My mom Marie, a lovely woman in her 70s, has just replaced her old computer (used mostly for soduko, crosswords and email) with a new Windows-based machine with a faster processor and better graphics. We’ve upgraded her wireless network and now she is bravely and intrepidly posting updates on her facebook wall, venturing to sites like Ted.com and themoth.org and generally exploring this new phenomenon of the Internet.
She’s a retiree and when something goes wrong, she has an abundance of patience for human, phone-based interactions and has only recently begun to think about performing some of the traditional human-based tasks online. While she has made great ‘progress’ moving on line, she still ventures inside the bank to perform daily transactions, phones in for support for her PC and takes the time to form a real connection with the agent on the other line.
I can only shudder as I imagine the call center agents watching their timers click upwards as they ‘get to know’ my Mom and she gets to ‘know’ them as they solve her problem. And, while she is a lovely and wonderful woman and truly enjoys the interaction with the call center agents, she is the archenemy of Average Handling Time (AHT) and the prime candidate for contact deflection.
Marie also consumes a fair bit of live TV. She often has it on in the background at home, has not adopted a DVR and is a loyal follower of the evening news and a number of TV series, which again she watches ‘live’ as they are broadcast. In short, she is exactly the demographic that a number of large consumer brands are targeting in their TV advertising. She is exactly the demographic that those same brands would like to move to online and she is exactly the demographic that is being exhorted to ‘like’ us on Facebook and ‘follow’ us on Twitter.
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When, and we are all looking forward to that day with keen anticipation, Marie does make that leap and ’follows’ me on twitter or ‘likes’ a group or company on facebook, what will be the outcome? As she makes this bold and unprecedented step forward online, how will she be rewarded? Imagine her bravely posting a question for an insurer on line. How long will she wait for an answer? When will she give up and dejectedly dial in for an agent? How much longer will that call resolution take as she gets to ‘know’ her agent, explains the process and the effort it took her to get online, the number of revisions to her posting and her shock at not getting a response?
I may be joining the chorus here, but it feels like high time that once answered, the call to action ‘follow us on twitter’ and ‘like us on facebook’ should be as rewarding for the consumer as it is the company. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, customers have the power to affect the success of your company. Doing nothing is not an option.
Making social media actionable with the goal of rewarding your customers while increasing brand equity is one of the things we, at KANA, do best and we’d love to talk about it.
I’ll let you know how Marie is doing on her transformation to savvy on-line consumer in future blog posts…
(Chip Greer is Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, KANA)
