Picture from cote
A friend and fellow marketer Emma Brooks has declared today #InternetFAILday as a result of the multiple failures on social networking and commerce sites. This got me thinking what would happen if companies suddenly lost social media as a marketing/business tool? Especially now that many customers are accustomed to these practices , how could current social media practices be scaled down into real life settings? Here are a few of my thoughts on this issue:
Customer Service: Many companies are trying to improve their service offering through their online channels having ignored the poor service their customers receive in person. Without this tool sales/service people to be successful would need to be much more autonomous and have the tools they need in front of them instead of outsourced to call centers/outside locations.
This would be a major business shift for most companies. Instead of having a sales orientation in their stores where metrics and the bottom line is the most important part of operations, a customer service orientation would need to be taken where relationships and customer satisfaction would need to be seen as a major driver of sales.
Customer Connection: With the loss of internet tools customers would lose the sense of connection with companies and other customers. They would lose the ability to come together and discuss the direction and changes to the company. Companies would lose a great market research outlet but they also may lose the strong brand evangelists that spread word of mouth for their company as well .
A company I feel that takes this relationship building and does it well on a personal level is Lululemon. By supporting the local yoga communities and offering interaction mechanisms in store (little fun activities and yoga classes) customers feel connected to the company on a deeper level. Customers don’t think of the company as an organization that just sells them stuff but they also see them as a community hub. Social media places a large focus on grouping customers together and building communities, why can’t stores themselves work on building communities locally?
Customer Segmentation: Without social media some things could be much more costly to do. Customer segmentation would be one of them and without social media this would be a be a large strategic challenge for companies. Using the internet and social media , companies have often times tried to attract all groups through customized product offerings and communities. Knowing each individual customer and customizing their experience would be too hard to do in the offline world. It would mean that a company’s customer list would either need to be scaled down so they know each individual customer to place them in a specific category or there would be a big brother scenario where every action a customer takes is recorded (not a very friendly situation).
Social media offers information about customers that real world interactions don’t and in this case it would be strategically better to define the customer your company wishes to target instead. By doing this all efforts and resources are focused on being a strong product/service supplier for a single group building market and mind share among these customers. While the downfall of this would mean that your market is significantly smaller, this also means that your resources are more effectively used saving you money in the long run.
Conclusion:
In closing I think this is a great exercise for companies to be doing. If social media were to just suddenly end today how would their company operate? What changes would need to be made? Looking at how they could improve their operations in real life situations could be an opportunity to further strengthen the company as a whole and create a company much more focused around the customer.
Tags: Community, Customer Service, Marketing, Segmentation, Social Media, Targeting
Another question to ask is – what would happen if businesses had to pay for social networking? Would they do it differently? not at all?
Great comment! In the end I think it would come down to company culture. There would be those who see it as an essential part of their business and important to what they offer to their customers but others would abandon it seeing it as an insignificant tool.
Great post Kev! It really is something to think about. The primary way I converse with people, both in my job and in my personal life, is through social media – whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, etc. I think you’re absolutely right, customer service would certainly suffer, especially for the beacon companies that have already embraced social media, like JetBlue & Freshbooks. I would definitely feel less connected to brands – I feel like I’ve built up a relationship with brands like Moo & Threadless because of how active and responsive they are with social media.
It is a great point though – what if were to all just disappear? How would your company deal with it? And how would you keep your community happy?
Contingency plans for social media outages… what a world.