April 30th, 2010
by Corey Mahoney

Last week, Facebook made some changes. Depending on the slant, they either “seized control of the internet” or basically sewed buttons on everything in sight. A lot of the changes were under the hood, but I’d like to focus on the shift from the ‘Become a Fan’ to the ‘Like’ feature, along with the accompanying proliferation of Like buttons across the internet.

Do you like-like me, or do you just like me?

On users’ profiles, Pages are public: they’re broadcasted endorsements of brands, causes, ideas, and organizations. They are, like all the other pieces of profiles, one of the building blocks of a Facebook identity. On the old Facebook, ‘becoming a Fan’ of something meant consciously endorsing that thing as part of your digital identity.

That’s a high bar for engagement: it meant that Fans were clear advocates for the brand and interested in ongoing interaction (with the exception of Fan-building contests).

Meanwhile, we all got used to ‘liking’ our friends’ status updates, conversations, and links. ‘Liking’ something was the Facebook equivalent of smiling at it, nodding vigorously, or giving it a hug.

The Result? People ‘liked’ things more often than they became ‘Fans.’ So Facebook, cleverly, decided to parlay the habit of ‘liking’ into Pages. Now there’s no semantic difference between liking your friend’s graduate school acceptance update and liking the Coca-Cola Company. The only difference is the resulting engagement: one of those will be published publically as an endorsement and enable continuing communication, and the other remains a casual expression of congratulations. It’s like a flashback to 6th grade, when it was easy to spend entire bus rides explaining that you liked that guy, but it didn’t mean you like-liked him. Totally different, guys.

So what’s the difference, anyways?

For brands, this means that the barrier to Facebook engagement is much lower. Pages are likely to wind up with more Fans, but they will be less committed to the engagement. ‘Liking’ will be more common, but it will mean much less. This is good for companies for whom liking is enough—Coca-Cola, Sketchers, the Seattle Mariners—but less good for companies who count on deep engagement to build relationships and share content—the New York Times, consulting companies, financial organizations.

The “like” feature could become the next big marketing thing, or it could lose all meaning. For the marketers who rely on measurements like number of Fans, it’s going to require a reassessment of what that number means. For consumers, it could mean a backlash when they realize that ‘liking’ things grants access to news feeds.

Your turn!

Would you rather ‘like’ something or become a fan? Do you read ‘Pages’ as endorsements? How much engagement are you committing to when you like something? How much engagement do you hope others are committing to when they ‘like’ your Pages?

Speaking of which: do you like us?

Or do you like-like us?

tags: customer engagement, social media

April 9th, 2010
by Corey Mahoney

I spent the first part of this week at An Event Apart, which is billed as “the design conference for people who make websites.” While I’m not a designer, I do make websites (like this one), and the speakers included a number of people I hugely admire, so I was thrilled to be able to go. After two days packed with presentations, great people, and good food, my head felt ready to burst with design, code, content, and interaction ideas. I came away feeling personally challenged to do better work—and with a few major takeaways for all of us who work to engage with customers online in one way or another:

• R-E-S-P-E-C-T: find out what it means to…well, everyone. Respect your colleagues, your users, your readers, and your clients. The strength of the presentations themselves came from these presenters’ obvious respect for each other and for us as their audience. But they also preached respect: Jeffrey Zeldman talked about the importance of recognizing when clients are a good fit (and how to part ways gracefully if they’re not), while Luke Wroblewski and Kristina Halvorson discussed the need to respect users’ time and attention by keeping content to-the-point.
• Engage on your customers’ terms. Luke Wroblewski pointed out that this increasingly means meeting them on their mobile phones, but Ethan Marcotte’s “Dao of Flexibility” presentation offered ways to get a great experience on the biggest screens as well as the smallest. MailChimp’s Aaron Walter talked about playful, humorous design, but also highlighted the need to make straightforward, serious communication available if that’s what customers need. And of course, nearly everyone talked about the need to be aware of what browsers and devices visitors are using and to make their experience positive.
• Be nice—but first get out of your customers’ way. Playful brand identities and emotionally appealing interfaces are great (and important!), but websites and applications have to stand on a solid foundation of usability and clarity. Nicole Sullivan’s suggestions for faster websites and Jared Spool’s emphasis on truly user-centric design underscored how important it is to keep in mind that “engagement” should never mean “entanglement.” (See the difference between this concept of ‘engagement’ and this one, which was quite successful).

I left impressed and inspired. These people care about the internet and its users in a way that should inspire all of us to engage genuinely and humanely online. What’s more, they provided direct ways to start doing just that—my to-do list grew with every presentation. In fact, I’d better get to work on that!

tags: customer engagement, web design

February 22nd, 2010
by Eric Larson

Recently, we sat down as a team to talk about what makes Projectline different from other customer engagement and consulting companies. As we shared various stories about who we are, what we do, and why it matters, we found that some of the best input came directly from the feedback we have received from customers. Their perspective is probably the best indicator of what it is we do better than other companies.

Of course, we know how we see ourselves as different from our competitors, but that is tied more to market positioning. But in this meeting, I was reminded that it’s healthy to ask your customers how THEY think you’re different. The more you deviate from actual customer feedback, the more you are talking about positioning and less about proven differentiators.

So how can you make sure that your customers’ insights about your product or company are being integrated into your story? How can you use their feedback to tell other possible clients what sets you apart?

• Look for your enthusiasts online. When people tweet that they love you, why is it? Don’t just say thanks—pass those tweets back up to your sales or marketing team or make a note to include their messages (at least in spirit) in your explanation of how you’re different. Bonus: they’re already short and sweet.
• Look to reviews. If bloggers have mentioned you, reviewed your product, or noted new developments in your brand, what have they seen as different? Read between the lines: what made your brand or product worth reviewing?
• As you gather customer evidence, think about using the insights beyond the case study or testimonial. Have sales teams consider what each story teaches them about why the customer succeeded, and consider incorporating those key points into the core story about your brand.
• When advisory boards or customer communities provide feedback for future iterations, use their feedback to inform sales and marketing as well as product development teams. Even if the feedback is critical, look again: customers are often most critical about the features that are most crucial to their business.

tags: branding, customer engagement, customer evidence, customer feedback

February 12th, 2010
by Corey Mahoney

Now that the initial duststorm has settled on Buzz, we (along with our clients) are starting to wonder: what will this mean for us? Will Buzz be a new channel for engaging with customers or a set of personal and semi-closed conversations? Will it be a boon for marketers or a disaster for privacy concerns?

Mostly, let’s try to answer one crucial question: if you’re an enterprise marketer, do you need to add another social media channel to your plate?

My answer, in several flavors:

• Not yet. Buzz is, like Facebook, set up for most interactions to happen between individuals (it’s linked to Gmail accounts for now) rather than between brands and individuals directly. Unlike Facebook, though, there is no separate entity (‘Pages’) for brands. Building your professional network on Buzz makes sense, but your brand may not need to jump in just yet. In all likelihood, Google intends for brands to participate by buying Google advertising real estate rather than behaving like users.
• No…but you need to pay attention to your other channels. Buzz aggregates RSS feeds, Twitter feeds, and photo sites. Shared Google Reader items will suddenly be easier to converse about and re-tweets by Buzz users may start semi-closed comment threads. Your content will—if it’s worth it—be able to reach your readers’ networks more effectively than before. If you’re going to work on getting up to speed in response to Buzz, focus that energy on your content: make it valuable, worth sharing, and well-done.
• Yes, for some things. By default, Buzz makes it publicly visible who you follow and who follows you. This has some major security and privacy implications (which have been covered elsewhere), but for marketers it means another way to discover circles of influence. Identifying the public profiles of major influencers could provide wonderful insights into who they’re engaging with on a more reciprocal level than Twitter offers.

But at this point, within a week of Buzz’s launch, it’s hard to say how this will affect the social media landscape. What do you think? Will this be an extension of email and RSS, a new way of seeing the old tweets, or a more fundamental shift? What do you hope to see happen as Buzz settles into people’s lives and inboxes?

tags: customer engagement, social media

January 22nd, 2010
by Corey Mahoney

Yesterday Fortune Magazine announced their annual 100 Best Companies to Work For, with North Carolina business intelligence pioneer SAS at the top of the list.

In response, Jim Davis, SAS’s CMO and Senior VP, published a blog post titled “Fortune says SAS is the best company to work for in America. So what?”. He’s not dismissive—he’s interested in exploring why it does matter:

Satisfied employees stay longer, get better at their jobs, learn more about SAS products and the ways people use them, develop stronger relationships with our customers, and are ultimately better able to do the work that provides real value for our customers.

He cites SAS’s growth and the cost-effectiveness of its great benefits, concluding succinctly that “the award is positive recognition not only of how much we value our employees, but of how much we value our customers.”

One theme that emerged for me as I read about each of these companies: for many, what made them “best companies to work for” was how they kept employees informed through hard economic times. Many avoided layoffs or reduced their impact by taking executive pay cuts, but the real key to keeping employees feeling engaged and happy was communication (for instance, Fortune points out that after layoffs at NetApp, “top execs visited 26 offices in 13 countries to brief employees on the changes.”). Despite a wide range of industries, sizes, and corporate cultures, many of these companies sustained employee engagement simply by letting them know what’s going on, which in turn made them feel valued.

All of this hit home, since we had a company-wide update at Projectline just yesterday. With all three founders in the room, we talked about how the 2009 went, what our goals for 2010 are, and how we can all pitch in. It’s obvious that Projectline agrees heartily with SAS’s Jim Davis—engaged employees lead to happy customers.

tags: customer engagement

January 8th, 2010
by Corey Mahoney

With the last few years’ escalation of conversation about customer engagement, it’s more than a little odd to note that some of the biggest marketing stories in the first week of this new year (and decade!) are actually about very traditional one-way marketing—or even customer dis-engagement. Case in point:

• Last week dating site beautifulpeople.com made a PR splash by culling its ranks of singles who’d gained a little holiday weight. Seems like the exact opposite of customer engagement, right?
• Polaroid named Lady Gaga as its new creative director: a perfect example of celebrity-centric splash-making.
• Today, as CES hit its stride in day two, more and more of its live tweet-stream is mentioning iPhone trouble. With thousands of gadget fans, marketers, and tech bloggers in one place, the overload on AT&T’s network means they can’t engage the way they want to engage—online.
• All the tech chatter is about tablets-to-be. They aren’t in consumers’ hands yet, so for now the chatter is confined to generalized hype and tech bloggers’ speculation.

What does this mean for those of use trying to engage customers in the longer term—those of us who care more about gathering customers’ reactions and responses throughout the product lifecycle than about an isolated PR splash?

Well, it seems like a great reminder that in getting customers’ attention, fun, surprising, and entertaining stunts still matter as much as ever. Creative diversions (like Lady Gaga), surprising moves (or even obnoxious ones, like beautifulpeople.com’s rejection spree), and big events (#CES) can kick-start the conversation. The trick is to make sure the tools are in place to support it, respond to it, and deliver on the promise—which is where the challenges lie for AT&T and tablets.

tags: customer engagement, events, marketing, PR

January 4th, 2010
by Corey Mahoney

Last weekend, as I wandered through the farmer’s market, I discovered a storefront I’d never been inside before. Just inside the door was a gorgeous display; of course, I pulled out my phone to take a picture. As soon as I got the picture, a man rushed over to me and asked me—brusquely, but politely—to please ask before taking pictures. “Of course!” I said, “I can delete it right away! So sorry.” He assured me that I needn’t delete it and explained they’d had trouble with people copying some of the designs for sale. I asked for a business card, apologized for my thoughtlessness, and left (with permission to post the picture).

The experience of being personally chided for the very possibility that I might steal designs without giving credit reminded me of the recent etiquette and culture debates I’ve seen on Tumblr, Twitter, and Delicious (the 3 networks I’m most active in personally). It feels like everyone is worried about attribution. As things get easier to pass around and pass along, our reputations (as organizations and individuals) depend on what we share as much as what we create.

Interestingly, this can also offer a new model of customer engagement. Newsweek, for instance, has a Tumblr blog that links to Newsweek and external content, provides an easy way for readers to share Newsweek articles, and—last but not least—enables Newsweek to reblog readers’ best content and suggestions. On websites and traditional blogs (like this one), user-generated content is often relegated to the wilds of comment sections or discussion boards. Newsweek’s Tumblr interacts with users as equals (while maintaining order through careful curation). Suddenly, an organization that seemed faceless and one-sided is a potential reader or partner in conversation; to me, this seems like the very heart of customer engagement.

Pop quiz:

• What kind of attribution do you expect from your network?
• What makes you trust re-tweets (RT), reblogs, or links? What makes something worth passing along?
• How do you think Twitter’s new RT feature (currently in limited rollout) will affect attribution and engagement?

tags: customer communities, customer engagement, social media

December 15th, 2009
by Corey Mahoney

I’ve been watching Dustin Curtis’s dust-up with American Airlines since his original post in May, so I was certainly interested to read last month that American Airlines had fired the employee (“Mr. X”) who wrote to explain the design process and complications behind AmericanAirlines.com.

The responses have been unusually split, with some claiming the incident is about bad customer engagement and others claiming it’s about bad self-promotion. Both arguments have been made well (I especially like this take on it), so instead of rehashing them, I took the opportunity to chat with Projectline consultant and user experience expert John Shields about why Dustin Curtis and American Airlines seem to have missed each others’ points. Here’s what I asked and what I learned:

Seems there’s a huge gap between a single person designing an ideal homepage and the day-to-day functioning of a large-scale corporate web presence. What are the biggest contributors to that gap?

• First off, there are often several teams that need to be involved: tech, marketing, legal, and sales—at the very least. They all have different priorities and strengths, so with all that help a website can wind up looking like Frankenstein’s monster. But, at the enterprise level, none of them are optional. You can’t just throw them out in favor of an ideal design because the stakes are too high and their contributions are often vital.
• In an established organization, you’re never starting from scratch. You can’t. There are old databases, old content, and old workflows. Each is there for a reason. In order to move from a site bound by the old processes to a site that looks and feels fresh, you need a business analyst to make sense of why the old systems are there and where they can afford to change.
• A large website isn’t a one-time thing; it’s a process. Throwing up a new design or a new feature is all well and good, but the ongoing maintenance and support is where the real work gets done. Without a web team (or at least a person) to be the gatekeeper, even the prettiest minimalist design will be a hodgepodge in no time.
• User experience means a lot beyond the homepage. In a large company, maintaining a smooth user experience depends completely on having someone (or several someones) willing and empowered to fight for the customer’s needs.

Wow. Sounds hard. How does anyone do all that?

It’s mostly a matter of two things: a design vision and a business unit that can drive it. A dream-design is a great thing to have, but you have to be able to take that to other stakeholders and work towards a compromise that works for them. To keep things under control and sustain that vision, you need a team in charge of the website in the long term—it might be an internal team, an embedded program manager, an external web team, or some combination, but they have to be empowered to keep putting the customer first and serve as gatekeepers for all the other stuff that tends to wander into websites and muck them up. With that in place, it’s pretty phenomenal the kind of difference you can see in usability, customer responses, and revenue. It might be tough, but it’s worth it.

tags: customer engagement, user experience, web design

November 12th, 2009
by Corey Mahoney

Last week, two apparently unrelated things conspired to get me thinking about community, customer feedback, and how to turn customer engagement into smarter, better-informed products.

First, Projectline’s book club gathered to chat about Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, which does a great job of explaining the social and organizational changes we’re seeing as the internet enables rapid sharing and easy communication. In our conversation, we spent a lot of time trying to puzzle out what new ways of organizing will mean for everyone doing business online (and offline). Shirky’s examples compellingly illustrated that traditional organizations are often terrible at predicting just how users will wind up using what they make. We didn’t quite solve the question of how to balance the need to monetize (which sometimes takes the form of restricting use) with the desire to provide the flexibility to let customers determine the use of the product (which often makes it much more widely used).

Second, Ars Technica reported on the PC release of popular video game Modern Warfare 2, which has been (and continues to be) wildly successful as a console game. In what looked like an effort at customer engagement, Best Buy hosted a question-and-answer session between Infinity Ward (the game developer) representatives and PC gamers. But instead of fostering real engagement, the conversation wound up highlighting the game’s fundamental disregard for PC gamers’ myriad ways of playing.

(more…)

tags: book club, customer communities, customer engagement, product development

November 3rd, 2009
by Eric Larson

Fellow Projectliner Anika and I attended the 2009 Summit on Customer Engagement in Quincy, MA on October 19-21. We’ve finally managed to recover and really process all the great presentations on using customer input to drive corporate decisions.

Tim Thorsteinson (President of the Harris Corporation) and Sean Geehan (@seangeehan and Founder of the Geehan Group) started off The Summit by talking about how Harris drives corporate strategy through their Executive Advisory Board. Great presenters from AT&T, National Instruments, Microsoft Interoperability Council, and Intel followed with stories and advice about using advisory boards comprised of influential customers to guide and inform business decisions.

What’s stuck with me longest?

It was exciting to hear from Citrix’s Chris Fleck (@chrisfleck) about how customers’ voices can directly sway new product development. In his presentation, he mentioned that Citrix had intended to build a new Blackberry application. But, suspecting they needed more info, he blogged the question, “Do you want Citrix XenApp to run Windows apps on the iPhone?” When his post got more than 500,000 views, he used the interest to get resources assigned to building an iPhone app. By tuning into customer needs, they were able to prioritize the app that customer wanted most.

So, what’s next?

There seems to be a movement to integrate broader community-based engagement plans, like Citrix’s, with more narrowly focused advisory boards. As companies engage with customer communities, they have the chance to use community input alongside feedback from advisory boards and other councils. By posing questions to both the community and to advisory boards or internal leadership, you can find out whether there’s a single clear direction. Even when there isn’t a straightforward consensus, clear, genuine communication will let your community members and advisory board know you’re listening. Open lines of communication also mean that, if you change your mind based on the reaction from an advisory board or community, you can admit you’re wrong and amend your decision.

The big takeaway:

We came back ready to start working on coordinating advisory boards, communities, and all the other ways of engaging customers. With transparency and responsiveness, they can work together to strengthen your customer relationships—which is always the top priority around here.

tags: customer communities, customer engagement, customer engagement summit, customer reference, events, new media