Trustworthy » Social Media Response

Interview with Aaron Kaufman of THQ, Part 3

Kirk Skodis — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 01:10:47 +0000

We wrap up this 3-part interview with a big, ten-minute Part 3 in which Aaron Kaufman, Community Manager of UFC and WWE brands at THQ, tackles troll-management, community self-defense techniques, the importance of speed in response, and how to effectively coordinate real-life community summits.

Aaron leaves us with some valuable words of wisdom for companies wanting to emulate his success in community building, growing and sustaining.

Thanks, Aaron!

UPDATE: Be sure to watch Part 1 and Part 2 of this interview!

SXSW Interview Wrap-Up

Kirk Skodis — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:27:05 +0000

One month and three interviews later, what did we learn from Frank Eliason, Susan Bean and Bowen Payson?

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.

SXSW Interview With Bowen Payson of @VirginAmerica, Part 3

Kirk Skodis — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 21:09:20 +0000

In Part 3 of my interview with @VirginAmerica’s Bowen Payson, we first tackle the “Will it scale?” question, and then cover team size and training, response speed and the future of Social CRM.

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!

SXSW Interview With Bowen Payson of @VirginAmerica, Part 2

Kirk Skodis — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:36:04 +0000

In Part 2 of my interview with @VirginAmerica‘s Bowen Payson, we talk about intuition, monitoring tools and real-time Social CRM in action; how a tweet can get a pilot’s attention in the air.

Plus, some customer training for Guy Kawasaki…

SXSW Interview With Bowen Payson of @VirginAmerica

Kirk Skodis — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:28:55 +0000

Bowen Payson is Virgin America’s Manager of Online and Digital Marketing and leads the social media response team on Twitter, Facebook and beyond. I caught up with him between panels in Austin last month to discuss how Virgin America tackles the nuts and bolts of social CRM in the high-profile and potentially volatile airline industry.

(Apologies for the harsh lighting on Bowen.)

Social Media Response Hero of the Month

Kirk Skodis — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 07:11:39 +0000

Paychex Supervisor on Twitter

We got the reply above to our tweet about our co-founder, Holly Skodis, lodging a complaint about Paychex the way we all do these days: on Twitter. She was replied to by @PAYX within 24 hrs and the dialogue ended with Holly commending him for taking her issue seriously.

So here’s this guy, a Supervisor at Paychex who was so inspired by Frank Eliason and his team at Comcast, that he’s taken it upon himself – without pay – to monitor and respond on his employer’s behalf. Wow. This guy is our Social Media Response Hero of the Month (an award I just made up, but I think it might stick!).

The world needs more people like @PAYX. He didn’t wait for someone to add it to his job description. He recognized a need to help his employer engage in social media and he went for it. Additional kudos must go to his superiors who are aware and allow him to continue, even if it is in a quasi lone wolf capacity.

So are we going to see this more often? So far, Social Media Response happens in one of the following scenarios:
1) Companies who build internal teams.
2) Companies who hire Advertising/PR firms.
3) Companies who partner with Trustworthy.

Can we now add:
4) Companies who are lucky enough to have employees who will volunteer their free time?

It’s a pretty shrewd career move if you think about it. Paychex is a huge company and you can bet there is C-suite buzz about social media, Oprah-on-Twitter, etc., but maybe a hesitance to increase head-count in this economy. @PAYX not only increases job security, but should his tweets get some PR hits, he could be climbing his way up faster than you’d think.

Full disclosure: Holly was voicing objections on Twitter about an issue regarding our other company, Real Pie Media, and the Paychex service. Trustworthy is not a client of Paychex.

Open Letter to Jeff Bezos

Kirk Skodis — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:07:43 +0000

Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos

Dear Mr. Bezos,

All of us here at Trustworthy are huge fans of Amazon and regularly buy everything from flat-screens to shaving cream on Amazon.com. We get free shipping with Amazon Prime, and even harangue lazy authors via email to publish their works for the Kindle.

So it was with great lament that we witnessed the recent #AmazonFail fiasco. In case you missed it, there’s a great round up on Ad Age today. Now we’re inclined to believe the “ham-fisted glitch” story, giving you the benefit of the doubt you deserve after years of innovation and success. But where we can’t let you off so easy is this issue of Social Media Response, or the glaring lack thereof.

To illustrate how easy it would have been to avoid this mess, let’s pretend for a moment that you had hired Trustworthy to listen and respond to your customers in social media. It would’ve gone down something like this:

4/9/09 10:33pm – Author Alex Beecroft blogs on LiveJournal that her romance novel, False Colors, isn’t tracking on Amazon.

4/9/09 10:45pm – A Trustworthy representative comments on Alex’s blog that we’re looking into it, assuring her that either we, or someone from Amazon will get back to her in 24 hours with an answer.

4/10/09 1:11pm – Author Storm Grant blogs, again on LJ, that her book has lost its ranking as well.

4/10/09 1:25pm – A Trustworthy representative comments on Storm’s blog that this is a known issue and promises an answer within 24 hours.

4/10/09 1:45pm – Trustworthy advises an executive contact at Amazon about the problem, alerting them to the groundswell in online chatter. Amazon investigates, finds the “glitch” and Trustworthy notifies everyone who blogged, tweeted or posted comments about the issue.

4/11/09 – No one creates the hashtag #AmazonFail. Disaster averted.

Mr. Bezos, my guess is that Amazon was monitoring it all weekend, but no one responded. Next time, perhaps a few simple acts of Social Media Response will keep the brand you have worked so hard to create from being lumped-in with the notorious Motrin Moms, sleeping Comcast techs, and Dell Hells of the world.