Yesterday I wrote a post: Social Media Marketing – You Can’t Stop Once You’ve Started and I sent it to Chris Brogan via Twitter, who read it and came up with another, very interesting, question of his own.

“I have a different question: this is going on with or without company involvement. Is your company ready for no voice in the conversation, or are they willing to hear the voice of the people?” – Chris Brogan

Chris is so right. Whether companies like it or not the conversation will go on with them or without them.

Then what?

It takes a level of awareness in upper management to make the sort of changes needed in order to make social media work. In companies that have an upper management focusing on the bottom line instead of core competences the customer will probably come in last. It’s the wrong direction, but a typical one in a bad economy. People get so stuck on the tree they forget to see the forest.

How does a company take a step back and remember the forest?

1. Upper management has to come to a consensus decision to focus on the customer. The rest of the company will follow top-down. This decision has to be reflected in all company decisions – and if there are cutbacks they can not be in a way that will affect the final product or the customer experience. In other words, executives get to skip the company jet and fly coach if necessary.
2. Customer service needs to be melded with sales and marketing and shouldn’t be considered a cost center. Typically customer service is the bottom feed of the organization, which seem silly in my opinion as this is the one group (along with sales) that has a clue what the customer actually wants. But as Customer Service isn’t seen as income generating it’s considered a place where costs can be cut. As Dell learned when outsourcing to India and losing their competitive advantage – customer service needs to be a core confidence. Customer service is your investment in your current customer – and it costs less to keep a good customer than to find a new one – so by investing in your customer service you are sending the message that your customers are the top priority. Your customer will reward you in turn by recommending you to others (and the best new customers are typically those that are referred by existing customers.)
3. Now the social media begins. (Why only now? Because without having the systems in place to handle the feedback, asking for feedback but offering nothing in return would do even more damage to your company’s reputation.) Outreach to show you care about the customer on the relevant social media platform for your niche. The relevant tools depends on your niche – do you know where your customers hang out online? Have you ever asked? Now’s the time to research where your platinum customers hangs out – and follow them them there – and listen to what they have to say.

Any questions?