Is Social Media Monitoring Creepy?
April 21st, 2009Posted by: Hannah Del Porto Posted in Media Monitoring
Marshall Kirkpatrick’s “This Machine Eats Tweets” on ReadWriteWeb started an interesting conversation last week by asking if corporate social media engagement is helpful or intrusive.
After a negative experience with Comcast Cable, Marshall wrote a sarcastic tweet about the company’s customer service. He received a message from Comcast on Twitter, asking if Comcast could help.
Seems like a fairly innocent, even positive exchange. But Marshall quickly realizes that Comcast most likely received some sort of automated notification of their company’s twitter mention. He posits that:
- It’s “deeply disturbing” to have a media monitoring or CRM system between customer and company (though he acknowledges that it’s unrealistic for large companies to monitor and respond to social media without technology).
- While an interaction may look like a simple exchange to the customer, the company is collecting and applying information from his/her profile (past interactions with companies, background, influence, etc).
- Social media monitoring opens the way for marketing/sales attempts through SM platforms.
There are a lot of great comments on the post, many of which address Marshall’s concerns.
- Michael Downs mentions that some companies are using this information as an opportunity to improve customer service.
- Marcel LeBrun points out that the interaction was genuine as (at least in the case cited by Marshall) the company spokesperson has an ongoing presence on Twitter, is available to form a relationship with and personally responded to Marshall’s concern.
- Richard Petersen contributes a great list of ways that companies really can go wrong in social media engagement:
“When the company violates the norms of online social communications – spamming (as you noted); pretexting and/or astro-turfing; outsourcing your identity to others to act on your behalf; selling or upselling instead of offering help authentically; or violating the network’s terms of service or APIs.”
- Coldbrew suggests that media monitoring tools make it difficult for companies to maintain authenticity.
- Martin Edic gets the gold star for his comment that all of this information is submitted to public forums. If you don’t want companies to see it, make it private.
Despite the discussion surrounding media monitoring tools, I think Marshall’s main concern in the motivation of companies who engage in social media. They may decide to only respond to influentials’ complaints, or only negative comments, or only to expressions of need/sales opps.
And that’s not engaging in a “real” conversation.
But the probability of a company accidentally stumbling on your Twitter profile and genuinely wanting to have a conversation with you is…well…not very high. That person is getting paid to address your concern, to improve consumer satisfaction, to increase profits. That’s how companies work.
When you call the customer service number of a corporation or send them a help email, you’d better believe that they are looking up how much money you spend with them and how much of a pain in their ass you are, just like service reps on social media are looking at your past tweets and follower count. But maybe Average Joe’s new-found ability to trash a vendor to a few thousand of his closest friends will get him closer to VIP status.
Marshall’s concern about marketing and sales pressure through social media channels is already coming to pass. I see this every day. And sometimes do it myself.
When someone asks how to measure social media, I sent them a link to resources. When someone asks about how to monitor their media, I answer their question. When someone asks for a recommendation, I introduce our firm.
Everyone will have a different idea of what crosses the line between helpful and intrusive, but I think social media has an advantage in finding its own happy medium – companies are listening.
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Photo courtesy of: faeryboots
Tags: comcast, crm, marshall kirkpatrick, readwriteweb, social media engagement, social media monitoring, Twitter
April 21st, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Thanks Hannah,
When I was with Techrigy I had to constantly remind people that social media, unless hidden behind a permission wall like Facebook, is a public conversation on a global commons. That old soapbox in the park model. If a company doesn’t want people speaking publicly about their product, tough cookies, they are going to.
What does this mean? Your product has to be great. Your customer service has to be great. You have to fix problems and publicly ask for help. Your marketing people have to understand that everything has changed. There is no broadcast. There is no pitching or spinning. There is only conversation that adds value.
April 21st, 2009 at 4:19 pm
The reason this article caught my attention is that I had JUST seen a client mention where someone on twitter thanked the company for the help but then said she thought it was strange that my client was reading her tweets.
People realize it’s a public site but I think many think of “public” as other individuals, not companies.
I do see 10x more thankful tweets from people who have reached out to companies and received resolution, so not only do I see sentiment towards customer interaction through SM as positive, I also think co.s like Comcast are setting the example to keep it that way.