The Social Media Professor

Voice of the B2B Customers' Customers

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In the early 1990’s, companies started to listen more systematically to the “voice of the customer” (VOC)* after the quality movement made it clear that companies had room for improvement in this regard. Companies could more precisely identify how to provide the most value by dissecting the customers’ voice so that they could hierarchically structure and prioritize their needs. Many companies learned from this exercise and customers benefited.

However, VOC also missed the boat in one major way. The voice of the customer approach assumes that the customer is talking to you. But what if the customer is either unwilling or unable to articulate anything? This is the “silence of the customer” which could be equally if not more important than what customers actually say such as when “96% of customers who are unhappy don’t complain.”

Thinking about it, in a B2B context this could also mean that social media listening efforts could be misdirected if listening is limited only to direct customers. Instead of trying to listen to direct customers when they may not have anything to say, companies could be better off holding their ears close to the ground where the customers of the customers interact instead. Why? Well, imagine if we could hear customers’ customers concerns. Wouldn’t that put us in a better position to also predict what our customers’ needs are, articulated or not?

* Abbie Griffin & John R. Hauser (1993), “The Voice of the Customer,” Marketing Science, Vol. 12, No. 1, Winter 1993.

Good Domain Parenting

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When speaking about social media, I often draw laughter when I say that I find it incredible that there are still parents out there who name their babies without first checking if the matching domain name is available. What they don’t know is that I am only half-joking when I make that statement. Perhaps “incredible” is an exaggeration but I do maintain that you could do your child a great favor if you think ahead in this regard. I registered our two kids’ domains when they were about 5-6 years old and was lucky myself to find them still being available. Yes, it is possible that .com as a top level domain will be more or less irrelevant when the time comes for them to “brand” themselves online as technology changes. Still, the expense of about $10 a year pales in comparison to all other investments parents make in their kids future and the rewards could be significant.

Case in point. In today’s class when I said the above, one of my students came up and said that that was exactly what his dad did when he was born! His name “Zachary Campbell” is a common one as well but thanks to his dad’s foresightedness, he now outranks others with the same name, even some semicelebrities.

B2B Social Media in Silicon Valley

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Santana Row, San Jose

Took the Southwest shuttle from Orange County to San Jose in Silicon Valley today and met with some marketing executives at a major B2B company. It was educational for me to hear first-hand accounts from marketers about their struggles selling social media initiatives to non-marketing executives. Without strong companywide support, the social media efforts undertaken, however well-intentioned, may not even get a fair shot at being successful as they tend to be understaffed and underfunded. Even the projects that do get some traction on social media can suffer from not get the recognition they deserve due to a general lack of appreciation of the power of social media. Continuing to provide some good examples could perhaps convince them over time. However, it would clearly be ideal should they have the very senior management’s blessing. A great way of demonstrating such support would be if the CEO would jump on board and started tweeting or blogging, wouldn’t it?

What Social Media Can Do

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In my first social media marketing classes today, students were asked to identify various uses of social media, preferably with a business use case in mind. If you cannot read my handwriting… here comes some of the prominent uses of social media:

  • Communication/Conversations
  • Connection/Network
  • Humanization/Personalization
  • Marketing Research/Opportunity Identification
  • Brand presence/Awareness creation
  • Reminders about ones existence
  • Employee relations and employer branding
  • Collaboration
  • Communities
  • News

Social media is quite multifaceted in other words! Not bad, huh? So, are you leveraging most of these uses or are you limiting yourself?

3 Keys to Social Success

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There are many guidelines out there when it comes to how one can achieve success through the use of social media. To me, three core perspectives stand out as being particularly critical.

  1. Long term perspective. Without the patience to develop long-term relationships and networks, one is likely to fail. To strive for short-terms results may not be wrong per se but it cannot come at the expense of long-term customer satisfaction.
  2. Generous approach. Give more than you take and you will be offered plenty in return. This is related to the long-term perspective as well and the generosity is also about proactive sharing, offering ideas, connections, and resources to those in your network you believe would benefit from them without them asking for them.
  3. Human appearance. Trying to sound corporate, professional, or intellectual can on social media come across as being snobby and standoffish and is thus also less likely to engender any interest in interactions by other parties. A more casual, informal, and sometimes humorous communication style is a much more effective way to get other people to open up and be willing to develop better relationships with you. In the end, it may very well be seen as being unprofessional to be too professional!

What do you think? Other factors you think should be a top priority as you find your approach on social media?

The Social Media Professor

Orange County, California
United States

Also at NiklasMyhr.com

Contact

Please email me at niklas [at] thesocialmediaprofessor.com if you have any questions.