Ever wake up in the morning and sit down for breakfast to find out someone’s executed one of your ideas better than you could’ve imagined? No? Well it happened this morning when I read about Dachis Group’s new launch of the Social Business Index. Touted by TechCrunch as “Klout for companies,” the service ranks companies based on countless social media metrics.

We’d fantasized about building a similar service, dreaming of a day when companies would compete to get a better score and hopefully raise their standards of customer engagement in the process. The SBI goes several steps further, tracking industry performance and trends down to a strategy graph that tracks internal constituents’ behaviors.

It’s left me wondering how we’ll all use it. Will companies vie for competitive positioning? Will it become relevant to customers who would rank best/worst companies on sites like The Consumerist? Will we, as agencies, consultancies, etc., look to the lowest ranks for leads? In any case, it’ll be fun to watch and I applaud the Dachis Group for putting in the massive effort to provide us all with this great resource.

The breakdown: Retailers post signs and stickers pointing to Skweal.com. Customers with smartphones pull it up in their browsers and the site finds the location. Feedback is then privately sent via email or SMS to the store’s manager who can take immediate action.

Skweal founder, Tyler Crowley, is betting that when presented with a convenient option to keep feedback private, customers will “generally do the right thing” – as he expressed in a healthy debate in the comments of an All Things Digital blog post by Liz Gannes.

We here at Trustworthy advocate anything that connects consumers with companies in an effort towards greater mutual satisfaction. Social, email, telephone, iPhone app – what matters most is that it’s customer convenience in the driver’s seat.

What brands might miss are the benefits of amplification and scale that come with social media customer service. Like even the best call-center representative, when the manager addresses a customer’s praise or offers a helpful solution to an issue, the whole experience dies when they hang up the phone (or in this case, swipe the touchscreen closed). The customer’s friends and followers never benefit from these interactions, silencing the digital word of mouth.

Speaking of scale, I’ve argued in the past against those who worry that social media response can’t scale in large organizations with even larger customer bases increasingly voicing opinions online. Holding that line of thinking against the Skweal model, the one-to-one nature of issue resolution is strained to call-center proportions.

Also, retailers must burden the customer with finding their location on the Skweal website to voice their opinion. Like the “best camera is the one you have” argument for camera-phones, as easy as it is to visit a URL on a smartphone, it will never be as convenient as using the platform they’re already on (Facebook, Twitter, Yelp) to speak out.

Cautions aside, if Mr. Crowley can get retailers to sign on en masse, we may see Skweal lead the next wave of the digital customer service revolution!

That’s great news for Old Spice, but ultimately this is about making your grandpa’s brand relevant to a new, modern customer. So how did Wieden + Kennedy turn their wildly popular Old Spice Guy spots into a viral sensation? Social media response, that’s how.

Let’s examine why these 87 short videos responding to celebs and common folk alike, resonated with people:

1. They leveraged a smart and popular campaign of TV spots.
2. The writing and delivery by Isaiah Mustafa was pitch-perfect awesomesauce.
3. The rapid-fire responses over an 11-hour marathon felt live and fresh.
4. Social media response connects consumers with a brand message like no other tactic available to marketers.

The great promise of social media for brands lies not in promotional Facebook pages, PR Twitter accounts and YouTube channels full of TV spots. No, the promise is fulfilled as brands connect with their customers in meaningful and human exchanges called trust transactions. A trust transaction is any encounter that results in an increase in confidence and loyalty.

In this instance it’s a fantasy spokesperson, but the truth cannot be denied; the magic of a real-time, two-way dialogue is a powerful branding and, as it turns out, sales technique.

UPDATE: W+K has released a case study of the campaign which helps to make my case (thanks guys!).

Well first off, they’re clearly pioneers. When so many companies are just now trying to figure out how to handle Social CRM, these folks have a huge lead. In five years time, nerds like me who care about this stuff will look back at companies like Comcast, AT&T and Virgin America (and others) as the founding fathers of digital customer care. These are the companies who didn’t wait to see if Twitter was a passing phase, or worried themselves into inaction over the ramifications of opening up a real dialogue with their customers on the web. So, what did we learn?

The Similarities.
All three were obviously passionate about their missions, evidenced by their openness to talk to me about internal operations. They are all champions of social media within their organizations, with realistic and sober expectations about how their roles work alongside other non-digital departments. They regard every customer equally – no special treatments or biases given to celebrities or influencers. Speed of response is a big priority for everyone, with Frank clocking in Twitter responses under 5 seconds!

They all believe that Social CRM can scale. In fact, they are doing it right now.

The Differences.
The most obvious differences were team-size and organizational approach. Frank leads an internal team of twelve at Comcast, Bowen has a smaller internal team with some pitching in part-time, and Susan works for AT&T’s PR agency, Fleishman Hillard, with customer care and corporate communications teams. Frank and Susan frown upon using the social media channel for promotions while Virgin America shares infrequent promotions on Facebook. Bowen and Frank both monitor and respond in blogs, but Susan feels it’s too invasive, and focuses on Facebook and Twitter.

Here’s a round-up of all the interviews. I had a blast chewing on the nuts and bolts of Social CRM with Susan, Bowen and Frank, and would like to thank them once again for their time and candidness.

The Interviews.
Frank Eliason AKA @ComcastCares – Video Interviews, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
Bowen Payson of @VirginAmerica – Video Interviews, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Susan Bean of @ATTCustomerCare – Text Interview.

Watch Part 1 and Part 2 for the whole conversation.

A big thanks to Bowen for an insightful look inside Virgin America’s social media customer care operations!

Plus, some customer training for Guy Kawasaki…

(Apologies for the harsh lighting on Bowen.)

AT&T was in Austin this year in a big way. After last year, they made sure they could handle the additional load and did an amazing job. My iPhone was never without service, nor did I hear any complaints.

@ATTCustomerCare‘s Susan Bean couldn’t make the trip, but she graciously agreed to the interview via email. As Sernior VP & Partner at Fleishman Hillard, Susan leads the Consumer Media, Digital, Social Media, Video and Branded Integration teams for AT&T.

She offers great nuggets about responding to angry customers by “being Ghandi” and the groundswell-driven pricing drop on the iPhone 3GS, and while I disagree about not responding to blogs, her reasoning is nonetheless valuable. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Here’s the interview (click READ MORE below for the full interview):

Trustworthy: A celebrity with a following tweets dissatisfaction about your brand. How do you respond? Any differently?

Susan: We try to respond to all tweets expressing dissatisfaction with the brand. We have a team of 13 customer care folks who monitor twitter and DM people to find out how they can help. We also monitor on the Corporate Communications side and respond and we watch to see if people are reporting problems with the network. Social media is the canary in the coal mine.

Trustworthy: DM or @reply – How do you balance privacy and the value of a public answer/help?

Susan: If it’s something that can bring value to the Twitter community then we might respond publicly…if it’s a customer care issue, we’ll almost always DM because the first questions we’ll ask will be about the customer’s account information.

Trustworthy: Is DM a sign of fear to the customer?

Susan: We haven’t found that…generally, if someone is having a problem, the first thing that we’re going to ask is for their wireless number…not something most people want to broadcast to the entire Twittersphere…so we think people understand why we DM.

Trustworty: What is your help-to-promo ratio? What is ideal, healthy, etc.?

Susan: The vast majority of what we do on Twitter is help…contacting people who are having a problem and tweeting…or tweeting to us directly. We also use twitter as a way to give people who follow us access to our news, like the release of a new device, first. We don’t really push out marketing messages. We’re considering letting folks on Facebook know about great deals, just as we currently let them know about news before they can find it anywhere else. This is something our fans have been asking for, but even so, we’ll do a status update to ask them how they feel about us letting them know about e-com offers before we do anything recurring.

Trustworthy: Do you respond on blogs or only Twitter and Facebook?

Susan: Interesting question and something we’ve discussed among ourselves. So far we only reach out directly on Twitter and Facebook…we suspect that bloggers don’t really want us invading the comments…. That said, when we see a customer airing an issue with a blogger, we often ask the blogger to connect us so we can correct the issue.

Trustworthy: Should you ever argue/defend your position? If so, how? If not, why not?

Susan: I wouldn’t say we argue…but we definitely convey our point of view…especially on Facebook. We’ve had discussions that go on forever about the network…giving people facts and metrics, explaining a process or a point of view. Our fans mostly appreciate that we’re willing to engage. We pretty much keep answering questions and engaging for as long as people want to keep going. We don’t always see eye to eye with all of our fans, but they seem to appreciate that we’re willing to have the discussion, go track down a fact, find out when they are getting 3G in their area, find out whatever it is that they want to know. Sometimes fans really challenge us to defend our position on something and we’ve responded with a couple of pages addressing their questions point by point. We’ve gotten begrudging respect even from some big time critics that way.

Trustworthy: Does speed matter? Do you respond within 5 minutes? 1 hour? 24 hours?

Susan: Speed totally matters. We have folks across the country monitoring Facebook and Twitter and trying to respond in as close to real time as possible. This is particularly important with customer care. We have customer care managers monitoring Twitter and on Facebook all day long. [Into the night in most time zones] We think if people reach out to us for help that it’s important to help them as quickly as possible.

Trustworthy: How do you respond to praise?

Susan: We love praise. We always say thank you.

Trustworthy: Under what circumstances should you NOT respond?

Susan: If someone asks a question and the community jumps in on FB and provides really helpful answers we will often just leave it at that. Some comments really aren’t asking for a response…although we do tend to err on the side of responding. What we don’t do is ignore people who are really angry. Someone can come on our Facebook page and curse us out and insult both us and our mothers’ and we’ll still ask them if they’re having a problem and whether there’s anything we can do to help. Sometimes we’ll respond with something like “OK…clearly, you are ANGRY. What happened? How can we help?” We call it “being Gandi”.

Trustworthy: What are other ways to respond (Dominoes video response, Zappos sends flowers)?

Susan: I think the most powerful response is action. When we introduced the iPhone 3GS and people on both Facebook and Twitter were really up in arms about the upgrade pricing…and based on the feedback we were seeing in social media we actually changed the policy. That’s not the kind of thing that happens every day, but I think it shows how a company can really listen to consumers and respond.

Trustworthy: Are you basing your answers to the above questions on data or intuition?

Susan: Both.

Trustworthy: How does response scale within your organization?

Susan: We have both corporate communications people and customer care people across time zones to respond from 8am Eastern to 10pm Eastern. As our social media properties have grown we’ve had to bring more and more people into social media to keep up the quality of the conversations and the level of Customer Care.

Trustworthy: How do you train? Do you have your own response flowchart like the Air Force Blog Assessment?

Susan: Train…hmmm. Basically, we show folks how to use the tools and then they do the same jobs they do for AT&T in the brick and mortar world. Our customer care managers essentially operate the same way they do on the phone. The corporate communications people interact on Facebook the same way they do with bloggers or reporters…they’re just doing it directly with the public through social media. We think it’s better to have social media really integrated into the company with people who do their regular jobs using it as another way to talk to consumers. We think it’s important that the way we interact in social media be a reflection of our real relationship with consumers…not a phony overlay. No question we spend a lot of time talking about the need to engage people in a serious and respectful way and at the same time to show a sense of humanity and humor, but that’s more about the ethos of the team than about any formal training.

Trustworthy: Do you study “Twitterstorms” as they come up? What are some lessons you’ve learned?

Susan: Engage, engage engage. If you ignore it, it will not go away. It will get worse. Besides, it’s rude to ignore people…and we try not to be rude.

Trustworthy: How can you turn-around an unhappy person?

Susan: Help him. Engage with him as honestly and transparently as you can. Keep the dialog going for as long as he wants to. Treat his questions or comments with respect. Fix his problem.

Trustworthy: Does monitor/response require 24/7? Or less?

Susan: So far we’re finding 8am to 10pm on weekdays and customer care help on the weekends works. When people ask questions after hours the community tends to jump in and say “the AT&T team is off the page for tonight come back tomorrow morning.” That said, we’ll see how it goes, if the community says the really want us on nights and weekends, we’ll find a way to make it happen. Besides…I sneak onto the page on the weekends and answer questions. I’m trying to stop that. Social media is kind of addictive.

Trustworthy: What tools do you use?

Susan: We monitor twitter through tweet deck and a monitoring tool that pulls everything so that we can respond to anyone complaining about AT&T. We’re working with a variety of app developers on Facebook.

Trustworthy: Have you noticed more people EXPECT a response/less are surprised?

Susan: Yes. We have totally spoiled our Facebook fans…they expect responses right away and if they don’t get it they’re like “Hey AT&T…where are you???” We love that. It really is almost like a real time conversation.

Trustworthy: How are people drawing the line between response and “stalking”?

Susan: I think people expect us to respond on twitter…jumping into blog posts feels like stalking, which is why we don’t do it.

Trustworthy: Do you see a day when the majority of people will associate SM with customer care. Will SM adoption be driven/accelerated as people recognize it’s the best way to get a company’s attention?

Susan: We think in some ways we’re already there with SM and customer care. We still get some people who are surprised when we respond on Twitter…but much less than even a few months ago.  Yes…there’s a definitely a cycle being established where people see that they can get a company’s attention, and companies see how much people love when you respond to them. It feeds on itself. I think companies are also starting to see how much they can learn from their customers in social media. All parts of our business are really interested in what people are saying. I mean you PAY for research like that…and here are all of these people who are just dying to tell us what they think. It would be silly not to listen.

Trustworthy: What do you look for when hiring staff?

Susan: We try to bring people onto the team who are empathetic to the customer, are willing to track down answers for them and are willing to engage in an honest and open conversation. Folks who can only see the company’s point of view aren’t that useful to us. Since its about having a dialog in a real two way conversation, we also look for people who are capable of engaging in a real conversation…not just spitting back messaging. Good judgment and smarts, because we encourage them to understand the company’s point of view and policies and be able to respond in a way that is appropriate for the question being asked. Also,they have to be resourceful. A lot of what we do requires tracking down answers…it’s a big company with a complicated business and it takes some skill to be able to answer everything.

Trustworthy: Can you train good response?

Susan: Yes…by role modeling. We have pretty high level people engaging on both Facebook and Twitter who really lead the way for folks who are new.

Trustworthy: What can you do to avoid the culture/attitude of a phone call center?

Susan: I think all of us feel like we’re doing something really important for our relationship with the consumer. It also helps that executives at the highest levels watch the page and respond to what we’re doing there. Also, our Customer Care people across the business do a really good job. If you don’t really want to help people, you’re in the wrong line of work.

Trustworthy: THANK YOU, SUSAN!!