Two latest Apple products are generating a lot of press and some of it is decidedly negative – iPad and iPhone 4. This writing will focus on the analysis of the iPad devices. When you try do “comparative” analysis one starts with a list of products to compare and iPad makes it very difficult as it seem to be positioned to compete with e-readers as well as tablets. The tablets category definition presents us with yet another challenge, so for the purpose of this analysis I decided to compare iPad with popular e- or digital book devices as well as some tablet devices that do not have a physical keyboards. Some popular retail website offer a very useful hint to see what percent of people who looked at a product actually purchased it, and if not what was the product they did, however in the case of iPad or Kindle such information was thoughtfully removed from every site I have checked. I also am very disappointed not to find any customer reviews on the Apple store website. It is very hard to believe that none of over 3 millions of  iPad customers did not write about their product experience on the manufacturer store site. The only possible explanation of that can be found in accusations that Apple actually censors the iPad customer discussions the same way as they accused of doing for iPhone4 here and here. It is very disturbing if it is true.

So here is the list of products I have decided to compare in terms of them meeting their customers expectations. You can make it larger if you click on the report.

Here is the scale legend for better understanding of the report.

iPad did not meet expectations of their customers, who wrote the reviews with 53% reported negative experiences (0.91) related to Reliability, and 65% of comments about Support were negative (0.94). To be fair, the customers are overwhelmingly impressed with screen readability (100% rated 1.81)  and usability of the device (96% rated 1.53).

I know the Apple just reported 78% increase in profits, but with 63% of their flagship product customers reporting that its value did not meet their expectations (0.98), I can’t help but wonder how long it would take for Apple to start loosing it’s “freshness”.

So far it gave birth to hordes of consultants and marketing services that promote ideas of influencer chasing and reputation management monitoring technologies, however the “scream” of offerings seem to counteract the idea of increasing the volume of the voice of customer.

One example is a number of websites, offering depository of customer reviews about products and/or services, outnumber the customers who are willing and capable to contribute to these depositories. The end result seems to be counterproductive as consumers who look for such information are hassled to sites that have no content to offer.

Some companies spend substantial energy to explore and pursue some form of activity involving Social Media and there are very few, but loudly celebrated examples of those. However that doesn’t seem to change overall reputation of these companies. One of my favorite whipping “boys” – Comcast is still rated dismally for the delivery of their customers experience, despite heroic efforts of their Social Media team on Twitter and Facebook.  Here is another example, a darling of the Social Media mavens – LinkedIn. Based on Customer Service Scoreboard scores

LinkedIn is ranked #253 out of the 273 companies that have a CustomerServiceScoreboard.com rating with an overall score of 19.35 out of a possible 200. This score rates LinkedIn customer service and customer support as Terrible.

There 56 negative comments vs 1 positive one and most of them by paying subscribers, who cannot get their issues resolved. Ironically the 19.35 score is below the LinkedIn lowest monthly subscription fee of $24.95.

I know that 56 complains is a very small number considering millions of people who use the network, but I wonder what is a percentage of them who actually use it actively enough to care, and even more interesting is how many actually pay for it. I personally am one of them and my experience is one of neglect. I have an issue outstanding for almost two years without resolution. The issue resurface from time to time and causes me a lot of aggravation and waste of time. I finally decided to use LinkedIn Inmail to escalate the problem to the founder of the company, Reid Hoffman.

On 7/2/10 12:18 PM, Gregory Yankelovich wrote:
——————–
I am expending a valuable Inmail credit and hope that you will read it.

This is the 3rd time I am erroneously locked out of my ability to ask for Introduction. I am paying customer, but I cannot get resolution for almost 2 years. The 1st time I have experienced this problem, I reported it 10/27/2008 and I am having problems with it once again and it negatively impacts my efforts to bring my product to the market.

I rely heavily on my network to reach out to potential customers and partners. However every time I encounter this problem I have to wait for 2-3 days for your Customer Support to reset the system’s counters. 2-3 days are a long time to waste in the life of a startup. I understand the power of reputation more than most people and don’t want to scream #fail all over Twitter. Please help.

To Reid’s credit he responded

Gregory,
I am reading it; I’ll put your issue into the executive escalations. Since I don’t know what you’re doing that hits problems, I don’t know if we support what you’re doing or not. (For example, not saying that this is what you’re doing, but we have very clear messaging limits to prevent spam.)
Hope it all works out. (And, btw, you can write what you feel is right on twitter: I apologize for where we step when we’re wrong or slow.)
all the best,
Reid

However his response was the only one, I am still waiting for any contact from the Customer Support. I eventually did express my frustration on Twitter:

Wasted yet another day waiting for help from #LinkedIn technical support – still no love.

What is a reasonable response time for #customersupport? Does anyone else has #LinkedIn Introduction Withdrawal or is it just me?

and here the reaction I have received

@piplzchoice Do you have a free linkedin account? If so, be thankful you get to use linkedin at all. Just sayin.

I did not write this to whine about my “misfortunes”, but to explore what, if anything, is actually changing with advent of Social Media in respect to the treatment of the customers. Advertisers keep complaining how difficult it is to gain share of consumer attention, yet when a company like LinkedIn or Facebook, does manage to do it, and end up raising enormous amounts of capital based on that fact, our attention doesn’t seem to be that valuable anymore. Let’s face it, Social Media is nothing more than another communication channel, like a next generation of telephone, radio, TV and email. All of these improved our life experiences at some cost to our privacy or quality of life, but how we use these channels is the only thing that may influence how Market delivers our Customer Experiences.

Like never before, Social Media is providing a colossal platform allowing us to hear what our customers are saying.   It is quickly becoming one of the best ways to engage a customer and gain valuable insight into their experience with our products as well as those of our competition.  Are you listening?

This explosive technology could permit any business to identify competitive threats or opportunities through information that might not otherwise be detected without listening to thousands of customers.  Historically, formal focus groups were utilized as the most common means of collecting this data in-person from the end user.  Perhaps one could imply that today social media is quickly becoming the new “focus group”.

Consider for a moment that while traditional focus groups draw in customers to discuss their experiences, so are Social Networks providing the same information.  Is there really a significant difference?  The value of a focus group depends largely on quality of questions posed to the participants with all the biases that are incorporated into a question. The main disparity is that social media presents a very public review of a product or company’s benefits and even shortcomings.  However, we must not ignore the exponential numbers of consumers who are vocalizing this valuable data.  It is often more candid than any focus group could provide.

Getting connected with them is just part of the solution.  Connecting & engaging within these social mediums is relatively easy part.  Nevertheless, just like any other ‘marketing” effort, its success is not realized without measurement.  Therefore, the opportunity exists in figuring out what to do with the unstructured data.

Fortunately there is technology available to “interpret” this valuable data. Utilizing a multi-dimensional analysis, we convert various forms of feedback into an actionable plan then we take it one step further.  We are examining customer ratings across the market of nearly 20,000 products.  Many of the companies who have attempted their own translations had to invest very significant amounts of money into text mining implementation projects that allow handling feedback about only their own products.  With more than 2 million reviews, our database can deliver satisfaction scores from real world consumers about your products as well as that of your competition.

Self help author and motivational speaker, Robert Kiyosaki,  was quoted last year as saying ‘I am a bit old to focus on social media now but I spend an average of two hundred thousand dollars monthly through hired employees or consultants on social media, online reputation etc’.  While the use of social media as a marketing tool is still in its early stages, let’s not ignore this novel opportunity to act on customer feedback.

Clay Shirky once said in on of his presentations – “There is no information overload – it is filters failure”

Some people complain that the Internet has created overwhelming volumes of information.  Is there really too much information about objects of interest or is the perception of overwhelming volume actually misstated? Perhaps the issue is not quantity but level of quality. It is a matter of perception and focus; the ability to discriminate signal from background noise.  Both producers and consumers care about what is said about a product or service equates to dollars or pounds or yen because positive statements will usually translate into higher demand.  It is ironic how growing numbers of sophisticated product producers and consumers are tapping into the same information stream that has only recently come out of emerging social networks; a kind of digital crowdwisdom.

Whether consumers are overwhelmed by the amount of product information or just lazy, many consumers apparently prefer the conversation threads shared by digital “friends” in their social network over search engine result pages generated by a product’s keywords and metadata tags. There is a very human tendency to seek out the opinion or advice of a “social herd” of like-minded people with similar values, interests, and needs.  It is more than just a contemporary cynicism of Madison Avenue hype and infomercial verbiage. Following the “virtual herd” may at first sound like a derogatory statement but it is in fact fair and descriptive.  Herding is an adaptive trait that fosters very important social behaviors. Though it can, if carried to an extreme like lemmings jumping off a cliff appear pointless, following a “digital” herd saves time and minimizes personal risk. Whether inexperienced or as mentioned above, overwhelmed by too much information, “attending” to what the other member’s of one’s social circle say, do, or prefer is like a filtering device. Some people feel that the wider their circle and the greater the consensus toward a selection, the less risky their final choice. This filtering is especially cost-efficient. A consumer, after finding a common and comfortable social niche, has to neither spend additional time nor effort to select objects of value or need; they just follow the Word-of-Mouth recommendations of their trusted circle and their satisfaction is guaranteed.

Sophisticated product producers recognize that tapping into these social niches, if they can find them, provide free and truthful evaluations of what is right and wrong with their product line.  Crowdwisdom would appear to reflect unsolicited, and therefore one hopes, unbiased evaluations of many different facets of a product. If postings in some niche social network discuss a product, its reputation, and its brand over some reasonable time frame, a producer could conclude the data is accurate rather than misrepresented, for example, by a competitor’s planted remarks or their own staff trying to “market” company goods. They could conclude it is balanced rather than atypical and biased when, for example, a single irate customer monopolizes bandwidth with redundant rants.  Producers who cast their virtual nets over social networks to catch real-time comments must follow the best practices in statistical sampling and testing of experienced psychologists and trained sociologist. Crowdwisdom is not necessarily wise but it is, when collected carefully, extremely relevant. Especially in this digital age where many people struggle to find the signal in all the noise, it is cost-effective and an adaptive trait that minimizes personal risk. It doesn’t matter whether or not you trust or even like everyone in your social circle, if the group hangs out at a particular water hole, it must be safe to go there to drink.

Imagine a product review that shows 5% of your customers were reporting specific design issues with, for example, the battery compartment latch on an MP3 player you sell. Image a tool that would, in minutes, help you factor out this specific design issue, recalculate a customer satisfaction index, and project that your product would outscore the competition by 4.2%. Would an online tool like this help you manage your product and your career?

Several analytic tools and techniques on the market offer easy-to-use interfaces that offer multiple selections of key performance variables and listings of competing manufacturers. These tools can filter the number of sampled reviews and adjust ranges for different scores and indices. What should you look for in such a tool?

· Verify that data collection techniques are carefully performed. Are samples filtered for promotional content and duplication? Are they run on a regular recurring basis? We believe that, depending on the market, data over 30 days old is stale.

· Select a tool that provides multiple independent criteria for your product reputation metric. Make certain your underlying data sample reliably support variables. Look for robust reporting features that are easy-to-use and well-documented.

· Confirm features that allow you to export your data to ANY spreadsheet (using, for example, comma-separated variable, CSV, format).

Whether you are a product managers or an entrepreneur, you need actionable insights to identify how well your product meets your customers’ expectations. Yesterday’s excitement becomes today’s expectation and tomorrow’s “must-be”. The ever-growing “digital word-of mouth” coinciding with the ebb and flow of social media phenomena like Facebook and Twitter can exaggerate shifts in perception and opinion over very short periods of time.

Customer satisfaction is no longer a simple statistic. Consider this key performance indicator of success as an aggregate of perceived reputation; your product’s functionality (its feature set), its reliability and its accessibility through support from you as the manufacturer, included documentation, and the friendliness of the user interface. One unexpected effect these “socially-shared expectations” have is the speed at which they can unpredictably change. Protect your product and your brand. Your online reputation and the reputation of your products need constant monitoring. Your livelihood probably depends on it!

Provide a venue and build a relationship

Is your product or brand associated with a social media website? A user forum? A company blog? Leverage the sense of anonymity an online forum offers. Encourage active participation with polls, surveys, and “The Most Burning Question?” submissions. When have you ever had the opportunity to so cost-effectively talk to a customer on a one-to-one basis? There is overhead in terms of administrative time but the benefits will more than likely outweigh the costs. If you offer and initially promise participation of management; keep your word! If someone posts a comment, make certain someone in authority quickly responds with more than just a robotic thank you. You don’t have to agree with comments but, you do have to prove you have read them!

Post surveys and polls about your product to encourage participation

Make certain you clearly state when and where results will be published. See if anyone is paying attention. When posting results of your surveys and polls, use the interest generated to ask visitors to respond to either another poll or a sign up email list. Give information before you ask for a name and an email address. Remember that negative criticism more often than not is more valuable than praise and fearless publishing it is a mark of transparency (good management) and character.

Grow your brand and tell people about it

Developing name and “brand” recognition by “spreading it horizontally” into collateral areas in your geographic community, on the websites and forums of colleagues AND competitors in your industry, and, most important, in your “virtual business niche”. Consider providing “expert”answers on public forums. Offer charitable donations both in your local physical world as well as in cyberspace. Charity builds your persona, your online reputation, and your brand recognition. Telling your customers about your charity is not blatant self-promotion; it can be a public announcement.

CRM was certainly a very profitable business for a couple of decades now, and yet most people talk about it as a failure. I have written about the fact that CRM has never failed as a technology, but as a strategy, implementation, adoption, and as the result in delivering promised ROI.  At the heart of it CRM promised Customer Relationship Management, but delivered customer relationship Management – efficiencies and cost cutting without effective execution of better Customer Experience. We tried to manage Customers, not to manage our relationships with the Customers.

So, what have we learned here? Judging by the communications and attitudes of the last night panelists (again excluding the Mint) – not much. New and improved SCRM would help Enterprise to manage PR risks, to corral Customers into company controlled forums, capture more personal information and otherwise continue on the same path of exploitive relationship management.

The fine metaphor of the bridge between the Social and The Enterprise morphed into the image of the gated community without a lot of transparency or accountability.

@jowyang asked me afterwards if a company can make money engaging in more balanced, fair, respectful relations with their customers. In my opinion it is the only way to build a truly great, profitable company with a focus on long term ROI growth, look at Zappos.

Social CRM – Putting Customers First – what does it even mean?  Healthy relationship has to be equitable and “social” means that even in relatively free market society customers have a choice to have relationship with less abusive partners. The first law of Social is Authenticity and when a company starts to invest into quality of Customer Experience, with or without technology to support it, and then I’ll start buying into Social CRM. Please stop putting Customer first and concentrate instead on Customer Experience.

Many online shoppers now use social media to make informed decisions about their purchases. Are your stakeholders any less discerning? Perhaps management should consider going beyond an annual report to decision-makers and integrate them into your operational rather than just strategic processes. Are “active” stakeholders in your product or services aware of what your customers “really” say about your products or do they receive summarized, massaged statistics that have a 4-figure precision? Have you noticed that with the emergence of a Global Village, there are now many self-appointed “town criers”? Social media forums and blogs provide the digital equivalent of a local village square. As a manager, do you have the resources to provide your stakeholders, assuming they are interested, with raw and timely “online buzz”? Can they “(with)stand the truth”?

A meaningful picture of key performance indicators (KPI) is not complete unless they are somehow linked to critical success factors (CSF); the two are very different but ultimately affect the same bottom line – stakeholder ROI! Defining a critical factor that will make a product successful doesn’t necessarily have to come from the boardroom or the Research and Development department. In today’s Global Village, a critical success factor more than likely comes from an unsolicited comment made in some public forum! Social media not only keeps Jane and John Customer informed but actually helps “must-have” features crystallize in their minds before they make their purchase. Failure to integrate “must-have” features into a product design is an obvious mistake that is relatively easy for a product manager to avoid. It takes however, an interaction between the identification of what is exciting and innovative today with tomorrow’s performance indicators to eventually achieve a product’s critical success.

Stakeholders have cultivated a very specific point of view – otherwise, by definition, they wouldn’t have the wealth, education, or power to be a stakeholder. Product managers similarly have a viewpoint,  although it, again by definition, is very different from that of stakeholders. A synergy can arise however, if a third perspective, an aggregate measure of customer satisfaction, is added to the “product mix”. Customers want satisfaction; stakeholders want success; the two are fundamentally the same. The successful product manager can extract many actionable insights that ultimately translate into significant returns on investment from what customers’ and stakeholders’ want; they just need to know where to look for their solutions

If the sales staff knows what words or questions your target audience used most frequently when talking about your product, they can craft a better sales pitch.  If product engineers realize how many different ways people actually use the products they create, they can improve and create better products. If the design team identifies how your customers come to visit your page and where they clicked, perhaps they can increase the conversion rate on your next campaign.

In my experience this knowledge, even if it is available within an organization, is rarely utilized for a process of resolving customer problems with a specific product or in a new product development process. Product Marketing organizations often seem to be more inclined to use “customer” feedback they solicit, via panels and focus groups other then analysis of unsolicited voice of the real customers, who actually purchased their products. I suspect it is the issue of control, and in my opinion, it contradicts the notion of “Social” relationship with customers. Another potential reason of the disconnect is a nature of “soft” raw data, extracted from chats and and forums, does not easily translates into the structured information required by enterprise processes and systems.

Let’s consider the historical warning signs of this phenomenon.  For years to reach 50 millions users:  it took Radio 38 Years, TV-13 Years, Internet – 4 Years, iPod – 3 Years and Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 month.  IPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.

What force is driving this huge wave of information that is rapidly stretching out and putting television, radio and print media to shame?  While viewing Eric Qualman’s video on Social Media Revolution, it become more obvious to me that Social Media is not only lending to buyer behavior, it is more or less dictating buyer activities.

The statistics are astounding and these hundreds of million users say they prefer to view a peer recommendation over traditional advertising.  According to Facebook, only 14% of their users trust traditional advertisements.  Savvy shoppers are no longer going into the marketplace without delving into the social ranks for assistance. Unless a product also has social support riding on the surge of information, it could become dead in the water.

Moreover, consider the effects this movement is having on American institutions such as the US Postal Service and newspaper industry as a whole.  Items such as news and mail are finding us, where the need to “wait” on the 5 o’clock news is passé for generations across the board.  Joe Puzilli once said ‘we are seeing nothing less than a tsunami affecting business of every size’ in reference to Social Media.  The Mom & Pop businesses that won the battles against big business may now lose the war if they don’t pay attention and defend themselves within Social Networks.

A remarkable platform has emerged allowing you to engage in conversation with your customers.  No longer can you simply sell your products straight away without building a relationship with buyers.  If you are not using these social mediums to listen to consumers, build your brand and increase sales you are falling way behind.  Socialnomics may compel us to action as in the self-help quote “Don’t wait for your ship to come in, swim out to meet it.”