FreshNetworks Blog

Image courtesy of Cityville

Not sure about the value of social gaming for your brand or business? Check out these interesting stats and facts…

According to the UK National Gamers Survey:

• 28 million UK internet users are casual gamers – amounting to 67% of all internet users.
• 20 million of those use their mobile handsets to play games on
• More than 40% of time spent on Facebook is spent on playing social games. 19% of game players even claim they are “addicted” to social games.

According to Utalk marketing:

• 23% of gamers say they are more likely to buy a brand that has sponsored or advertised on a social game
• 18% said they would click on an ad to gain a reward

According to game developers Wild Tangent:

• The median age for social gamers is 35, and they are mostly female

According to market research company Park Associates:

• Facebook embedded games alone will rise from $1bn last year to $5bn by 2015

Think social gaming is too expensive for you? According to agency TBWA:

• Third party platforms are the easiest and cheapest way to leverage social gaming opportunities – by third party read Facebook.
• To create a simple game [on Facebook] costs about the same amount as you would pay to develop an app for the site – between 10k and 200k

Mobile phone provider 3 has just launched the “3 Live Shop” in Sweden to blend the convenience of shopping online with the knowledge and personal experience gained through an in-store visit.

It’s the next evolution of the sales “live chat” that can often be found in online retail spaces, taking the most up-to-date information from a web store, giving it a human face, and displaying it in an easy to understand manner for the customer.

3 has put a lot of thought into the experience for staff and has tried to make it as natural as possible to drag, scale and adjust the auto-populated content that appears.

From a customer perspective, the user can have multiple options on screen so you can clearly see the difference between products and services. You log on, choose your input method (webcam, microphone or text) and have a real customer service representative respond to your needs there and then. The staff are competent, well trained and the introduction is carefully scripted to help ensure that the customer heads down the correct path as quickly as possible.

This culminates in the customers being more informed, with a better, faster service, so sales won’t be lost because the staff weren’t up-to date on the latest phones, plans and options, couldn’t cross sell, or it took too much time and effort for customers to head to the store.

The video below explains in more detail and gives a run through of the process behind getting the 3 Live Shop working:

3 from B-Reel & B-Reel Films on Vimeo.

Image courtesy of Portland Copywriter

When using social media to help with customer service, it’s important that messages aren’t just created when a crisis or issue occurs – they need to be structured, coherent and should fit with your over-riding business or brand strategy as a whole.

Here are 6 tips to help you use social media as a customer service channel:

1. Give customers an accurate response with a consistent message

Erratic responses that help one customer but don’t apply to other customers makes you look unsure of yourself and gives the impression that your organisation doesn’t know what it’s doing.

2. Give your customer service team access to current and existing data

This will help to maintain uniformity across the board when it comes to problem solving through social media. This doesn’t necessarily mean rigidity, but a certain amount of knowledge about previous issues will help solve problems quickly and efficiently.

3. Define a process and framework for how to deal with complaints

This will ensure that processing times are consistent. Time is money, and wasting it trying to figure out how to solve a problem effectively is inefficient and tedious.

4. Educate your customer services team about wider customer experience goals

Customer service teams need to understand brand messages and the wider customer experience strategy in order to effectively respond to issues through social media. If their responses aren’t in line with the brand’s overarching message it could cause confusion and customer retention and satisfaction levels could suffer in the long run.

5. Get to the heart of what a complaint means before responding

Understanding what’s caused the problem, and why, is critical for providing a suitable solution. Don’t just respond to a query without thinking through a response – just because it’s occured in real-time through social media doesn’t mean it needs addressing immediately.  DO, however, keep people informed of the situation and let them know you’re trying to resolve the issue. Keeping the customer up-to-date will help alleviate the situation while you look for a suitable solution.

6. Follow up after problems have been solved

Contact the customer through whichever channel they brought up the complaint. This helps change attitudes from “They solved the issue, but there shouldn’t have been one in the first place,” to one of “Wow, they actually went the extra mile.” They are also likely to spread this message through the social media channel too, helping to highlight your brand and customer service efforts.

Interested in learning more about social media and the customer experience? Why not come to the European Customer World Experience 2011 from 24th – 26th May. Register for tickets here.

F-commerce (commerce through Facebook)  is not just a buzzword; stores are opening up daily and Payvment, a third-party Facebook comments platform, boasts in excess of 60,000 stores using its features.

Starbucks is using Facebook for its loyalty card scheme, Coca-Cola uses it to sell branded merchandise and GameStop, one of the biggest video game retailers in the world, has just opened a full-range shop on Facebook called The GameStop Shop.

Despite generally lagging behind when it comes to embracing new Facebook features, the UK is starting to see some f-commerce traction. Perhaps the best known example is digital fashion powerhouse, ASOS, who have their own Facebook shop. But what are the real opportunities behind F-commerce for brands and businesses here in the UK?

F-commerce enables smaller brands and businesses to set up a secure shop without the hassle of owning and setting up their own e-commerce store. Challenger brands will seek digital market share from e-commerce giants by opening up shop on Facebook. Larger brands can use Facebook as an alternative engagement platform to their main e-commerce site or as a way of selling different or targeted merchandise.

The key to f-commerce success will, of course, remain in users purchasing from stores in sufficient quantity to justify investment. This does not appear to be an issue. A March 2011 WebTrends report suggests that Facebook conversion rates range from 2-4% – this doesn’t sound much but it’s pretty much on par with e-commerce stores. The nascent industry will rely on customer trust in the Facebook platform, ease of use, social buying and going straight from a Facebook advert or a friend’s recommendation to purchasing an eye-catching product – a new social take on impulse/checkout purchases.

It’s time for brands who want to, or can sell to consumers to consider how f-commerce fits into their business model. If it’s suitable for their business, it may be worth entering the market while it’s still young.

LinkedIn has implemented several upgrades over the past few months that will mean a change to how companies (and individuals in companies) use it.

Here’s a quick summary of the key changes:

LinkedIn today

LinkedIn today is a new feature which allows users to get relevant news from their peers. This essentially means that you will be kept up-to-date on industry changes as they happen without having to consult several different sources. In essence, it becomes its own content curation system.

LinkedIn has also noted that news sources will be from sites like Mashable and TechCrunch, not just the usual big news and media sites.

LinkedIn today enables industries that are not specifically digital to become more digitally aware by feeding business account holders news that is relevant to them from online sources.

Share function

The “Share” function on LinkedIn makes it a bit more like a social networking site like Facebook but for professional individuals.

Sharing an article with your network will result in a Network Update telling your network where to read and discuss the article. Sharing it with your connections allows you to pick and choose who to send it to and provide a message describing why you think the content is noteworthy. Sharing news with your network helps your colleagues and peers stay on the same page, sparking discussions on the topics that matter to your network.
For Content Providers

Adding a “Share on LinkedIn” link to your website or blog allows your users to share your content with their LinkedIn connections or networks. This gives your content legs: one user visits your site and can notify literally tens, hundreds, or thousands of others, driving relevant traffic back to your site.

Third tier connections

It’s still possible to invite third tier connections, or even those with absolutely no connection to you, but only if you know their name. If you don’t know their name, you can only send an in-mail. It also appears that on a Pro account it is possible to invite third tier connections, however this facility is not available on free accounts.

Group messages system

The group messages system has changed too. Essentially, you can only send group messages to those in a specific group and no longer to those in search results, which was probably done to prevent spamming. This anti spam consideration means that businesses can concentrate on important information coming in through LinkedIn messages rather than junk they have to sift through. This could be a great encouragement for businesses to maintain their LinkedIn accounts.

Video

The upgraded Linkedin also has the functionality to add video and other rich video sources to company profiles.