Category Archives: Business is Social

11.22.16
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Beating the Kobayashi Maru – or the human vs machine experiment with Watson

“I don’t believe in no-win scenarios.” (James T. Kirk, Starship Captain)

When you are a strong believer in datadriven decision making, building strategies on real insights, and always sticking to facts rather than fiction – it’s a hard blow when one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence systems tells you, that you are not a nice person. It’s based on data – so it’s a fact.

Many industry leaders have evangelists who are excellent presenters and subject matter experts. It’s always a privilege when you get a chance to interview an evangelist. I met IBM’s Rashik Parmar, Watson evangelist, at IPExpo Nordic a few weeks ago.

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Source: IBM

There is so much potential for big data analysis and the learnings and insights we gain, from combining the many available sources of accssible data to draw new conclusions and find answers. That’s basically what Watson does. And then makes the logical connections. Simply put.

IBM developed a small demo engine that would analyse your Twitter personality and generate those awesome charts we all love; and few of us know how to interpret. It was reassuring to see what a nice guy President Obama is on Twitter. And my friend, Rashik, had a similar profile – so all good.

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Source: IBM’s demo app TweetMeWatson

Lucky for me, we couldn’t make it work for my profile until I got home. When I ran it, I found out I was

“Inconsiderate and a bit shrewd”

I will spare you the rest. Either I am very delusional about how I express myself, or there was something fishy going on here. But it’s based on data! It has to be true!

Before digging a hole in the garden to hide from the world – or the equivalent: deleting my Twitter account – I decided to think it through. What was Watson picking up on, what were the actual parameters used?

The Big Five (FFM) Personality Traits

Watson is grouping our personalities according to the Five Factor Model (FFM) Wikipedia explains:

The Big Five personality traits, also known as the five factor model (FFM), is a model based on common language descriptors of personality (lexical hypothesis). These descriptors are grouped together using a statistical technique called factor analysis (i.e. this model is not based on experiments).

This widely examined theory suggests five broad dimensions used by some psychologists to describe the human personality and psyche.[1][2] The five factors have been defined as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, often listed under the acronyms OCEAN or CANOE. Beneath each proposed global factor, a number of correlated and more specific primary factors are claimed. For example, extraversion is said to include such related qualities as gregariousness, assertiveness, excitement seeking, warmth, activity, and positive emotions.

220px-francis_galton_1850s It all sounds very reassuring, the term “Lexical Hypothesis” makes sense –  it was analysing words. This is a principle which was developed by British and German psychologists to identify a personality characteristic. It was used to determine risk of mental illness or criminal behaviour. Invented in 1884, by the way, by Sir Fancis Galton – a stern looking fellow.

But something as elusive and intangible as the human mind is so very hard to classify and illustrate in data points and charts. By creating a lexicon of words and adjectives that at the time were considered to be indicators for certain behaviours, they provided a tool to build profiles – and categorise people based by their choice of words.

Note that the method has also received a lot of criticism – many of them quite reassuring when you are on the receiving end of this exercise. Read more here. 

Phew – that means I can still be a nice person, just not when I tweet. Or speak.

It seemed safe to climb back out of the hole in the garden and meet the world face on. But knowing now what triggered my unpleasant profile, I decided to challenge Watson to a duel.

A duelling experiment

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@echrexperiment is the experimental Twitter profile where tweets were worded more carefully, where people and followers were thanked and nothing bad was happening in the world. No politics, no injustice, no gender inequality, no discrimination. And lots of cats.

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After three weeks, I was a much nicer person. The traits that I seem to be exploiting negatively in my original profile are now contributing to a positive image.

Suddenly, uncompromising was a good thing.

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“In academic vernacular, you cheated”

Like Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek challenging Mr. Spock’s designed program, I cheated to win.

Most of my tweets were carefully drafted using positive semantics but remaining true to my usual topics of interest. I was not trying to be someone else, just focusing on being nice. Here’s a list of the parameters I introduced to make Watson love me more:

  • Following back – anyone who followed me, unless an obvious business account or egghead, was followed back as soon as I spotted them.
  • #FF – sometimes I used the FollowFriday hashtag to thank select people. It generated some nice interactions even between those mentioned, so I grouped them into categories – e.g. Danes, analysts, etc.
  • I thanked, and loved, and “awesome’d” and “great’ed” a lot.
  • Sharing – giving credit, not taking it. I always mentioned the source or the account where I had picked up a link.
  • Sharing the love – retweets were focused on positive news, positive sentiments and uplifting current events. I also checked the wording of the original tweet before RT’ing to avoid contamination of my positivity.
  • Getting personal – my personality and emotions were conveyed more by sharing private interests such as books, cats, travel and science fiction.
  • Language Disclaimer – all of the above choices were based on my non-native perception of the English language, and may have been different from Webster’s Dictionary which is the basic semantic interpreter used in lexical hypothesis.

What I didn’t do

Humour doesn’t travel well, so any jokes, irony, satire and cartoons were not part of echrexperiment. I may have gotten carried away occasionally, but consciously tried to avoid it.

Politics are a powerful emotional trigger, so I avoided RT’ing or engaging in conversations with political statements. That wasn’t the mission.

Automation is a powerful tool to increase the quantity of your social media posts, but with automation things like timing and engagement suffer. Sometimes, due to other news, automation may even lead to displaying insensitivity.

Automatic response is a convenient way to further promote your services and invite people to connect. But it just isn’t personal. Despite all these lovely people addressing me by name. I did not send messages to thank people for the follow, but I checked their profile and retweeted where I could to show my appreciation.

What Watson had to say about @echrexperiment

The app itself produces a lot of detail as you can see from above. Below I grouped the result into more familiar charts to share some highlights. To make sure I picked a really nice person as control, I chose President Obama’s Twitter @potus. But please remember – it’s probably mostly his staff tweeting. And they seem to have done an excellent job.

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Obama – it appears – is very agreeable on Twitter, and my experimental lovely/nicey/catsy account matches this impression very nicely. We are both very open, although I am lagging on conscientousness, but hey –  I am not the President.

Digging deeper into selected parameters, revealed some interesting characteristics related to being a President or just trying to be a nice person.

We can all agree that values should be an important parameter if you are President of the United States. Strangely enough Obama wasn’t all that keen on change, and more inclined to be conservative. For self enhancement … we have identified the villain – the one parameter that makes my original Twitter account so repugnant. I leave the graph to stand on its own.

Meanwhile, President Obama scored a resounding Zero on self-enhancement – but he made it to the top already.

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President Obama’s most distinguishing need is the need for structure. Love – it seems – he gets a plenty.

On the other hand, my original self seems to have enough structure in her life.

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But here’s the greatest insight from this entire exercise – other than confirming that it is possible to change who you are, or rather how you are perceived:

When it comes to curiosity, all you need to do is be a positive tweeter and include lots of cats.

 

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11.16.16
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Timing is everything – and loyalty is earned

Looking for correlations between airline social customer service and growth.

The social media manager of an airline or airport has a challenging job dealing with complaints, bookings, questions about all and sundry … and emergencies.

 

 

It’s not a nine to five job – it’s a 24/7 task for a social media manager at airlines and airports. People have questions and need help anytime, anywhere. Including when stuck in elevators. When it comes to monitoring and responding, in some cases it’s a life-or-death situation. I hope, Amanda Carpenter survived the ordeal of waiting from Feb 14 until Sept 7 in an elevator at the airport before somebody on the social media team responded to her tweet.

Oh, and Ms. Carpenter is not just anyone – she is an accomplished CNN contributor. Not that this matters – regardless of who you are, if you need help you should get it while you are still breathing.

Just testing

Knowing her to be a journalist, I seriously hope this was only a test to check the response time of @Amtrak – but you never know.

Airlines and airports – as well as many travel & leisure providers – are industries where a Twitter conversation is an important channel for customer interactions. So, in 2013 I wanted to find out how and if these industries had embraced this opportunity on improving customer satisfaction and grow their business despite a challenging market situation.

With the help of Datasift, we analyzed the response time on Twitter of 33 different airlines worldwide over a period of 30 days. At the time – 2013 – there were more than 100,000 tweets from customers mentioning the airline either directly or via hashtag. If ran today, the numbers would have multiplied.

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CEOs want social media presence to influence buying decisions

At least that’s the prevalent argument. Social media was about sharing and engaging with family and friends – who in turn influence our buying decisions. This was the major argument in favour of companies investing in these channels. And 3 years later it’s still up there as one of the reasons CEOs invest.

So, I asked my family, friends and wider network eight short questions about whether they had ever tried to contact an airline via social media, whether the airline responded, and whether you were satisfied with the response – leading to a positive customer experience. And repeated this survey in 2016 to see if things had changed.

Turns out, they hadn’t. The sample is in no way stastistically significant with 35 responses then, and 46 responses this year. But what is interesting, is that things hadn’t really changed that much. The airlines who were most responsive in 2013, were still the best and most appreciated in 2016. And those who sucked… well, they still sucked. Except two: American Airlines  and Lufthansa Group

 

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It is often said that it is almost impossible to reverse a bad reputation, which United Airlines has felt ever since it lost the famous guitar.  But it is possible to build a great reputation as American Airlines has done, and jump 33 points on the J.D. Powers  customer satisfaction index for airline industries. Simply by focusing on social profiles and social interactions.

American Airlines started running regular workshops with their staff teaching all customer facing employees how to navigate in the social media space and to pick up trends and grumbles before they turn into storms. In 2013 they were rated below average – three years later they had climbed the ladder significantly.

Twitter – a marketing channel or a conversation?

This graph shows the response rate versus customer interactions for some of the airlines in the study. You will want to look for the white space – the gap between the organge response line and the yellow staples signifying number of customer mentions either directly via their Twitter profile or in hashtags. The whiter, the better.

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Other than American Airlines, United and Delta, British Airlines stands out as being very non-responsive. In 2013, they “loved reading tweets” on their global Twitter account, but were only ”answering 09.00 – 17.00 GMT on weekdays.”

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For my analysis, I picked those airlines respondents had mentioned. Lufthansa was among those who were very present on Twitter showing promotional images of their aircrafts engine power, happy pilots and stewardesses, and pictures of the clouds in the sky. But for customer service, in 2013 Lufthansa referred people to download a detailed form on their website, and fax (!) or email it to their customer service centres.

Air travel remains for many people an uncomfortable, disappointing and grumble-worthy experience. Things have changed both for Lufthansa Group, American Airlines, United Airlines, and to some extent British Airways. But the grumbling persists.

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As with United Airlines and the lost guitar, the reputation of British Airways for non-supportive customer support remains a stigma. And the execution for both airlines appears still to be slightly lagging at least according to the 46 responses on my little survey.

Is there a correlation between focus on social customer service and growth?

Imagine if you could simply take these findings directly into the board room and demand more resources for your social customer service initiatives.

Unfortunately, it would require a lot more detail and a larger survey sample to draw any conclusions worthy of that, but the financial results before taxes and interest for some of the noteworthy airlines from the original study show some trends, especially if related to growth in passenger numbers.

KLM is famous for it’s pioneering efforts in engaging customers on Twitter with their many innovative ideas. But this analysis cannot illustrate the impact, if any, because they had since merged with Air France. But they are both on the top ten index of the world’s best airlines, so it can’t be all wrong. Similarly, Lufthansa Group now comprises Swiss who already then were performing well in the response rate plus acquired several more in the interim years.

We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Even obvious correlations may be false friends.

In 2000 there were 327 deaths by people entangled in their bedsheets and per capita cheese consumption in the United States was 29.8lbs. This has grown to 717 deaths and 32.8lbs of cheese by 2009. A clear correlation over the years.

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 Enjoy more of these obvious and very funny correlations by Tylver Vigen here.

What I am trying to illustrate with the cheese in the bed sheets is that we cannot draw any conclusive data from the social media engagement rate and the financial results or passenger growth in the airline industry. There are too many additional data points that influence or need to be filtered out. It requires more computing power than I have available. But it would be an obvious task for some of the now very hot artificial intelligences being launched by many IT vendors. What if I could ask IBM’s cognitive intelligence Watson  to do an analysis?

I did in fact ask Watson about something else – stay tuned for my next blog post on the Kobayashi Maru – or how I convinced Watson to change its impression of my Twitter personality. Take a look at @echrexperiment on Twitter to see how I did it.

So, is there a correlation between a company’s financial growth and turnover and how socially engaged they are in their customer service function?

The short answer is yes and no

Sorry, if this wasn’t helpful.

If you compare customer satisfaction index, the financial results before taxes and the passenger growth of these airlines in 2013 adding the filter of how they were rated in engagement on Twitter with their 2016 results and growth, all of them have grown. But not necessarily because of their satisfaction ratings or social media engagement, but due to other strategic measures such as mergers, geographic focus, improved fleet etc. The numbers provided in the below chart are based on the annual reports and official websites of each of the airlines comparing 2013 with 2015.

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It can make all the difference in the world

On this chart one airline stands out with negative growth in passengers and the lowest financial growth 2013 – 2016 on results before taxes and interest. But it is also one of the most Social Airlines in terms of response rate.

Scandinavian Airlines Systems was facing bankruptcy in November 2012. Media reported hourly on the negotiations between trade unions and SAS leadership and executive board. They were trying to agree on terms that would make SAS more competitive and allow the airline to bring in more capital to avert the crisis.

Meanwhile, over the course of that week, travelers were deeply worried. But SAS had a social media strategy in place already. Following the infamous volcanic ash cloud closing down airspace in most of Europe in 2011, they had kicked off their social media channel with a focus on providing active assistance and service to their passengers.

During that dramatic week, one social media manager in particular – Cecilia Saberi – stood out with her calm and constructive responsiveness, her quiet charm with a twinkle in her eye. She worked day and night, slept on the sofa in the office for a few hours only to resume responding to concerned passengers, media and sensationalists. Her approach was sincere, open, genuine and fact-based. And she showed with every comment, every tweet, that people interact with people, not machines or corporations.

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(Bård tweeted a link to a newspaper site: “SAS in collapse. SAS very close to bankruptcy.” Cecilia responded within minutes: “Hello Bård, we are flying as usual, but of course all these speculations in media create unnecessary uncertainty. Have a nice day! //Cecilia”)

SAS did not lose their passengers during that week as far as is known. Because business continued as usual in a very unusual situation. As is often the case, despite sensationalist media reports creating issues without proper attention to facts.

I repeat – Timing is everything

As you can see from the below Skytrax 2015 airline ratings, customer satisfaction does not necessarily lead to better financial results or more bookings.

But during a crisis, loyalty and genuine openness and care – including responding while the response is still helpful and not leaving a journalist in an elevator for 6 months – can make the impossible possible and turn around a potentially disastrous situation into even better experiences.

Cecilia no longer works for SAS – but how she interacted has become the style of the social media team and is well appreciated by the customers. The seats may be shaky, there is no silver ware in business class, but Scandinavians remain loyal a little longer while SAS gets itself sorted.

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10.07.16
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Creating your own pathways through the cloud

Companies like Microsoft have many types of customers, but by embracing cloud they have multiplied their impact on IT’s everyday dilemma – the rogue customer.

Meet the customer where the customer is – a truism pervasive to sales and marketing speak over the past few years – is now also the overall motto where IT meets business.

James Staten, Chief Strategist Cloud and Enterprise at Microsoft, spent a few days in Stockholm at IP Expo Nordic  and a few minutes with me on the balcony overlooking the trade show floor. Just off the stage speaking about the end of the era of IaaS we were looking at the specifics behind his statement:

“Hybrid Cloud is the future and Microsoft will continue to invest in the dynamic interchange and complexity of public cloud and on premise computing.”

The Microsoft Cloud offers customers a global infrastructure with 30 available, and 36 announced, datacenter regions. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella just confirmed this commitment on Oct 3, 2016 by adding several European countries to the list of countries hosting or acting as hubs for their datacentres. And by introducing a novel concept where access to customer data is controlled locally through a trustee – T-Systems International in Germany. Thus addressing the continuous resistence to placing and handling data outside of your jurisdiction which is particularly fierce in Germany.

The dilemma of empowerment and control

In 2010 we could still put everything into boxes and linear progression charts

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This linear layered view of computing vs cloud as illustrated by industry expert R Wang in 2010 was a nice illustration of where the -as-a-Service had disrupted traditional IT – but this no longer applies: It is being disrupted by the citizens=users themselves.

“Just about 15% of the world’s developers have the highest level of skills required to build advanced and full scale deployments on Iaas (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) but there are 10 times as many developers who have excellent basic coding skills in various languages who are creating business value for the enterprise,” James Staten explains. “If you then consider that there are 80 times as many people in the world who can code and deploy to a selected cloud platform, there is a nightmare scenario out there from the IT Operations perspective which can inhibit innovation and growth.”

James Staten is a visionary. As a former Gartner and Forrester Analyst   and ex-CMO he is an expert at connecting the dots and creating a cohesive narrative.

To understand the reason why Microsoft believes in the hybrid cloud and is leaving the focus on -aaS combinations, you need to understand who your customers are and under which assumptions they operate.

With new tools at their fingertips, your customers will always find their own way – even in IT
Only the really skilled can really navigate the maze of IaaS

 

Historically, IT called the shots when business needs were met in the enterprise. And even structure lovers like myself, can see that what the architecture of today’s large enterprises mostly resembles is a maze. But with today’s tools at their fingertips, customers want to do their own thing. And the challenge is on the IT management to keep it safe and secure despite everyone going rogue on them.

When basically everyone can or can learn to code, or at least subscribe to cloud based business process applications they could deploy themselves, the infrastructure has been disrupted by user behaviour. Just like a path created by people simply trying to find an easier way.

James Staten feels that if you support the developers by providing them with the tools they feel comfortable with as they navigate safely in the Cloud, you are also helping IT to stay in control of their infrastructure and protect their investement in existing platforms and processes. This is where among others the Microsoft Azure Security Center wants to help  IT managers sleep at night.

If we want to achieve true developer empowerment in this next generation of cloud, we have to encourage more coders to be productive with their existing skills. We can do this by letting them program with the languages they want to use — and are most appropriate to the type of app they are building — giving them reliable and consistent access to as broad a set of services as possible, and doing this in such a way that leverages open source and open standards. You want their processes to be painless and intuitive to encourage productivity and be applicable across the needs and services that your business operates and leverage where your customers are when they want you there. (Source: Geek.ly “Cloud Empowerment should not stop at highly skilled developers” by James Staten)

Star struck

When you meet people like that, who have visions that reach beyond and above, you should always remember that they are people who want to make the world a better place – in this case, James Staten even held my phone when we took the img_0928traditional SpeakerSelfie – and I am still slightly shaken by the encounter.

Hope to meet again soon at another conference somewhere in the universe to continue our conversation.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and if you would like to see what a rogue customer can look like, here’s one. (Photo courtesy of Miroslav Trzil)

< Disclaimer> Image has no connection to the interview topic or person interviewed.

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02.10.16
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Data whispering presidential elections

It’s interesting to find the correlations between social media data and unexpected results during major elections. The power of the crowd is growing.

I found an amazing data whisperer, Stephens-Davidowitz aka @seththoughts on Twitter – a NY Times opinion writer and former Google Scientist. And he alerted me to the real scoop of yesterday’s New Hampshire caucus:

The interesting part is not the fact that one or the other candidate is trending – it is the timing and context that makes it so remarkable. 

People appeared to be considering John Kasich and investigating what he stands for, only when the first primary result in the little town of Dixville Notch showed Kasich beating Donald Trump 3-2. New Hampshire residents started googling him. A lot. Take a look:

 

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If you click on the link to the Google Trends comparison @seththoughts prepared when he started to notice the correlations, there is a clear spike where Google Searches on John Kasich increased dramatically right after the reports of the surprise win in the first result came in. It happened between 7 pm and 8.30 pm.

Can you predict election results with social media?

Of course, it’s never straight forward. This interesting paper by a group of computer scientists at Wellesley College ON THE PREDICTABILITY OF THE U.S. ELECTIONS THROUGH SEARCH VOLUME ACTIVITY concludes that Google Trends was not a good predictor of the outcome of the 2008 and 2010 elections. But the limitation of only focusing on one parameter – in this case Google Searches out of context and time – was clear to them even then:

Nevertheless, if there is a widespread belief among the journalists that G-trends have such a predictive power, it may not be long before it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, influencing voters’ decisions: reassuring and exciting some, while discouraging others from voting in pursuit of a lost battle.

Perhaps that is what happened on the night, when John Kasich became a plausible contester (and perhaps by many an alternative they had been hoping for) when he won the first published result from the tiny town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire over Donald Trump.

Make the data speak – listen and engage when it really matters

Opinion polls seem to have a strong influence on how politicians formulate their campaigns and whether or not they believe they can win.

But with social media, there is a source much more reliable than disturbing phone calls during family dinners.

What candidates might consider, is to steer away from listening only to news anchors and sponsored social media posts and to engage with the crowd itself. In Iowa, Bernie Sanders’ campaigners went door knocking – the next step is to transform the knowledge gained into actionable political strategy. Whether the knowledge is collected in door-to-door conversations or social media conversations is less important than how it is incorporated to keep it relevant and appealing on the day it happens.

Because as the example of New Hampshire has shown, it’s all about timing.

Pros and Cons from other research:

 

 

 

02.02.16
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How to win presidential elections with a digital strategy

“If the Democratic party were a body, Bernie Sanders would be the heart and Hillary Clinton the brain”

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition – and initially, nobody expected Barack Obama to have a real chance – even more so to get re-elected for a second term. What was his secret? It was being both the brains and the heart.

His method was using data to gain insight into what people care about and address that issue at each and every rally right there and then. When the issue was burning the most.

For us non-US observers it is worth remembering that the key to winning the candidacy as well as the election is not necessarily winning the votes of those who walk to the ballots. It’s about engaging those who wouldn’t.

A datadriven digital strategy

A datadriven strategy enables you to identify the issues that engage your audience.

For his first term election campaign, Obama succeeded in engaging a generation – the generation of social media which was just about to take off at the time.

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He was the first major political candidate to understand the power of sentiments and the power of the voice of the people outside the established channels such as television and news anchors.

By 2012 for the re-election he – or his team of advisors – had understood the power of using data to refine the message and making it timely.

The power of the crowd

As I am writing this article, the final numbers for Iowa have not yet come in, but it is a 50-50 race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. In social media, Bernie Sanders has won (according to this Reuters analysis.)

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders raises a fist as he speaks at his caucus night rally Des Moines

Bernie Sanders raises a fist as he speaks at his caucus night rally Des Moines. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Sanders was mentioned 77,000 times versus Clinton’s 55,000 times (Brandwatch) and gained 15,699 new Facebook followers on the one day. Clinton’s Facebook page only came third with 6,210 new followers that day, trailing Donald Trump’s 10,704.

As in all data, one must not jump to easy conclusions and take the number at it’s face value. There can be many different reasons why someone chooses to like a Facebook page – you could be liking an opponent to observe and learn, or to troll and create a disturbance. The second level of such an analysis should therefore always be a sentiment analysis and catalogueing the social media influence of these new followers to be able to conclude credibly whether this will impact a future election result.

 

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But one thing is certain – you could easily turn the intelligence gathered from this analysis into a practical campaign such as Obama did. One example is given below where the objective was to engage would-be supporters who just had not registered to vote with BigData combined with TV advertisement.

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I can’t wait to read more analyses on how the candidates fare by making their data speak. May the best data whisperer win.

 

More interesting links to the impact of social media on US elections:

 

 

 

01.04.16
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Your website is your business

Remember the early days? When companies were proud to announce that they, too, were “on the internet”? When all they did was digitalise their corporate brochure and added an info@ email address. Which sometimes even wasn’t clickable.

Unfortunately, despite all the technology, all the amazing professional designers and developers, there are still far too many websites who do not engage and add value. (At this point, I could add a “wall of shame” to this blog entry, but that is not a nice thing to do. I am sure, if you are one of them, you know it by now.)

Speed is the new currency of business

Your ignition key is your website if you want to keep up – and speed up – your act. Modern marketers develop content and interactions based on websites and landing pages where all customer interactions, and thus all the useful data you need in the sales follow up, is tracked, monitored and converted into actionable insights and next steps.

If you do not understand how to act and react fast and to the point, chances are you and your business will be disrupted by someone who does.

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Stay on target. Keep the content valuable, up to date, and avoid click baiting your audience to capture their information – and then leave them dissatisfied with the quality of the information they committed their personal details to get access to.

And whenever you create a website, think about what you – yourself – would look for and where you would look. Or better, if you have the time and the budget, engage with an agency that specialises in user interfaces and website navigation.

Be honest and transparent

Recently, I crossed the Oresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö for a quick Christmas family visit. The lovely young agent in the toll booth offered me 50% off my total fee for two crossings, if I saved the discount code on the receipts and logged into their website within 28 days to claim my discount. Pretty straightforward.

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But I never found out how to do it! Because after navigating around the website, checking all the tabs, using the search function, using the FAQ section – there was no mention of this possibility. I gave up twice. Then, finally, on the last day of the offer I gave it a last try. And I realised that the offer was directly connected to purchasing a BroBizz – loyalty program where frequent travelers across the bridge get 50% off their normal fee. But I live very far away, and would normally not go via this route.

Not only did the website make it impossible for me to find what I was looking for, because search functions and FAQs did not include this offer = not up to date. They also were not completely transparent about the main objective of this special offer campaign: to get more BroBizzers.

Be up to date

So, whenever you create a campaign that is driven through your website – make sure the content, layout, call to actions and data management is up to date and synchronized. And that your employees are properly briefed about the campaign objectives and how it works.

You lose consumer respect much faster than you can ever regain it. For someone like the company operating the Oresunds Bridge, the website IS their business. It’s the only channel they have to interact with and add value for their customers and potential customers. With more than 20,000 vehicles passing over the bridge daily according to www.orestat.se there is a lot of potential.

Be social

And your business is social. For inspiration, take a look at www.waze.com – also in the business of facilitating traffic. With this little app, GPS navigation has been seriously disrupted. Users want more than just maps, they want to know where the traffic buildup is right now, where the speed traps, the accidents, the roadkills are at the very moment they are heading in that direction – and what their route options are if they want to avoid them. And while they are at it, they can be social, collect points, rise levels (I am a Waze Warrior and striving to become a Ninja). Google Maps is losing ground as we all outsmart traffic together.

Wikepedia explains, and has more details:

Waze (pronounced ways), formerly “Freemap”, is a GPS-based geographical navigation application program for smartphones with GPS support and display screens which provides turn-by-turn information and user-submitted travel times and route details, downloading location-dependent information over mobile networks.

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And in the past month, Waze even had a special Star Wars theme, where C3PO was giving me the directions, and I could collect points by driving on roads where no-one had gone before and thus add to the quality of the maps available to all. Collecting little Tie Fighters. Sadly, this little game is over now.

Happy New Year!

A big thanks to @holman – read his article on what developers were facing when creating websites in the 90s. Those who tried to go beyond digitalising the corporate brochures.

 

09.29.15
by

What is datadriven marketing? Well, it depends…

Datadriven marketing means capturing and analyzing data from the abundance of available transactions and interactions between you, your company and your market – and turning them into meaningful conversations that engage your audience.

It’s all about analyzing the data available to you with the purpose of charting patterns, volumes, trends so that marketing can make business intelligent decisions based on insights around actual customer behaviour.

If you google “what is datadriven marketing” you will find several different perspectives:

  • Using data analytics to drive marketing decisions – says IT
  • Create marketing insights based on the analysis of data about or from consumers/customers – says Marketing

There is no way around it. We have to combine forces.

The 2013/2014 CMO-CIO Alignment Survey (Accenture) revealed that digitalisation is bringing IT and Marketing together, albeit slightly hesitant. 45% of CMOs believe “more collaboration is needed” with the CIO – while 43% of CIOs believe marketing requirements and priorities change too often.

So let’s turn the discussion around – why are we really here? Both Marketing and IT must contribute to the success of the business. They are literally in the same boat. How does datadriven marketing change all that?

Profiling, marketing personas, multi-touch communications using marketing automation tools; we all use these techniques to create a strategic engagement/nurturing cycle. But we must base it on insights – on the actual available data including your social customer engagements.

The enemy of any marketing campaign is complexity. None of this works if your IT department is unable to extract the information = data you need when you need it. And put it into context.

Make your data speak!

The overall objective of datadriven marketing must be to turn data into actionable insights. Because if you look at data in isolation, it is dead. Data is merely a reflection of something that has already happened. Any transaction in your ERP is history as soon as it is captured, including any customer interaction you may have recorded in your CRM. It’s what you do next, that’s important. According to Gartner,

Data-driven marketing refers to acquiring, analyzing and applying information about customer and consumer wants, needs, context, behavior and motivations.

You should take a moment to watch the excellent video from Gartner for Marketing Leaders.

To make your data speak, you have to apply filters that create patterns of behaviour which you then use to create a communication strategy for a continuous cycle of engagement.

Tom Kaneshige on CIO.com explains how:

“Data comes from many sources but not all contribute equally. Marketers also have the unenviable task of separating the good data from the bad data. It’s a work in progress, and CIOs can help CMOs learn about the many internal and external data sources and their value to marketers. Tech vendors can assist in this difficult process, too.”

… By the way, not everybody is a fan, especially when you define datadriven as metrics-driven.  Robert Glazer  maintains that if marketers only focus on satisfying particular metrics, they may fail to capture the greater good for the company:

“Clicks, time spent, and conversion rates only describe what people do, not why they do it. If marketers rely on data to tell them what works, creativity no longer drives the message. Instead, an obsession with data leads to metrics tunnel vision, and as brands shift from their creative offensive, they neglect to consider consumer engagement.”

FT.com/Lexicon

“Data-driven marketing refers to the marketing insights and decisions that arise from the analysis of data about or from consumers.”

Author Lisa Arthur from Forbes Magazine :

“At its core, data-driven marketing centers on one thing and one thing only: propelling value by engaging customers more effectively.”

Her book on Big Data marketing contains many examples of companies that are already well on their way to becoming data-driven organizations.

04.19.15
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The “ambassadorization” of business

Human civilization emerged from tribes – as individuals the early humans would not have survived. The same applies today . No one can survive in a silo, be it a company, an industry, an organization or a department.

Once you realize that, you understand the power of relationships as the foundation of successfully connecting your needs to those of others upon who you are depending. That is why the current mantra in modern marketing is engagement. Every process, every action, every transaction is connected. If you push, someone or something has to move backwards. If you pull, someone or something is moving towards you. Pushing and pulling at the same time creates engagement. When you engage your audience, your partners or your employees, you create a tribe.

ArntEriksen (2) Speed

At the Speed of Change event in Oslo on April 16, 2015 (organized by Salesforce), trendspotter Arnt Eriksen focused on the power of tribes that develop into movements which ultimately could change the world. You could claim that the Arab Spring – using Facebook as it’s vehicle – started as a tribe and ended as a movement. Similary, Apple started building a tribe, a community of followers who wanted to think differently about computing. And ended up changing the world by engaging with them, changing them into devoted followers (tribes) and making them it’s strongest, devoted and forgiving ambassadors.

Artistic         Collage

(Artist: Maja Eriksson)                                   (Artist: Maja Eriksson)

When you have a purpose that can unite your tribe – such as the Arab Spring – and you have the vehicle to engage with each other – such as Facebook or other social channels – you can become successful as a business in the digital age.

“Convert strangers into customers – and nurture them into ambassadors” (Arnt Eriksen)

03.05.14
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A diary of #anywhereization – working on the iPad with Salesforce1 and various office tools

It wasn’t planned, but necessity made it happen: stuck in extremely busy times working entirely off the iPad (and a mini at that). So what’s all this about mobility, on any device anytime, anywhere? Can we be productive?

Short answer: yes.

Slightly longer answer: read my notes below to understand what worked, how it worked, and what didn’t (at least for me).

By the way, I am sure if I had had the bandwidth to search for solutions/apps when I encountered challenges, it could have been solved. But I didn’t. Simply too busy. So I invented new ways of getting things done.

Day 1

My plan was to stop carrying my laptop when travelling on short business flights for meetings – the iPad mini fits into the handbag and does not even have to come out when passing through security, as it is seen by the scanner as a mobile telephone. So I downloaded Office-To-Go from Nexscience and created my first document during a flight which I could later email to myself, edit and forward/send to the people I wanted to email. Creating a straight forward text was easy and intuitive and it did not reformat when moved between applications.

Getting back to the office,  my laptop – died. No time wasted, turned to Chatter on the Salesforce1 platform on my iPad to update my co-workers on the project in the appropriate Chatter group. It saved me having to write meeting notes! In fact, I could share more information more directly – because you get lazy when you have to type it all on the small iPad mini keyboard. Within 20 minutes, all the details discussed in the meeting were shared with those co-workers working on the project who would then be alerted to them in their Chatter feed.

  • Less is more – direct messages in a collaboration tool gets the information directly to your co-worker who does not have to open yet another document and read through a lot of prose. And can respond right there in the same  feed for everyone else to see. No “reply-all” –  it’s a need-to-know only solution
  • Productivity indicator – saved 30 minutes – no need to organise your notes to  write a structured report. And immediate sharing, instead of another dreaded set of meeting notes lying around that need to be written “when you have a moment”.
Running your business from an iPad

Running your business from an iPad

And then I logged a ticket with our IT hotline – also in Chatter – to get help fixing the laptop. Obviously, as I could not log it from the laptop. Duh… Considering I work offsite (#anywhereization) and it being a hardware issue, I braced myself to be stuck with the iPad for at least another day.

Day 2

Opening emails as the first thing you do makes little sense if most of the interaction you have is in the Chatter feed – including just getting an overview of what happened overnight in a global company that never sleeps.

Working on the iPad mini means you can work everywhere, so why not right there with coffee and a toast without even getting up – and it is not nearly as uncomfortably hot as a laptop on your knees. Who hasn’t had a “laptop-burn” on their thigh at some point – or fried a battery charger under the covers.

  • You end up working in the most awkward positions.
  • Productivity indicator  – Down at least 60 minutes, as I should have been up and in the office instead.

In preparation of a new project briefing to be kicked off in a conference call later that day, I had planned to create a fabulous Powerpoint slide deck with nice images, amazing graphics and charts. But that was not an option with just your index finger and an iPad mini screen size. So I opened Keynote which I knew was a cool app. But since I am not a Mac-User (yes, my laptop is in fact a PC) I never checked it out. Now was the time. It took some trial and error, and I never figured out how to import the cool graphics and charts and nice images. But all the information needed for the briefing suddenly fit into 5 slides – just text and itemized lists and links to other sources of information. No fancy stuff that is nice to look at but not really carrying any information.

  • Keeping it simple also gets the information out.
  • Productivity Indicator – Saved 60 minutes of searching for the perfect graphic, the perfect photograph, creating the perfect pie chart and reformatting into the perfect colour scheme.

But what about the conference call? We mostly use GoToMeeting so that was a fast and free option to download to the iPad and then log into my existing userID. But I never figured out how to schedule a meeting for later, so had to open one in meet now and then let it beep in my ear until the meeting started 20 mins later. I experimented to be sure it all worked once the co-workers were joining to save everyone the frustration of a failed conference call, but it meant I had to live with the beep. Honestly, folks at GoToMeeting, could you not give us some music, instead? The beep eats my brain cells. I had sent everyone on the call my fantastic Keynote presentation with only 5 slides for them to read, which was greatly appreciated – so it all started off on a really nice note and we had the most agreeable session where everyone agreed, and we agreed on who should make it happen:  me – but that’s another blog, I fear.

  • Learn how to SCHEDULE a GoToMeeting on the iPad as soon as you can to avoid the beep.
  • Productivity Indicator – saved 30 minutes, as everyone had the clear, short itemized briefing and we did not share any slides on the call to go through in presentation mode where everyone wants to comment (at least in Sweden) and knocks you off track. No questions asked = agreement was quicker and based on the facts only.

Day 3

Laptop fixed, off into the office to plug it into the docking station…. and it died again. Motherboard fried. Back to the iPad. My eyes were swimming – also because the iPad mini screen is so small that it is really tiresome to work for 8 hours squinting like that.

By now, I found myself checking Salesforce1 notifications continuously rather than checking emails – it is just quicker to get the issue/request sorted within the app, so that any links to information that is already part of Salesforce is there without having to copy/paste it into an email. As a matter of fact, I find copy/paste very difficult to execute on the iPad – maybe my fingers are not the right size.

All is not well  when you really need to get your head down to business, though. When a process is not designed intuitively for the mobile interface, some things just cannot be done. Such as updating Google Docs. Painfully, I realised that I had to start writing apologetic Chatter posts to my co-workers that dealt with the more logistical aspects of our ongoing projects – you know, budgets and stuff. The beauty is, that the apology posted on one co-worker’s Chatter feed actually resulted in two others reading this post and offering to help with completing all the steps that I cannot currently take care of from the iPad. So – in fact – I did not ask for help, but help was offered. And saved me the humiliation of casting the towel and delaying the process impacting everyone in the chain of events. Running complicated projects on a tight timeline requires a well oiled machine where every link is the strongest link. And I am the weakest  link when unable to complete my own tasks.

  • Until all business processes are intuitive and integrated in  the mobile interface – not just VIEW but also CREATION, you need friends when stuck on the iPad.
  • ProductivityIndicator –  Lost at least one full day in the progress of the project. Not a good thing.

Day 4

Waiting for my replacement laptop got me another day on the experiment – and made me realise that a big screen is probably a better choice when I need to write more than just a few brief messages. So I ended up working in a hybrid – and perhaps a little less smart – but hey, it worked.

You just need a bigger screen, sometimes

You just need a bigger screen, sometimes

My private laptop is big – really big. I use it for playing computer games. You need a big screen to find all those monsters in the dark. Today, I created long documents (including this blog) on this fantastic device with a proper keyboard and ergonomic mouse – and emailed them to my company email to process on the iPad either as another email now going where it was supposed to go, or as a briefing/post in Chatter. It’s backwards, but at least my eyes are not swimming. And easier to make sure there are no typos – or unintentional bloopers – in the information that I share.

  • You are physically challenged if you work intensively and long hours on an iPad – need more meetings or other  non-computerrelated activities to break the spell
  • ProductivityIndicator  – Minus 50% productivity on the day, having to send documents back and forth between devices and formats requiring reformating/editing.

Looking forward to my laptop tomorrow, you are still my best friend. But iPad Mini – you saved me and will always remain close to my heart. Or in my handbag.

Please excuse any typos – as this was proof read on an iPad Mini.

08.03.13
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Being social – it’s B2B, it’s B2C, it’s everywhere

There’s really no excuse – go where your customers are and engage: become a customer company. If you do, the benefits will be extensive – increased customer satisfaction, keeping tabs on the competition, marketing your latest product that could go viral, a more productive and efficient mobile sales force. Below are some great examples of Do’s and Don’ts.

To get inspired, I attend the Sweden Social Web Camp on the provincial island of Tjärö every year, to understand what goes on in the creative minds of those dominating the social media scene. It’s worth visiting their website to understand what social means in terms of branding, collaboration, and innovation.

Before I’ll give you my tips on how to create a social media strategy, let’s take a look at your toolbox:

Facebook: On Facebook you can reach consumers of all demographics and it is a powerful and effective tool with all of its 500 million users globally. When your business profile is up and running and Facebook users become fans of your page, they get automatic newsfeeds or other updates from your company. Facebook is also a great multiplier because you will reach the network of your fans and their networks.  But be aware – things can go wrong: One horrific example of a company who messed up with their Facebook Page and didn’t quite understand how to have a functional dialog with their customers is Amy’s Baking Company. But that should not stop you – learn from the mistakes of others:  it’s still crucial to have a proper dialog with your Facebook fans. So take a look at Oreo’s or the Danish TV broadcaster YouSee. They have worked out a perfect strategy for their business and know how to keep their fans pleased. For YouSee, it’s all about trust and transparency – another important element of becoming a customer company.

Do

oreo

 Don’t 

amys

Facebook has ranked the 20 best brands on the social network for 2013. Have a look and be inspired!

Twitter: Twitter can be used in different ways. You can have a dialog with customers and prospect, tweet about product launches and campaign as well as using Twitter in customer service. But if you start to tweet once a day and have built up a follower base you can’t just stop without losing your followers’ interest. There are other traps you also have to stay away from. In 2012 McDonalds asked their followers to share their #MCDStories. For a company with a large amount of both pleased and unpleased customers, this was a fatal idea. To see how brands successfully have used Twitter, take a look at this infographic.

Twitter really is an incredible tool for making announcements or promotions and profiling your heroes. And with tools such as Salesforce for Twitter from the AppExchange, it’s also possible to capture leads directly from Twitter.

YouTube: One of the most effective ways for your message to be shared in social media is by using visual material. It’s one of the most engaging ways to make your content “viral”. YouTube, with nearly 80 percent of the online video market, is an effective tool for businesses who for example want to share product demos, Webinars and training materials. Take a look at Salesforce on YouTube to see how we are using the channel.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a professional networking tool to connect with prospects, clients and other professionals both within and outside of your industry. You can create groups which individuals can join to participate in discussions and to connect with other customers. It is a great place to post job listings and corporate news as well as promote events to your most interested users. Take a look at our group: Growth Through Innovation Nordics on LinkedIn.


Build your social media strategy in 8 steps

  1. Choose a community manager – He or she will serve as your point person for all social media and collaboration activities and be the company’s official voice on social media sites.
  2.  Create a steering committee – In addition to the community manager, define other stakeholders in your social media strategy to create a cross-functional steering committee that includes public relations, product management, customer support and marketing.
  3. Define objectives – What do you hope to achieve with your social media campaign? Each tool offers different benefits, so define very specific objectives and then choose the tools that can help you get there.
  4. Decide on success metrics – The true impact of social media can be hard to measure. However, many social media sites offer fairly robust analytics so as part of your plan, decide what metrics are important, set your goals, and determine how to track results.
  5. Set up social media guidelines – Encourage your employees to take part in your social media campaigns. But be sure to set up guidelines that specify the “do’s” and “don’ts” of participating in online communities.
  6. Create easy-to-remember URLs –With most social media tools, you can select a personalized URL which makes it easier for customers and prospects to access your links. So when setting up a Facebook or Twitter account, make sure the URLs are a natural extension of your business Web site. Great examples here from the Nordic countries includes Telia’s Danish Facebook Page or the Swedish startup Buildor.se or adding value like the road help and security company Falck in Denmark.
  7. Be active – Not responding to posted messages has the potential to not just damage your social media programs, but your company as well. So update your content and respond regularly to keep it fresh and to interact with your users.
  8. Be flexible – Review and revise your social media plan regularly to keep up with and make the most out of all the new tools and functionalities that are introduced all the time.

And if you’re still wondering if you even need to be in social media, take a look at this: