It’s been a week since the first Social India conference (held on the 12th – 13th November  2011 @ Bangalore ) concluded and I am pretty late in writing my thoughts on this. So, I will not bother with what happened at the conference. For that, I suggest you read the awesome summaries penned down by fellow participants & bloggers here:

http://blog.fatema.in/2011/11/my-take-on-the-social-india-conference-2011/
http://blog.gmrwebteam.com/social-india-conference-bangalore-india-day-2/
http://lighthouseinsights.in/2011/11/sanjay-mehta.html
http://lighthouseinsights.in/2011/11/shashank-nigam-speaks-at-socialindia.html
http://lighthouseinsights.in/2011/11/stefan-kolle-don%E2%80%99t-try-this-at-home-at-socialindia.html

Overall, it was a very nice experience for me and I look forward to the next one. I really met some nice people in person, some great fellows online and hope to continue interacting with them. What I am sharing here is 5 key takeaways from the Social India conference and few suggestions for the next one

1. Every organization (or for that matter, even individuals), regardless of size, nature, scope, location etc can make use of Social Media. This is aptly demonstrated by the fact that AkshayPatra, a NGO which enables hunger free education to 1.3 million children in India, was the organization behind the event. They did a superb job of lining up great speakers, logistics, venue and AWESOME food. The fact today is that Social Media can’t be ignored and just as internet/e-commerce changed things for good a decade & half ago, Social Media is doing it now.
2. Organizations need to go beyond just using facebook/twitter to effectively use Social Media. True listening, humanized approach, conversations & engagement with stakeholders is what makes an organization social — Not many organizations realize that there is a difference between using Social Media & being a Socially enabled organization.
3. We are still in early days of Social Media and no one has clue to where this will lead to. However the best way is to be part of the journey rather than be a bystander and watch the world go by. In most organizations (which later became showcase case studies of Social) the journey started almost by accident and not necessarily by design. Someone then picked that experiment and nurtured it, make it legitimate and brought it to business center stage. We are still in the education & awareness phase of our Social Media journey and this I say because almost all speakers had a 101/why Social Media is important component part of their talks and almost all had case studies on facebook campaigns etc. None actually pushed the boundary and had really thought provoking stuff to talk about.
4. Social Media RoI is still a hazy & murky area with the jury still out on how best to measure it or what to do next with the 2 million fans you have on your facebook page. There are several theories out there on what to measure, how to measure, what to report, what to watch for etc but all these are still fuzzy with little acceptance from the bean counters existing on organizations
5. There is a HUGE disconnect between Social Media initiatives of an organization for their external needs & how they use it internally and integrate it with rest of the organization. This is also evident by the fact that almost none of the speakers touched upon the finer aspects of usage of Social media within the organization and examples of these. Even integration of Social Media initiatives with other internal business processes, systems etc is something that organizations are not thinking of as yet. I am sure in years to come that will be the #1 driving force.

Now coming to suggestions for next year conference:

1. We had a good mix of local, national & international speakers. Please do continue that part. Maybe include the participants in suggesting the topics for sessions and the speakers can pick those topics.
2. Can we have a mix of user generated sessions — a.l.a unconference sessions. Say breakout sessions for 1.5 hours after lunch each day where participants themselves can come up with sessions & be the speakers etc.
3. Do have more speakers, handling Social Media within corporates, who can share their experience of what it takes to implement social Media initiatives, can speak of their relationships with Digital media agencies, what they expect from agencies, where do the agencies fall short, How they handle RoI, what questions get asked to them internally. Basically, stories from people implementing Social Media within organizations. (We did have Shauna Cassey from nordstorm talk about SM initiatives internally but would be good to get Indian Perspective also)
4. Have speakers push the boundary by talking not just 101 but 301 topics also like integration, sophisticated RoI models which go beyond just the case studies by Social Media Agencies of organizations having facebook & twitter campaigns

So, what were your takeways from the Social India conference & what will be your suggestions to make the experience even better next time around?

While the mouth-to-mouth sharing of experiences is nothing new and has been happening since time immemorial, the fundamental change is in the the magnitude of the inter-connectedness that social platforms bring to the table and the reach of these platforms. The voice that an individual has as part of the larger eco-system. (combine this with above reach point and just realize the impact it has?). The level of openness, transparency & discoverability that the changing online social platforms are bringing. Consumers are no longer shy of expressing themselves and acknowledging that they made a good or a bad decision in buying a particular good/service. Fundamentally, Social Platforms are transforming the way people behave online

A recent survey of internet users in the UK revealed that

• 70% have purchased a product/service online
• 53% have reviewed a product/service online
• 30% have sent a product recommendation to a friend online

Buyers are getting influenced by the social product reviews and not just marketing pitches by the brands. In-fact, customer’s reviews are fast catching up with search engines towards influencing online purchase decisions.  Empowered customers are increasingly motivating other shoppers and triggering purchase considerations. While lowest price/VFM pricing is still a large influencer of online purchase decisions but it is not just the only & sole driving factor. Infact, research suggests that customers are willing to pay premium for a 5* rated product vs a 3* rated product.  The purchase trigger/consideration/decision making process is moving more & more online – driven by social feeds. (previously, the consideration process was offline, with just the purchase transaction being done online)

So, what does this mean to the online retailers?
Online retailers need to understand these social changes taking place online and get plugged into the social, collaborative, emergent, inter-connected online market place for building differentiated offerings, relationships & touch points with the customers.

Is your retail/online strategy ready to leverage the social phenomenon?

While most SM efforts are targeted towards the enterprise engaging in & leveraging external social channels, I firmly believe that organizations need to be socially enabled internally and then only they can be truly socially engaged externally. Going forward, it just can’t be let to a select group of people (in marketing, sales, customer service) to be socially enabled externally without they tapping into the internal social enabled enterprise.

Towards this, I think that the dynamics, context & implementation nuances within the enterprise are different from the external landscape and hence there is a need for a differentiated internal & external SM policy. This doesn’t mean that they differ at the concept level but just the implementations, rules of engagement could differ and clearly articulating it though separate SM policies would reduce confusion & give greater clarity.

For example, the external policy could have rules of engagement in external channels, do’s & don’ts, workflows, roles & authorizations, NDA’s etc aspects covered; while the internal policy could focus on tying internal social initiatives with work, collaboration, KRA’s, objectives, culture, rewards, acceptable norms of engagement, IP etc.

What do you think? do you also think there is a need for separate internal/external SM policies or just one will do? What’s been your experience?

Here is an example of an attempt by Standard Chartered Bank, trying to cross-sell a loan to me, gone horribly wrong. Infact it makes you wonder, what were people @ Standard Chartered Bank smoking when they did this

Mostly, organizations have created platforms and avenues where their customers or general public can engage with the organization and give product ideas, help in co-product creation and become part of customer-networks. Some examples of such crowd-sourcing platforms & initiatives are:

• Fiat Mio - create a car
• Open Innovation Sara Lee - open innovation portal of Sara Lee
• P&G Open Innovation Challenge - external idea sourcing in Britain
• Kraft - innovate with Kraft
• Dell IdeaStorm - external idea sourcing
• Vocalpoint - P&G’s network for women
• My Startbucks Idea - shaping the future of Starbucks

Recently, one organization pushed the envelope of crowd sourcing by soliciting ideas & concepts for it’s band identity (logo) from the public. Happiest Minds, a young IT Services start-up, opened up the contest by asking people to submit logo for it’s business. The brief was that the logo should depict the Happiest Minds philosophy, vision, & essence of Happiest People leading to Happiest Customers.

As part of using customer service, most of us would have had an experience interacting with a human being — either over phone or through emails/systems. Many a times I have wondered if it is actually a human being at the other end of the phone line/email or some programmable robot spewing out canned responses.

Just have a look at numerous customer review websites like mouthshut.com, consumercomplaints.in, community portals, twitter etc and you will get the drift.

A recent post Efficiency vs Effectiveness had highlighted this aspect of customer service and how organizations in today’s social eco-system need to take an effectiveness based approach. Social Monitoring & Analysis tools, like Radian6  Visible Technologies etc can get you a sense of what your customers, in social channels, are talking about your products & customer service. Now, while technology can get you all this information, the key challenge is how organizations respond & engage with customers.

Organizations have 2 choices:

Cookie Cutter Approaches  == Efficiency, Repeatability, Consistency, Productivity, Scalability, Mass rollout, Can be outsourced, Traditional measures, Easy trainability etc.

Engagement, Dialogue & Conversations == Each transaction is new, Customer of one, Extreme Personalization, Empathy, Human Centric. New age organizations are realizing this and are in the process of creating roles like “Community Managers” to interact with consumers in the social channels.

Let’s understand the differences in the above 2 approaches through these sample responses

“Thanks for sharing your problem. I’ve looked into it and have taken the dealer to task. The problem lies with your head gasket. Please take the car to the dealer and we’ll sort it out ASAP. “
OR
“Greetings from XYZ Company. Our cars are the most reliable and this is proven by 5,00,000 customer cars on the road today. We cannot be held responsible for the way you have used your car”

“Looks like your low battery is due to bad sensor, or a loose connection. Please bring it to the service station and we will glad to diagnose & help”
OR
“The ABC battery has been officially certified for 35 hours backup by CERCI”

“Yes, we realize that our dealers from the northern part of country need a severe ramp-up and are in the process of doing so. Existing dealers are being taken to task, and newer customer-focused dealers are being shortlisted”
OR
“DEFG India prides itself on the No.1 position in customer satisfaction survey. Our dealerships provide industry-leading after-sales service“

Which one do you think is more human, engaging & conversation centric? Which one would you prefer? Do you have some views & experience to share on customer service?

Enter the Social World:
With almost every organization embarking on a social media strategy, they find themselves using the same philosophy, yardstick, approach of the traditional customer service approach – a transactional approach, on social media. Somehow organizations don’t realize that the playing field is different and the rules are different now.

In the social paradigm, organizations need to realize that the key is to have meaningful conversations that can lead to insights for actions. Customer service agents need to take time, think and actually hear people out before engaging in a dialogue with your customers. This calls for a new way of thinking, a new approach, a new philosophy — where the organization & the customers are speaking  in a shared and common language. Where the organization is part of the audience, where it is OK to accept mistakes, where it is OK to be ‘human’ & empathize with the customer, where it is OK to have small talk with customers and not just focus on closing the call ASAP.

This now calls for the organizations to measure their call center agents on ‘how many conversations‘ they had, how much dialogue they are having. Not only just with the customer but even internally within the organization on linking what the customers are saying to various parts of the organization — how much collaboration are employees having internally?

This calls for organizations to be rewired for the right processes, metrics, training, coaching, ethos required in the social world.

Social is a totally new mindset —  one of ‘effectiveness‘ and not just about ‘efficiency‘

So, if your organization is starting out on a social customer care journey, do understand the difference between efficiency & effectiveness.

That will ensure that you know the rules of the game & the playing field before your begin the game

So, what do I as a customer do? I send email to their customer support….

• No response for 2 days (In internet era, customers except instant response)
• Reminder email after 2 days
• Standard response from company customer service
• Customer still not satisfied. Sends email again but then no response for 2 weeks from company. Total dead end for customer

Frustrated & pissed, I revert to social media sites and post my horrid experience with yebhi.com on a customer review community website. And viola..!!! Like magic, things move and issue is resolved in 2 days.

What I observed was that the complete focus of the presentation and the thought process was on “activities they were doing and not on why they were doing what they were doing“. Somehow the purpose of the activities they were doing, the problem statement on what they were trying to solve, what were the business benefits, what outcomes they were looking at, how would the next steps scale or be fed into organizational processes — in short the bigger picture was not at all there.

In my opinion; the aim of reporting, for any change management program initiative, should be to make the message viral and memorable. One of the key success criteria of reporting on change management initiatives should be to make the message reach the corridor & hallway conversations (in a +ve manner). This becomes more important if the presentation & reporting is for senior management who are crucial in propagating the message further.

So, ensure that the first slide of your reporting/presentation is about the bigger picture, problem statement, the why, business benefit, outcomes…. and only then state the activities you are doing for the above. That will make your audience get it — in a dumb proof way and the message can be propagated further without dilution.

If you are not doing that, then reporting (on just activities) is purely for the sake of reporting & all you will hear in the hallways would be: “yeah they seem to be doing something… but..“