The Ultimate How To Marketing Guide

The Social Contract:
Customers, Companies, Communities, Conversations

in the Age of the Collaborative Relationship
Brought to you by
Sponsored by
2010, Social Media Today, LLC
The Social Contract:

Customers, Companies, Communities, Conversations
in the Age of the Collaborative Relationship
3
Part 1: Introduction
22
Brent Leary | Blogger-In-Residence, TheSocialCustomer.com
Part 2: The New Customer Service:

An Excerpt from Trust Agents
Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.
24
Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
Part 3: Lining Up for Your Customers

Part 4: Improving Customer Experience
By Filling In the Gaps
28
Part 5: Making Leaders Successful Every Day
31
Part 6: Serving the Social Customer
33
Part 7: Yes, You Can Sell That Here

Kevin Ryan | Vice-President, Social Media at Barnes & Noble.com,
Content
20
art 8: Is Your Customer Service Rep

P
More Influential than Your CEO?
Mark Simmons | Senior Director of Marketing and Customer Support,
Six Apart
P
art 13: A Conversation with Tish Whitcraft
Brent Leary and Tish Whitcraft | SVP of Customer Service
& Operations, MySpace
39
Frank Eliason | Senior Director in National Customer Operations

at Comcast
18
P
art 12: Mainstream Media and the Social Customer
Martin Murtland | Vice-President & Managing Director, Dow Jones
Dr. Natalie L. Petouhoff | CRM, Customer Experience,

Customer Service, and Social Media, Forrester Research
15
P
art 11: Customer Service
in the Once-In-A-Lifetime World
Scott Rogers | Director of Strategic Planning, Davids Bridal
Ellen Filipiak | SVP Customer Care at DIRECTV
12
art 10: Customer Communities:

P
Revolutionizing Customer Engagement
Sanjay Dholakia | Chief Marketing Officer, Lithium
David Alston | VP Marketing & Community, Radian6
Part 9: The Dollars and Sense of Social Media
P
art 14: Dont Bother Wasting Money on Social Media
Until Your Organization Can Competently Handle
a Customer Phone Call or Email
John Burton | Director Product Management at SAP Labs
42
P
art 15: Your Tweet Is Important To Us
Emily Yellin
Part:
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Introduction
Brent Leary | Blogger-In-Residence, TheSocialCustomer.com
I learned some of my best lessons about customer
experience way back when I was college disc jockey at
the University of Delaware. Back then at least, colleges
were their own little worlds, and nothing was more
important than the parties with the obvious exception
of the educational stuff, of course. And what got people
to a party, and kept them there all night, was the music.
As DJs, it was our job to make people dance and have
a good time. The more packed the dance floor was, the
better. The louder the crowd was, the longer they would
stay. Theyd request songs and participate in calland-response games (remember throw your hands
in the air?). They would make up group dances and
have battles, and do anything to keep things going,
because were enjoying the music and each other. But if
a DJ played the wrong song, or repeatedly ignored their
song requests, the floor would part like the Red Sea, and
people would head to the next party across the street.
And by the next weekend the word would have spread
around campus that you were whack, and just like that
your reputation was shot, and nobody would come to your
next party.
On a college campus, that loss of reputation seemed to
happen so fastwithin a week a couple hundred folks
would know you played a bad mix. But that is nothing
compared to what can happen now. Just look at the
Southwest Airlines too fat to fly episode with Kevin
Smitha movie director who live-tweeted getting
booted from the plane to his 1.6 million followers on
Twitter. Whats even more interesting is that Southwest

used their blog as the main response tool to explain their
side. But the most fascinating part of this whole thing
to me is the conversation it created among people on
Twitter, Facebook, blogs and everywhere else online. In
fact, more customer service stories are ending up on in
mainstream media because of social media generated
buzzeven spawning news segments like Viral Videos of
the Week on CNN.
While its true that social tools and networks are changing
the way customers interact with vendors, its not
changing the way they think. They were social customers
in spirit long before technology allowed them to tweet
or blog. Theyve always wanted to share more than their
money with the people they do business with. They also
wanted to share their opinions, ideas and their emotions
as well in some cases. But most importantly theyve
always wanted to feel like they are being listened to,
and being valued for more than just the financial
transaction that comes with being a customer.
Because of social tools, networks and media, customers
are now able to do what theyve always wanted to do
be heard, and to have the power to turn their ideas into
ways to make the products and services they love even
better. These tools are also allowing them to reach more
people like them, with common interests and information
needs, creating powerful communities not possible only
a few short years ago.
continued on next page
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Part:
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Introduction (contd)
This ebook brings together a collection of experiences
from some of the brightest people in business today.
From executives at major corporations, leading industry
analysts, best-selling authors, application vendors,
and customer service professionals, come real stories
of how companies are integrating social channels into
their traditional methods of engaging todays sociallyempowered customers. Youll hear from industry leaders
on how theyre using social media to get closer to their
customers in order to build better relationships. Youll see
how customer communities are already impacting both
how customers are supported, and the effect its having
on top and bottom lines. And youll hear B2B stories as
well as some great B2C examples.
The experiences included in this book serve as great

examples to anyone looking to successfully begin
engaging social customers in meaningful ways to build
trust and mutual loyalty.And were also excited to
include an excerpt from Chris Brogan and Julien Smiths
book Trust Agents, which sets a nice tone for the rest
of the ebook.
As you will see in the pages of this book, there are

numerous ways that companies are leveraging the
power of social technology to build better long-lasting
relationships with them. And while were still early on
in the integration of social media and CRM, customers
have fully embraced social communications. The 10
billionth download just recently took place on iTunes,
right about the same time Facebook announced going
over the 400 million member markwith 5 billion pieces
of content being shared weekly. So its pretty obvious
that social has affected all facets of life, including
our lives as customers.
About the Author

Brent Leary is a CRM industry analyst, advisor, author,
speaker and award-winning blogger. He is co-founder
and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, an Atlanta based CRM
advisory firm covering tools and strategies for improving
business relationships, with a client list including
RIM, Sage, Microsoft, Intuit, and Cisco. Recognized by
InsideCRM as one of 2007s 25 most influential industry
leaders, Leary is also a past recipient of CRM Magazines
Most Influential Leader Award. In 2009 Leary co-authored
Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business, and
has written regular online columns for Inc.,
Black Enterprise, and popular business sites including
American Express OPEN Forum. Leary blogs at
http://BrentLeary.com.
A big thank you goes to all the experts who shared

their time and effort putting this together. Each and
every article included here adds something special to
the mix, making this a truly unique experience.
Enjoy!
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The New Customer Service:

An Excerpt from Trust Agents
Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
If youre going to work as a trust agent, an element of
what you do, every day, is customer service. You might
not think of it that way, but your role is to empower and
equip the people who choose to do business with you.
Because you might not be used to thinking of yourself
as a customer service representative, here are some points
to consider:
Answer the phone. On the Web, were talking about
this new social phone, a term we learned about
from Marcel Lebrun, entrepreneur and CEO of Radian6,
a listening software platform. He looks at all these
services (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) as new
phones that are ringing, asking for you or your company
or your product, and when a company doesnt have a
presence or listening ability, it cant hear the social
phone ringing. The first step to taking advantage of the
human powers of the Web is to be there to hear the call.
Learn the three As. Chris learned this during a (very)
brief stint working at a restaurant. When a customer
complains about something, follow the three As:
Acknowledge, Apologize, Act. This holds true for the
Web. If you visit a blog and see a complaint about your
company or product (or you), acknowledge it. Then
apologize. Something simple: Im sorry it took you that
long to get your file transfer problem sorted out. And
act. Do something. Resolve the problem. One part of
trust in being a trust agent is being reliable.
Act as soon as you can so as to resolve the problem

and to curb the anger escalation that happens when
someone feels unheard.
Customers shoot back. Realize that every customer can
now blog, leave comments on Yelp.com and a hundred
other sites, write reviews on Amazon.com, and complain
on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and everywhere else
that offers tools to communicate. Be ready for it, and
be receptive to it. Sort out whos just complaining to
complain versus who can be saved or converted. Learn
how to adapt to an audience who has the same tools as
the press to complain about you, and learn when and
when not to engage.
Customer service is the new PR: From the 1950s until the
early 2000s, customer service has been a cost center for
any business. It has been a job where get them off the
phone fast replaced help them to remain our customer.
Not good enough anymore. If youre in the game as
a trust agent, this is an opportunity to do something
more than a rival company. You can learn how to build
relationships at a deep level using these online tools,
which, in the interim, will crush your competitors and
create great press for you.
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The New Customer Service (contd)

The Three As
Want a simple-yet-powerful recipe to improve your
apologies? What? You didnt realize they needed
improving? You need the three As: Acknowledge,
Apologize, Act.
Acknowledge. Start any apology by telling the person
that you accept that something happened. I didnt
meet my deadline.
Apologize. Make sure you clearly and simply say
that youre sorry, with no excuses tacked on.
Im sorry, Ellie.
Act. Explain what youll do to improve or rectify the
situation. Ive finished the work now and will better
scope my time next time.
These simple steps, done in this order and sincerely,
will make a world of difference as a trust agent.
About the Authors

Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a
new media marketing agency, and is an eleven year
veteran of using social media and both web and mobile
technologies to build digital relationships for businesses,
organizations, and individuals. Chris speaks, blogs, writes
articles, and makes media of all kinds at chrisbrogan.com,
a blog in the top 5 of the Advertising Age Power150, and
in the top 100 on Technorati. In addition to co-authoring
the New York Times bestselling book Trust Agents, he
recently authored Social Media 101.
Julien Smith is an author, consultant, and speaker who
has been involved in online communities for over 15
yearsrom early BBSes and flashmobs to the social web
as we know it today. He was one of the first people on
the web to use podcasting in 2004, as well as one of the
first web personalities to be broadcastesd on traditional
radio. He has since worked with and been interviewed by
numerous media organizations such as CNN, CBC, CTV
and a few others that dont start with the letter C.
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Lining Up for Your Customers

David Alston | VP Marketing & Community, Radian6
Your call is important to us. Please stay on
the line and someone will be with you shortly.
How many times have you heard this? This phrase has
been drilled into our head hundreds of times as we were
left waiting on hold to speak to a company. But who
really believes it? We are important, yes, but apparently
not important enough to hire enough agents to serve us
in a timely fashion.
Its no wonder that customers have started to express
their complaints, concerns, ideas, opinions and thoughts
about brands in social media. With the advent of Web 2.0,
blogging, tweeting, and commenting have become far
easier than looking up a phone number and waiting in a
queue. Thankfully, a growing number of companies have
realized this and are staffing up to assist customers on the
channel they choosethe two-way channel called social
media. I refer to this as answering the social phone.
Companies start by setting up the terms to listen for
including brand names, competitors names and product
categories. They assess posts in real time, tag them,
prioritize them, understand their sentiment, link them to
existing customer records, assign them to the appropriate
team members, respond in a timely fashion and report
on the entire operation to see how they fared and look
for ways to improve. It may sound a lot like the processes
of inbound call centers, but lets call it the inbound
conversation center or engagement center instead.
The key difference though is how customers expresses

their concerns or needs in their own way, on their
own time, and in their public medium of choice. They
do this in hopes of being heard, of being understood
and of being helped. Companies who are answering
the social phone essentially are lining up to help
their customers. http://www.vancouversun.com/
business/world+store/2334175/story.html. And while
consumer expectations are mounting quickly for all
brands to be listening, those who do reach out online
are often receiving extra kudos just for showing up.
While interactions may start off around solving customer
problems and answering questions, it can actually lead to
much more. Engaging gives a company an opportunity to
connect and develop relationships, and thus to build out
their community. Over time, this growing community of
brand fans can also play an important role in tandem with
a brands efforts.
Gradually, as the community matures, members may step
in to assist other members with their questions, freeing
up the company to focus on new questions surfacing
that may require deeper analysis. After all, sharing
and helping is the foundation of many friendships. For
those companies that recognize the need to live in their
communities in order to best serve them, lining up to
help their friends seems like the natural thing to do.
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Lining Up for Your Customers (contd)

About the Author
David Alston is VP Marketing and Community at Radian6,
social media monitoring, measurement and engagement
solution for PR, marketing and customer support
professionals. Davids focus at Radian6 is building the
firms brand internationally through the use of social
media monitoring, community outreach and engagement.
David has also become a featured speaker and panelist
at a number of new marketing, online community and
social media events as a guide to how brands should be
answering the social phone. David is @davidalston on
Twitter and blogs at http://communityinstinct.com.
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Improving Customer Experience

by Filling in the Gaps
Ellen Filipiak | SVP Customer Care at DIRECTV
The more things change, the more they stay
the same doesnt seem to apply anymore.
Sure, customers still want to be valued. They want great
service at a fair price. And, they want their service
experience to be handled effectively, quickly, and by
knowledgeable employees. If you look at it that way, it
seems like things have stayed the same. But the world is
changingand rapidly.
In our socially empowered world, customers have
more information, choice and control than ever
before. At DIRECTV, we recognize these changes
and are continually adapting to ensure we engage
our customers in ways that build long lasting
relationships. We look at each interaction we have
with our customers as an opportunity to listen, learn
and improve the products and services we provide.
When I became the leader of Customer Care in 2007, my
first priorities were to talk with both our customers and
our employees, so we could determine what was working
and what wasntand where we could fill in the gaps
to meet customer expectations. This priority is constant
because needs and expectations change over time, as do
the channels in which customers want to interact with us.
So, what have we done differently in this new world?

First, as contrary as it may sound, we went back to the
basics. Most of our interactions are still over the phone
with customer service representatives. We ensure that
we have hired the right people and that they have the
training and tools they need to resolve a customers
question or concern the first time. We also have made sure
that our representatives are there when a customer wants
to speak with us. Its basic, but we know and respect the
value of our customers time and know they want to reach
us quickly. We make that happen.
Customers also want to be able to help themselves, at
their convenience. We enable that as well. For example,
customers can communicate with us via email. In
addition, we recently launched AnswerCenter on directv.
com. This is a service destination that customers can visit
to get answers to the most commonly asked questions,
anytime. Do you want to know how to program that new
remote control? Understand the benefits of having a
phone line or broadband connection? The AnswerCenter
has the answers. Over the next year, we will be adding
even more content to this site, making it even easier for
our customers to interact with us.
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Improving Customer Experience (contd)

And, of course customers receive email from us, which
enables us to send service support links in addition to
marketing materials that meet a customers unique profile.
In addition, as we know, social media is, well, social.
For several years at DIRECTV, we have established on-line
Forums, where DIRECTV users help each other. There are
more than a dozen forums, where communities of users:
Work together on to solve complicated, non-standard
technical troubleshooting, on the Technical Forum
8 volunteer customers provide approximately 28%
of the responses
Find a game or sporting event on the Sports Forum
Share input on new products and services
Heres one example of what happens on these on-line
communities and how we react:
On the opening night of College Football in 2009,
DIRECTV noted chatter about the loss of a popular
sports channel. Within two to three minutes of noting
this, our Care organization notified our broadcast
team who went into immediate channel recovery
mode. We were able to respond on the forums and
other on-line means as well as notify our customer
care representatives of the issue and resolution, in
case we received calls.
We also look to these communities for feedback on a

variety of issues, including recommendations on product
enhancements. Some of the power users within these
communities become our testers of new products
before commercial rollout. Their feedback is invaluable
in ensuring that not only the product itself is ready,
but the service we put behind it is also tested. And, our
products themselves recognize that customers are socially
empoweredDVR scheduler, IPhone Apps, Sunday Ticket
on your mobile device. In short, we do a lot to engage
our customers and have them be active partners with us.
We also learn a lot from our customers who engage in
other forms of social media, such as blogs, Twitter, and
more recently, Facebook. Our on-line monitoring team
keeps a close eye on certain blogs and recognizes Twitter
as the CNN of our brand, providing breaking news
about our service. Recently, we identified a high profile
athlete with a 1M+ following who had a problem with the
DIRECTV service. We were able to privately contact this
customer and solve their specific issue within hours of
the original post, satisfying our customer and stopping
a potential PR headache.
Through our on-line monitoring tools we are able to track
favorable and unfavorable customer sentiment about
DIRECTVs products and services. On a weekly basis, we
monitor sentiment compared to our competition and
specifically correlate business and/or market issues and
the resulting impact on customer sentiment relating to
DIRECTVand react accordingly.
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Improving Customer Experience (contd)

DIRECTV is excited to be engaging our customers via
social media channels. We plan on continuing and
expanding our involvement. After all, where our customers
are is where we need to be. By being there and working
with them in real time, we believe we can continue to
enhance our relationship with our customers.
About the Author
Ellen Filipak is the Senior Vice President of Customer
Service for DIRECTV, overseeing all customer service
operations, including all in-house and outsourced call
centers. Filipiak, who joined DIRECTVs customer care
operations center in Denver in April 2007, joined the
company with 25 years of experience in the cable and
telecommunications industry and was most recently
senior vice president of Customer Care and IT for Adelphia
Communications. Filipiak has also held executive level
positions at AT&T Broadband in Florida, where she had
overall responsibility for a 1 million customer region;
MediaOne, where she oversaw the cable companys Atlanta
region operations; and Continental Cablevision, as a vice
president and district manager with responsibility for
operations in south Florida.
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Making Leaders Successful Every Day

Dr. Natalie L. Petouhoff | CRM, Customer Experience,
Customer Service, and Social Media, Forrester Research
When people find this book a hundred years from now, its
insights may well be considered common sense, obvious or
trivial. But today, what businesses are discovering is that
there is something extraordinary happening. Something
non-trivialsomething that is transforming how business
is done, how companies are differentiating themselves,
and which of them will thrive.
At the same time, Im amazed at the arrogance businesses
continue to dwell in. Instead of practicing self-reflection,
many business leaders take the easy way out and keep
repeating the mantra: Do more with less. That makes
no real sense. It is a paradigm that came from hoping
that technology would automate business. And
technology has automated business, but to keep doing
the same thing and expecting different resultthat is
the definition of insanity.
Think back to the Model T. The transition Henry Ford
made by going from building individual cars to the
assembly line dramatically changed auto production and
profitability. Technology automated the business. The
point of this analogy? It is possible to do more with
lessbut only to a point. And when we push businesses
beyond that point, doing more with less is crippling.
There are diminishing returns. Today, we see the effects
of that in our auto industry. We see an industry that has
gone past the efficiency breaking point to a place no
business wants to be.
What can Customer Service professionals learn from

this example? First, is the need to reflect on their
responsibility to their customers and to business in
general. Too many Customer Service professionals have
found themselves trapped between angry customers and
unconscious executives. Customers are angry because they
cant get help. Executives are unconscious because the
Do more with less mantra has allowed them to remain
in a fiscally irresponsible mindset with no accountability.
They are either in a fog or in denial about how pissed
customers really are. And when customers go beyond
pissed, they are lost forever.
The result is this: customers have taken charge. This
was predicted by the guys who wrote The Cluetrain
Manifesto. They said there would be a day when
customers would vote with their feet, their opinions
and their influence. They said customers would be
empowered and enabled to do this with an ensuing
technology. That technology is Web 2.0.
What does that term mean? It means that customers can
virally communicate with one another, quickly and easily,
influencing millions within seconds. Fueled by a fire in
the belly, stoked with frustration, disappointment and
disdain, the customer fire is spreading rapidly.
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Making Leaders Successful Every Day (contd)

The second thing Customer Service professionals can do
is get real and acknowledge not only what they already
know to be true, but to see an opportunity few ever have
in their careersone that has descended upon them. That
opportunity is to change how business gets down from
the top down and from the bottom up.
When one stands back and looks at what is happening,
it all comes into focus. Customers now have the ability to
get help from other customers or super-users of products.
They become loyal not to the product or the company, but
to the network that supports them. Customers have the
ability to review posts, comments and opinions in dozens
of places from Facebook, to Twitter, to MySpace to
YouTube to LinkedIn to e-reviews sites to blogs.
These comments are a permanent record of what
customers think about your company. Cant take them
down, delete them or destroy them. And you cant
pretend any longer that they dont exist. They do.
And the viral nature of how the information spreads
will put some companies out of business. Companies
shouldnt get sidetracked on the channels in social
media, but rather focus on the consequences of it.
The third thing Customer Service Professionals can do
is to step out of their position-less stance and take
charge. What do I mean by this? Lead the social customer
interaction initiatives in your company. What occurred to
me as I interviewed hundreds of people on this topic
is that when Customer Service takes charge of the social

customer, they not only transform Customer Service, but
the insights and information they learn from interacting
with the social customer allows them to take that missioncritical information to the CxO level. That data not only
surprises CxOs, but puts Customer Service in the driver
seat. The CxO reaction is: fix this and fix it now. And since
Customer Service brought them the data, they are put in
charge of transforming the whole businessleading all
other departments down the path.
Never before have Customer Service professionals
been in a position to be directly seen and heard by
their customers and the CxOs. Sure, PR, marketing and
advertising were early frontrunners in social customer
interactions. But their results were very shortsighted
and siloed. They listened to the social customer
to hone their marketing campaign messages. But
they didnt bring the data back to customer service,
product development, engineering, manufacturing or
salesor position themselves to transform business
as usual. Their single-minded, self-serving focus was
important to one part of the businesstheir part.
What we are seeing now is that unhappy customers are
sharing their thoughts virally with millionsdriving away
revenue from companies that act as if they dont care
when customers are unhappy. The point? Just honing
marketing messages is not enough. Customers want and
need more.
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Making Leaders Successful Every Day (contd)

In interviewing hundreds of people on this topic, what
I witnessed is that when customer service professionals
lead the interaction with customers, they realize that
the information they discovered in social customer
interactions must be delivered back into the business.
There was no other way to make customers happy,
satisfied or loyal. They knew what customers were saying
was that real change is needed.
What Customer Service Professionals did was different
than any other position that has interacted with the
social customer. They started taking responsibility
for customers needs and wants and stepping up to
the plate to deliver it to the CxO level. Often times,
in doing this, they put themselves and their career
on the line. Youll often hear me refer to them as the
brave souls. They are brave because they didnt
let the paradigms of do more with less stop them.
They did not let the Rodney Dangerfield effect (we
just dont get enough respect) stop them. In their
hearts, minds and souls was a resurgence fueled by
knowing all along the RIGHT thing to do. They were
empowered by the realization that an angry customer
post is really a passionate customer who cares enough
to help a company do what they do better.
About the Author

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff is a leading expert on social
business and CRM-Customer Service. Her research focuses
on the use of combining social media and traditional
customer-facing initiatives to extend brand awareness,
develop deep and meaningful relationships with potential
and current customers as well as provide companies with
a return on their investments in applications. Dr. Natalie
is often asked to provide her unique point of view on TV
(ABC, CBS and NBC) and national radio segments, as an
international speaker and as the author of four business
books and social business research and white papers. Her
thought leadership in social business is often quoted by
organizations like BusinessWeek, Fast Company and The
New York Times. She is an active participate in the Twitter
Hash Tag Group #SCRM.
The only question left now isare you one of the brave
souls who will make the difference? Or will you do
business as usual?
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Serving The Social Customer

Frank Eliason | Senior Director in National Customer Operations at Comcast
This e-book is designed to help you get ready for the social
customer, but as Customer Service professionals you already
have the skills critical to social media success. I am a
Customer Service guy at Comcast who has been involved in
social media for the past few years. I have learned a lot,
but the most important thing is that this space is already
built into the Customer Service DNA. It is just another
communications channellike the phone, email or chat
except that is owned and operated by customers.
Back in 1997, I worked as a Customer Service representative
for the Vanguard Group of Investment Companies,
a mutual fund firm in Malvern, PA. While I was there,
I made a habit of reading a section of Morningstar.com
called Vanguard Diehards, or the Bogleheads as they were
affectionately known. The name came from the founder
of Vanguard, John Bogle. Each day I would read entries,
which helped me understand the needs of my customers
and, in many cases, gave me solutions to problems.
My point is that the first key to success, just as in a
call, is to listen to what your customers are saying.
Of course, to do this you have to go where your
Customers are. There are probably many employees
who know these spaces well, so ask around. The
Internet offers many free tools to locate this
information. You can start with Twitter Search,
Facebook Search, or Google Blogsearch. Then, you can
graduate to more sophisticated tools like Radian 6 or
Nielsen Buzz Metrics.
Many will tell you the next step is engagement, but first
is taking action based on what you hear. As you listen
to these stories, are you learning things that would be
useful for improving your operation? If so, utilizing the
information for improvement is the next logical step.
As a Customer Service professional, it is really hard to just
listen without offering assistance. This is where you enter
into engagement, the next level of Social CRM.
Blogs, You Tube, Live Journal, Facebook pages, etc.
(not status updates) These spaces, and others like
them, are customers stories of things that have already
happened. Great way to learn from customersbe it the
good, the bad or the ugly.
Technical Forums (for Comcast these would include
our help forums, Broadband Reports, AVS Forums,
High Def Forums and many others) These are spaces
that can help enhance existing knowledge databases
for Customer Service since they often discuss highly
technical issues and find resolutions. The resolution
can be added to internal resources for Customer Service
representatives to be used for other Customer. There are
other issues that can only be fixed by the company but
in many cases the Customer turned to the forum first.
We can then offer assistance where they already are,
bypassing the need to call.
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Serving the Social Customer (contd)

Twitter, Facebook status updates (when made
public) and other microblogs These are great spaces
to learn things before any other means of communication.
On Twitter people are answering Whats Happening?
The answer may be I am calling XYZ company because
So now you know the reason for the call before
they even connect to an agent. This information in a
centralized space can add tremendous value because
you can know a lot before its identified through calls
or other forms of contact. This can save companies
tremendous money and provide great cost savings
leading to a better experience.
The most important aspect of social media is community.
The community defines the way you interact in the space.
For example, forums and other similar places are about
peer helping peer, so when we offer help we usually
do it through private messaging available to members
of the forum. Our goal is to not take away from those
in the space helping customers on their own time. We
value their help and dont want to discourage it. When a
customer blogs, we have found that calling themif we
can identify themis a highly effective way to help. With
Twitter, we have found responding with a simple message
of Can I help? is the best way to engage customers.
This simple message puts the ball in their court, and
if they want help they will let you know.
Again, the basics of Customer Service are invaluable

in this space. One that I learned early on is
personalization. We would never answer a call with
XYZ company, what do you want? We identify
ourselves. That is why my team members each have
their own Twitter ID and can personalize it as they
see fit. It is their online cubicle!
I am often asked how we obtain permission from the
legal department to engage customers in the space.
My first question for the legal folks is do they listen to
every phone call, review every email, or participate in
every chat session? Social media is no different from
these other spaces. It is communication with a customer.
Social media may seem like a scary world, but it is the
same world in which Customer Service professionals
have been assisting customers for years. The difference
between social media and the phone is the customer has
the control of what is being said about your brand or
products. And anyone can search what is said, including
customers or senior leaders. We can turn this to a benefit
by understanding the business intelligence it offers,
participating in the conversation, and considering the
customer part of the solution.
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Serving the Social Customer (contd)

About the Author
Frank Eliason is Senior Director in National Customer
Operations at Comcast, where he works to create the right
experience for Comcast customers by operating within
various digital media channels to measure, understand
and assist themredefining customer service in the
process. Frank may be best known as @ComcastCares
on Twitter, one handle he uses to interact with Comcast
customers. Frank has a background in current and former
roles in working to use new technologies to assist
organizations in improving processes and tools
to ensure first contact resolution and improved
customer satisfaction.
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Yes, You Can Sell That Here

Kevin Ryan | Vice President, Social Media at Barnes & Noble.com, Content
Theres a thread running through community circles that
suggests you cant monetize your social activities in the
traditional sense. The ROI, its said, should be measured
in diverted costs and the knowledge you gain through
customer engagement.
By and large, thats still true. But smart community
folks can also drive sales through their social efforts,
sometimes in measurable ways. Dell is probably the best
example, with $6.5 million in worldwide revenue through
its Twitter accounts. But others are making headway, too.
At Barnes & Noble, we created opportunities for
user-generated commerce by adding a product searchand-buy feature to the message editor in our online
community. The B&N Book Clubsmessage boards
run on the Lithium Technologies platformwere
a discussion space for readers and writers. We had
dozens of conversations taking place on a range of
literary topics.
We learned early on that the participants (in addition
to being good customers in their own right) were good
social sellers. They spent considerable time making book
recommendations to other users (and linking to the
product pages on our site in the process). The mechanism
for this linking was kind of clunky: users had to leave the
forum, search the site, and copy a URL into the message
editor in order to make their links.
In late 2008, we added an add product widget to

the message editor that allowed users to search, link
and buy without ever leaving the community. Posters
who wanted to make a book recommendation simply
hit the add product button on the editor, entered
their search terms and selected the book or books
they wanted to add to their message.
People reading the boards now had a nice visual
representation of the recommended titles. And because
they were part of the contributors content, the product
placement was appropriate for the discussion. And when
readers moused over the image, they saw our standard
product details popup, and could add the item to their
cart right from the message.
With little fanfare, we turned user-generated content
into user-generated commerce, and encouraged customer
merchandising that was contextually appropriate and
useful to the community.
Barnes & Noble doesnt disclose usage of or sales through
the widget. But you can see that its in use across the
community in nearly any message containing a book
image. And you can see that users miss the feature when
its (sometimes) not there.
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Yes, You Can Sell That Here (contd)

I always thought the widget was the perfect
complement to our book club discussions. And I think
a similar tool would bring value to the community
on any e-commerce site, or to any forum where a
product (digital or otherwise) might be a solution
to a user question.
In our case, where the recommendations were personal,
any participant could use the tool. But its not hard to
imagine a situation where the commerce recommendation
would be available only to super-users or to members of
the moderation team.
But either way, its evidence that you can mix commerce
with communityprovided its appropriate for the discussion
and it doesnt get in the way.
About the Author

Kevin S. Ryan is a digital media and social commerce
strategist focused on helping brands navigate the
changing social landscape in search of customer
engagement, loyalty and sales. Kevin ran content and
digital community programs at Barnes & Noble.com
for nearly a decade, turning user-generated content
into user-inspired commerce. He believes social media
tools are fundamentally altering the balance between
companies and consumers, and has experience managing
that change. Kevin began his career as a journalist, and
worked as an editor at New York Newsday and The New
York Times before entering the digital space more than
a dozen years ago. Kevin blogs at KevinSRyan.com, and
communicates on Twitter @KevinSRyan.
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Is Your Customer Service Rep

More Influential Than Your CEO?
Mark Simmons | Senior Director of Marketing and Customer Support, Six Apart
Many might answer yes to question posed in the title
of this article, given the power consumers have amassed
in this era of consumer-generated content. Why? Because
Customer Service Reps have regular, one-on-one contact
with the people who most influence a companys success:
its customers. And customers influence prospective
customers. The ripple effect of customer influence can be
wide and lasting.
While CEOs have access to influential media outlets,
customers have access to arguably more influential
social media outlets, where their voices can sound and
reverberate throughout the social universe. Customer
service repsanyone in a company interacting with
customers for that matterare on the front line
responding to those reverberations. How they respond
can influence how a company and its product are
perceived for a very long time.
Whats a CEO to do? She can start by making sure her
organization is aligned to encourage customer feedback.
That means providing an environment where customers
can get fast answers to questions, provide feedback on
their experiences, and have the confidence that
they will be heard. It also means channeling customer
feedback to the right groups within the organization,
and incorporating it into future product or service plans.
How can a company pull off such alignment? By

committing to communicate with customers and prospects
directly and authentically. Blogs were among the first
online tools used by companies to elicit conversational
feedback and respond directly to customers, and they
remain a powerful tooloften in combination with
Twitter and Facebookto deliver information quickly and
efficiently. With thoughtful rules of engagement, blogs
can foster community and encourage deeper relationships
between a company and its customers than, say, a call
center can.
Take Comcast, for example. In 2009, the company
took aggressive steps to improve its customer service
reputation by interacting directly with customers. They
got active on Twitter and established a blog, Comcast
Voices (link: http://blog.comcast.com/), which explicitly
stated that the entire company was aligned to respond
quickly to customers. Heres the video that lays out their
plans for the blog.
Wells Fargo is another example of a company positioned
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Customer Service Rep (contd)

to communicate openly with customers and prospects. In
2009, anticipating that Wachovia customers would have
questions and concerns about the Wells-Wachovia merger,
CEO John Stumpf launched the Wells Fargo Wachovia blog
to address customer concerns. One year and hundreds of
posts later, there are still some very helpful conversations
going on, like this one: http://blog.wellsfargo.com/
wachovia/2009/12/the_mailbag_your_deposit_accou.html.
One thing weve learned at Six Apart as weve helped
companies set up blogs over the years is this: online
conversations last forever. A good or bad experience is
likely to ripple throughout the social web, ricocheting
from one social network to another, and leaving a distinct
and lasting impression about a product, service or brand.
And thats why your customer service rep is potentially
more influential than your CEO. While people may forget
the CEOs sound bites, theyll definitely remember their
interactionsor those of someone in their network
with customer servicebecause those interactions
are personal. If your customer service reps are closely
monitoring online conversations, and replying quickly
and honestly, even if that means saying: I dont know,
but Ill find out, it makes a difference. A huge one.
You can tell your CEO I said so.
Mark Simmons is Senior Director of Marketing and

Customer Support at Six Apart, where he is responsible
for corporate marketing and customer satisfaction.
His primary focus is to help bloggers become successful.
Marks past career includes roles in online marketing
and web site development for a number of small
businesses, responsibility for web technologies for
Fidelity Investments, and a position at the head of
the online and direct sales business for Design Within
Reach. Mark graduated from Kenyon College with
a bachelors degree in Philosophy and Political Science.
About the Author
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The Dollars and Sense of Social Media

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.
Customer interaction via social media
increases customer valuewhich is profitable
for company and customer alike.
A colleague of ours was angry about the way Orbitz
handled a service issue, so she tweeted about it. She
also sent a complaint via the companys website customer
support page. Orbitz responded to her Twitter posts via
email, and resolved the issue. But in response to our
friends email sent via the contact us form on the
website, the company only sent a generic were reviewing
your inquiry email.
This is just one of the many examples of customer
interaction via social channels benefiting customers.
The question is, does it benefit the company, as well?
It does, and here are a few examples:
Barnes & Nobles retail sales of specific books
increase when customers discuss those books in
its online community.
User-generated content on Hewlett-Packards online
community site helps improve the companys search
engine optimization. In one case, HP went from not
appearing at all on the first results page of a specific
keyword search to dominating that first page.
Candy bar Wispa (a product of Cadbury Schweppes)

was given a second chance thanks to Facebook groups
reminiscing about the chocolate sweet. About 14,000
customers banded together and collectively demanded
that their nostalgia be return to store shelves.
Tibcos customer community enables customers to help
each other solve technical issues (thats what crowd
service is). Every time that happens, a customer gets
the help he needs but the company saves about $1,000
on a support call. The savings gained more than covers
the cost of hosting an online community. We can show
tangible value from our social media strategy, says Ram
Menon, executive vice president, worldwide marketing,
for Tibco Software.
According to a 1to1 Media study on marketing spending,
respondent companies increased their 2009 spending on
reaching customers in new ways:
69% increased spending on social media
68% increased spending on email
50% increased spending on search
The hard-dollar benefits include:
Increased buzz around a brand, product, or service
online. Not only increases awareness, but also has the
potential to increase sales across channels.
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The Dollars and Sense of Social Media (contd)

Improved search results from customer conversations
about an organization and its products that happen
on a companys online community, blog, customer
forum, and the like. Potentially drives more traffic
to a companys website.
More influence from customer recommendations
given on social networks and in online communities
than referrals in the offline world. Can lead to more
deal closingsin some cases with less selling required
by the company.
Deeper insight into customers uncensored
preferences, needs, and behaviors is invaluable.
Potentially leads to improvements in such areas as
service delivery, product features, and pricing. Also
can lead to better customer experience, increased
sales, and greater customer engagement.
Customers helping other customers online. Crowd
service can reduce costs to serve by deflecting calls
and emails from the contact center, and may result
in better service results for customers as well.
strategy to get you there that includes measurable results.

As Barnes & Noble, Hewlett-Packard, and Tibco can attest,
its a journey worth taking.
About the Authors
Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., are founding
partners of management consulting firm Peppers & Rogers
Group, recognized as the worlds leading authority on
customer-based business strategy. Business 2.0 named
them among the most important business gurus of our
time. They were jointly named Direct Marketer of the Year
by DM Days New York.
Peppers and Rogers have coauthored eight books. The
One to One Future was named by Inc. magazine as one
of the two or three most important business books of all
time, and is considered by many as the bible of the CRM
revolution. Their newest book, Rules to Break and Law to
Follow, advances the concept of the customer base as a
revenue-producing asset for businesses, capable of driving
a companys long-term economic worth. They blog at
Strategy Speaks and at Think Customers.
Although some executives are still searching for the best

way to measure the ROI of social CRM, the bottom-line
benefits are clear. That doesnt mean its easy. Start with
the end in mind: determine your ultimate goal or set of
objective for social media interactions. Then create a
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Customer Communities:
Revolutionizing Customer Engagement
Sanjay Dholakia | Chief Marketing Officer, Lithium
Social CRM: Reacting to the New Social Customer
If the current economy has taught businesses anything,
its that we all need to be more proactive in building
stronger and deeper customer relationships. However, the
explosion of social media has forever changed the way
companies and customers interact. For every interaction
that occurs directly between the company and a customer
or prospect, there are hundreds or thousands more that
are happening among customers and prospects. Customers
now drive the conversation.
This shift in the conversation has shaped a social
revolution that offers a great opportunity for
companies. Customer communities have created a
breakthrough in customer relationship management
Social CRM by putting companies squarely in the
middle of those interactions. And, not only are
communities putting companies in the middle of
those conversations, but they are now unlocking
millions of dollars in untapped value.
The New Customer Service
Imagine that the support line rings in the contact center
of a wireless carrier, and the customer has a problem with
her smartphone. Does the problem lie with the phone, the
network, the software, or some combination of all three? It
is typically not possible to train contact center agents in
all of the complexities of contemporary consumer products.
Organizations such as AT&T, Best Buy, HP, and

Research In Motion Limited (RIM) have therefore
turned to online customer communities for peer-topeer supportwith outstanding results. By letting
the people with the most relevant knowledge and
experiencecustomersanswer key questions,
companies are transforming the customer experience
and their bottom line.
Linksys by Cisco, for example, reports that at least
120,000 calls per month are deflected from their call center
by their peer-to-peer support community. This reflects
millions in hard dollar savings for the company. In April
2009, the New York Times published a story about how
Verizon was engaging customers in peer-to-peer support
entitled, Customer Service: Ask a Volunteer. In a recent
Webcast, entitled The New Customer Service Imperative:
Driving ROI with Peer-to-Peer Social Networks, HP
described how their customer community answered two
million questions in the first year and drove up positive
sentiment by 300%.
Customers answer questions for each other, not only
saving the company money, but also creating a more
positive customer experience, as questions often get
resolved more quickly and efficiently. Sage Software,
for instance, has seen their community drive a 20
point increase in their NPS (Net Promoter Score).
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Customer Communities (contd)

In 2010, increasingly, organizations are seeking to
leverage the uniquely valuable content from communities
in the contact center as well. Two processes have emerged
to improve contact center and customer support efficiency
through crowd-sourced tribal knowledge: communitysourced content and community-maintained content.
With effective governance processes in place, community
members can codify the most important knowledge
from online forums or other conversations into discrete
articles, for the benefit of internal agents as well as
the customer community. One of the most compelling
transformations here is speedcustomer communities can
identify, solve, and sort issues faster than companies can
typically create solutions themselves. For emergent issues,
each day saved may mean thousands of dollars. During
product launches, the success or failure of the launch may
hang in the balance. Another key transformation is scope:
customers often identify issues that even the products
designers did not anticipate. The volume of available
product documentation thus increases, at an astoundingly
low cost.
Where effective content already exists, organizations
can empower community members to update or augment
it, even if it originates in a traditional knowledge base.
A key benefit for organizations is yet another dramatic
cost reduction. The costs of maintaining/updating an
internal knowledge base are substantialall the more
so as products age and updates are no longer possible.

Companies gain efficiencies by engaging customer
advocates in the process.
Furthermore, customer communities can increase
the asset value of company content. A traditional
knowledge base article begins to lose value the
moment it is published because it is instantly
outdated. Customer advocates can actually increase
the value of the article over time by augmenting it
with updated information.
Customer Advocates are the Engine
So, can any customer community deliver these
transformational benefits to customers and companies?
No. A pre-requisite is a vibrant and healthy customer
community. Too often, companies believe that any
technology will suffice. And, worse, they believe that
just turning it on will deliver the return. A vibrant and
healthy community depends on super-users
a special breed of customer that is the lifeblood of
customer communities. Studies have shownand Harvard
researchers have just confirmed it with Twitterthat
1 to 10% of a social networks users create 50% or more
of the content. It is this content that draws in the other
90% of the customers. Without those super-users
the other 90% never come.
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In 2010, as companies seek to identify, attract,
and nurture super-users, customer communities will
rely more on reputation management systems to
drive vibrancy and success. In the AT&T community,
for instance, the top-ranked super-user has posted
over 45,000 messages. Why does that person do it?
Because reputation matters.
Customer Service is the New Marketing
Its no accident that marketing organizations are
assuming responsibility for online communities that have
traditionally been oriented around service and support.
Great supportespecially public, peer-to-peer support
is great marketing.
Companies are increasingly finding that, in addition to
transforming the customer service experience, customer
communities are transforming the innovation and product
development process. As a collective, customers know
as much or more about product usage than the company
itself. Often, they have terrific ideas for improvements,
new capabilities, and compatibility. Business leaders
can use social media to harness this knowledge, move
new products to market faster, and drive millions in
new revenues. For example, Intels ideation community,
Connect This!, generated hundreds of new product ideas
for embedded devices in just 30 days.
And, even beyond customer service and innovation,
companies are realizing the power of customer
communities for selling. Retailers like Barnes & Noble

and Future Shop are using community now not only
for customer support, but also to enhance e-commerce
experiences by letting customers discuss products with
each other during the purchase and search process.
FICO experienced a dramatic customer service impact
from the success of their customer communitiescall
volume to the call centers went down after going up
by over 20% in the previous yearsall while business
volumes were increasing. But, even more compelling
in many ways was that the average spending of a
customer jumped 66% after joining the community!
In 2010, customer communities are going mainstream
across all industry verticals as organizations as varied
as Caterpillar, Best Buy, and the United States Small
Business Administration have already discovered the
transformative impact on the customer experience in
their own communities.
Companies have no more effective promoters than their
most enthusiastic customers. And marketers have no
better allies in word-of-mouth promotion than customers
who have proven their ability to influence others. Theres
only one catch. In exchange for amplified word-of-mouth
marketing and increased sales, marketers must abandon
absolute message discipline and endure the occasional
slings and arrows of empowered customers. Our prediction
for 2010 and beyond: it will be worth it.
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About the Author
Sanjay Dholakia is Chief Marketing Officer for Lithium,
responsible for driving Lithiums vision, go-to-market
strategy, and customer acquisition programs. He
joins Lithium from SumTotal Systems, where he was
instrumental in advancing the companys market
leadership in the learning and talent management
industries. He served most recently as Senior Vice
President and General Manager, of SumTotals Learning
and Talent Management Business Unit. Previously,
Sanjay served as Director of Business Development and
acting COO for a portfolio company within Walker Digital.
Sanjay also served as a consultant at McKinsey & Company
and Andersen Consulting, advising Global 500 companies
from a broad range of industries. Sanjay holds a B. S.
from the Wharton School and an MBA from the Kellogg
School of Management.
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Customer Service
In The Once-In-A-Lifetime World
Scott Rogers | Director of Strategic Planning, Davids Bridal
We are a retailer, but our resemblance to other retailers
ends there. Our CEO is fond of saying, It looks like a duck
and sounds like a duck, but it aint a duck. Heres why:
Our Customer:
A person who has dreamed of your product almost
her entire life, will wear it (hopefully) once and will
remember that day the rest of her life.
Or those looking for products for other once-in-alifetime eventscommunion, prom, graduation,
bridesmaid, mother of the bride/groom, etc.
Our Industry:
No such thing as an impulse purchase
(true destination shopping)
Primarily mom-and-pop (less than 5% of stores
are chains)
Self-serve does not exist, because first, bridal gowns
are big, heavy, and brides need help and second, its a
sample businessstores carry one or two sizes to try
on, customer puts down 50% with order, waits three
to nine months for dress to be made, and pays balance
on delivery
Despite the web, its still well over 90% a brick
and mortar business (the need to try it on is
strong, Obiwan)
99.99% supply chain efficiency is not good enough,
and, most important,
Word of mouth is the number one reason a bride decides

where to shop
Completing the it aint a duck picture, there are a few
things that Davids does differently that have additional
service implications specific to us:
The only one in the industry that is not by
appointment only, (a welcoming point for the
customer, but since she shops multiple stores, service
expectations can be challenging)
Carry all styles in all sizes in all stores (its great for
the customer, because she can now find out exactly
what style looks best on her, and more than 50% buy
something different from what they originally thought
they wanted. But it also means, since bridal sizes run
small, (though, why is beyond me), we are the go to
place to find out your size in the category), and
The only nationwide chain, with 308 stores in 49 states
(sorry, Wyoming) and Puerto Rico (with the result that
we get a disproportionate share of weddings where the
wedding party is scattered throughout the USboth a
CRM system and a supply chain challenge).
The journey from I will to I do, (averaging about a
year), is charged with emotionfrom joy to stress. The
CLV is word of mouth, and every interaction/experience
has significant impactin the short-term on whether she
continues to come back to shop, and in the long term on
what she tells her family and friends.
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Customer Service (contd)

Then along comes social, Web 2.0, whatever you call it.
Its word of mouth on steroids.
Recognizing there is a problem is the first step towards
solution. (Let me add we do not have a Contact Us link on
our website and our small home office customer service
department has not increased since we were about 0.1%
our current size). So, what are we doing?
I started monitoring in 2007, using Google Blog Search,
Technorati, etc. to quantify the discussion (category
volume over 5M last year). In 2008, I engaged a company
to formally monitor and report on CGM, bringing in
BPT Partners for a two-day seminar to educate senior
management and then spent the next nine months
working on strategies.
Although the economic downturn in late 2008 put
a serious damper on our plans for 2009, we have
managed to make some progress, especially in
customer service support:
For responding directly and/or forwarding to customer
service department for follow-up: (with one-part-time
person dedicated to this during office hours and two of
us, informally, daily including nights and weekends):
For responding, using dedicated customer

service staffing:
Contact Us functionality (e-commerce orders only,
launches Feb. 1)
Live chat (reactive service only)
For monitoring/listening and reporting/spreading
the VOC:
Radian 6 and just signed contract with Attensity
Foresight (VOC for website functionalities)
Internal bi-weekly newsletter
We know these are baby steps so far. Our CEO also likes
to say: It is more important that they like us than that
they buy from us. Now thats understanding the power
of word of mouth. My vision for Davids is helping to
fulfill dreams and create beautiful memoriesemphasis
on the helping. This entails listening and supporting her
wherever she decides to communicate. I truly believe
what James Barnes says in his book, Secrets of Customer
Relationship Managementthe number one driver of
customer satisfaction is how you make them feel.
Radian 6 for broad reach in CGM types

Davids Bridal Facebook Fan Page
Twitter (just begun) ie; Can we help?
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Customer Service (contd)

About the Author
Scott Rogers is Director of Strategic Planning for Davids
Bridal, the largest retailer of bridal apparel in the United
States. With over twenty-five years experience in specialty
retailing for some of the largest retail chains in the U.S.
in their respective categories (Fotomat, Payless Shoes,
Kay-Bee Toys, Western Auto and Davids Bridal), Scott
has spent the past fifteen years in consumer research and
CRM activities to improve the business, its relationships
with customers, and the Customer Experience. Scott
currently chairs a taskforce charged with improving the
customer-centric focus of the organization. He has spoken
at numerous CRM conferences around the world over the
past several years, and is the author of several articles on
www.customerthink.com about the subject. You can find
him on Twitter here.
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Mainstream Media and the Social Customer

Martin Murtland | Vice President & Managing Director, Dow Jones
The social media revolution has fundamentally changed
the way that buyers make purchasing decisions and,
thus, has altered the customer life cycle. At Dow Jones,
a 140-year old mainstream media publisher, we recognized
this early on and have embraced social media to extend
our reach. By encouraging employees to branch out as
thought leaders and engage with customers directly
in social networks at every step of the life cycle, were
strengthening our customer relationships and building
brand loyalty. A perfect example is Dow Jones employee
and avid blogger Daniela Barbosa. Through her direct
contact with customers, she was able to promote
an e-book she wrote on behalf of the company for a
highly targeted audience and successfully generate
over 11,000 views and 1,900 downloads.
It makes good business sense to be willing to listen
and learn from your customers. While social tools do
not replace existing methodologies for understanding
or engaging with customers, if used properly they can
enhance and open another direct channel from which
we can learn from customersat a lower cost. This is
critical to innovation, and innovation and customer
intimacy are critical to winning in the market place.
Engaging Social Media in the Customer Life Cycle
Awareness and Knowledge stages: Buyers now enter the
social media world to gather information from peers and
experts who actually use the products and services
being considered. In the process, they can get great

advice on what to buy, where to buy it and how much to
pay. We use a variety of social techniques to engage with
customers at each of these stages. Weve built a presence
on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook to share the expertise
of technologists, marketing and businesspeople. Perhaps
most compelling, our Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal
editors are active bloggers and Twitterers, providing
information to fill any gaps customers might have.
In fact, when our Financial Information Services team
released an additional supplement within its publication
for its private equity customers, the blogging efforts of
our editors generated over 500 downloads the first day
it was released.
Consideration and Selection stages: Listening to
customer conversations about our brand isnt new to us.
Weve followed and contributed to message board and
listserv conversations from the early days of the Internet.
But, weve come a long way from our philosophy that
only marketing and public relations can monitor and
comment in these feeds. Today, we believe everyone
needs to be engagedfrom product managers to
technologists to customer service. Our sales team actively
practices the art of social selling and has used tools such
as Dow Jones Companies & Executives and LinkedIn to
develop and nurture relationships and build far-reaching
online networks long before a sale is secured. Its just
good business.
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Mainstream Media and the Social Customer (contd)

Satisfaction: Like sales and marketing, customer service
has regularly monitored message boards to help customers
looking for the tips and tricks of using our products. And
theyve made use of our own products, Dow Jones Insight
and Dow Jones Factiva, to find customers who are looking
for help. In fact, our customers have done this as well.
For example, one customer used Dow Jones Insight to
track customer conversations about a local service outage.
Not only did it speed up repairs, their engagement in the
discussion helped quell customer outrage.
Advocacy and Loyalty: Our customers have always driven
our product development, but now they can share their
ideas and opinions with each other at our free website,
www.dowjonesideashare.com. All opinions are welcome
in this interactive community where customers can share
ideas, provide feedback, and speak directly with our
product development team so we can create features
and functionality that meet their needs and help them
be more productive. Users can also join the community
conversation on Twitter.
About the Author

Martin Murtland is Vice President, Managing Director
at Dow Jones for PR & Corporate Communications. He is
responsible for the commercial and strategic development
of Dow Jones services for the PR and Corporate
Communications market, focusing on ensuring that Dow
Jones creates communications success at every point
of the customer experience. Marting holds extensive
experience in running a business unit targeted at the
public relations and corporate communications segment
in the global online business information market. He was
responsible for the strategic development and commercial
success of Dow Joness media analysis and measurement
offering, Dow Jones Insight, and was previously in charge
of Factivas content and metadata strategy, a position
in which he expanded Factivas content capabilities to
include web news, blogs and message boards.
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A Conversation with Tish Whitcraft

SVP of Customer Experience & Operations, MySpace
Brent Leary: My next guest is Tish Whitcraft, SVP of
Customer Experience and Operations at MySpace.com.
Tish, thank you for joining me today.
Brent Leary: When you think about your customer base

the people that share information and communicate
what are some of the challenges that you face as a social
network when serving those customers?
Tish Whitcraft: Thanks for having me, Brent.

Brent Leary: If you could, talk a little bit about MySpace
and how you are reaching your audience.
Tish Whitcraft: Were really excited about the changes
that weve been making to our online user experience in
the area of support. Over the last twelve months its been
a transformational strategy to build what we want to be
the best user experience in the world. Its been pretty
exciting. Weve implemented all sorts of new technology
but, more importantly, were connecting with our users in
a way that we havent beforea way thats really starting
to leverage our network and their social graph, so users
can help each other.
Brent Leary: Theres a lot of publicity and media
attention around some of the other social networkscan
you share how many people are using MySpace?
Tish Whitcraft: Sure. We currently have well over 200
million users on MySpace. They are using us for all of their
connections with their friends and music. We provide a
lot of the content that makes up their day-to-day life and
were proud of that.
Tish Whitcraft: To back up for a minute, theres this

group of new school thinkers that know that the idea of
customer care and support is just one part of a successful
strategy that includes a web and social experience, along
with a traditional CRM or contact center experience.
There arent a lot of customer experience mavericks out
there, but the idea of customer care is now much more far
reaching then just support.
I joined MySpace because its a great transformational
story of a great brand and a leader in the social space
going and growing to the next level. I saw an opportunity
to build the best user help experience in the world.
This meant totally revamping how we think about
customer support. Making our online help experience
the cornerstone of our strategy instead of just the
ontact center.
Over the last twelve months, weve quickly changed the
face of help by implementing a new online help platform.
Weve been building out our customer experience team so
we not only create and maintain great online experiences,
we also connect the dots for the business by providing
actionable product feedback and identifying opportunities
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Tish Whitcraft (contd)

for new products and new functionality. We provide
a pulse of the customer back to the business leaders
end product.
Thats historically different from the traditional thinking
about customer care.
Brent Leary: Customer experiencewhat does that mean
to MySpace? And how do you go about improving the
customer experience?
Tish Whitcraft: For MySpace, the idea of customer
experience relates to help and support for our users.
It encompasses the basic contact channels that were
used to, like email. In our case, we dont provide much
in terms of phone support, because most of our users are
free users. But, it incorporates the traditional contact
center piece, so we have a repository to collect all of the
data and we can trend and analyze what our users are
looking for, in terms of support, issues, suggestions, etc.
Its making sure we deliver relevant content thats

updated, accurate and useful. If its not content,
its video. If its not video, its peer-to-peer, so they
can choose which way they want to interact with us
or other usersfor help.
The third part is the social piece. That is what we are
working on right now to roll out. That social piece takes
it to the next level, which is allowing our users to let the
world know that they are interacting and helping other
users and answering questions. With some of the new
stuff that we are going to be rolling out on the platform,
there is going to be a reward and recognition program
around that. So, based on the engagement of those users
in answering questions and rating content and helping
other users and allowing them to broadcast to their
friends, to the world, to other networksthey are going
to have the ability to influence what we do with the
content and what we do with that experience and help.
Pretty cool stuff.
The second part of it is really the web experience.

And thats not just throwing up some FAQs on a screen,
its creating a complete personalized interactive
experience for the user when they click on help
anywhere on the site.
Brent Leary: Yeah, I remember during your presentation,

you talked in particular about frequently asked questions
and you had a demonstration of what it looked like
and what it is now. What were the things that were
important for you to change? What impact did those
changes have on how your customers are experiencing
MySpace right now?
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Tish Whitcraft: I think its hard to compare having a
screen with a list of questions and answers to what we
have now, which is a fully interactive destination for their
help needs. Now, users can get answers and help any hour
of the day, any day of the week. They dont have to have
a person helping them. That is what we have tried to
deliver, a platform that allows them to do it when they
want, and how they want it.
It sounds simple, but it takes a whole team of folks just
to maintain all of that content, create new content and
develop our help videos. And to ensure that our search
engine and help stay tuned to deliver relevant results.
Thats a whole different way of thinking about the user
help experience. Its an important piece of what were
doing, so at the same time we are working to develop
expertise in managing and integrating all of these
platforms.
Brent Leary: So, you went through the process of
implementing a CRM solution that matches the strategy
of improving the web experience. What kind of results
have you seen so far?
Tish Whitcraft: Weve seen a double-digit reduction in
our email contacts coming in. Customers were able to
help themselves to find the information they wanted.
Normally, youd expect to see something in the 35%
range. Were well over 15-16%; recently weve topped
20%. Thats huge, but it came with a commitment from

the top down. It took resources and expertise and that
was all here. MySpace has always been a big believer in
creating great user experiences. So, it was an easy sell to
say, look we really need to focus in this area and we need
the resources to build out.
Those are the kinds of measurable results that I look for
because that shows the ROI in the investment. From a
user perspective though, we send out surveys to users
from which we get about an 89% response rate. Our
users indicate how much more easily they can resolve
their issues. Some have said, Wow, why didnt you have
this a year ago?
Brent Leary: You also mentioned another goal for the
customer experience improvement: lowering employee
turnover. What has the impact of this technology been
on your employee satisfaction level, in doing their job
as customer service people?
Tish Whitcraft: Brent, I would be remiss if I didnt
mention this again. At the end of the day, we are in the
people business. We have our users as customers and we
have our agents and our internal folks who support our
customers as customers. None of this was done without
their input and making sure that whatever we do makes
their life easier.
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Its been a great story because employees, just like
customers, usually dont come back to me and tell me
when things are great. They only let you know when they
have a problem. In the case of this new MyCare platform,
they have gone out of their way to let me and the rest
of my team know that This is great, Youve listened to
us, Youve made it easier for us to help our customers,
You made it easy for us to access information, we dont
have to have as many clicks and mouse points. That is
really where the rubber meets the road.
So far, were ecstatic with the results for our usersof
course. But were also ecstatic with the results we see
with our employeestheyre as happy as they can be with
this new system and 25% more productive because of it.
Brent Leary: You mentioned that you matched some of
theI dont know if incentives is the right wordbut
you wanted to match the improvement in customer
service to the individual rep so they are responsible for
making sure customers are feeling better about how they
interact with MySpace.
Tish Whitcraft: Absolutely. At the end of the day, when
you have to support as many users as we have, it takes
a lot of people. You have to figure out creative ways
to recognize individual contributions. These folks on
the front lines do the hard part of keeping users are
happy. Being able to connect the dots across all of these
platforms, using our MyCare CRM platform to do it, we are
able to recognize performance. We are also able to do it

as a platform for coaching, too. The reality is, the agents
are going to get more out of it because its easier for us
to see all the good things theyre doing. And I think it
will continue to build and improve overall morale and
culture for the business.
Brent Leary: oure about halfway through a four-phase
process in fully implementing this strategy?
Tish Whitcraft: We are through a little more than half.
Building an entirely new online help experience has
been our focus for the past six months. I have been
here a little over a year and still have more to do, but I
am so excited to rollout our next phase, which is cloud
monitoring and community. Beginning in December,
well have an integrated view of all of the MySpace
chatter on the social networks, coming right into our
MyCare customer CRM. We will be able to aggregate all
of that content into sites like MySpace, YouTube and
Facebook and actually surprise our customers by letting
them know we are out there looking for them to address
their questions, because the one meek customer is now
empowered with all of these fancy mass media tools to
expose companies that dont provide a customer-centric
experience. It is our job to go out there and find their
questions and issues, even if they dont communicate to
us directly on MySpace. Thats exciting. Well be one of
the first companies doing things that way.
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Brent Leary: When I was watching you present, I was
struck by one of the major social networks looking
towards CRM, customer relationship management, to help
grow their organization. Whats been the management
perspective on this whole process? Has it been as
expected or are they surprised at how things have
gone so far?
Tish Whitcraft: Everyone is really excited. When I joined
MySpace, right up front I laid out the expectation and the
strategy and thought around it, and everyone was
on board. That is probably the most important piece
of thisit wouldnt be successful if it werent for all
of that support.
Are we surprised at the results? Selfishly, I would like to
say no, its exactly what we planned. But I think everyone
is surprised at how quickly it has happened. Typically,
if you turn up a new platform and are looking for
efficiencyespecially in a CRM when you are migrating
from a Legacy system to a newer systemyou are looking
at several months before you start to see the numbers go
in the double-digit direction.
As an example, when we turned up our new help site back
in May/June, we saw our session and page views and help
triple in two weeks.
Brent Leary: Wow.
Tish Whitcraft: On the CRM side, as soon as we turned

up the MyCare platform and it was fully integrated with
that help site, within a month we saw our email contacts
start dropping. It was like 5% a week, then 10% a week.
It just shows the power of an integrated experience.
Brent Leary: Tish, where will you guys be a year from
now with this whole execution around this customer
experience upgrade?
Tish Whitcraft: Hopefully, we will be done. And I hope a
year from now that other companies will be looking at the
MySpace model as the best-in-breed user experience.
Brent Leary: What can MySpace users and community
members expect?
Tish Whitcraft: They can expect a more integrated
experience throughout the site. No matter what screen
they are on, help will pop up in a widget and they
will never have to leave where they are to get their
questions answered.
Brent Leary: Great. Well, I guess MySpace.com would be
a great place to learn more about this. Is there any place
else that you could point to learn about some of the
things that you are doing to make their experiences even
that much better?
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Tish Whitcraft: If you really want to know what we are
doing, go to our site. www.MySpace.com. Take a look
around, look at our products. Go down to the bottom and
take a look at our help area. And you can look up my
nameI have a profile. There is a part on there that says,
Talk to Tish. So send me your comments, I want to hear
from you.
Brent Leary: Tish, thanks once again for joining me today
and thanks to the folks at TheSocialCustomer.com for
making this segment possible. We are all interested
in understanding the social customer. After all, we are
all social customersso lets try to understand and help
each other.
Tish Whitcraft: Thanks Brent.
About the Author

Tish Whitcraft is SVP of Customer Experience and
Operations for MySpace and is responsible for delivering
a world-class user experience to the 250M+ MySpace
users. In her role, she is responsible for building
scalable global customer support, user experience and
satisfaction and driving the user feedback loop back to
the business. In addition, Tish is also responsible for all
the customer technology systems, CMS and MySpaces
online help platform. Prior to MySpace, Tish served as
Vice President of Global Customer Care and Experience for
Yahoo!, handling frontline operations responsibilities as
well as mergers and acquisition customer due diligence.
Tish is known throughout the technology industry as an
influencer and thought leader on customer experience,
product quality, global relevancy, and scalable operations.
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Dont Bother Wasting Money on Social Media

Until Your Organization Can Competently Handle
a Customer Phone Call or Email
John Burton | Director Product Management at SAP Labs
Readers of this eBook might be surprised to find out that,
although they and I have never met, I know quite a bit of
information about them. No, not Social Security numbers,
mothers maiden names, or ATM PINs (that would be weird
and possibly illegal). Rather, what I know is that you, as
readers of this eBook, are literate (duh, youre reading)
and computer savvy (or at least know your way around a
Kindle pretty well). I also know (or assume) that you are
as passionate as I am about improving customer service
and engaging more deeply with customers via online
social media channels. After all, if youre taking the time
to read this eBook, you probably have more than just a
casual interest in these topics. But, aside from that, what
else do I really know about you? Honestly, not much.
Yet, if you were one of the thousands of people who
I follow, link to, or friend online via social
networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook I
would have a surprising (perhaps even disturbing) amount
of information about even the most intimate details of
your life. I might know, for example, that you are the
midst of a torrid love-hate (but mostly hate) relationship
with your smart phone and in the market for a new one.
I might also know that you are thinking of leaving your
current cable or satellite television provider. Id also know
if youd recently started a new diet and exercise
regime. Id probably even know if your son or daughter

was accepted into a prestigious ballet, music, or fine
arts program in another state away from home. If I were
a marketer, Id be licking my lips and drooling over this
valuable demographic information. But as a customer
service professional, I probably would just roll my eyes or
shrug my shoulders. After all, how does any of this help
me figure out why the widget my company sold you
doesnt work anymore and smells like burnt toast?
Perhaps not suprisingly then, despite the growing adoption
of social media by businesses and corporations, many
companies today are still failing miserably at customer
service. Facebook and Google both recently incurred the
wrath of privacy advocates for delivering default user
settings that automatically index and publish private
user data to the Internet. And retailers Best Buy and
Abercrombie and Fitch continue to appear regularly as
villains in blogs and online communities due to accusations
of shoddy customer service and abusive return policies.
Customers are definitely not happy. Clearly, customer
service still has a long way to go to improve. The question
is whether social mediasocial networks and online
communitiescan do anything to help? The bad
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Dont Bother (contd)

news is that simply setting up a corporate Facebook
or Twitter account is likely not going to do much to
improve customer service. Yes, its true that more and
more customers are moving online and joining social
networks and online communities. And yes, there are
indeed real benefits that can be derived from engaging
with customers in social media channels. For example,
organizations can potentially lower support costs by
reducing the number of calls and emails into the contact
center; companies can better monitor and influence
(but not necessarily control) conversations about their
brand; and businesses can improve customer service
by integrating online forums and other social media
channels into their customer service processes (e.g.,
allowing contact center agents to search online forums for
resolutions to customer issues).
But social media is not a customer-service cure-all. If a
companys products or services suck (for lack of a more
technical term), monitoring Twitter and paying lip service
to customer complaints isnt going to fix the underlying
problems. The thing that organizations need to realize is
that, although engaging with customers via social media
channels can provide very real benefits, it is not going to
remove or for that matter even mask problems with an
organizations level of customer commitment, the quality
of actual products/services, or the efficacy of a companys
post-sales customer-service and support processes. If
somethings fundamentally broken, a little social-media
duct tape isnt going to provide a lasting solution.
Social media should be approached as one additional tool

in the companys complete customer service toolkit. We
should treat social media as we would treat any individual
tool. A glue gun for example, is great for small repairs
involving certain types of materials, but its not going to
fix every problem in our house or garage. Just because
we go out and buy a glue gun doesnt mean we can throw
out the rest of our toolbox; we still need those hammers,
screwdrivers, drills, and wrenches. Social media can
provide the finishing touches for an already finely-tuned,
smoothly-running customer service process, but it should
not be used as the starting point for an overhaul of a
broken-down, dysfunctional customer service operation.
Adding social media on top of dysfunctional processes
is like spending money a high-end paint job for an
automobile that doesnt run; it might look great sitting
on blocks in the front yard, but its not going to win
any races.
If a companys customer service operations are broken
or in need or repairs, its not even time to start thinking
about social media yet. Theres no point in pouring money
into hiring a dozen people to sit around monitoring
Twitter if the hundreds (or thousands) of agents in the
contact center are still struggling to consistently provide
decent first-call resolution rates. If the customer service
organization cant respond to customer email within an
acceptable time frame (such as 3 days), what are the
chances those agents will be able to magically
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Dont Bother (contd)

handle real-time customer tweets instantly (and in
140 characters or less)? Jumping into new social media
channels while your customer service organization is still
struggling with traditional channels is probably setting
yourselfand your customersup for failure.
Thats why the best advice, in regard to social media,
customer service, or anything else has always been
to master the basics before proceeding to the more
advanced topics. Dont worry: social media will still be
here next year (and even the year after). Take the time
to first address any serious issues or problems within
your customer service organization before pushing
ahead into social media. And if you really cant wait and
feel compelled to jump right into social media while
addressing revamping your customer service organization
in parallel, at least start small and stay focused. Choose
a particular channel whether it be Twitter, a discussion
forum, or an online user group and put enough
resources and effort behind it to make it work. Put in
the time. Engage with customers. Show people that
you are serious and that you plan to stick around for
the long term. If you respect your customersand the
communitythey will likely both respect you back.
And thats a pretty good start.
About the Author

John Burton works at SAP as a Director of Product
Management in the CRM organization. He is the author
of the SAP Press book title Maximizing Your SAP CRM
Interaction Center. John is also a regular contributor
to CRMExpertOnline.com, and is a featured blogger at
TheSocialCustomer.com.
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Your Tweet Is Important to Us

Emily Yellin
A few minutes ago, I noticed that @zappos had just
tweeted this:
Even though its low-tech, one of the best

forms of social media is the telephone.
(Thats why our 1-800 # is on every page.)
It reminded me of other worthy wisdom from Zappos CEO
Tony Hsieh, a darling among customer service innovators.
He was asked what advice he had for companies that
werent using social media for customer service at the
time, but wanted to start. He told them to make sure they
were taking good care of their customers through all their
other channels of communication first.
In the four years since I began reporting on the customer
service industry for my book, I have witnessed social
medias evolution into a powerful tool for connecting
customers and companies. I have applauded the way the
Internet and online connectivity have begun to level the
playing field, giving customers a platform from which
companies are more apt to hear their voices than ever
before. And I have seen social media feedback wake up
corporate giants to the often angry masses just outside
their gates in ways that focus groups and customer
satisfaction surveys never did.
Still, social media has not been a cure-all for what

ails many companies when it comes to customer
service. Companies that didnt treat their customers
well before they got on Twitter, wont magically learn
to relate well to them through social media.
In fact, a companys relationship with its customers is
only as good as its weakest link. And that weak link,
often, is the customer service call center. Because
traditionally customer service has been viewed in the
corporate world as a necessary evil. Born from the
receptionists duties, it was set up to deal with people
who bought products and had questions, or were unhappy.
The conventional wisdom said there was no profit in that.
So customer service had little status in corporate ranks,
and played no real role in shaping a companys future.
Happily, that kind of thinking is becoming obsolete.
The smartest and most successful C-level executives
Ive seen are recognizing the value, as intangible as
it may seem, of making sure their companys highest
volume of direct contact with their customers
customer serviceis aligned with all the other parts
of their companys image and reputation. Social media
has had a lot to do with starting to elevate the status
of customer service in corporate culture. But there is
still a ways to go.
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Your Tweet Is Important To Us (contd)

For so long, customer service was the first place that
many companies looked to cut and streamline. C-level
executives and their boards became disconnected from
the effects of all that short-term thinking, which in
turn short-changed their front lines. Lack of support
for customer service undermined otherwise wellmanaged company reputations in the process. Before
long, customers complained. Not much changed. Then
they blogged, posted on YouTube, and they tweeted.
Famous incidents like Dell hell, the recording of the
AOL cancellation death spiral, ComcastMustDie.com,
and the United Breaks Guitars viral videos all quickly
became cautionary tales about the new online power of
the mistreated customer. The noise could no longer be
ignored. Companies could no longer get away with bad
customer service. There was a new urgency in finding ways
of preventing such mishaps, and in responding well if
they happen.
Dell developed Idea Storm, which empowered
customers and gave the company valuable feedback
through crowdsourcing. Comcast called in Frank
Eliason. He and his team schooled the rest of
the world in using Twitter and other platforms to
interact with customers online for the good of all.
Online communities like GetSatisfaction.com and
PlanetFeedback.com aggregated customer complaints
and questions and set some rules of civility for online
interactions between companies and customers.
But problems linger. When I had a problem with frequent

flyer booking online at Delta Airlines the other day, fixing
it took me a total of five hours and 42 minutes during
four days of phone calls, including 53 minutes all together
on hold, and talking to eight different people. There
were promises made by Delta employees to call back that
were not kept. There were very good agents who saw the
problem but had no authority to help. There were tech
people who said all the problems were on my computer,
which numerous tries on other peoples computers proved
not to be true. Somewhere in there, while on hold, I
tweeted to the two official Delta twitterers (is that a
word?) I could find:
@DeltaAirLines Horrible problem with online skymiles
bookings. Tech support has no authority to help. Impasse.
Meanwhile cust is out of luck
@DeltaAirLines Systemic failure w/online Skymiles bking.
Nice phone agent sees prob, but has no author. to help.
Textbk v. bad cust. serv.
@DeltaBlog Systemic failure w/online Skymiles bking.
Phone agent sees prob, but has no author. to help. Textbk
v. bad cust. serv.
No one ever responded. Eventually, using all I had
learned about customer service, I spoke on the phone to
a supervisor who listened carefully to my whole sad story
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and then came up with a way to solve the problem on the
spot. He was the first Delta employee I encountered who
was empowered to say yes, and not no. And in the
end, that is what most customers want when we contact
customer service. We want yes.
After that encounter, I agreed to help the supervisor who
helped me, and I took the time to write up and email
him my whole encounter with Deltabased on my notes,
which included dates and times and who I spoke to on
each call. I can only hope that the initial problem with
their web site gets fixed, and that those charged with
helping customers when the website malfunctions are
truly given the authority to help. But customers shouldnt
have to work that hard. And most customers wont.
Theyll just walk away angry and they may tweet about
it. But even that didnt help in this situation. Only long,
unpaid hours on the phone on my own behalf got me
what I was sold.
Customers shouldnt have to have written a book about
customer service before they can get what marketing
and advertising and loyalty programs promised. And just
having an online presence is not enough, in the same way
that merely having call centers is not enough.
It takes commitment from the top, bottom and middle

of a company to make sure that call centers and
online customer service are the communication hubs
of the company, and that they work pro-actively and
reactively to have a default position of yes, not
no, when customers contact them.
So, as companies jump into the social media arena, they
should heed Tony Hsiehs advice and first ensure that all
their other communication channels are well supported,
and aligned and interchangeable with their social media
operation. Then, even if a company becomes a star in
the social networking world, and its marketing and public
relations departments realize all their social media goals,
it must redouble its efforts to address its most pressing
customer service issues wherever they occur in the
company. Because if their call center is still marginalized,
and its workers are still treating customers poorly on
old-fashioned social media devices like the phone, all the
tweeting in the world wont fix that.
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About the Author
Emily Yellin is the author of Your Call Is (Not That)
Important to Us Customer Service and What It Reveals
About Our World and Our Lives, and Our Mothers War.
She was a long-time contributor to The New York Times,
and also has written for Time, The Washington Post,
The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Smithsonian
Magazine, and other publications. Emily graduated from
the University of Wisconsin, and received a masters
degree in journalism from Northwestern University.
She decided to write Your Call Is (Not That) Important
to Us while waiting on hold in her freezing cold house,
only to argue on the phone for hours with customer
service at a home warranty company before convincing
someone to fix her broken furnace.
345

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The Social Contract:

Customers, Companies, Communities, Conversations

2010, Social Media Today, LLC

The Social Contract:

Brent Leary | Blogger-In-Residence, TheSocialCustomer.com

Part 2: The New Customer Service:

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

Part 3: Lining Up for Your Customers

Part 5: Making Leaders Successful Every Day

Part 6: Serving the Social Customer

Part 7: Yes, You Can Sell That Here

 art 8: Is Your Customer Service Rep

Frank Eliason | Senior Director in National Customer Operations

Dr. Natalie L. Petouhoff | CRM, Customer Experience,

Ellen Filipiak | SVP Customer Care at DIRECTV

 art 10: Customer Communities:

David Alston | VP Marketing & Community, Radian6

Part 9: The Dollars and Sense of Social Media

Twitter. Whats even more interesting is that Southwest

The experiences included in this book serve as great

As you will see in the pages of this book, there are

About the Author

A big thank you goes to all the experts who shared

The New Customer Service:

Act as soon as you can so as to resolve the problem

The New Customer Service (contd)

About the Authors

Lining Up for Your Customers

The key difference though is how customers expresses

Lining Up for Your Customers (contd)

Improving Customer Experience

So, what have we done differently in this new world?

Improving Customer Experience (contd)

We also look to these communities for feedback on a

Improving Customer Experience (contd)

Making Leaders Successful Every Day

What can Customer Service professionals learn from

Making Leaders Successful Every Day (contd)

is that when Customer Service takes charge of the social

Making Leaders Successful Every Day (contd)

About the Author

Serving The Social Customer

Serving the Social Customer (contd)

Again, the basics of Customer Service are invaluable

Serving the Social Customer (contd)

Yes, You Can Sell That Here

In late 2008, we added an add product widget to

Yes, You Can Sell That Here (contd)

About the Author

Is Your Customer Service Rep

How can a company pull off such alignment? By

Wells Fargo is another example of a company positioned

Customer Service Rep (contd)

Mark Simmons is Senior Director of Marketing and

About the Author

The Dollars and Sense of Social Media

Candy bar Wispa (a product of Cadbury Schweppes)

The Dollars and Sense of Social Media (contd)

strategy to get you there that includes measurable results.

Although some executives are still searching for the best

Organizations such as AT&T, Best Buy, HP, and

Customer Communities (contd)

Part 2: The New Customer Service:

Part 3: Lining Up for Your Customers

Part 5: Making Leaders Successful Every Day

Part 6: Serving the Social Customer

Part 7: Yes, You Can Sell That Here

art 8: Is Your Customer Service Rep

art 10: Customer Communities:

Part 9: The Dollars and Sense of Social Media

Candy bar Wispa (a product of Cadbury Schweppes)

Word of mouth is the number one reason a bride decides

Radian 6 for broad reach in CGM types