Anyhow the point is that I had some spare time this morning and decided to spend a few minutes reading. The particular section I read through was title “Portals to Experience”. To save you my definition, here’s the jist of it:

“That’s how really well-designed products or services work: The product becomes an icon and a venue, a doorway or a portal for a specific community to a unique experience, and that’s where you start to create equity.”

The book went on to reference airlines and how even in time of unfortunate circumstance, cancellations, weather etc., the difference between a good experience and a bad experience is all in how the airline (or employees) handle it. “keep you moving with a smile on your face…”.

For someone who spent the better part of two years in and out of airports experiencing just about every airline the continental US has to offer, this struck me. Because lets face it, anyone who travels frequently will undoubtably see differences in how airlines handle these type of situations. More than likely you will begin to narrow down your favorites and all together avoid certain airlines.

Then I started thinking about how even airlines I enjoyed and for the most part always had an excellent experience while flying seemed to have certain hubs where the customer service was altogether lacking. It seemed that the more these airlines spread out the more likely it was for that “mission statement” or customer service message got lost.

So I started thinking back to some of the jobs I have held in the past. For the most part they begin with some sort of “training” session, an intro course so to speak. You watch a video or two, learn how your company handles customer interaction, basic policy and procedures etc. That’s it you are ready to go. Sure some jobs require refresher courses but for the most part you “learn” everything through that first intro and the actual interaction with the job to follow.

You can start to see how people might become complacent and lose a little bit of that “training” along the way. But, those that are closer or more attached to the original corporate culture established by the company are probably reminded more often of “how we deal with clients”. This could be the home office, the original offshoots etc.

However, as the company starts to spread it’s wings by establishing more remote locations, hubs, retail outlets etc, I think that they start to loose that connection with the “home office” and thus loose some of that original culture or mission statement that has been established.

An Example

I flew an airline, one that is quite well known for service. The service at the original hubs was simply amazing. You never had to walk more than a few feet to get your questions answered and for the most part they kept you smiling and on the move. Then they started to spread their wings a bit, suddenly I could fly with them to places I normally would have had to choose another airline to get to. Upon arriving at some of these places you see the usually big bright logo and head off to the desk because your plans have changed and now you need assistance. You expect to be greeted by that welcoming smile that you would normally receive, but instead the man in airline uniform tells you “sorry but we are closed right now come back in an hour and I can answer your question”. HUH? That’s not the service I am used to. Can I maybe see a supervisor? “Actually I am the supervisor”. Perfect.

The “mission statement” has been lost. The care is no longer there because this person is not quite as vested in the corporate identity as those back home. To him this is just another job, he is not reminded on a daily basis of what it means to be an Airline X employee.

Enter Social Media

So in todays world how can we fix this just a little bit? Here’s where I had a thought. Today it should be easier than ever to bridge this gap in communication. Think about the possibilities that things like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook etc open up for your average company (going beyond marketing). Would it be so terrible if upon clocking in for the afternoon shift that an employee be required to watch a brief inspirational message in the form of a YouTube video? If nothing else to subtly refresh them of that message that was conveyed in that two hour training session they went through ten months ago.

There are a lot of possibilities out there for keeping your company message alive and avoiding this disconnect that I have seen happen all to often. What ideas do you have?

For most of you Twitter is no secret, you have probably heard of it at the very least and I hope that a large number of you actually use it. (If not shoot me an email and we can talk). So for those of you that use it you know of that little thing called Twitter search. Now without going into hash tags and so on we will jut have a quick look at the basic Twitter Search.

Let’s say for some reason I wanted to keep tabs on what people are saying about Nike. I head on over to Twitter.com, I log in and in the upper right I type the word Nike into the search box. Search does it’s thing and returns real time results for tweets referencing the word Nike. Sweet!

Now for me, I use Tweetdeck, in fact I have it open around 15 to 24hrs a day (yes somewhat geeky you might say). Now with Tweetdeck I can organize my twitter feed into columns. Let’s see right now I have All Friends, friends I categorize under “Design”, my @ replies, DM’s and last but not least a column for search.

That’s the one I need to get to here. So a few weeks ago I launched a pretty large and involved site for a client (by involved I mean lots of moving parts so we launched in “Beta” so to speak because we wanted some time to iron out any bugs). Couple of quick notes:

1. With the launch he did a bit of publicity so we expected some traffic right off the bat meaning we couldn’t really hide behind that “we haven’t been found yet” period in hopes to work out the kinks.

2. With the site there is also a few informational products, one of which would also get some publicity behind it.

What Am I Looking For In These Searches

Ok, so on launch I fired up a search for the domain in my last column of Tweetdeck to monitor what people where saying. It’s not foolproof and probably will not catch every muttering but it will catch a good number. Now sure I see someone say “awesome design” or “well put together” and it gives me a bit of an ego boost, but more importantly I can keep tabs on a few very key things.

1. The overall reaction to the product.

2. Someone experiences a problem, they are an active twitter user, more than likely they are going to tweet about it!

3. Someone has a feature idea I can take note. (Now I am of the mindset that first of all you can’t please everyone down to the detail and secondly you should not run off and make every change you see, but if those request start to pile up it is definitely worth having a look at. Sometimes, an idea is so smart it makes you say damn, I should have thought of that in the first place.

4. This allows me to get an outsiders view of the product. Let’s be honest working day in and day out on something you may overlook an obvious detail. The most important thing is those outsiders, your product end users, so it is good to hear what they have to say.

Real Life Examples

Here are a few things that actually happened through my monitor this particular site.

1. A feature idea was tweeted that will more than likely make it’s way into phase 3 of the site.

2. A bug, error, misjudgment what ever you want to call it was tweeted, I caught the tweet and had it fixed in minutes.

3. A consumer in another country wanted to purchase one of the informational products but could not because we had overlooked the country code on the order form. Now this one is really neat. First I fixed it, then I let the site owner know of the request. The site owner happens to have a twitter account for the site specifically so he DM’ed the original tweeter and let him know that he could now purchase the eBook. How’s that for paying attention to your “customers” needs.

Really what this is about is getting customer feedback in it’s rawest form and without really having to do much leg work to do so. Nobody here knows that I am keeping tabs on what they are saying about the site but you can be sure that their opinions (good and bad) are valued and looked at.

Are you taking advantage of social media to keep tabs on what your clients and customers/end users are saying about your product?

To approve or not to approve. I am of course referring to those times when you have the ability to moderate what is being said, but I think it applies even to those instances where you do not have that control. My vote… unless it is completely inappropriate (i.e. riddled with foul language etc) approve it. And then respond.

Why? Because not only are you given the chance to engage the angry or dissatisfied “customer” and possibly resolve the issue, but you are also showing your other consumers and potential clients how well you are willing to work with dissatisfied clients. You are showing them that this space you have created and thus your “product” is in fact one that is actually here to engage and listen, learn and improve for them. That I think is what the majority of the consumers engaging products, brands and companies via Social Media are looking for.

Consider for a moment how someone in the restaurant industry must deal with an angry client (speaking from experience). For one, there is no where to hide, you can’t run from the angry customer when you are in the middle of a packed dining room, all eyes on you. You have no choice, you have to deal with that angry customer right here and right now, and you damn sure don’t want to be disrespectful to one when 30 or 40 other families are looking on to see how this pans out. Sure you want to keep it low key, but the bottom line is you are going to in most cases have to deal with this publicly.

So how does the server who comes under attack over undercooked food deal with it. Be respectful and understanding, calm them and find out what you can do to make this client happy again. In every case possible you want this customer to come back two weeks from now telling the next manager on duty:

“You know, even though the food was awful the last time I was here, I decided to bring my family back because of the way so and so handled the situation. They convinced me that it was worth it to give you guys another chance.”

Now sure that’s not going to work out every time. So the next thing you want to do is control the situation. Show your other customers that although this particular customer is very unhappy, you are dealing with it in a very respectful manner and trying your very best to turn the situation around. Because although they may be perfectly happy with their meal and may not let the angry customers opinion of his meal influence their own, you can be sure that they will let your treatment of the angry customer impact their opinion if you do not handle it professionally.

The point I am trying to make here is that your customers are engaging you in these spaces because they are looking to believe that you will in fact get involved, be proactive if you will. So if it is your choice to provide your customers with these platforms, then perhaps consider treating as if you do not have the option to hide. As if you are in a crowded dinning room, all eyes on you.

Is that the slightest bit overwhelming to anyone? Noise overload perhaps, how are you supposed to keep track of it all? It seems to me that so many people and businesses tend to get so caught up in what connects to what and how this program updates the other, that they loose track of their purpose for entering social media in the first place. To foster relationships, whether it be with clients, customers or critic, the point is to make connections!

Here is my advice, and it is something I often say to clients when they start to drum up the subject of social media. You do not need a profile on every single network out there in order to be effective and not every single form of social media will will accomplish your goal.

Before we even decide which ones are going to be effective for you, we need to establish a goal. What is you purpose for venturing into the realm of social media? Yes everyone else is doing so, and yes you are overlooking opportunity if you deny the power of social media, but… Just like any other form of marketing there has to be should be a focus for creating the campaign, otherwise you might just as well throw your time and money out the window.

When that goal is defined we can get started, but let’s start simple. Let’s discover one or two social media networks that are really going to help you reach out and touch your market and let’s get really good at them. Just like any community, group or neighborhood you are the new guy. You need to see how the community works before you can run for mayor and trust me this is not going to happen over night. You need to build, establish a rapport, make connections. Your strategy will begin to develop around your experience.

Now you might be ready to explore further into the realm of social media.

The point is don’t get caught up in “the hype”, there is a lot out there and it can be extremely overwhelming. You should be adapting and embracing social media, but you need to do it for the right reasons and with the right intentions. Don’t just jump in wildly start registering profiles, connecting things that don’t need to be connected. By doing so you will be missing the true value of social media and in the end only adding to the noise that once overwhelmed you.

So whether you have 1000′s of followers who have chosen to stick around even though they know the majority of tweets are links to your product, or you have just a few and your conversations are about what you are doing tomorrow, it makes no difference. The point is Twitter is an app made just for you, use it as you see fit.