10.08.2021
Purposeful social
Let’s talk about phone calls
You have probably read this stat before: 80% of millennials would rather lose the ability to make phone calls if it meant getting unlimited data. Attention is fleeting, and speaking on the phone means having to dedicate time to doing something – right? In response to this trend, Vodafone created VOXI, the mobile network that offers unlimited social media for millennials (but did take two years to work out what a millennial was… 2017 – under 25s only, 2018 – under 30s only, 2019 – no age limit). Picking up the phone is also becoming less appealing given that 44.6% of unknown calls are spam – so not only do we not want to set aside the time to call someone, but we don’t really want to pick up the phone.
However, don’t let that make you think that phone calls being shit is the only reason people prefer communicating digitally – digital communication is fantastic.
Messaging allows us to dip in and out of a conversation as we please while getting on with another task; something customers would value particularly when talking to businesses. Think of having to contact your utility provider (personal least favourite thing) – the time spent on hold, searching for the paperwork while on the phone, or even the fact that you’ve only just found time to call them and they’re closed. I can’t call my energy provider without feeling stress – and every four months they expect me to do this with a meter reading. Now think of contacting your utility provider via messenger – sending meter readings outside of opening hours – knowing that it will be actioned once someone is in. The ability to dip in and out of my conversation, at a time that suits me, with my energy provider rather than setting aside 20 minutes to feel stressed has led to me personally feeling far less negativity towards them. Something so simple has made my brand experience so much better – and this is how we should be thinking, as businesses, about how we can use social media. How are we making the customer’s experience more delightful?
Messenger is just one example of how social can make an audience’s experience with your business better. When we start to understand what a customer is trying to do, we can understand how to make it better. So, understanding the purpose of their visit on a social channel means that your brand can add value to this experience. The purpose could be service-related, leading them directly to your brand (such as a purchase or query); or the purpose could be for entertainment, where we have to consider how we can add to that experience in a way that makes sense for our brand. This should be your key consideration when creating a social experience strategy for your business.
People visit social with intent
We need to understand this intent and add to the experience. It’s time to move away from a point of view that social belongs to the marketing team, and create experiences that belong to the customer – and feed into departments across the business. We need to understand all customer touchpoints, and where social adds the most benefit – for the business and the customer.
Creating these experiences rests in the idea that we need to focus on the right metrics – and report better. Let’s stop telling senior teams that our social strategies are driving clicks or engagements – or something equally myopic – and start reporting against three core objective areas:
Social for service (the quality of social in resolving customer/crisis issues).
Social for activation (shorter-term goals, such as campaign metrics, or learning outcomes such as testing messaging).
Social for growth (how is social helping long-term business goals such as brand sentiment, or even feeding into product development?).
It’s time to step away from vanity benchmarking, social against social, and instead measure the impact it has across the overall digital journey. If used correctly, a great social experience can make a huge impact.
At krow.x we work with your whole business to understand where social can drive the biggest impact for you and your customers. If this sounds good to you, email sam.bettis@krowgroup.com
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