He’s been called “the most famous customer service representative in the U.S. and possibly the world” by BusinessWeek and now he is sharing his Twitter secrets with PMN members. As Director of Digital Care at Comcast, Frank has been credited with reshaping Comcast’s customer service with a brilliant effort on Twitter that focused on listening to customers and then actively participating with them. So what are those secrets to his success? Here are the top 10 points that Frank made on the recent PMN webinar.

1. Don’t be afraid to try new thing – be open to the possibilities of the social web
2. Be everywhere your customers are
3. Be, find or encourage an evangelist in your organization
4. Invest in listening and ultimately participating with customers
5. Be honest, transparent and responsive – adopt a “Make it Right” mentality in the customer service department
6. It takes a village. Be a team player and work with your internal teams. You may even want to consider creating a cross-functional team like Comcast did.
7. Find an executive sponsor/advocate – support is critical, particularly if you need to change the culture
8. Measure success 
9. Communicate success
10. Always be learning and sharing

Some great advice – thank you Frank. To hear a replay of the webinar, visit the membership section of the PMN website. Stay tuned for some more great speakers – up next how Dell made millions on Twitter…just confirming the details!

'Til Next Time

After 3 years and 50,000 entries Netflix is ready to announce the winner of its movie recommendation challenge – or are they? While the contest ended on Sunday, two teams are reportedly in a dead heat for the million dollar prize. In fact, Netflix has delayed officially announcing the winner to validate the results – yes it was that close between the top 2 teams (BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, The Ensemble). So what was the challenge and -- more importantly -- the key lessons learned? The challenge was to improve Netflix’s movie recommendation engine by 10% - a task requiring deep expertise in predictive modeling and statistical scoring, which makes the 50,000 entries all the more impressive. However, one of the more interesting phenomena’s that resulted was the participation and collaboration among team members and eventually across teams in the later stage of the contest. Once the benchmark of 10% was passed, it set off a 30 day race that allowed other teams some time to surpass it. What actually occurred was fascinating – teams and rivals merged, consortiums were built and passions were ignited. So much so that one team, started their own company to develop recommendation systems for e-commerce players.

So what was THE key lesson learned?

• Participation & collaboration and teamwork leads to innovation and invention: When you engage a community great things can happen. There are countless examples of communities generating great ideas – My Starbucks Idea, Dell’s IdeaStorm and others. However, when you get the community to collaborate and you build teams comprised of different yet complementary skills sets truly amazing things can happen. This is why the Netflix participatory marketing program will be one that will be studied for many years to come. Not only did Netflix receive some great ideas on how to solve the problem, but they got a diverse group of people from around the global to focus on building a solution that they could not otherwise buy or build themselves.

For me the Netflix program reminds me a little bit of what 3M is so famous for – that is their ability to assemble small teams to collaborate and innovate new products. But while 3M pulls its talent from within the company, Netflix tapped into the social web to reach and engage the best minds in the world to solve their problem – amazing. So the next time your company faces what seems like an insurmountable challenge – ask yourself how would the “community” solve this?

‘Till Next Time

In a new report, social media guru Charlene Li, in partnership with wetpaint, reviews and charts Interbrand’s top 100 brands based on their social media presence and the level of engagement they have with their customers. It’s an innovative and important report for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the report attempts to actually measure the depth of engagement and provides additional insights on trends by industry and the number of social media channels used by each brand. Next, the report goes on to correlate financial performance of these brands with level of engagement.

Not surprisingly, “Mavens,” (those brands engaged in seven or more social media channels with an above-average engagement score), enjoyed double-digit revenue and margin growth (as a category) in spite of the current economy compared to “Walflowers” (those engaged in six or fewer channels and had a below-average engagement score) who had negative financial performance on those same metrics.

Additional insights from the report include:

• Being there is important: having a presence on social networks and micro-blogging outlets is important. The report goes on to say “social media reach alone may have a positive impact” as the more touchpoints used can cause a “ripple effect”, by increasing or “boosting” brand recognition and driving sales volume.”
• Depth is critical: In some respects focusing on depth over breadth may be an effective strategy as depth gives brands the opportunity to understand customer needs and to react quickly – “which in turn generates pricing power” and drives success.
• Scalability is key: Make the customer and a commitment to social media a part of the culture. “A few minutes each day spent by every employee adds up to a wealth of customer touchpoints.”
• Doing nothing is not an option – but doing it all may not be appropriate: Building a social media strategy depends on many factors including who your target is (remember Forrester’s POST methodology), your industry, etc. However, being where your customers are and a part of their online experience is critical.
• Find your sweet spot: Understand what resonates with your customers and engage with them in the channels they use and prefer. If resources are an issue – start small, lobby for more assets and engage fully.

The report goes on to highlight some very compelling case studies including profiles on Starbucks (ranked #1), Dell (#2), SAP (#9), Toyota (#21) and also includes a complementary website that allows brands to engage further and even complete their own brand’s profile. Another great report from Charlene! However, with the focus being so heavily placed on measurement these days it would be great to better understand the “engagement attributes” used to rank these brands (but I guess that is the secret sauce). Furthermore, I would have liked to see how much of a lift these brands experienced on a series of other metrics. Specifically, in a world where people are turning to other people for a things they need rather than the brands themselves, it would have been great to see if these brands experienced any lift in metrics like satisfaction, likelihood to recommend, likelihood to purchase.

To download the report click here.

‘Til Next Time