August 20, 2008 | Author: Zack TaylorLife Imitates Art in 3G
Having written about customer experience, social networking, and the Ultimate Question, I realized that I became a Net Promoter a few weeks ago after purchasing a 3G iPhone. Not that Apple needs any help after selling one million devices the first weekend it came out.
As a Net Promoter, my small contribution to that total was thirteen individuals. This is the basic Net Promoter approach in action – recommending a product or service to a friend, family member or colleague. There’s also a twist. I was both a Net Promoter and an unofficial member of the tech support team. I walked five people through several startup processes, shared a few nuances I learned from my experience, and recommended applications from the Apple store.
The Applications Store has been highly effective in that value-added capacities are readily available to iPhone users. Social networking attributes like user rankings and recommendations are present. The apps I have are largely based on recommendations from others, which I in turn recommended to the thirteen people I influenced. It’s essentially a waterfall effect.
Another user category may exist beyond promoters – "enthusiasts" comes to mind. Seasoned users can share configuration management, startup, and related insights, effectively supplementing the sales and tech support forces without adding a single employee.
With much of this dynamic occurring across many companies, it’s interesting how much of the brand experience is now in the hands of individuals who are not on the company payroll. To Andy's point, crowd sourcing extends a company's value proposition to social network dynamics with both benefits and risks. It’d be interesting to see how the thirteen people I’ve influenced go on to influence others.
Posted by Zack Taylor at 12:59 on Aug 20, 2008
John Swanagon said... Posted at 14:05 on Sep 09, 2008
Great post. I think this phenomena is happening across the board with technology in general. Support and promotion of products is, to such a high degree, community based now. Social networking, wikis, forums, and other resources on the Internet have led us to not only support technologies in the community, but add value and promote them as well. Traditional customer support has become more specialized, even a mini professional consulting business. Anymore, I only call support when I have something so specific that the community couldn't or wouldn't solve it or I need warranty help. In my opinion, this is proven by many companies now charging for support. Overall, I think the community driven approach is great. It inspires innovation and even creates new small businesses for our economy. I agree there are risks, but in my humble opinion, the rewards well outweigh them.
Zack Taylor said... Posted at 09:05 on Sep 12, 2008
John -
Thanks for your insights. In thinking about your comments and the rise of the community-based support model, I would be interested if you agree with a reason I have onsidered this phenomenon is occurring - it has to do with the one thing everyone has the same amount of - time. The community support model, wikis, blogs, and other social network tools are often the fastest path to resolution vs. traditional "queue" and resource based approaches. Just like water flows to the path of least resistance, so it seems do people's efforts to resolve their service issues with time being the great equalizer.
--Zack
Jim Keenan said... Posted at 22:19 on Sep 20, 2008
Zach, your point is spot on. Community based support, in all aspects of the web is growing. I use Twitter to solve a myriad of problems, or get answers. Leveraging the masses, is not only efficient but also, personal and engaging. It makes people feel better. Trust plays a role here, however.
Knowing this, I think AVAYA should begin building these type of tools into its Contact Center and UC tools. The ability for Agents (and other employees) to share information, experiences and knowledge would create a bottoms up efficiency not normally associated with Call Centers (The Enterprise).
There is an huge opportunity for someone to take the lead in Enterprise Telephony by incorporating Web 2.0.
