Developers Conference F8 Offers Advancements In Customer Interactions But Also Mean More Focus on Customer Service

At F8, Facebook.com ’s developers conference in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, announced the use of plug-ins designed to embed its social networking service into third-party sites. As the FinancialTimes.com reported, “The initiative is designed to put people at the center of their web experiences by providing more meaningful connections.”

Companies might like the idea because –with the more than 400M members, Facebook’s plugins could drive a lot of traffic.

The “Like” Button

How does it work? Let’s say a Facebook user was on a website. They would be able to click on a “Like” button –on stories or products they want to share with friends. Their friends would see a pop-up window that shows their friend’s activity on the site and allows them to share comments.

As the NewYorkTimes.com story said, “It would, in essence, allow Facebook friends to enjoy those sites together.” If you want to follow some additional great coverage of F8 and other tech news, check out @benparr – he’s got the goods.

Focusing on the Big Picture of Social Business

As many of my readers know… I am very focused on the customer-facing aspects of social media. That means that I always have a keen eye towards wondering what each of the new developments will mean to companies and their ability to enhance or at least maintain their customers’ experiences — i.e., in particular their ability to deliver a quality brand-equity enhancing experience –otherwise known as customer service.

While the idea of the plug-ins theoretically sounds like a great idea… it could also lend itself to a PR nightmare. Let’s say for instance, that someone is sharing about something. And let’s say that a number of those people weighing in on that shared product or service are not too happy. What could happen is a spiraling of unhappy customers sharing their unhappy experiences.

So what can companies do as they adopt the Facebook (FB) “Like” button? Get a little satisfaction.

What do I mean by that? For many companies, their Fan Pages or in this case,  extended fan experiences are or will become a company’s “other” homepage. Companies are finding that these “fans” or customers  spend a significant amount of time on FB and thus are possibly a great way to engage their most social customers.

More Engagement Means Doing Less of “The Ostrich”

What I predict will happen, is that, as more and more companies are embedding these “Like” buttons — not only will they increase engagement… they are likely to also increase the amount of feedback. While many Facebook-type initiatives are started as a PR/Marketing effort, the social net has become a place where consumers can scream very loudly and to millions about their disdain for a company’s products, service and overall attitude towards customers.

This addition of inter-connectivity or third-party FB “Like” buttons doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t adopt the “Like” button. But it does mean that you need to be strategically ready to handle the additional customer service issues that are likely to explode.

And note that adding a “Like” button IS NOT the cause of more customer service issues. If the issues are there, they are being talked about — at the watercooler, at the cocktail party and somewhere on the internet. So its not about whether you adopt the “Like” button, its about whether you take your head out of the sand and stop doing the “ostrich.” Stop pretending that your company, its products, its services and they way it handles customer issues isn’t being talked about. It is. Start thinking strategically about how you are going to handle them.

Don’t Under Estimate The Need For Customer Service Interactions

Customers view your Facebook Fan Page-type interactions as another channel to interact with you on. And they assume that you– the brand –will be there to answer their questions, acknowledge their ideas, etc…   But companies who are not planning ahead often underestimate the need to provide service & support via the fan page-type initiatives.

I’ve worked with many PR and Marketing professionals who didn’t anticipate the amount of Customer Service they ended up doing when they interacted with customers via social media. By not planning ahead and supporting all you social media channels properly, you can essentially alienate your most social customers.

Facebook Fan Pages have roadblocks that make it hard to serve/engage customers. For instance:

• The Wall has no search function (This translates into  costly, repetitive responses)
• Information on the wall has no permanence–as engagement/activity increases the wall “turns over” faster.  (This means there is (limited exposure of valuable content to fans and companies are having to answer the same questions over and over — inefficient & ineffective… (In addition, This means that there is limited value to internal teams/systems to garner that value information and feedback to make changes, improve products and services, etc…)
• The information is “locked” inside of Facebook — ( That means no SEO, and you can’t use that information other places ([brand site for example])

What is a Company to Do? Getsatisfaction.com

Here’s what I think the real news is: Get Satisfaction has partnered with Involver to solve these problems by building an app that recreates Get Sat within the Fan Page. What does this combo provide? Here’s a couple of advantages:

• Allows users to search to see if question has already been asked (benefits both company & customer).
• Since the information is stored in the Cloud, the Fan Page content can be syndicated to other places (search engines, community on a brand page, etc…)

If Facebook is part of your social media business strategy, then you’ll want to think strategically about how all of your functional disciplines are affected. (Note: I did not say functional departments. I am encouraging clients to move away from functional silo’s and think in terms of social business.

Social business means that you are considering how all social interactions affect your company — every single person, department and especially how they manifest in your customer’s experiences.

If you want to learn more and join an interesting discussion TODAY on social business, check out the Facebook Social Engagement Hub Webinar.  Here’s a link to it:  http://bit.ly/SEH-GetSat

It’s at 11 AM PST TODAY. I’ll be there. Will you?

Luv to hear your thoughts about these new developments on Facebook and how your company is leveraging them.

Learn. Share. Grow.

Dr. Natalie

Follow me on twitter — www.twitter.com/drnatalie

Republished with author's permission from original post by admin .