The realities of customer engagement (hint: it’s not all positives)
The other day I jumped into a conversation thread on the SWOM forum and caught this bit of genius from “Wandering Dave Rhee”:
As a former Dell competitor (at the time when they introduced their initiative last year), I can say that we closely looked at the pros and cons of creating such an initiative ourselves [Ideastorm]. The pros are fairly obvious, so I’ll simply say that the perception of listening to your customers is as important as actually listening and acting on what they tell you.The cons, however, can be numerous. For example, do you really have enough resources to manage a discussion professionally, if your internal team can barely keep up with the internal ideas coming from your own people? For example, feedback from your (professional business) customers, which is filtered through your (dedicated in-house) sales force?
How do you prioritize the input feedback, if what you’re told is, “I think it would be cool if you had or did X,” when you know from past experience that this seldom translates into, “I would buy more of your product than I already do if you had or did X”? Or rather, “I would buy so much more of your product or service, that it would more than pay for your effort to collect and process my feedback, plus integrate it into your design and manufacturing loop”?
How do you gently tell your customers, “Thanks for your feedback, but we’ve decided to do something else instead”? Even if your reasons are good, yet possibly confidential ones? (Such as exclusive supplier agreements that prohibit you integrating some new “cool” (but not necessarily better) technology into your product?)
And here’s the biggest one — any consumer-facing company with a lengthy product history (e.g., you’ve been around more than 5 years) also will have a natural backlog of unhappy customers. If this is your first effort to solicit feedback in a public forum, then you must be prepared to hear, and address in public, a lot of angry complaints (whether justified or not, including those from unethical people looking to blackmail you for a handout). You have to decide that you have first, a culture of transparency in your internal management, second, a willingness to air your dirty laundry in public, and third, the staff and other resources to wash it several times a day, since letting complaints sit over a long holiday weekend can really do significant damage to your brand.
Couldn’t have said it better myself, although lord knows I’ve tried many, many times over the years. The real solution to this reality (notice I’m not calling it a problem…) is to power through it. Think about what it takes to train for a marathon: you don’t run 26 miles on day one. Instead, you start slowly and each day just keep adding to your distance. Of course after day one and a half mile you may feel like you’re going to die. Stop there and you’ll get nowhere. But when you wake up the next morning and push it up to a mile then two the day after, you find yourself surprised when it’s marathon time and you’re ready for that 26 miles.
Remember, success is hard. But the more you practice, the easier it gets.
Staying motivated about the (seemingly) mundane
In 1994 I discovered the Web and was training college faculty members to use it, despite their interest only through mandate. In 1996 I was convincing clients to build Web sites. In 2000 I was building community activities for a major global brand. Somewhere along the way I discovered that I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of bringing new ideas to the somewhat interested.
Now it’s 2008 and I’m ready to be part of the next “wave of the future”. Thing is, I think the next such wave is actually the lull where adoption truly takes root. I actually talked about this in a previous post about comments from Sarah Lacy:
Lacy has confused “lack of innovation” with “industry maturity”. When the first automobiles came on the scene, it was such a radical departure from the horse drawn carriage that even minor improvements felt incredibly new. Today’s automotive innovations may be incredibly impressive, but the maturity of the automobile overall makes it hard to be amazingly revolutionary in that “dear god that’s cool!” sorta way. We hear things like “50 mpg” and think “well, of course that’s possible”.
Thing is, when you’re a bleeding edge kinda guy, it’s hard to get (or at least stay) excited about a stage like this. Certainly it’s exciting to see broadband adoption to high, or millions of people signing up for and participating in social communities, or my mom checking her email on a regular basis. But it’s not quite the seeing those things happen for the first time.
So then how do you stay excited and motivated when the innovation of the day is “continued mainstreaming”? I don’t claim to have any solution to this question, but here’s what I find myself doing:
- Minimize standard processes - While I constantly strive to improve the way I explain concepts or ideas, I do my best to stay away from “standard processes” that I use no matter the project or the client.
- Help someone new - The more experience we put under our belts, we tend to move further and further away from the newbies. I do my best to help those trying to get into the field or looking to find answers to tough questions or to speak to interested audiences.
- Hang out with people smarter than me - Spending time with the geniuses [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] helps remind you that you have a long way to go before you know as much as you think you do now. These are also the folks who generate the greatest discussion.
- Mix strategy work with implementation work - I do my best to mix it up and do a little of the high level thinking and some of the roll up your sleeves work. This keeps things happening from multiple directions and keeps you out of the rut that sometimes comes from doing all of one type of work.
- Find new industries - Along with mixing up the type of work, I do my best to mix up the industries I do it for.
- Work on motivating (side) projects - Yes, I’m fascinated with the power of community. Yes, I believe in its power because I’ve seen it up front and personal. But sometimes I forget, and so projects like the community stories book help me to be reminded of the power.
What about you? How do you keep motivated?
OCRN: Community Communication
In the last few weeks, I’ve posted several bits of content to the OCRN around the theme of “community focused communication”. The theme is wrapping up and I’m moving on to this month’s theme (more on this soon). Here’s a recap of what was posted.
- Case Study: Comics in Community Communication
- Community Netiquette: How to Avoid Stepping on Virtual Toes
- Interview w/ Communication Expert [AUDIO]
- 9 Tips for Inspired (and Inspiring) Text Communication
Still not a member of the Online Community Research Network? You really should be. Email me for the details.
Help Needed: Share your story about the power of online community
On a recent trip through the Dayton airport book store, I came across a book that sparked an idea that I’m really excited about.
As you all know, I’m a bit of an online community buff. I truly believe in the power of online communities to bring together people and place for amazing results. Over the years, I’ve seen community members ban together in times of triumph and tragedy. I’ve seen people meet and marry through online communities, and I’ve been constantly excited by meeting people in person I’ve only interacted with on twitter or facebook. If I try to pick a favorite online community story, I find myself having a hard time choosing just one.
I came home from that trip inspired, wanting to share my stories and more importantly wanting to hear similar stories from my friends. So inspired, in fact, I’m beginning work on putting together a book of stories, inspiring tales that share the power of online community. The only message of this book is that communities are amazing, powerful things. And I need YOU to help me prove that.
My goal is to collect 50 such stories and edit them into book form by end of the summer. I’m tentatively calling the book “Connected by Distance”, but that may change.
I’m positive you have a great story, and I’d love to help you remember it and share it. If you participate, your story may be included in the collection along with your name and URL of your choosing. They don’t need to be terribly long (~600 words or so), and there’s no particular direction, theme, or topic (other than “online community does great things”). Make me laugh, make me cry, make me ask “how did we ever function with message forums, twitter, facebook, and/or YahooGroups.” Unfortunately, I’m not able to pay for stories, but hopefully that won’t stop you from kicking in.
Please let me know if you interested in participating by dropping me a email.
Here’s to not only changing the world for the better, but to being able to tell a great story afterward.
(Huge thanks to Derek Powazek and his Fray book for making me believe something this crazy might actually work)
Rapid Fire - Sunday, May 11
Back-Up Your Mac, Effortlessly - Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog
Taco Bell - Direct Daniella
BOOM BLOX at Nintendo :: Games
Hot new jobs on the Community Guy Jobs Board
Some impressive jobs have been added to the Community Guy Jobs Board lately. It may be a down economy, but it’s certainly not a bad market for community jobs!
- Online Community Manager (Chicago)
- Justin.tv Community Manager (San Francisco, CA)
- Peer Media Manager at a Global PR firm (New York, NY)
- Content Manager - Online - New role (NYC)
- Community Manager - New position (NYC)
- Social Media Account Coordinator - Converseon (NYC) ()
- Online Community Manager (New York, NY)
- GLOBAL COMMUNITY DIRECTOR (London/ Milan)
- Looking for an Online Community Manager (San Francisco, CA)
Rapid Fire - Friday, May 09
Twitter Monetization: How to Make Money With Twitter
Mike Doughty
User Generated Content Principles
Jamba Dole :: Home
Lost: A theory on time travel
‘Batmanime’ Is a Blast in Batman: Gotham Knight | The Underwire from Wired.com
Video Pick: Vice TV Sets Sail for ‘Garbage Island’ | The Underwire from Wired.com
Rapid Fire - Friday, May 09
louisgray.com: Five Social Media Bloggers to Watch This May
Camera Hacks: Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera
LIVE Interviews Online: Interview with Patrick O’Keefe on Managing Online Forums
YouTube - Delta’s New In-flight Safety Video
Star Wars | Del Rey & Star Wars
FFF: Casper, WY
Reasoning for this week’s Friday Flickr Find:
This is a great scene selection, but the colors on this fairly basic shot are wonderful.
(photo by hyku)
The Tipping Point vs. Duncan Watts
Months after Duncan Watts published his article basically calling the Tipping Point an irrelevant concept, the debate still goes on about which theory is “correct”. Personally, I tend to agree with Joe on this one:
A year later and a little more to the point, here’s what marketers can consider: Everyone has influence, but that influence has a couple of variables.
–People have a quantity of influence: the maximum number of other people they can reach with a message.
–People have a quality of influence: the amount of influence they exert over those that they reach.
–People have types of influence: categories of “expertise” that other people assign to an individual.
