I’ve been asked to speak in Melbourne on April 15th (evening) about the impact of social media, online communities, social networks and call centres. As you probably know, I believe that while marketing and PR want social networks to be about them and their needs, the customer usually has a specific question they want answered, best suited to Customer Service engaging on support and FAQ issues. And yes, the exception is when you want to play with the network and offer them competitions and campaigns. But mostly, the customer is about wanting answers, not fluffy “please call our hotline with your details” tweets and responses. From ATA website:

ATA VIC Forum: Social Media & Your Centre — 15 Apr 2010

5.00 for 5.30 – 7.30pm
TressCox Lawyers: Level 9, 469 Latrobe Street, Melbourne
Social Media & Your Centre: What’s new and what’s legal?

Social Media is revolutionising the way we do business. Many progressive companies are opening up new communication channels and using tools such as Twitter for engagement with their customer base. How are successful centres now taking advantage?

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Crucial paradigm versus a client over a Twitter comment. Justified?

 

Miss me? I’m still in Singapore, teaching Social Media campaigns and how to build branded microcommunities for the Singapore Government. I’ll be back next week. In the meantime, here’s an interview I did with Choice Magazine on the future of social networking: In the future, we will turn to the internet to get a job, for a loan and to take out health insurance, but we’ll apply through our online social network. And this will give rise to the development of peer-to-peer economies. These are just a few of the developments that Laurel Papworth is anticipating. The internet strategist works Continue Reading…

 

Let’s pretend this isn’t groups on Facebook but you’ve just spotted them on member created forums on your own little community. Do your community “spider senses” tingle when you start to see groups with Gary Coleman and Nazi Swastikas all over it? And then -oh dear – you see the group is called… we dont need to say sorry to the aboriginals… we did nothing wrong Further investigation reveals other groups in the list…… have you already started framing a post for the moderators forum, with a warning to go out over MSN Messenger or Yahoo!Messenger (or Twitter if you Continue Reading…

 

At the very bottom, above the line is “Customer Service Updates” link Well, I didn’t believe it. Foxtel Customer Service has been down for over a week. Nope, I’m not exaggerating. And I don’t mean, busy or hard to get through. I mean “sorry for the inconvenience but we can’t take your call right now.” Clunk. The problem? I organised Foxtel with IQ for my aged parents (they’ll hate that) in Adelaide. But the box blew up around last Thursday 14th. The technician that arrived put in a new box and said the SIM card (or whatever the equivalent in Continue Reading…

 

Not really social networking. Actually not social networking at all. But it annoyed me. McKinsey recommend overbooking technicians to make them more productive. Let’s forget about all the delayed appointments, missing parts and lost in traffics – things that weren’t straight forward and gosh! most of the technicians that come to my house have to take/make a million cellphone calls. We’ll just assume that technicians sit around 1/2 the day because people cancelled appointments. When was the last time a technician actually showed up early – or indeed on time – at your house saying “oh I had a few Continue Reading…

 

Remember one of my mantras? Your staff are members of online social networks too? Hat tip to Steven Lewis at Zest: Irish blogger Damien Mulley complained on his blog about the service of his airline’s ground agent, Sky Handling Partner. In return someone at Sky Handling Partner allegedly signed Damien up for some gay dating websites. Now there’s an oopsie in the making… (front page of Digg already happened). I remember employing (accidentally!) a hacker back on 1995 who, upon being sacked and removed from the premises, signed me up for a million listservs. Bless. Once I tracked down the Continue Reading…

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