Experience Engineer

Engage your customer. Give them a great experience. AND help them reach their goal.

The digital consumer has multiple communication channels and it's great that companies, or more specifically the marketing departments of companies are catching on. But this should not detract from basic principals of consumer engagement.

Dragon Catcher is cool. It's on your mobile devise. It's exclusive to the attendees of the event (social needs). It closes the gap between reality and internet, an augmented form of reality. It has game mechanics. It has a fun creative idea behind it. It's a cool package.

An entertaining shiny new toy is a great short term tactic to get attention. Customers experience a deeper use of their digital channels and focus shifts from one campaign to the next. But was it truly useful? Did it have high brand utility? Did it create or add to the customer relationship to the brand?

This campaign did not engrain the Qualcomm brand into the values of the consumer. It did not add a benefit and did not help the consumer reach a goal. It could have done that better. The game should have helped people connect to eachother. The game should have helped the user explore the Qualcomm brand to realize the effect on their business.

Help your customer fulfill their goals. How does your marketing move your brand forward? How do you campaigns fulfill their needs?

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People don't want to use Social Media for Customer Service.

Bottom line (and feel free to show me this answer if I am proven wrong, which I doubt): customers don't use Facebook to seek help en masse, nor to purchase through it.

Facebook is to enjoy strong relationships with friends and familly - at least for those people that are not in the social echo chamber.

via blogs.forrester.com

Close your eyes. Imagine your favorite sports team. They're at the finals of their respective sports greatest cup/bowl/tournament. They're about to be winners. Remembered forever.

They lose.

How did that feel?

When I read this comment (see above) on the Forrester blog I felt that pang in my heart. Hard to explain why, but I did. And this is what I responded.

"Customers dont use Facebook today for sales or service"

I'm going to focus just on the service part (not the sales) and split that up into two separate issues:

-- Customers don't want customer service. --

Forget about Facebook. Customers don't want customer service all together. They want simple, easy to understand, easy to use products that don't crash, that don't fail. Customers want products that don't require customer service.

-- Customers want customer service - wherever they communicate. --

A lot of this will echo what has been said before. The idea that customer don't want to use a specific channel for customer service is unthinkable. Customer want to choose where they communicate and the emergence of different media had made communication lines around us ubiquitous and even more integrated. When consumers start a conversation on Twitter, they want to pick it up on linked in, continue it on Facebook and finish it with a Youtube Video. It's not about the medium, it's about the message.

When consumers purchase a product or service they want it to function. And if they need to talk to someone about it, they'll do it on their terms. As agencies and brands we need to realize that the piramid is upside down, the funnel is a circle, and earned PR is the only PR out there.

Now let's go build great brand communities and have them spread our brand message!

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How the internet is changing story telling, and how this should change brand/consumer relationship

Every new medium has given rise to a new form of narrative.

via wired.com

Story telling is a powerful tool in anyones arsenal. Sales people use it to get clients emotionally engaged in the product, advertising uses it to change consumer behavior, and parents use it to put children to sleep (imagine such a powerful tool). Story telling has been around since the beginning of man kind when we were drawing how to's of the hunt.

The last few years has seen a revival of story telling. People in marketing who talk about the importance of a narrative. But this has been around for so long, why suddenly the interest.

The rise of the internet has given the narrative a new medium. Consumers haven't seen such a shift since the rise of TV, and marketeers need to catch up.

The internet is interactive, immersive, and a hot bed for co-creation. Yet where are the great online customer experiences tied in with the brand story? I can count the notable ones on one hand.

Ex1: Old Spice Guy
Ex2: Huggies Social Bus
Ex3: Levi's after dark

In order of immersion, these brands are leading the storm into the interactive story. From the responsive Old Spice Guy singling out consumers, speaking to them one to one. To the Huggies campaign which highlights parents proud of their babies. To the Levi's after dark campaign which put the narrative in the hands of the consumer, successfully letting their brand ambassadors integrate the brand into a real life game.

The new future will see brands focusing on true dialog with their customers and expanding this relationship. The future where the advertising of brands is useful to the consumer, ensuring brand utility. A future where the customer experience is central to every undertaking by the brand, including its traditionally linear advertising.

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Engage your customer. Give them a great experience. AND help them reach their goal.

People don't want to use Social Media for Customer Service.

How the internet is changing story telling, and how this should change brand/consumer relationship