of people feel good, but a company can help thousands.
It builds a subtle kind of obligation. Obligation, even subtle obligation, is a powerful emotion; its the glue that binds a marriage together through all adversity. When you do something nice for someone, there is a natural tendency or feeling in the recipient to return that favor. Now, this doesn’t apply to everyone because a lot of people will just keep taking without giving, but it is worth it.
It creates a positive, memorable experience. Try it our for yourself – Remember back to some interactions with others that were truly memorable – you will find some incredible acts of selfless service behind those memories.
It can potentially create brand evangelists. Brand champions or evangelists spread the word for us. This is the ultimate payback of paying it forward. Does it happen every time? No. But, the more powerful the act you pay forward, the greater the chance you will create evangelists.

How do you Pay it Forward as a Business?

Well, Social Media has given us that chance. Channels like Twitter and FaceBook allow us to engage with customers at a human level and interact in a way we never could before. These channels also allow for new ways to service customers or anyone for that matter. To me, I believe the best way of Paying it Forward for companies is finding ways to improve 3 things:

Your business’ ability to listen. Everything begins with listening. It is the basis for appreciation and focused response. Clear understanding of customer need, issues or just being there for them is a price of entry for Social Media Experience Design.
Your business’ ability to react. All talk and no action will kill you in Social Media environments; public or private. people need value and reasonable response. Use Social Media to enable your customers to use your products/services easier, faster and better in little ways.
Your business’ ability to appreciate. Appreciation and recognition of customer loyalty is critical. When was the last time a company said “thank you, I really appreciate what you have done for us”. Appreciation creates positive stimulus in anyone who receives it. A relationship is hollow without appreciation and is the basis of long term loyalty.

Avoiding Trying to do Too Much

Many times, I have seen instances were companies had it right, but tried to do too much. Its a habit that needs to be controlled. Often, all customers or consumers want are little things. By planning to do little things, we also limit risk of failure and minimize potential damage to our brand.

In the end, Napoleon Hill said it best, “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”

I enjoy comments and invite debate. Please feel free to do either.

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February 11, 2010

We are all Connected – The Great Ecosystem

Filed under: Customer Experience,Human Behavior,Social Experience Design,Social Media — Jeff @ 3:27 pm

I have just started reading a book that has me tremendously excited. The book is Connected and is a visionary achievement in explaining how we are all connected emotionally to each other and the complex cause-affect relationships between people in social networks. In essence the book explains how emotions are contagious and that emotions of people we don’t even know are affecting us; a friend of a friend for example.

So far, it is a fascinating exploration of the human experience from such a fresh perspective.

Super Organisms or Ecosystems

One interesting analogy they use is that social networks are much like super organisms with each individual affecting the whole while being affected by all of the other “parts” or individuals. I think that the analogy of an ecosystem works better for my work on Social Media networks rather than the thought of one organism, albeit super. When you shift perspectives to look at Social Media environments to that of, say Charles Darwin, you begin to see the intricate patterns of an ecosystem and all of the species struggling to exist; a species could be anything from a person, group of people, a corporation or even an idea. All of these species are vying for dominance and trying to increase their numbers (read followers, fans or members). In the end, i think it’s a case of “po-tay-to” versus “po-tah-to”.

How Does this Impact the Social or Customer Experience?

Think about it. If one person has a positive experience or negative experience with your brand or even an indifferent experience, it can affect a broad spectrum of people you don’t even know about. The emotions you create in the customer are contagious and will directly and indirectly affect your brand and the perception of your brand in the social networks they inhabit. The danger is the subtlety of this kind of contagion; it works on the subconscious level for the most part. A silent agent of change if you will.

Where to next?

Is this a stepping stone or high level validation for group consciousness? Perhaps not but it makes you wonder if there is much more to be unearthed about how we are connected in ways that cannot be seen or heard. It certainly gives credibility to the notion of an unconscious group empathy buried just under our conscious perceptions but affecting us in real ways. I know what you’re feeling, i feel it to – it has suddenly become even more important to focus on being a positive emotional force with your customers. Telcos beware!

Net Promoter Scores are Passe; Try Net Feeling Scores on for Size!

The big measure of customer experience could switch from ‘Would you tell your friends about us” to “How can we make you feel fantastic” knowing that positive emotional virus will spread to everyone they are connected to in their social networks, both physical and digital. I never really liked net promoter scoring anyways, always too obvious. I mean how can you quantify emotions?? I always felt the answers for net promoter, much like boxing matches, were fixed from the beginning.

On the Book and the Authors

If you are in the communications or marketing business, this book is definitely worth the time. Even if you retain just a bit, the way you perceive customer experience or Social Media could shift dramatically. And it should.

The author, Dr. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD is a highly accomplished Harvard Sociology Professor and Doctor who was recently named to the Times 100 most influential people. Co-author is James Fowler PhD noted Social scientist also at Harvard. You can follow them on Twitter here.

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February 9, 2010

People Behaving Badly- Online Human Behavior 101 Series – Part 1 of 3

Filed under: Customer Loyalty,Human Behavior,Social Experience Design,Social Media — Jeff @ 11:28 pm

I figured I would start out looking into the basics of human behavior online as it forms the basis of understanding for all of the other areas (social experience, customer experience, and demand gen).

The big question is: Do people act differently online than they do in real life?

The answer is yes. Sometimes dramatically different. But why?

The 3 A’s

Since the net began it has offered all people the same thing without prejudice. That thing is Access. Access to content, access to applications (of all varieties) and access to people (like minded or otherwise). Access has broken all of the boundaries people, society and governments have understood for hundreds of years. With it came all sorts of behavior new behavior and not many rules to manage conduct or behavior.

The second A is Acceptance. People could easily find like-minded individuals and whole groups who shared their interests no mater how normal, bizarre, and immoral those interests are. Social sites like FaceBook and Twitter by natural design encourage and support this characteristic. If you love nude marathons, there is a group for that. If you are a cross-eyed knitter, there is probably a group for that too. Acceptance is the glue in social networks and real life relationships alike.

The last, and probably most contentious characteristic is Anonymity. Anonymity allows anyone to do or say something without accountability. And when we remove accountability, we get radical changes in behavior. Suddenly without the typical boundaries we have in the real world where accountability is all around us and governing our behavior, we have the capability to be completely anonymous. And with anonymity, we are also stripped of many emotions that keep us from behaving badly; fear and shame to name just a few of the more powerful ones.

So where is the point at which people can potentially take a turn for the worse? It’s all about situation and the people involved in that situation at that specific time.

The Power of the Mob

I recently read a story of a speaker who took the stage at Web 2.0 Expo 2009. You can read the full story here, but it is shining example of how easily a mob forms out of what one can only assume to be decent people any other time. The problem came from a Twitter back channel and a rough start to a speaking engagement. This was no novice speaker either as she is a woman of wonderful talent and excellent insight; a great speaker by all accounts. But here we have a situation where a speaker stumbles and shows weakness. With the Twitter back channel going on behind her, the crowd begins to comment on her performance and it quickly spirals out of control right down to sexual remarks. Remember, this is a business conference filled with professionals…

But what would have happened had all of these people in the crowd used their real names and company information as part of their Twitter IDs for this conference? It certainly would have changed the situation because it would have potentially allowed for accountability for socially unacceptable behavior. Maybe this is where we have to go in the future? But that kind of control is very uncomfortable for anyone.

The Plight of the Corporation

Now enter the corporation, a powerful entity in the real world and masters of their domains. But online, they do not get the benefit of anonymity and are accountable for everything they do or say. This is the conundrum all companies face. How can we deal with people online who can easily hide behind a veil of anonymity while we have to expose ourselves completely.
In Social Media channels in particular where the conversation is happening about your company in hundreds of different conversations, most of them without you knowing, you are constantly exposing your brand to risk. So how do we deal with this imbalance? We can’t force people to be accountable.

Think Strategically

A solid strategy that encompasses rules of engagement for employees goes a long way. Don’t just send them in willy-nilly. Arm them with a plan and the tools to make it work. This includes an understanding of the environment you are getting into, how to resolve almost any problem (or escalate it quickly to someone who can), how to keep people engaged, and most importantly how to listen and appreciate what someone is saying. Listening to and appreciating people will help to keep behavior civil almost every time.

Know Your Audience

A little knowledge goes a long way. Research should always be the basis for any communications program, including Social Media. Next to this, understand why they are in this Social community and why/how they would interact with your brand. Again many times bad behavior is because of negative situations and negative situations arise when we lose sight of customer need in some way.

Find out who they respect or trust and why.
Find out who the leaders are and what their values are.
Understand that people are in Social Media environments to build relationships with like-minded people. If you are not there to build relationships, then why are you there?

Be Careful What You Ask For

If you go into Social Media channels asking for feedback expect you will get it. In fact, expect you will get it regardless of whether you ask for it or not. The last thing you want to try and do is control what people are saying by suppression of opinion (deleting posts, banning members, etc.). Just take Honda’s recent experience with the introduction of the CrossTour as an example of what happens when you ask for feedback and then start deleting all the negative comments. You can still see some of the comments here, but they deleted most of them, much to the joy of the blogoshpere who took that naughty behavior and told the world.

If you want to create a bad situation, start suppressing people’s opinions. It works every time.

Manage the Situations

The most important thing we can do is always been on the lookout for potentially harmful situations. What do these look like? Well, here’s where you need a practiced eye/ear to be involved in your Social Media program. Someone capable of spotting trouble before it happens and being able to defuse almost any situation by either dealing with it effectively or taking it offline and dealing with it effectively. The key is to do it swiftly and fairly; not heavy handed. If you deal with people harshly or unfairly you stand a very high chance of fanning the flames even higher.

Behavior can be Influenced

In the end, we can influence behavior once we understand what drives it. This is a learned experience and one that each company is going to go through as they explore Social Media channels. As each situation arises, always remember that the proper approach will win you relationships, many times create champions and the respect of many, many people. If you can always do the right thing for your customer, you stand a good chance of avoiding the mob and building a great and vibrant community around your brand.

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February 8, 2010

Setting Expectations – The inaugural first post

Filed under: Customer Experience,Demand Generation,Editorial Schedule,Overview,Social Experience Design,Social Media — Jeff @ 9:25 am

I must admit I dithered just a bit about what to put in my first post. After some thought and discussion with some colleagues, I settled on something simple – set some expectations by creating common understanding. If you are going to invest your time coming here, I want you to have some type of expectation for what you will receive.

What is the Mountain Top?

Think perspective. Depending on where you were in relation to the mountain, it looks and feels dramatically different. If you are at the top, you feel triumphant and exhilarated. If you are clinging to the side you feel determined and cautious. If you are looking at from the base you feel overwhelmed and in awe. Now change from a person to a bird or animal and the perspective changes yet again as do the feelings.
Perspective is the combination of three things:

Situation (what has brought me here)
Vantage point (who and where am i)
Experience (how have my experiences and the experiences of others affected my beliefs)

Take a simple garbage dumpster. A wealthy person looks at is as a disgusting place meant for trash. A homeless person looks at it as shelter from the elements and a source of food. That is the power of being able to understand and change perspective.

What The Mountain Top will deliver is a unique perspective on some very specific areas of online marketing and communications:

Social Media: A term I personally dislike and feel it misrepresents what we are looking for which is to “be social” with our customers. I much prefer Social Experience Design.
Demand Generation: The art of creating demand in customer’s minds for your products, services, and solutions.
Customer Experience Design: The foundation stones of any marketing and communication program. We will explore the soft, dark underbelly of emotional experience design and the human behavior that drives it.

What is Social (Media) Experience Design?

Lets establish a common understanding of the terminology.

Social Media: It is a distribution channel for User Generated Content (UGC). That’s it. Most marketers only focus on Twitter, FaceBook and You Tube, but it includes all sorts of various specialty channels, the blogoshpere, and customer communities. Social Media is not new; it has been around since the web began and has always been social. Marketers just took notice because of the sheer number of consumers on the top channels. These top channels are consumer wastelands and at best indifferent to most companies and at worst hostile.
Social Media Experts: It is truly frightening to witness what passes for an expert these days. 2000 followers on Twitter does not a Social Media Expert make. We will look at what core skills an “expert” needs and how to spot a gong show before it happens. If the advice has been to use Social Media channels as just another PR outlet, then you should hear the banging of gongs in the background.
Social Experience Design: Is the art of creating a positive experience in social channels and the art of creating favorable social environments. It combines a deep understanding of the environment and the customers. It is also about understanding your role as a company in social media environments – that role is the enabler. We will dig deep into human behavior, identify best practices, and examine all sorts of current examples.
Favorable Social Environments: Think of these as customer communities, but also places where your brand can flourish rather than struggle to survive. How do you identify external communities and how do you design private ones.
Social Experience Strategy: A Social Media strategy is impotent without understanding audience need and the experience you need to create in order to meet that need. How are you going to anchor your appraoch to what the customer holds dear? Who do they trust already? How can our current customers become brand champions for us? Is there such a thing as targeted social (media) experience?
Strategic Rationale: I seriously question why many companies even get involved in Social Media. Many times, the compelling reason has been “everyone is doing it, so I don’t want to be left behind”. We are going to look at who is best positioned to be “social” and which companies should save their time, money and brands. What you should really be asking is how can I develop better relationships with my customers?

The end result of Social Experience Design is an evolved, very different and very personal relationship with potential and current customers. It is full of risk because it exposes us to the unknown in an environment we cannot control. Those who master this environment stand to gain significant advantage over their competitors. Those who go in without a sound, well researched strategy introduce high risk to their brands.

What is Customer Experience Design?

While the field is fairly mature, I tend to take a different approach to CE than most. It is based on several fundamental approaches to people, even in a B-to-B model.

Emotional Experience: As companies, we have analyzed the bejesus out of our customers spending habits, demographics, psychographics, etc… We understand the rational mind of the customer. The problem is that the customer, often times, is not rational at all (at least to us). We will focus on the dark half of customer experience design, that being the emotional experience. The emotional experience is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. It is the one place, that if we understand, we can make tremendous progress to acquiring and keeping customers. It is the feeling we all have that answers the question “do i feel good doing business with this person?”
Human Behavior: Behind our emotional experience is the behavior that drives us. Why do we do the things we do? How can different situations or experiences influence action? Can we create those specific situations or experiences by better understanding primal drivers and embedded human perceptions? We will explore all sorts of edgy ideas on human behavior and the art of influence.
Customer Centric: This is based on 3 areas of commitment.

Customer Enablement: Focus on clearing obstacles from the customer relationship, enabling ease of access to knowledge, understanding and service. Share power with the customer.
Customer Advocacy: Deep understanding of the customer and the customer’s customers. Investing in the relationship. Being there through thick and thin. Putting their needs ahead of our own by paying it forward.
Customer Relevancy: Ensuring everything is relevant to the customer and their needs; that value is delivered at every step.

Balance: Everything is about balance. Everything. We will look at how to identify what a balanced customer experience is and how we can achieve it. This includes looking at Employee Experience Design (how can we deliver a positive customer experience with disenfranchised employees?)

The Mountain Top will explore new perspectives and challenge norms around customer experience design. We will look at current examples and identify emerging best practices to dramatically improve the customer (emotional) experience.

What is Demand Generation?

In my experience, this is a practice area that many confuse with lead generation; the two are very different. A lead is something any chuckle-head can get because usually the definition is so broad. “They downloaded a whitepaper, therefore they are a lead!” or “we had 100 people register for this event!”. These are not leads, but they are often precursors to leads or prospects depending where that individual is in their decision-making process.

I have always defined a lead as: An expression of interest to do business with you from someone who is not currently a customer.

What does it mean to have demand?

This is where we start. Demand is simply that; when a person thinks of a business problem or a consumer thinks of fulfilling some kind of need, they seek the solution that is top of mind and has the most positive experiences attached to it. It is about positioning within the minds of specific targeted customer groups. It is about creating groundswell.

How do we generate demand?

Demand generation is a very strategic process. It all starts with knowing your customers (emotional/psychological needs, preferences, and decision making processes being the most important). Contrary to many people’s opinions, I believe this is always an integrated approach combining marketing tactics (both direct and indirect) that have been identified through research as being high potential.

There are a couple factors to my approach that stand out as different and perhaps can help you identify ways to improve your demand generation programs.

Behavioral Profiling. We use this as the basis of everything we do. It gives deep understanding of customer language, behavior and emotional patterns above and beyond what standard segmentation research can provide. It takes a little digging to find a company that can do this, but they are out there.
Customer Experience Design. You are designing a customer experience, not a demand generation campaign. If you change your thinking to this way, the results can be dramatically different.
Think baby steps not giant leaps. I have always carefully managed expectations around Demand Generation to focus on the incremental steps to building a relationship with a net new prospect rather than getting a sale. A sale is the result of the process of building rapport, comfort, and trust with a person and is the essence of long term, profitable customer relationships. If we focus on a sale, we are often disappointed. A sale is timing. Demand is being top of mind when the timing is right.
Continual engagement. I have seen so many demand generation programs planned without any consideration to ongoing engagement once the “official” campaign has ended. This goes back to timing and that often the timing just isn’t right for the majority of people we connect with, but they still express high interest in our brand. Continual engagement is how we effectively and efficiently continue to foster a positive relationship that will eventually lead to sales. This is a process best addresses by web and social media.
Don’t neglect the website. Most demand generation focuses on getting people to the website, 800 number or retail location. But that is only half the battle, in fact many people who are potential customers already know about you. In my experience embedding a custom new customer engagement process in the corporate website is fundamental to fulfillment. To use a simple metaphor, it is the difference between telling a person to climb a mountain and giving them a sherpa to help them along the way.

These are the kinds of topics I am going to cover off as well as looking at practical applications of these elements in demand generation, case studies, and insights into best practices you can easily integrate into your demand generation programs. These are principles that equally apply to B-to-B and B-to-C models.

Strategic Crossovers

Lastly, we are going to look often at how each of these areas supports and crosses over into the other. For example, I firmly believe that customer experience design is the basis for every success in marketing including social media and demand generation. I also believe you can integrate Social Media into Demand Generation programs very effectively to close the loop between the two and justify entry into Social Media.

It’s all about you.

This blog is about paying it forward and sharing all of the knowledge and experiences I have gained. I won’t be able to cover everything myself and often, I will bring experts in specific fields into The Mountain Top to delve deeper into these subjects.

Many times you will have questions or issues that I haven’t covered, I want you to feel comfortable asking questions via comments or this question form. I will respond on the blog within several days to answer your questions as best I can.

I am not promising enlightenment, but hopefully we can travel that path together and uncover the answers for the betterment of all.

Cheers!

Jeff – Sensei

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