Are Social Media Obligations and Responsibilities Mutual?

Many of us would have read the story recently about Za’s Brick Oven Pizza restaurant and their run in with a South Carolina Twitter celebrity. It’s an interesting lesson about the power of the crowd and how sometimes this power can be misused (either intentionally or unintentionally).

As someone who is active in social media, generating income from working in the space, consulting to companies, and providing solutions I’ve long advocated the basic principles put forward by the luminaries like David Meerman Scott (as an aside – did you know that David is coming to Australia next month – don’t miss this…) Brian Solis, and Axel Schultze – be open, be transparent, contribute and expect nothing in return, accept feedback, listen, engage, and most of all be honest.

But as I read this story and thought about the ideals that we strive to live to I was struck by this notion that sometimes consumers don’t seem to live to the same set of expectations. So there’s no mutuality in this social media thing… Is this fair?

You don’t get to play by the old rules any more, and it doesn’t matter what business you’re in. You don’t get the old privilege of anonymity – Sonia Simone

So we as vendors can’t live by the old rules! But what about consumers who choose to use word of mouth tools (like Twitter) to make a complaint that they know full well is going to spread; is there an obligation or expectation on them to take an active role in the resolution?

Is it fair on the vendor if a customer rants on Twitter and then decides they don’t want to talk, that they want to move on!

Or have we entered an age where consumers won’t accept mistakes period?

Or worse, have we entered an age where minor transgressions become internet headlines? My dish arrived 2 minutes later than I expected so it’s death to the reputation of this restaurant… I have to admit I don’t like this model where a consumer can rant and run. It goes against my core values of fairness and accountability.

How should we deal with those that decide to rant and run – do we as active members of the community have a right to turn the tables and call out consumers who do a seagull?

Customer Experience Management – The untapped potential at Qantas

I fly around Australia a lot and my airline of choice is unashamedly Qantas.

I had an interesting experience today and it got me thinking about how situations could be handled more efficiently and effectively – particularly given the availability of technology like Smart Speak. Through our partnership with RightNow Technologies I had a chance to look at the Smart Speak solution earlier this year and was really impressed.

The situation that triggered this is I received an SMS from Qantas informing me that my flight home later today has been cancelled and could I please contact their call centre for more information. There was nothing personalised about the message as they (helpfully) directed me to their general call centre (not the premium flyer call centre) as well as offering a number to call should I happen to be calling from NZ (odd given I was flying from Sydney to Brisbane).

So I rang the premium flyer call centre and was helpfully informed that I’d been booked on the next flight – Great. But I then received a call from Qantas 10 minutes after I arrived at the airport wanting to speak to me about the change of my flight. Given I’d already checked in for the new flight, this was in fact a complete waste of Qantas resources.

Knowing the Smart Speak product, I got thinking about how Qantas could use this technology to (a) deliver a richer customer experience for their customers, and (b) reduce the impact of cancelled flights on their call centre operations – which would clearly mean lower operating costs and better experience delivery for other customers not affected by a flight cancellation.

Smart Speak lives in the Cloud and kicks into gear when an inbound call is received. Recognising the inbound number, Smart Speak can interpret a real time database (for example RightNow’s Service module) and recognise that the caller ‘might’ be calling about an open service incident. Smart Speak can ask the customer if that is what they’re calling about, or even give them an update before asking if they still need to speak to an agent.

Here’s what I would do.

A flight is cancelled – Qantas creates incidents against each affected passenger

The SMS is sent (I’d like to see this message personalised more – for example – “Qantas flight QF544 13 NOV from SYD has been cancelled. We’ve booked you on a later flight, pls call 131313 for details”)

• As passengers are moved onto later flights, the open incidents are closed off

Inbound calls are now routed via Smart Speak which identifies the caller and interprets the incident database.

Smart Speak asks the caller if they want information about their new flight, or would they like to speak to an agent.

If they want information about their new flight, it’s offered and the caller confirms their needs have been met.

Smart Speak is sophisticated enough that it can inform the customer that incident information has been updated, deliver this information, and then ask the customer if they are satisfied or still need to speak to a call centre agent.

What does this mean?

Well firstly, it means the customer gets the information they need with a minimal investment of time.

Secondly, Qantas wins as it means they deliver automated information to customers and prevent each and every customer hitting the call centre looking for information.

I can see this being a real winner for Qantas, particularly among their regular customers. Most of us understand the demands of running a modern airline and most of us get the system so this really is a case of Qantas developing the system so that we can use the system to help them help us.

Smartpen website launches with full range of Livescribe products

I’m pleased to announce (belatedly) that we finally launched the Smartpen website yesterday. We got the site live with a full set of products and accessories along with our own database of knowledge and FAQ to help our local customers.

We still have a couple of minor quirks to iron out – namely getting the software to display the sales price consistently and updating some of the images to be better quality – but overall, we’re live and taking Livescribe orders in a more automated fashion.

The team put in some long days to get us to this point and we were really pleased to get some early positive feedback from visitors and customers – specifically the feedback from Rob Vos and Anita Swift.

As we’ve communicated to everyone who’s found us, we’re capturing every single piece of feedback and using this to fine tune how we engage with our customers and also how we ultimately engage with BigAnt and Livescribe as to where the Livescribe Smartpen is going.

What changes are we working on?

1.       On the site, we’re working hard to iron out a really annoying glitch as to how the RRP is displayed. For reasons unknown, the software “might” show a price that is ex-GST, or it “might” show a price that is inc-GST – we’ll have this resolved by the 3^rd November.

2.       Some of the product images are a bit ordinary. We’ll spend some time over the weekend toying with these so that we can display really nice, clear images.

3.       How we account for delivery is still clunky. The software allows us to create a complex formula that “might” generate a more balanced delivery fee charge. This clearly needs more work and more data as to our actual freight charges. We’re probably going to move away from Australia Post due to the limitations as to what we can package and send.

a.       Just so you understand – we treat delivery as cost recovery. But this gets hard  to determine as we have items that are cubically large but light, items that are smaller but much heavier, and some small items that are also light.

I suspect we’ll default to a delivery fee that is blended for the larger and smaller items.

What else will we put on the site?

1.       We’re working to expand the product descriptions so that we can give a better indication of what each product set comprises

2.       We will be updating the FAQ to include some specific content to help Mac users understand how to use the product.

3.       PayPal as a payment option – I was convinced we wouldn’t be asked to accept PayPal but go figure day 2 and someone enquires as to whether they can pay via PayPal…

Your feedback is important. If you have any comments or suggestions please drop us a line or add a comment to this post.

Livescribe – Applying the lessons of Tim Martin

As a TEC member, I’ve had the privilege of hosting Tim Martin from 2 Sticks Digital Marketing as a speaker at my TEC group earlier this year. Tim gives an engaging, yet simple presentation where he talks about all things digital marketing.

Here at Smartpen, we’ve taken all of Tim’s advice and applied them to the launch of our Smartpen website. As we prepare for the official launch of the site we were really pleased to see our efforts pay off with the site achieving the top organic listing on the Google search term “Livescribe Smartpen”.

Smartpen achieves #1 ranking in organic Google results

You can contact Tim at 2 Sticks (03) 9018 5672. He’s got some really interesting stuff on his blog. I recommend Tim to anyone looking to get their heads around the Web 2.0 world.

Here’s some of Tim’s work from YouTube

Livescribe Pulse Smartpen is go

We finally got our hands on the first shipment of Livescribe Pulse Smartpens last week so we’ve been extremely busy filling orders, playing with our new gadget, and getting the word out.

If you haven’t seen the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen yet, have a look at the Salesnet website where we’ve created some content and excitment around this amazing new piece of technology.

Everyone we’ve been showing the pen to has been really excited and has turned into advocates for us – a special mention to Meyrick Adams from Gen3Media who’s determined to sell a million units for us…

We’re hoping Gizmodo will do a review for us soon. I’ve also asked Adam Wallace from Too Easy to drop in here and give us a review as he’s a happy new user.

If you’d like more information on the product, let me know and we’ll get in touch.