Next time you’re out running some errands, give this simple experiment a try. Visit a national company that you know has a strong social media presence, and then ask an employee or two about some social tools. Is the clerk at the register familiar with any incentives for Foursquare check-ins? Can the teller help you with your iPhone app? Does the waiter know what Yelpers think? Does the sales woman know about the discount you just saw tweeted?
If your experience is similar to mine, then all too often you’ll be met with a reply of “What’s that?” or “I’m not really sure.” I once told a hotel receptionist that I was the mayor, only to be asked “Oh really? Is this your first time staying with us?”
So why the disconnect? Because almost all of the advice that corporations receive is how their brand can leverage the unprecedented opportunity to interact directly with consumers.
But most consumers still talk to real people more than branded accounts and pages – they interact with brands indirectly. And as adoption of social tools continues to evolve – like mobile applications that merge online and in-person behaviors – consumers will begin to have more face-to-face “social media” interactions with brand representatives. These employees, or “social media middlemen,” will need to not only be familiar with social tools, but also be apprised of any relevant social campaigns that your brand is participating in.
So what can a company do? First, identify your middlemen. If you’re an insurance company, they may be independent agents or in-house customer service representatives. If you’re a restaurant, they might be the wait staff and counter help. Banks have tellers and car companies have sales people. For some companies, like electronics manufacturers, it can be more complicated – your middlemen might be employees of the store that carries your brand.
Second, you must determine the role that these middlemen will play. Will they be active participants who promote your brand’s social engagements? Or should they just be educated representatives who are simply aware of your online efforts?
After you’ve identified your middlemen and determined what role they play, you’ll need to figure out how you will educate them. How will they know the difference between a mayorship and a badge if they don’t even know what Foursquare is? Will they need to be formally trained to help a consumer download your app on Android instead of an iPhone? If your company has thousands of locations, how will you make sure that everyone is up-to-speed?
And finally, you’ll need a comprehensive strategy to ensure that your middlemen continue to be properly identified, trained, and leveraged. Remember, social tools are about connecting people with people – and the more that the online and offline worlds of consumers begin to merge, the more they’ll be socially connecting with your employees in real life.
What disconnects have you seen?
Very timely post. Check out how Chili’s restaurant “trained” their servers in over 800+ locations about Foursquare in just 8 words:
http://socialfresh.com/chilis-foursquare-special-training/
Forgetting that EMPLOYEES are just as important as your prospects/customers in your social media engagement plans is probably the biggest “what not to do” I’ve seen so far.
Thanks Gia! That’s a great link and a perfect example.
And I definitely agree — companies that forget (or ignore) the role that their frontline employees play are going to have issues as consumer adoption continues to increase!
Thanks for the Social Fresh shoutout Gia. I would also point out that Jive is poised well to take advantage of this training need as an internal platform that can greatly help a company educate employees. Maybe not as useful for chains, but for the enterprise, it is gold.
Yes there needs a cross education of social ecosystem for all those employed at a company as soon as your company starts living a social lifestyle. You need multi-channel approach to communicate to all employees whether involved directly or not. People will ask everyone in the company a question somewhere. One thing is clear to em Marketing, PR, and Communications department silos need to take the death grip of control off of them being the Social Media Distributors to the middlemen/woman and then consumers. It moves to fast there should be a two way dialog about these things. Especially when you are large brick and mortar operation. Locally run established need to have daily communications about the owner or marketer has put on groupon, foursquare, gowalls, youtube, facebook, twitter, brightkite, yammer, socialtext jive, email, website, blog, yelp, google maps, etc etc etc( alot a places you need to communicate about your businesses presence. Because this changes daily.
One thing is to at least tell your employees you are there and at least instill in them to ask “can you show me on your phone or ipad or computer” Then they can read it and empower them to make a decision. Yeah your the mayor why not a free dessert, these are customer service not social media guidelines!
I put some ownership on the employees to be out in the social space and educate themselves also! I work with too many people that think I am speaking Portuguese when I talk about social networking, media or technologies. It is 2010 and yes technologies are here to stay and boy integrated and sharing more and more. Tell your employees go set up accounts find each other connect get a mayorship get some discounts, buy a groupon, yelp a dining experience, get involved, tell their bonus is based on making 5 posts across their social ecosystem a month. Image how many would do it for the money then realize they are doing it to be more engaged and connected to the world around them……wild theory I know….
Thanks for the post really enjoyed reading and where it took me in this comment. Hopefully this helped further the discussion!
Keith — you’re right, the silos need to break down between different departments for companies to succeed. As you said, many things that were ’social media’ functions are now becoming simply customer service issues. Thanks for reading and taking the time to respond!
I had this blog post totally happen to me at a restaurant. The waitress could not get away from me quick enough as I explained foursquare for there business or at least tell the manager or GM about it!
If it came across social mediaish sorry, I typically talk about this stuff in the social business context not a specific tactic or tool…..thanks for leading the charge on this framework. If fully optimizing internally and externally makes for a much more sustainable and profitable model!
Thanks for responding so quickly! Great discussion……also I see Gia commented here too! Met her IRL today, can I say Bombigity Fantastic! Well I guess I just did
take care
I complete agree with this and have found this specifically with Foursquare promotions at specific businesses – if you are the ‘Mayor’ of that business you are to receive a free coffee etc. which brought me all the way to the business, and I was quite excited to check in as the ‘Mayor’, until no one behind the counter knew what I was talking about or what Foursquare was. This is a disconnect, and I would say it is better to not engage in social media marketing at all, than to not follow through all the way. Brands need to include a ‘front line’ employee piece to their strategy to ensure their plan/promotion trickles down to everyone involved. For the true word of mouth marketing to work, you need the ‘Mayor’ to walk away with their free coffee and happily tell their friends about the experience.
Karen — that’s a legitimate debate that brands need to consider. There’s something to be gained more from being the first into the space and making a splash and learning along the way from the experiment, but the companies that do that should at least have a way to make sure that all relevant employees are on the same page and up-to-speed. If they can’t ensure the appropriate communication, they might consider holding off and firming up their strategy before proceeding.
Thanks for stopping by Social Fresh Tom.
I talk about this training need a lot. I call it the looming education gap. As companies learn what is possible in the space, the need for education is going to explode.
Companies like Dachis are poised well, ahead of the game, to take advantage of this coming trend.
Thanks for coming by the Collaboratory as well!
“Looming education gap” is a great way to put it. Companies will need to move beyond just training the employees who will be directly involved in social efforts, and start to realize that true social businesses will require social employees across the board.
Great point, Tom. I’ve been frustrated on more than a couple of occasions by the need to educate a front-line employee about a company’s social media promotions (I’m looking at you, Starbucks). It’s not that I minded having the conversation (hell, that’s basically my job), but the disconnect is a symptom of the larger problem of companies not understanding the benefits of empowering employees to act as representatives in social environs. As long as companies continue to issue social media gag orders and keep their online presence on lockdown, I’m afraid the best we can hope for is informed-but-inactive front-line personnel.
Spot on — even the companies who are leading the charge still have work to do with actually implementing the great campaign ideas that they come up with. The companies who are limiting their online presences have an even more difficult uphill climb!
Nice discussion Tom. Though I wonder why the posts on this blog almost always fail to link the topic of discussion to the relevant Dachis Approach archetypes. Every time it happens I think “missed brand opportunity.”
What you describe is a middle-step toward the Hive Mind that organizations need to develop in their social business practices. With the cultural practices in place even customer facing employees who aren’t aware of social media initiatives will do the right thing for customers, as the video from Jaffe Juice in the post at the following link makes clear. The video is at the bottom of the post.
http://skilfulminds.com/2010/06/24/what-are-the-organizational-limits-to-analytics-in-scrm/
Larry — thanks for the feedback. You bring up a great point, and something that I’m going to better work into some of my posts going forward.
And you’re right, it’s Hivemindedness that we’re talking about here, especially in the sense of employees approaching their job with not just social abilities, but with a social and collaborative mindset. Checking out the link and video now that you posted.
Thanks again!