Customer Centric Social Media Briefing

CUSTOMER CENTRIC
SOCIAL MEDIA BRIEFING
Written by Tamsin Oxford
@TamsinOxford
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#CSMNY
CONTENTS
Foreword Page 3
Customer Centric Social Media Part 1:
From Products to People Page 4-8
Personalisation and interaction Page 9-14
Personalise the omni-channel Page 15-20
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FOREWORD
Social media has changed the playing field for many areas
and discipline of business. Probably the most profound and
significant change has been the opportunity to listen to what
customers are thinking and saying.
In virtually all business functions, people, personality and
relationships are key. The ability to listen and respond to
customers via social media ensures companies can nurture and
grow those relationships.
Smart brands are putting their most valuable customers at the
heart of what they do. And in doing so they’re differentiating
themselves from their competitors.
In this 20-page intelligence pack Tamsin Oxford delves into
customer centric social media and outlines many ideas and
methods to ensure customers are at the heart of your social
strategy.
We hope you find the briefing of use and please do share
your thoughts or questions with us via our Twitter channel
or Linkedin Group. We look forward to continuing the
conversation...
Liam Dowd
Marketing Manager
@liamdowd10

#CSMNY
CUSTOMER CENTRIC SOCIAL
MEDIA PART 1: FROM PRODUCTS
TO PEOPLE
FOR CORPORATIONS TO SUCCEED THEY NEED TO
MAKE THE MOVE FROM A PRODUCT-FOCUSED
APPROACH TO ONE THAT IS MORE CUSTOMER-FOCUSED
Corporations are focused on a set of key drivers that include:
revenue, bottom line, financials, return on investment and
growth. The consumer on the other hand is driven by an
entirely different lingo that revolves around feelings, personal
impact, intimacy, trust and engagement.
For the business to capture the loyal attention of their
consumer within the social sphere, they need to shift their
focus from products to people.
“It’s not harder to sell today, but it is harder to keep selling,”
says Estelle Nagel, Head or PR for Gumtree in South Africa.
“We are in the process of changing our social media plans to
become more customer-centric even though we have one of
the largest social media pages in the country. Even with close
to 900k followers, we felt we had to make changes to get the
full value out of it. Research has taught us that customers
are less attentive, less brand loyal and more sceptical of
advertising messages. They know you are trying to get them to
part with their money and that you have an agenda.”
Almost every article talking about social media points out how
huge it is, and how corporations and their brands simply must
use it in order to grow as a brand and a business.
It’s easy to ignore this repetitive sentiment, as it doesn’t really
add much value. However, some startling facts from around
the web should get any business without customer-focused
policy to rethink their status:
• Social networking has long since overtaken porn as the
hottest Internet search.

#CSMNY
• Social media is no longer relegated to the young and the
restless with the 55-64 year age bracket growing by 79% on
Twitter, 46% on Facebook and 56% on Google+ since 2012.
• You have under an hour to respond on Twitter, especially if
it’s a complaint.
• YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn ranked as top three sources
for referrals according to Shareaholic, with Facebook and
Pinterest remaining King and Queen for referrers of traffic.
GETTING TO THE CUSTOMER
Developing a social strategy for your corporation needs to
have two-way engagement that encourages communication
and builds loyalty and trust. Many brands are not yet aware of
how much power now sits in the hands of the consumer.
“There has been a power shift and we’ve moved away from
looking at the product and instead we are focusing on
the consumer,” says Dave Ogden, Customer Engagement
Consultant at Aspect Software. “In just a few clicks, customers
can research a product or company prior to purchase, or write
a review about their experience. The power of opinion is
undeniable and – without focusing on the customer to give
them a positive experience – bad company reviews mean they
will simply take their business elsewhere.”
This sentiment is echoed across all those who offered insight
into this piece: ignore the customer at your peril.
“The influence of technology and social media has changed
the way brands communicate with their clients and potential
clients, and how clients engage with brands,” says Veli
Ngubane, Creative Director at Avatar. “It is important to move
from product focused strategies to customer centric ones as
it is the brands that pair the needs of the product with insight
that create positive experiences.”
Apple is one company that regularly uses the customer
approach in order to boost the brand and the business. Their
product interactions focus on how they will improve the
lives of their users, not long and dusty lists of features and
specifications that few people understand. They show the
value of their product to the user and that value is based on
insight into the lives and behaviours of their customer base.
Interestingly, it was Apple who bought Dr Dre’s Beats for

#CSMNY
$3bn – a move that not only capitalised on the hip hop star’s
understanding of the music industry, but also gave Apple
access to a product that was entirely structured around a
customer need. The business was built around a specific
customer and has become one of the most popular in its arena
as a result.
OFFERING INSIGHT
According to Lauren Shantall, Director of Lauren Shantall,
the responsiveness of social media is what makes it such a
strong tool for gaining insight into the consumer: “You can
pose a direct question and get a real response,” she says. “The
insights you can gain into customer behaviour by looking at
demographics, usage, social media influencer tracking and
virility potential are much more sophisticated and revealing.”
SOCIAL MEDIA POST-CLICK ENGAGEMENT
(SEPTEMBER 2013 - FEBRUARY 2014)

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“If asked, most customers are happy to tell companies
about their needs and requirements and with their answers,
companies can take action and respond,” says Fran Muiños,
Social Media Manager at STD-Multiopción. “Today every
company in most sectors competes with at least a dozen
competitors worldwide and must keep up with an ever
changing market. To know what your customer wants, before
your competition does, could give you the leverage needed to
survive and emerge as a market leader.”
Gathering the insight offered by the consumer allows the
brand to develop communication tools and social media
strategies that engage with their customer base and give them
a sense of being heard. Showing the customer that you’re
listening can make all the difference in the way that they
respond and relate to your business.
“You can’t please everyone, but if you drill down to what
people are happy or unhappy about and respond, nine times
out of ten they are glad you took the time to speak to them,”
says Nagel. “They feel like part owners of the brand and that’s
what you want.”
Plum Baby & Kids Fashion is a wholesale business that used to
focus on the products only.
When the new owners took over they realised that they had
to adapt and develop a more customer-centric business. They
used social media to achieve this goal as it didn’t demand a
lot of capital outlay and yet offered greater returns on any
investment.
“We have used social media to gain valuable insight into our
customer’s wants and needs,” says Eugenie Pepper, owner
at Plum. “Through social we were able to build connections
and strengthen relationships with our end consumer. We
asked our customers if they preferred side opening or front
opening baby sleeping bags and found that parents of toddlers
preferred them on the side, so we changed these to suit.”
Using social media has had a major impact on Plum’s presence
in the marketplace and having moved to a customer-centric
approach, they have becoming more attuned to what their
customers want and have subsequently increased their sales,
their following and brand identity.

#CSMNY
What social media has shown corporations is that they are not
selling products or features any longer. Social businesses sell
benefits to their customers. Successful enterprises understand
this shift and place it at the heart of all their marketing and
customer support activities.

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MEDIA PART 2: PERSONALISATION
AND INTERACTION
PERSONALISATION HAS BEEN RADICALLY ALTERED
IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND BUSINESSES NEED
TO ADAPT
The age of social media has dramatically changed the way
brands interact with their customers. Social networks offer
rich resources of information that can be used to make
conversations with consumers personal and attuned to their
preferences.
Social media is awash with the passions, loves, hates, moods
and preferences of a billion lives and corporations are in
a unique position to use this data to create personalised
customer interactions and create a lifetime of customer
advocacy.
The major social networks of LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter,
Facebook and YouTube hold a combined user base of over two
billion people. That’s the needs, desires, choices and buying
decisions of two billion customers sitting within the folds of
these social giants. It’s like the gold rush of the 19th Century
as brands gallop towards this data, trying to find the best
possible tools to mine it, woo it and make it their own.
In the infographic provided by My Optimid, it shows some of
the most successful strategies for capturing the consumer as
well as some pretty impressive statistics including:
• Posts longer than 1,500 words receive more tweets and likes
than their shorter counterparts.
• Infographics are still winning, growing traffic an average of
12% more for those who use them versus those who don’t.

#CSMNY
• Videos can increase conversions by 86%, keep customers on
the site up to two minutes longer and websites with video
are 50 times more likely to be ranked on Google’s first page.
• Email marketing is a surprisingly strong contender with
better click-through rates of 14% if personalised.

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IT’S PERSONAL. IT’S BUSINESS
Consumers are bombarded with information every day, on
every platform. Email, Internet, mobile, television, radio –
each of these is blaring a message and asking them to pay
attention. Your corporation needs to make this communication
feel personal so that the consumer doesn’t feel like they are
another box to tick or cog in the machine.
“Social media itself is consumer centric,” says Jason Perelson,
head of social media at Boomtown. “The brand that recognises
this from the outset will achieve far greater results than those
who purely use the digital space for direct marketing and
brand messaging, as if it were a traditional media space.”
The first step is for the corporation to commit to a strategy
that engages with the consumer on a regular basis and to
ensure that response times are swift, and messaging is clear.
Consumers know when a complaint or message is generated
by a machine or an internal codex and don’t respond well to it,
regardless of the situation. If your business wants to develop
personalised interactions on the service desk with social
media, then it needs to place human beings behind those
desks, people who can communicate with the consumer and
build relationships.
Research undertaken by Genesys, Greenfield Online and
Datamonitor/Ovum found that enterprises in the United States
lose around $83 billion annually from poor customer service
and that 71% of consumers have ended a relationship for
the exact same reason. On the flip side, 78% of consumers
labelled their most satisfying experience as one that resulted
from competent customer service. So how does this relate to
improved customer interactions?
The most common problems that had consumers labelling an
experience as poor service included:
1. Being trapped in automated self-service.
2. Representatives don’t know history and value.

#CSMNY
“Generating personalised customer interactions comes down
to hard work and technology,” says Fran Muiños, Social Media
Manager at STD-Multiopción. “Technology will help you filter
through customer responses and listen to what’s important
and you can use these insights to generate personalised
interactions. Clear training on social communications is
essential for success.”
If a failure to respond via social channels leads to a 15%
increase in customer churn then the second step towards
improved customer interaction is to have a proper social
system and staff.
“I think it helps to take a personalised approach to the
organisation and staff,” says Estelle Nagel, Head or PR for
Gumtree in South Africa. “At Gumtree, everyone has a voice at
the boardroom table. We have great business minds with great
emotional IQs and because the staff doesn’t feel like a number,
customers don’t either. It gets passed down.”
CUSTOMER VALUE
There are plenty of examples of how a company has
undervalued social and placed a junior member of staff onto
social media management. Interactions reflect this immaturity
and don’t lend themselves towards customer loyalty. Comcast
are a great example of doing social really well by giving their
staff their own social media identities. Now consumers know
they are talking to a real person who will talk to them as if they
are real people.
“The ability to generate personalised customer interactions
also depends on the scale of the business,” says Emma Lovell,
Director of Lovellly Communications and Digital Media
Manager at TLC Publicity. “A company like Coca-Cola is going
to struggle to have personal communication, however, their
name on the bottle campaign was an excellent way to speak to
people individually.”
The third step is to examine how customers interact on
social media and to use this insight to create personalised
experiences. Trends in customer patters and set behaviours
allow for more precise analysis and understanding.

#CSMNY
“Customers who have only ever used online channels such
as web chat are unlikely to respond well to a phone call, and
those who have only ever called are unlikely to deal with you
over the Internet,” says Dave Ogden, Customer Engagement
Consultant at Aspect Software. “It’s about spotting customer
behaviour and acting accordingly. Tesco and Amazon have
been very clever with their customer analysis and really could
be considered leaders in the field in buying behaviours and the
propensity to take additional products and services based on
customer history.”
The bleached bones of businesses that failed to engage with
their customers and adapt to trends litter the timelines:
Woolworths didn’t get online fast enough and Blockbusters
were trampled by the superior services of Netflix.
According to JiWire, 80% of mobile internet users would
prefer adverts that are relevant to them locally and 62% of
adults are willing to share their location in order to receive
more relevant content. Consumers are fairly welcoming of
brand conversations as long as they talk to them.
Finally, for corporations to develop personalised interactions
they need to deploy tools that capture, analyse and then
map the personal data of individuals that are interesting and
relevant.
“Once you understand who you need to talk to, understand
what it is what they want to hear and are clear about whether
or not you know these individuals, it is easier to sell to them,”
says Alan Smith, Head of Customer Engagement, DIGIVIZER.
“You can create communication packages for them and you
become more relevant and credible. What’s valuable is real-time
analysis of the conversations and what sits behind these.”
Personalisation has to walk alongside value. Customers will
provide you with the information you need to create better
communication, but they need to see the value to them.
Demonstrate this and you can gain access to this gold mine
and, to extend the metaphor, step away from panning for
a few nuggets of information and into the shaft where the
motherload lies.

#CSMNY
“It is important for brands to move away from thinking and
acting like brands that are desperate to sell their products
to the space of being a trusted opinion leader and content
creator that fulfils the needs of the customer,” says Veli
Ngubane, Creative Director at Avatar.
Use the information your corporation has gathered to
measure the results of future campaigns and ensure that
what you are saying remains relevant to your customers.
Adapt communications to swiftly changing trends and provide
bridges between the customer, your brand and the product
so they become engaged in the process. Amazon allows
for endless customisation and personalisation by both the
company and the product and as a result remains a market
leader in customer loyalty and brand identity.

#CSMNY
MEDIA PART 3: PERSONALISE THE
OMNI-CHANNEL
REACHING THE CUSTOMER IN THEIR DOMAIN, NO
MATTER WHERE IT MAY BE…
Late October 2013, John Lewis releases a report that says 40%
of their digital traffic was through mobile devices with 30%
of sales generated online, and the kicker is that 40% of online
orders were collected in-store.
The customer is not just in the physical shop or on the high
street, or sitting on a mobile phone or surfing social media
– they are using every avenue at their convenience and
personalisation must be streamlined across all marketing
channels in order to be effective.
“Every channel is different, but it needs to deliver a similar
goal so stick to yours,” says Estelle Nagel, Head or PR for
Gumtree in South Africa. “We always keep asking ourselves the
same questions: How does this get people onto our site? How
does this get people to buy and sell online? These are the same
questions whether we are talking PR, social media, customer
service or product development.”
Traditional tools, such as CRM systems, are not so much
obsolete as insufficient. Today the customer touches points
across the entire marketing mix and engagement has to be
ready. Customers leap from channel to channel with social
being a powerful sales channel, but also one that make lasting
commercial connections with masses of consumers.
Brands now have a plethora of platforms upon which they can
interact with their consumers and this can be used to their
advantage. There is, of course, the flip side where brands need
to be prepared to handle this level of interaction, understand
the role that they play, and build solutions that can capitalise
on it.

#CSMNY
Fran Muiños, Social Media Manager at STD-Multiopción says:
“We have regular meetings with all the departments that we
work with on the direction of the company, marketing and
customer service. It helps us understand how the company
operates and what campaigns are in the pipeline. We can then
work on protocols to achieve maximum efficiency and impact.”
The customers who use STD-Multiopción have a variety of
different needs – some prefer stepping-stone plans, which
gives them clear control, some prefer more flexibility and the
company works hard to ensure they can deliver on these with
strategies that work for both the business and the customers.
Why do corporations need to look at every marketing channel?
What’s the maths? The Direct Marketing 2014 Fact Book has
some startling numbers that may surprise the enterprise:
• In direct mail 56% of postcards are read making them the
most likely to catch customer attention.
• 108 million people in the USA bought something online in
2013.
• Email is the preferred communication method between
retailers and consumers.
• Nearly two-thirds of commercial email messages were
opened on mobile devices in December 2013.
ENTERING THE OMNI-CHANNEL
Sounding not unlike the name of a robot in a bad
science-fiction movie, the omni-channel experience is exactly
what is happening right now on the customer frontier.
And corporations need it to meet the needs of both their
customers and take advantage of evolving technology.
The difference between the multi-channel and the
omni-channel is that the latter is integrated – all channels are
connected and open to the consumer. In-store, online, mobile,
desktop, print, direct mail – these are linked together in one
cohesive system that delivers on context, need and brand.

#CSMNY
Research undertaken by Neustar and Multichannel Merchant
in a study ‘Optimize Omichannel Engagement with Actionable
Consumer Insights’ points out some interesting facts:
• 78% of respondents realise or expect a sales lift with an
integrated omni-channel marketing strategy.
• Delivering personalised and satisfying customer experiences
is the top data and predictive analytics strategy and priority.
• 38% don’t have a strategy or plan to implement one across
the omni-channel.
• The top five identifiers are email address, mobile phone,
online cookie, home address, IP address and landline
number.

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1 2
3
4 5
78% currently realize
or expect a sales lift
with an integrated
omnichannel
marketing strategy.
6 Consumer Data Identifiers
For the entire group of respondents, the top five
most important consumer data identifiers are:
Online Cookie 29%
25%
IP address 24%
87%
76%
38%
62%
of Companies
Currently Have
or Plan to
Implement an
Omnichannel
Strategy
Yes No
No, but plan to achieve
an omnichannel strategy
Email address
66%
31%
45%
Website
68%
Email
27%
Delivering Personalized and Satisfying Customer Experiences is #1
the Top Data and Predictive Analytics Strategy and Priority
61%
43%
Mobile
Optimize Omnichannel Engagement With
Actionable Consumer Insights
35%
Omnichannel Strategies are Very Important/Critical or
Important to 70% of Companies
Very important, critical
Important
Somewhat important
Not very important
Not at all important
30%
17%
8%
6%
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
40%
Linking Customer
Identifiers
73% of the respondents say the ability
to link all key customer and prospect
identifiers or contact points to identify
consumers across channels is very
important/critical or important.
11%
Not
important
42%
Important
17%
Somewhat
important
Most Important Consumer Data Analytics Trends
31%
Very
important,
critical
29%
Mobile
phone
number
Home
address
Landline
phone number
48%
44%
38%
30%
28%
21%
3%
0 10 20 30 40 50
7
Integration with other data, media and
marketing programs and efforts
Need to analyze internal data to uncover
actionable consumer insights
Proliferation of available data sources,
providers and platforms
Need to integrate external demographic,
psychographic and propensity data to
gain deeper consumer insights
Senior executive management
interest in this area
Competitor use of these
technologies and platforms
Other
Most Beneficial Consumer Insights
In Real Time at Point of Contact 8
y Purchase propensities and buying behaviors,
according to 58% of respondents
y Profitability and lifetime value, 51%
y Purchase history, 49%
Critical Customer Touch Points
Which of the following customer touch points are considered to be very important/critical to your organization?
9
54% 53%
40%
Social
Media
36%
Search
Engines
46%
41%
31% 31%
Landing
Pages
Online
Advertising
33%
10
26%
Touch Points Areas for Additional Customer Insights
Which touch point areas do or would provide the most benefit from
accessing additional customer and prospect demographic, psychographic
and behavioral insights?
24%
14%
16%
20%
Call Center/
Direct
Mail
IVR
21%
14%
11%
6%
11% 10%
Print TV Radio
Retail Store/
Branch
7%
3%
Outdoor
Advertising
All data taken from the 2013 industry
study, “Optimize Omnichannel Engage-ment
With Actionable Consumer Insights”
conducted by Multichannel Merchant, and
sponsored by Neustar.
23157

#CSMNY
“Making your customer-centric service a seamless event across
all marketing channels will take a strategy that needs to be
carried out through all levels of the business,” says Emma
Lovell, Director of Lovellly Communications and Digital Media
Manager at TLC Publicity.
“From management, to production and process to sales – all
areas of the business have to be on board with what is to be
delivered to the customer.”
Ask the questions:
1. What need are you fulfilling?
2. Why do they use your business?
3. What do they want?
4. Which social media channels are they using?
As Lovell points out, one of the first steps to take when taking
advantage of the omni-channel and creating personalised
customer interaction is to ensure that it is consistent and
contextual.
If your customer is visiting you on Twitter, use the format
of the social platform to engage with them, as that’s their
preference. If they prefer a phone call, have the systems in
place that allow for them to feel recognised by the brand.
“Brands need to have a human element in the relationship
and the customer can easily see through the attempt to be
seen as a customer centric organisation,” says Veli Ngubane,
Creative Director at Avatar. “The move to being a customer
centric organisation needs to be authentic and, furthermore,
for it to work, it needs to be adopted as the culture of the
organisation.”
From the telemarketer to the social media guru to the
marketer who creates the postcards and mail drops – the
messaging needs to adhere to the principles of personalisation
(see Part 02 of our series here) [ and it needs to be authentic.

#CSMNY
In November 2013, Zendesk commissioned research into
the omni-channel customer service gap that revealed some
fantastic results:
• 67% of online shoppers purchased across multiple channels
over the six months prior to the report’s release.
• 73% think brands pay more attention to generating
sales rather than to providing seamless customer service
experiences.
• 45% of customers say they will try any channel open to them
and will wait until their problems or questions are resolved.
• 87% think brands need to work harder to create a seamless
experience for customers.
“People don’t live in a single channel,” says Nagel. “There are
perceptions and influences, and they have little to do with
what people read, view or discuss. It comes down to speaking
in a way that people feel shows an interest in what they have
to say.”
There is a lot of choice and the customer is the one making the
decisions, not your corporation. Preparing an omni-channel
strategy that can offer an authentic, rich, seamless, integrated
and personalised level of interaction with the customer will
take advantage of the multitude of benefits and potentially
keep your brand and business at the front of the queue.

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