August 10, 2010
Engagement Escalation: When Do You Cry Wolf?
By: Lauren Vargas
Do you recall the Aesop fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf? Oftentimes, we create our own drama in response to the tweets or posts we monitor for engagement. If we cry “wolf” with every alert/mention, our teams/organization would tire of us and not pay attention to us when we do identify an escalating issue. Not every tweet or post is of the same value and not all require a crisis mode approach. For this exact reason, we released a version of the playbook our community team uses to dictate our engagement.
- Define importance: Begin by building an escalation chart (as shown on Page 18 of Community Playbook). Supplement your chart/playbook with examples of what constitutes a high, medium or low alert. You can spot a rising issue quicker if you have already identified what it looks like.
- Establish Issue Resolution Time: Our rule of thumb is to respond to a Twitter alert within 10 minutes and blog posts within an hour of being found. Trying to compare media types can get a bit sticky, so having different time expectations for response allows us to give the alert our full attention without saying one media type is more important than another.
- Communicate with Team: Issues will be resolved in a more timely fashion if your listening grid has good communication amongst each other. Clean up your internal communication and your external communication will follow suit.
Your organization may not be able to control the conversation, but you can control your response. Despite having defined response times, these are just guidelines and you need to remember to step back, breathe and understand the issue before responding with something that will cause additional problems. Know who you are talking to, what they are talking about, the different ways you can offer to help and clearly identify the person who will be taking ownership to resolve the alert.
Engagement takes an investment of time, tools and human capital. Is your organization willing to allocate the resources to manage the engagement expectation, or are there alternative solutions? What type of social media engagement is right for your brand? Only your organization can decide. There is no cookie cutter approach, but the framework of a community playbook will put you on the right track.
(A special thank you to our Community Analyst and Traffic Operator, Genevieve Coates, for helping me draft today’s post.)
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Blaise Grimes-Viort, Social Solutions and Bryan Cromlish, ilikerashersrss. ilikerashersrss said: Engagement Escalation: When Do You Cry Wolf?: Do you recall the Aesop fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf? Oftentimes, … http://bit.ly/9l8rUC [...]
Lauren,
Nice post and I agree, no 'buts'. I would like to extend it a little:
The addition of Intent: This is the most complex part of engaging/listening (or Social CRM). It will be the hardest to codify, why "best practices" will not work and why it will require training. Part of the intent evaluation process will determine the sociability of the action. Intent needs to definitively weigh and specify what the customer wants to be done based on the action she took. There are a number of human elements within intent, and the channel itself may speak to intent. You should be able, but not necessarily assume, that you can gauge the emotional state of the customer. Why did they say what they said?
What I know about this person: This is core customer data plus social data. This is verified data, and verified information. Elements of "what I know" are not open to interpretation; the person did send an email on this date, they did make a purchase, they did submit a complaint and/or they did change their address. The social data will increasingly be a part of a standard profile data set. However, since this data exists on other networks there potential issues, ownership and validity. The ability to pull data from disparate systems in real-time is a requirement.
I do appreciate the response times from Radian6 (both personally and professionally), but that is a tough standard to set for the rest of us. I think that expectation setting is crucial here, as people will come to expect certain response times and if these cannot be maintained, it will be a tough road.
Lauren,
Nice post and I agree, no 'buts'. I would like to extend it a little:
The addition of Intent: This is the most complex part of engaging/listening (or Social CRM). It will be the hardest to codify, why "best practices" will not work and why it will require training. Part of the intent evaluation process will determine the sociability of the action. Intent needs to definitively weigh and specify what the customer wants to be done based on the action she took. There are a number of human elements within intent, and the channel itself may speak to intent. You should be able, but not necessarily assume, that you can gauge the emotional state of the customer. Why did they say what they said?
What I know about this person: This is core customer data plus social data. This is verified data, and verified information. Elements of "what I know" are not open to interpretation; the person did send an email on this date, they did make a purchase, they did submit a complaint and/or they did change their address. The social data will increasingly be a part of a standard profile data set. However, since this data exists on other networks there potential issues, ownership and validity. The ability to pull data from disparate systems in real-time is a requirement.
I do appreciate the response times from Radian6 (both personally and professionally), but that is a tough standard to set for the rest of us. I think that expectation setting is crucial here, as people will come to expect certain response times and if these cannot be maintained, it will be a tough road.
Mitch, thank you for commenting and extending the conversation.
Best practices are YOUR organization's practices. Each organization has to identify what their customers desire, set realistic expectations for response, and communicate those expectations to community. I understand your concern about standards, but what we have released in the playbook is only a framework to iron out the process internally, so the external conversation is seamless. Organizations may not have control, but they can set expectations. Customers get frustrated when there are no expectations or those expectations are not realistic.
Mitch, thank you for commenting and extending the conversation.
Best practices are YOUR organization's practices. Each organization has to identify what their customers desire, set realistic expectations for response, and communicate those expectations to community. I understand your concern about standards, but what we have released in the playbook is only a framework to iron out the process internally, so the external conversation is seamless. Organizations may not have control, but they can set expectations. Customers get frustrated when there are no expectations or those expectations are not realistic.