Earlier this week, in “Cooking up Social Media with the Right Ingredients”, I wrote about Walmart and how their Elevenmoms initiative created and leveraged a community of shared values around saving money.
Today I will walk you through what Gina Debogovich, Best Buy’s Community Manager, called “a journey of all the wonderful things we can accomplish through social media.” Gina and Jason Parker, Community Analyst, shared their story at last week’s Engage!Expo.
About two years ago, Best Buy’s Enterprise Customer Care Division realized conversations were taking place on social media about Best Buy brands, and Best Buy needed to act.
First they observed and listened. They responded privately to customer comments in the blogosphere, but that didn’t create much traction. They decide to take it up a notch. They reached out to the appropriate internal departments like PR, HR, legal, Corporate Communications, etc. Once everyone was on board and privacy concerns were talked through, Gina was out there as Gina-BBY: a blogger, on twitter, and connecting with customers in the blog sphere and social media.
Early successes allowed her to hire a team and start participating more actively. Gina’s goals were to decrease support costs and increase customer spending, loyalty and product insights. In one example she shared, a customer posting on social media complained about the lack of iPhone inventory in a Miami area store. They quickly discovered the root cause (bulk buyers shipping overseas) and were able to rectify it within two weeks. Gina credited the “remarkable speed and power of online community.”
Remarkable speed and power is also a great way to describe how Best Buy has embraced social media. Three blogs, a Community Forum, bi-weekly videos each highlighting a policy or product, and an idea exchange called IDEAx. Marketing joined the party and the INSIGNIA brand launched their own community and Best Buy recently launched Twelpforce – 1,800 customer service employees on Twitter answering customers questions in three languages.
Gina says brands have to become social and listen to customers. Her advice is to get ahead of the curve, join the conversation and monitor the brand. If you get out there and build credibility you can respond to negative issues effectively.
Best Buy is also known for its data mining and analytics prowess and they’ve applied these smarts to social media. What are they learning? 85% of interactions are peer-to-peer, including resolving issues and getting buying advice. From a customer service perspective, 50% of interactions are service related and 50% are about product insight.
And the results? Best Buy sees improved first contact resolution while deeper customer loyalty, more interactions and more visits correlate to more transactions.
Next up: how Best Buy’s execution culture made this great story possible.
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Meri,
I’m looking forward to hearing about Best Buy’s execution culture.