Are we missing the point?
Digital channel hype versus good old customer value
An honest look at how digital and social media can be used to
create tangible value for companies, customers and
consumers
February 2012
A White Paper By
Magan Arthur
Rob Mallens
With inputs from:
Sumathi Venkitaraman, Head, Marketing at CustomerXPs Software Private Limited
The Vice-President, Global Digital Services at a large life science company
Gillis de Fouw, Front Office Manager, Ziggo Business
Joost Augusteijn, Brand Strategist Rabobank
The Senior Director of Marketing Operations at a large life science company
and thanks also to: Prof. David Meader, Director, Center for Socially Responsible Business at
the Mills College in California

INTRODUCTION
In search of the digital media silver bullet we are losing the very thing we set out to improve:
value. The three authors of this paper met on LinkedIn – with no prior connection – with the aim
of taking an honest and realistic look what companies large and small could do to create tangible
value through digital and social means of engaging employees, peers, investors, customers, and
consumers. We would like to de-hype the social/digital channel discussion and focus on strategy
through listening, authentic and meaningful messages and well thought through engagement
experiences.
Razorfish, arguably the leading digital agency, published a six month study, Liminal, which is
focused on customer engagement in this time of great transition. Here is a link to the research:
http://liminal.razorfish.com
From the Razorfish LinkedIn Post: “We took a ground up, customer centric approach to
understand things like -- how do marketers make sense not only of divergent touch points, but the
disparate reasons why customers gravitate to them, and how this affects the continuing evolution
of how consumers choose to engage with a brand.Here are few things that came as a surprise to
many in the industry, specifically:
> Though social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and the geo-location social service (such
as Foursquare) are being quickly adopted, customers don’t always view them as an important
way to engage with brands.
> When we asked consumers to prioritize what was important to them when engaging with a
brand, they ranked the following priorities in exactly this order, no matter how we looked at the
data: feeling Valued, Trust, Efficiency, Consistency, Relevancy and Control (We call these six
engagement qualities the Engagement Elements.) In other words, in a world full of engagement
touch points, the most important things to everyone are to feel valued by the companies they do
business with, to get their need addressed quickly, and to feel the companies they engage with
can be trusted.
> Even as “the consumer is in control” has become a mantra in the digital age, Control came in
dead last. Apparently, the consumer doesn’t need to be in as much control as we thought, seeing
other things, as far more important.”
What stands out in this is that the six engagement qualities would also apply to most employees
of any company, in terms of values we seek in our workplaces. We want to be valued and we
want to work in an environment of trust in which we can get things done efficiently and
consistently. In that sense digital channels and social networks can and should be viewed as tools
for engagement in and outside the company. The goal has to be to strengthen the quality of any
engagement.

The authors, who come from very different backgrounds and live in three different continents,
have found that despite these differences our experiences have led us to very similar conclusions
in how digital and social tools can help organizations improve engagement on all levels. We have
grouped the paper in three sections:
• Strategy
• Message
• Experience
STRATEGY – Think and listen before you act
With the book Groundswell published in 2008 by Harvard Business Press we had a first
comprehensive approach to strategic planning of digital and social approaches to engaging inside
and outside of organizations with a goal of increasing the value of these engagements. Many
lessons described in that book are still relevant but as the Razorfish study mentioned above shows
we have learned a lot more about what works and does not work well in digital and social
engagement. The time of just experimenting should be over. Organizations large and small can
now approach digital and social channels with a clear strategy.
It is important to highlight that such a strategy should not be merely a marketing activity but is
should be a business strategy. In general we can distinguish a few core areas that can be the focus
of any such strategy.
• Social and digital marketing and communication (inbound and outbound)
For established products that can range from basic presence to participation to
influencing
For new products that can rage from product intro and trail sites to product
research to product design
• Internal social networks
From communication to knowledge sharing and collaboration
• Social and digital services
From online support and account management to product communities and patient
adherence programs
• Social and digital commerce and products
From traditional eCommerce to fully virtual products and services in media,
travel, health, entertainment, b2b and more.
Each of these strategies has very different goals and measures and each can be broken down
further into sub categories that often require a different set of skills, tools and approaches. Any
organization should be very clear on the strategic direction down to the sub category and have
established goals and measures based on the available best practices. Establishing a senior

executive led digital strategy board is a best practice and should be a first step. In almost all cases
will it be helpful for this board to work across internal lines and jointly established strategies
between sales, marketing and IT for external facing marketing strategies or between Support,
R&D and IT for service related strategies etc. As the Vice-President, Global Digital Services at a
large life science and consumer goods company puts it:
“We created a Global Digital Board, which brings together our brand,
technology and operation teams to jointly discuss and decide on strategies related
to our digital and social engagements. We seek to leverage our experiences, tools
and processes globally. The shared services we can now offer our global
marketing teams are providing a host of new capabilities at significantly reduced
cost.”
A second step is listening and understanding. There exists a wealth of information that can inform
the direction and approaches of any strategy defined. The two mistakes to avoid are:
1) Don't forget all the information you already have from your support team, sales
team, and research groups and from your initial digital projects or programs – your
teams likely learned a lot. Some call this holistic analysis or holistic listening as
opposed to just social listening.
2) Don't get into an overwhelm and information overload state – ask simple
questions. Avoid analysis paralysis.
Between the information you have and the breadth and depth of the virtual data sources out there,
almost any questions could be analyzed. However most companies are not ready for the flood of
data. Moving from basic social analysis to true business intelligence is a sign of high maturity but
if overdone too early may cripple less mature organization.
The Senior Director of marketing operations at a large life science company put it this way:
”We began too aggressively with tagging and tracking our messaging. Metadata
and insights were buried in tons of data and not providing actionable measures to
marketers. We should have started more simply with tagging and tracking the top
five things we wanted to know from our messaging providing strong insights and
actionable measures”
Answering some simple questions that really impact the strategy can be a very effective start to
any strategy. For example:
• What are the three predominant statements about our product or service that
influence the perception of our brand and identity in the social communities?
• What is the overall sentiment about our product or service?
• What are the three biggest complaints and what are the three biggest incentives to

work with us over our competitor?
• Can we group our clients into a few simple digital persons that we can then serve
better because we understand their preferences or sentiments regarding our
product or service?
• What messages we have sent in the past 3, 6, and 12 months have resonated the
most and created the most virtual chatter?
• How many of our customers have smart phones? Do they access them as a
personal or business tool or both?
• Where in our sales and service, production or quality teams could we make better
use of Facebook and Twitter like tools to make collaboration and knowledge
management easier and more fun?
The above are just some examples of simple questions to get started. Advanced holistic listening
and social business intelligence can help with many aspects:
1. Understanding the consumer – profiling/targeting
2. Understanding of your own workforce – knowledge/idea sharing, collaboration
3. Understanding the need – new product and service design
4. Understanding the markets and trends – product and service road-maps
5. Understanding specific problems – internal and external peer communities – product
support – open source and joint development (this paper is one example)
It is simply not enough to just have a web site or “be where your clients are” and bombard the
twitter followers with basic marketing blur. We need to think about value of every engagement.
How can we make it easier for a person we engage with a product, tool, information or another
person that could help him or her do whatever it is we now know they do?
What has to be understood is that digital and social are not low cost quick tools. They often
represent significant strategic opportunities and risk with high costs for building, monitoring,
responding, reviewing and approving the new content. Also technology even in the cloud is not
cheap and there will be cost for failures, as not all approaches will work out.
Some companies may find that a simple presence through a web site will suffice but in all other
cases digital and social should be taken up as an executive strategy exercise on par with
establishing a new product line or an M&A activity as the right digital strategy very well may
include both of these aspects.
MESSAGE – Meaning and authenticity
One of the most interesting aspects of social and networked marketing is that we now deal with
communities and interlinked humans not with masses, as in mass media. Masses have been
studied and we know that humans in large groups tend to act in very simplistic or animalistic
patterns. However the new digital frontier has created a different phenomenon. Communities and
networks are intelligent. Therefore the messages that we send into those channels have a very
different impact. It is the authenticity and the actual news worthiness of the message that makes
the difference. It is sure a “cool” factor to send it in a nice flash movie or via twitter or even think

of a multichannel approach but that effort drafts the need to actually have something to say.1
Through holistic listening and evaluating the many data sources available today companies can
get better answers to questions like:
• Who are our customers?
• What do they think of us and our products?
• What kind of service do they expect?
Instead of trying to adapt to all possible outcomes of the questions above, organizations have the
opportunity to use these insights to become more aware of their own identity and start acting and
communicating accordingly. Becoming aware of one's identity means providing answers to
questions like:
• Who are we? Are we like that to our employees?
• Who do we want to be for our customers, partners, employees and investors?
• What role can social engagement play in that identity?
The answers to the questions above give the ultimate frame of reference towards authentic
communication in the digital channels. It also creates a clearer frame of the desired working
environment for employees and more recognizable products and services.
Many companies have already engaged in a process to determine their identity and have been
able to translate that exercise to clear company values both internal and external. Many of them
have transformed those values to a branding strategy. Not many companies however have made a
translation towards the branded customer experience especially when it comes to social channels.
Very few have made the brand experience part of the internal company culture. The positive
effects of doing so can be dramatic as Gillis de Fouw, Front Office Manager, Ziggo Business
describes:
"By defining a "Ziggo Business experience" we have become more aware of our
identity. This guides us in our customer service and has a positive impact on our
employees. Our absenteeism rates have dropped to the lowest in customer service
branch"
The engagement elements the Razorfish research points out are elements customers will be
looking for with any company they do business with. It will be wise to take them seriously.
However these engagement elements are generic. Following the Razorfish advice will deliver
better, yet copyable customer experiences. The competitive advantage could be temporary for
those organizations that have made them part of their strategy before the followers will fall in
line. The branded customer experience is unique and answers the question: How will a customer
experience a contact with us as a typical "our company" experience. It is so closely connected to
1In a survey of more than 700 marketing and PR professionals, 50% of respondents said the single most important
action a person or brand can take to increase their influence online is to create, post, or share compelling content;
(Vocus/Brian Solis).

the organizations identity that it is by definition not copyable and efforts to do so will lead to not
authentic experiences.
The two key questions now are:
How can we make social and digital channels have the same “our company” experience?
Will and should our identity change by leveraging social and digital channels? If so, can we
include these changes into a new and improved branded experience?
We would like to answer these questions with how one of the largest Dutch banks, The
Rabobank, dealt with these two challenges. The Rabobank is a co-operative bank, which from its
start in 1896 has had a strong local presence. Being nearby, in a literal and figurative sense, has
therefore always been a strong value, a part of the banks identity. However the modernization of
this co-operative bank has reduced the number of co-operatives from 547 in 1996 to 139 in 2112
(but still with over 800 offices and 3000 cash points throughout the country) At the same time
customers want to do more and more business with their bank outside the bank office, by phone,
mail or otherwise. So reinforcing the core value “nearby” merely by the physical presence of
employees and offices has lost most of its effect as a distinguishing competitive factor.
Rabobank has entered the arena of all Dutch banks that by utilization of a multichannel strategy
want to meet the rapidly changing needs of customers. And like its competitors Rabobank is in a
process to institutionalize the virtual service to customers into a virtual branch office.
Interestingly it has chosen to set up decentralized virtual offices. This to at least be in line with
the "nearby" value: being as local as possible.
This sounds paradoxical because one of the consequences of virtualization is that products and
services can be delivered from anywhere. But when the employees that deliver the products and
services through all virtual channels are from the same local environment of the specific
branches' customers and are able to transfer this local flavor into every engagement, it might very
well prove out to be a very clever strategy.
Right now a couple of branches are in the process of answering the question: What makes an
engagement with us a typical Rabobank "local branch name" experience? The outcomes are not
defined yet, but it might very well be that elements like local dialect, awareness of local news and
developments will be a part of it. And that is hard to copy in a centralized, large virtual
organization.
Therefore the answer to the questions, how can we make social and digital channels have the
same “our company” experience, is: by involving employees in the determination of the "our
company" experience and very important, by enabling employees to create experiences
accordingly. This means a major rethinking of leadership, management and coaching paradigms.
Almost all organizations that deal with large numbers of customer engagements, have tried to
manage this complexity by implementation of structures, processes, rules, strict diversion of
responsibilities etc, etc.

Over the past 20 years we have been focusing on operational aspects of customer engagements
only. This new way of thinking will require a more servant leadership style that can be
characterized by giving trust to employees, control more on direction than on output, in other
word loosen control. Only then will we see employees give the best of themselves to create
branded customer experiences, regardless of the channel that they will be delivered through.
Rabobank's vision is founded on the idea's of Friedrich Wilhelm Raffeisen (1818-1888) who
developed the idea that poverty can best be conquered by helping people to help themselves. The
solution: a co-operation. Therefore the vision of Rabobank, or its identity, is build four elements
that have remained the same of the years:
1. Enabling a connection with the customer
2. Enabling a connection with society
3. Enabling a connection with the future
4. Enabling a connection with each other
Rabobanks' brand values: Nearby, Involved and Leading are nested in this identity.
“We wants to be nearby our customers. Whatever the medium. With our offices
as personal advice centers and our mobile apps as daily lifeline.”
Joost Augusteijn, Brand Strategist Rabobank
That Rabobank was the first Dutch bank to offer Internet Banking and the first mobile bank in the
world, and the fact that customers communicate via web, mail, social media and web care have
not changed the identity of the bank. Mobile banking brought the bank literally close to the
customers heart (Nearby) Being the first to adapt these new technologies emphasized the
innovative character of the bank (Leading) As such the adaptation of social and digital channels
are logical consequences of the bank wanting to remain a stable, future proof bank (Connection
with the future)
Another good example of a company completely build around a strong shared value is Telfort,
which was the third mobile operator in the Netherlands.
Back then it was not easy to become a customer with a mobile operator. You had to fill in a lot of
paper work, had to wait for a day to be activated, the pricing schemes were not transparent and
there were not too many places where you could buy a mobile phone. The core value of this
operator, that was also directly translated into a promise to its customers, was: "We are going to
make mobile telephony EASY". This was translated in a large number of organizational aspects,
like marketing and sales, customer service, service delivery processes etc. A few examples:
• There was only one subscription form, with a fixed price per minute;
• Customers didn't have to go to a telephone store to become a customer. They could
buy a phone off the shelf in a super market or toy store;

• The handsets where packaged in milk cartons, which emphasized the fact that
mobile telephony was available for everybody;
• No paperwork to be filed in the activation prices. By opening the package the
Terms and Conditions where accepted;
• After unwrapping the package the first call that was made was redirected to the
customer service center, where a realtime credit check took place. In stead of 24
hours it to less than three minutes to become a customer and make a first call.
• A customer had in its life cycle only one moment at which he had to give his
contact details, after that this information was never asked again;
These are just a few examples of how customer experiences are designed to make mobile
telephony easier for customers. This became part of the corporate culture and it made this
operator the most successful new entrant in the Dutch mobile market.
It is important to understand that “making is easy” is the overriding identity and brand
experience. The choice of channel is secondary and in the example above digital and social media
was not used much at all but it is easy to see how important it would be to ensure it fits in with
the larger message and is easy to use.
Unfortunately there are a lot of bad examples where companies define digital and social identities
that are not inline with a positive brand experience or clearly defined identity. In the US AT&T
for example has an elaborate web site that lets a customer choose anything from calling plan, data
plan, phones and services of all kind. However, it is everything but easy to figure out what I
really need. The choices are confusing and in the end the store clerk was the best person to help
my wife and me figure out what was best after much wasted time online. I wish AT&T could
have simply put a chat, phone number or even twitter link on the website and be authentic about
their confusing mess. “You will never figure it out on your own, call us!”
EXPERINCE DESIGN – A holistic approach to experience design
Once the strategic direction for digital and social engagements are set and the messages based on
the identity of the organization and its brands are understood it is time to design the actual
experiences.
We like to speak of a holistic experience design because we want to highlight the interrelatedness
of digital and social with brick and mortar, phone and traditional media. The brand and company
identity has to be the same across all these channels.
Digital and Social Channels are also not just one homogenous entity. We can distinguish at least
three areas:
1) Representation of our brand or organization in digital form.
2) Listening and responding to comments and conversation in the virtual world
3) Actively influencing and initiating social conversations and viral campaigns
We will explore each area in a bit more detail below giving some examples.

1) Digital Representation
Digital representation includes the brand or company web or Facebook site but also includes
listings in Yelp, Wikipedia and other sources that clients and consumers leverage to find
information about a company, product and service.
It is obviously most important that our information can be found. In that regard search engine
optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are frequently used terms that follow
established standards. This paper does not try to elaborate on this topic. However, monitoring the
way our identity is presented in a search engine's search result, on the iPhone map, on Yelp and
Facebook etc, is very much a concern we feel deserves to be highlighted.
In one bad example we can think of a traditional food company that built a Facebook page for a
specific brand involving macaroni and cheese. The company and brand identity were based on
attributes like old-style, trusted, comfort. So just the idea of Facebook was a slight clash to that
identity. However the worst part was that the discussions on that site were mostly disgusting
descriptions by teenagers and college age youth about their experiences with days (and in some
cases weeks) old servings of that brand’s product. Needless to say that this was neither positive
branding nor a positive experience for the average reader.
It is surprising how many companies have abandoned hard learned lessons on branding and
Marketing 101 when designing digital or social experiences. A company may have spent 100's of
hours to train in store sales personnel on dress code, and service oriented language that is in line
with the company’s identity and branding. The same effort has to be extended in digital and
social engagements. An identity or brand should be presented in style, look and feel but also in
tone and language used in all conversations.
2) Listen and Respond
We discussed the opportunities and risk of holistic listening earlier in the paper. As for experience
design we would highlight two key elements
A) Identify the conversations
There is a conversation about your brand, product or service in progress at any given time
somewhere. At a minimum you should pay attention to what is said. In more advanced stages you
can start building intelligence of who is talking, where and when.
Not listening can be futile. There are many ways to respond to virtual chatter. You can respond in
the same channel that was used by the originator but you don’t have to.
The key is that you should respond to consumers whenever possible. Having a strategy for doing
so in modern media channels like Facebook or twitter but also blogs and posts on message broads
is a good practice.
Let's call this passive communication in response to brand impacting statements.

B) Respond
@ symbols and # signs may just not gel well with a conservative and traditional bank for
example. While Virgin Atlantic can happily leverage these symbols of modern conversations and
other shorthand without a negative impact on its modern brand.
But even in Facebook or Twitter you can send very different messages depending on the identity
you want to portray. However it is not necessary to respond in all channels at all times.
Let's say someone is asking about the closest location to purchase your product or where to find a
specific bank's ATM. You can extend significant effort to intercept these conversations and
respond. But sending them a link to a web site where they can enter a zip code and then find the
location is not a good user experience. If you do respond, why not send them a link that uses their
geo location and provide a clear answer as in an iPhone or Google map with the locations
highlighted including store hours etc. If you cannot get their geo location you have to ask them
where they are. However in most situations it will either not be feasible or necessary to respond
real time in all channels.
If you have absorbed lesson 1 above you have made sure that your locations are clearly marked
on iPhone and Google maps. Now all a consumer needs to do is enter your brand name into the
Google or iPhone map and voila here it is store hours and all. It they twitter the question a few
million Twitter users will point them to your app or explain smart phone usage to them. You
simply do not need to do that.2 Effort extended on making information easily found and
presented in helpful tools like maps and listings is much better use of your time.
Naturally you can have a twitter address for your company or brand. But in that you simply
respond to inquiries just as your customer service team did in the time of the telephone.
It is more important to have the relevant information ready in digital form. If I have a technical
issue, don't send me the 150 page pdf user guide. Tell me the solution. If you twitter, text, email
or call me really does not make a difference to me. “Fix my damn router and if you cannot fix it
send me a new one.” If you do that I will tweet all my friends what a great company you are even
if I had to call a telephone number.
Feeling valued, listened to and experience good service out wights the choice of channel for that
communication. Razorfish and other studies highlight this.3
In fact extending too much effort on new social and digital means of communication can be
decremental if the traditional values of service and customer orientation suffer because attention
is taken off what really matters.
2 A JC Williams Group consumer survey found that 91 percent of respondents ranked consumer generated content as
the number one aid to a buying decision. 74 percent of customers said they are influenced by the opinions of others
in their decision to buy a product. Marketing Sherpa found in a survey that 87 percent of respondents would trust a
friend’s recommendation of a product or service over a review by a critic, while 84 percent said they would trust user
reviews over a critic. Buzz Agent found that one word of mouth conversation has the impact of 200 TV ads.
3 “Are internet users more likely to purchase from a brand after becoming a subscriber, fan or follower?” 37% of
Twitter users say yes, 31% are indifferent and 32% say unlikely. On Facebook, “only 17% agreed, 34% were on the
fence, and a staggering 49% disagreed,” (ExactTarget via Brian Solis).

3) Actively influencing and initiating social conversations
While this paper has taken a slightly critical view of over hyped new communication tools there
is some very obvious advantage to using social tools in marketing4 but also in company internal
projects and processes as well as in enabling better communication in the supply chain or partner
network.
What should be understood is that monitoring 100's even 1000's of simultaneous virtual
conversations is complex and expensive. Few brands and companies can invest in social media
command centers that come close to a live newsroom environment. There is much to be said
about the merging of media and marketing. Adidas TV and social campaigns of many cool brands
are fascinating. For those interested the Super Bowl organizers (Americas biggest sports event)
have come up with a great plan for such a social media control center.5 But for many
organizations this is just too expensive and too risky to do.
However, Salesforce Chatter, Yammer and other companies have introduced affordable tools for
internal social communication. Extending a traditional project portal with a news feed and
discussion board is just a very good idea that does not need to cost much at all. It also will allow
employees and managers to experiment and learn about good and bad use of such tools in a
business setting before unleashing them in broader consumer or client settings.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion we like to summarize that digital and social means of engagement are tools that
should follow a well-established strategy in which the identity of brands and organizations should
be strengthened and through which each interaction should become more valuable to the parties
involved.
In order for that to happen companies need to clearly identify their strategies across
organizational lines, allow their organization to reassess their identities and those of their brands
in light of the defined strategy and finally they need to design the actual internally or externally
facing experiences in a way that will provide compelling, authentic and hands on helpful
messages and tools.
4 - 53% of active adult social networkers follow a brand - 70% of the active online adult social networkers shop
online, 12% more likely than the average adult Internet user - Among US social media users, 15% are more inclined
to buy brands advertised in social media sites;- Across a snapshot of the 10 major global markets, social networks
and blogs reach over 75% of active internet users (Knowledge Networks).
5 - Read more here: http://mashable.com/2012/01/21/super-bowl-xlvi-social

Research and good articles:
http://liminal.razorfish.com
http://eyelona.com/2011/11/11/why-you-should-not-focus-on-social-media-marketing/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTdGNGCKpag&feature=player_embedded
http://customerxpsinsights.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/from-customer-connectivity-to-customer-
connect/
http://mashable.com/2012/01/21/super-bowl-xlvi-social
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/165263/companies-struggle-to-manage-social-
media.html
About the authors:
Magan Arthur
As author for Focal Press and contributor to industry publications such as the Journal of DAM
and CMS Watch and through his work and speaking engagements at international conferences
Magan has become one of the thought leaders in the digital marketing space. Magan is focused
on building and leading teams thru the end-to-end execution of innovative digital, social and
mobile programs that seek to cut operational cost and introduce Digital, Social and Mobile
capabilities that truly impact the ability to relate to customers, employees and partners in more
meaningful ways. Magan also supported the Information and Service Design Program at the
School of Information at UC Berkeley and the Mills Collage MBA Program as a guest lecturer
and mentor.
magan@infoasis.com
Rob Mallens
Rob Mallens has 20 years of management consultancy experience. In the past 15 years he has
been involved in customer management. Rob has had a number of speaking engagements at
international conferences and frequently shares his ideas, via printed and digital media. Main
focus areas: are defining corporate identity, branded customer experience design and leadership
styles. Currently he is helping a number of organizations to define a desired customer experience
and his company assists in implementing the accompanying organizational changes. These
changes can be in leadership style, organization culture, coaching processes, in business
processes, management information systems etc.
rob.mallens@mallensconsultancy.com
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