Treat the cause, not the symptom.

From mental and physical wellness to sociology and legislation, it’s a truism that’s earned its mettle. So why are so many well-intentioned companies responding to their customers’ issues at face value? There are real people behind each tweet, status update and blog post. Their expressions reveal passion and complex emotions. The grievances are just the symptoms and it’s the responsibility of the responder to address the cause.

After all, there is a lot riding on the brand response. Beyond immediate satisfaction and problem solving, there are greater, long-term benefits like loyalty and social-evangelism. Being there is great. Offering a fix is even better. But can the violation of trust that motivated the complaint really be repaired? That replacement part or adjusted bill simply stops the bleeding. It cures the symptom. But rebuilding trust requires more than that. Imagine the moments between the first spark of frustration, as emotions escalate, until the customer complains in public online. That’s the part that demands mending. That’s the cause that needs to be treated.

Flashpoint. Motivation. Communication. Response. Satisfaction. Trust.

These are the six steps to focus on, but we start in the middle with the customer’s communication. From that communication, we must decipher the first two. We may never know what the flashpoint was, but as long as we identify the motivation correctly, our response will have a greater chance of building back trust. The purpose of the flashpoint step is less about identifying it and more about recognizing its significance in the chain of events. In many cases, if we address the motivation in our response, the satisfaction of a fix is secondary. Often times, there is no reasonable fix, but we can rebuild trust by treating the cause.

Of course, treating the cause also means fixing what’s wrong with your product or service, but that’s another blog post.

Praise also has motivations that should be addressed with the same considerations.

Trust Betrayal

All consumer motivations start with one commonality; the customer’s trust has been betrayed. This happens when the perceived effort is higher than the perceived value and the trade becomes unbalanced. The moment the customer arrives at this conclusion is what I call the flashpoint. It’s the moment when the widget breaks, the software crashes or the service is slow. Unless it was delivered on the doorstep for free, an unbalance occurs and triggers an emotional response AKA the motivation.

Motivated to express dissatisfaction publicly.

Now we’re at the point of communication, looking back. Communipathology, if you will. What drove the customer to tweet in ALL CAPS, punctuated by a #FAIL? It wasn’t that the widget broke or the software crashed or the service was slow. It was how that flashpoint made them feel . Understanding how it made them feel is the key to identifying their motivation for expressing their discontent in a public forum.

So, how do we ID motivations? I have some ideas, but I’d love to hear your’s in the comments below.

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!).

Pampers is defending a product at the expense of the brand.

After reading several articles covering both sides, I would actually tend to side with P&G on this one. And I’m sure after the effort and investment of a product launch of that scale, I’d want to punch any detractors in the face. But even if short-term sales are flat or even up, what long-term damage do you incur when you blame your customers for the problem?

And while yes, Pampers gets fresh new customers every few years as potty training obsoletes diapers and the stork drops new tots from the clouds, brand loyalty still exists in the form of mothers-in-laws, sisters, and friends.

I’ve always said a brand has as much right to defend themselves as a customer has to broadcast a complaint to thousands, but this case has made me revisit my position.

It’s not as simple as The Customer is Always Right. That’s too much of a blanket statement and we know every instance is different. There are times to defend your product if it’s a matter of education or setting the record straight, but at some point as the wave against you gets bigger and bigger, you have to step back and give the customer the benefit of the doubt and say “While we’re confident of no wrongdoing, we’re launching an internal investigation and in the meantime, will honor some restitution.”

A brand has to pick its battles carefully. Choose which hill do die on, and when to run away and live to fight another day. That’s it. I’m out of corporate war cliches. I think Pampers is in danger of dying on this hill. What do you think?

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!!