We know that as an engaged or active brand, part of making the most out of our product offering is using our Workflow option. Workflow option? What’s that? How do I use that? What do all those drop downs, tags, flags and emotional hand icons mean? Today, let’s walk through this one step at a time.

What is the purpose of Workflow?

Workflow enables you to track the interactions and human analysis side of your day to day work. It allows you to look back on the posts you and your team review and from a reporting perspective be able to look at things like your overall Engagement Level or the breakdown of your Classifications. It also allows your team to quickly share information based on a set of pre-determined settings. If someone on our team assigns someone else a “Product Review”, we all know exactly what to expect and look for.

What should I ask myself?
So, of course you should create a playbook for yourself, but once you have your playbook how to you effectively move through the posts on a daily basis? Here are some questions we ask ourselves as a team as we work through our workflow.

Who is posting?
Workflow Item: Source Tag

Why you need to know: Knowing who is posting a post is important for response and routing posts. Determining whether that someone is a client, partner, employee, competitor or among the general public will help your team determine how best to route or interact with each post.
Examples: employee, client, partner

Why are they posting?
Workflow Item: Classification

Why you need to know: After you’ve determined who is posting, you next need to ask yourself what they are posting about. Internally we’ve created a chart that defines each of our classification areas so everyone is clear on how to use this area.
Examples: Product Review – posts that look at the product side (not customer service, sales, brand or marketing side) and provide a review.

Are there any underlying subjects?
Workflow Item: Post Tags

Why you need to know: Sometimes even after you’ve determined the classification you can further explain a post by identifying a post tag that adds to the data. Again, internally in our playbook we’ve created a chart that shows which post tags relate to what classification area and how to use.
Examples: Product Review dashboard – use this post tag when a Product Review is specifically looking at the dashboard part of our platform.

What is the tone of the post?
Workflow Item: Sentiment

Why you need to know: After determining what the person is talking about, it’s important to understand their tone. Automated sentiment can help with this but be sure to keep in mind the context and possibility of sarcasm. Always, it’s a good idea to define what sentiment means to you and your team.
Examples: Positive – a mention that is completely positive, such as a product review or advocating mention to switch to the Radian6 product.

Should this be escalated right away?

Workflow Item: Priority
Why you need to know: While all posts should be handled in a timely manner, there are some posts that require more immediate attention. We designate this by adjusting the priority given to a post.
Examples: Medium (Orange Flag) – customer issue or somewhat negative comment

Can you provide further details or are there questions that need to be answered?
Workflow Item: Notes

Why you need to know: If you are aware of further information that may provide context around a post or if there are any questions that you need answered before responding, enter them within the notes space. This will help to encourage internal conversation on your team.
Examples: Please follow up ASAP as this client has an urgent request.

Who is best suited to handle this?
Workflow Item: Assignment

Why you need to know: After you’ve filled out all information it is then the time to determine whether you will respond, refer to someone else for response or refer to someone else to gain further information and then respond with that.
Examples: Genevieve assigns to Lauren for follow up since the post was high priority with possible serious negative undertones.

Where does the post stand?
Workflow Item: Engagement Level

Why you need to know: Whether you’ve decided to reach out on your own or refer to someone else, you need to update the engagement level based on your interaction. While we have recommendations, it’s important that you decide the engagement levels that work best for your team.
Examples: Referred – sending to another member of the team for response.

This is how we’ve found workflow works best for our teams but of course every team is different. How is your team working through workflow on a daily basis? What questions are you asking yourself as you classify, tag and respond to posts? Let us know!