Interview 4 With Verizon (Part 1)

This one was a real success.  I got to speak with the Director of Social Media Strategy for Verizon Telecom.  Yes, that Verizon Telecom.  Verizon Telecom encompasses basically everything but Verizon Wireless.  This was probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life.  All responses transcribed below are from Beth unless otherwise noted.  Thank you so much to Verizon for allowing me to publish this interview!  This is the first part of my interview with Verizon – part two is where we’ll hear from John ‘CZ’ Czwartacki, Executive Director – External Communications.  Stay tuned for that!

What is your name and official title at your company?

Beth Mulhern - Director of Social Media Strategy – Verizon Telecom

Cheryl Harris – Senior Staff Consultant – (manages @vzpittsburgh)

Tabitha Geary - Consultant

What is the name of the company you work for, and what does it specialize in?

Verizon – A communications and entertainment company

When did your company decide to create its online, social media presence?

2008 (There were some individual efforts before that.)  In 2009, we have a much more cohesive effort across the corporation.  We’re trying to get more cooperation between the sectors and get some brand standards set.

We did an inventory – who’s all out there?  A hundred different Twitter reps from Verizon.  We have a dozen or 15 or so FB pages – not all owned by Verizon.

About a year ago – working with [ad agency] we did a marketing campaign called MyHome 2.0 (tv show) which did tech upgrades for families, including our FiOS TV and FiOS Internet Services.  We would come in and do a technology makeover for them.  We had a website for it promoting casting, how to apply, etc.  We had the families who were winners writing blogs.  We ran the show on Fox TV in Pittsburgh, as well as in the Philadelphia market.

After hearing from a colleague who attended SXSW about Twitter, I tried to start a customer care program within my marketing team, but it didn’t go through.  However, fast forward a year later, and today we’re launching @verizonsupport on Twitter.  That team is looking at places such as BBR in addition to our Verizon forums for users with issues and complaints.  We have a tool that scrapes the content for users who look like they’re having issues so we can communicate with them quickly and effectively.  However, the @vzpittsburgh account on Twitter is all a manual process done by Cheryl – she goes out and uses Twitter search to locate users in Pittsburgh, and responds to anyone who posts directly to @vzpittsburgh.

Why did your company choose to establish that presence?

We want to have a conversation with our customers.  They require that and want that.  And there’s a huge benefit for us to do that.  We can get ideas from them.  If we’re not providing acceptable service, not being fair, billing issues, etc., we want to know about it. And if there are things they like about our products, or ideas on how to make them better, we want to know that, too.

Negative Facebook pages and such create an opportunity for us to make customers happy.  Are they pointing out an issue that we should look at closer?

Is your company using multiple services?  If so, which ones?

We’re on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube. We recognize that different platforms provide different opportunities.  You get this opinion and fact based opportunity on Twitter.  Request for service, feedback, screaming for help, kudos, is very appealing on Twitter.  Facebook is more social – hanging out with your friends.  We’re doing some testing there to see the business opportunities and how we can interact correctly there.

We have some videos on YouTube, including some viral marketing.  This is the least of our focus so far, though.  We want to make sure we focus on the services that provide us the best place to interact with our customers.

We’ve created company forums for various products and services as well. They give our customers the chance to talk online and help each other with technical and service issues.  They also give us ideas for new services that they’d like to see.

Is your company using these services mainly as a marketing tool, customer service outlet, or just as a way to connect to its customers in general?  In other words, what’s your overall objective for social media strategy?

D.) All of above.  The marketing tool is a great opportunity – that’s part of my charge – to develop marketing tools/strategy involving social media.

Customer care is a requirement – we need to support our users.

The fact that I report to a chief marketing officer… the purpose was to make sure we got visibility for social media within the company.  We need to make it a key strategic priority as to how we move forward into 2010.  ”Is there something related to social media in this discussion?”

Tabitha adds: One of the benefits of having a small business is having the ability to talk to your customers.  For a large business like Verizon, social media is a dream come true.  It gets them back in touch with their customers.  To be able to hear one on one what their customers are saying is fantastic – they really take it to heart.  The customers are driving their direction.

Beth – Getting customer feedback from millions is hard.  We’re trying to make sense of all of it and get an individual person’s perspective.  That’s different than marketing research where everything is related to a norm (trends, perspective), and where you lose the commentary from the individual level.  That’s what’s so compelling about social media – we hear both the good and the bad from our customers on an individual level.

Do you have someone on your staff entirely dedicated to managing your online presence?  If so, what do you feel are the benefits of having a dedicated social media staff member?

With a company the size of Verizon, there are many people involved with managing our social media […] it goes into the hundreds including people from IT.

Do we have dedicated resources? Yes!

Models from Groundswell – one being key success factors – one is have someone important in charge of social media to really drive it into the organization.  You have to have a thick skin when looking at this stuff – people are brutally honest with us.  You have to have a leader who says “This is important to us.  We want to hear it.  You can’t cure what you don’t diagnose.  We need to acknowledge our faults – you can’t be better unless you fix the things that are broken.”

What sort of clients or customers do you see embracing these social media tools?  Is it just the geeky type, the brand evangelists, or are you starting to see average everyday people using them to connect to your company?

It differs by platform.  Facebook, the group with the most tenure, is younger, but currently it’s more older people (40s and up) who are fueling the growth of new users.  On Twitter it’s more the middle aged and up.

I like to think of myself as average, and I’m doing it, my friends are doing it.  My kids make fun of me.  What was I thinking for making a Facebook page?  It’s become mainstream.  Everyone is doing it.

Companies need to understand customers’ behaviors in social media, in order to craft the best way to reach them.  Forrester has a good model for describing those social media behaviors – Creators (content creators), critics (ratings & reeks), collectors (tagging/organizers), joiners (join in on the discussion), inactive (not participating), spectators (like to look at creator’s content).

I’m more of a spectator – I like to look at people’s content.  I love to see what other people put up there.

As a business, if you know who you’re going after… (creators – create digital experience that plays to their desires to create content – showcase) (spectators – as a company YOU would create the content and put it on a site like YouTube) then you can create experiences that are fit for that target.

Tabitha: Twitter & Verizon – All over the board.  Nature would say more tech oriented, but they’re actually just great communicators.  It’s become a universal tool for people who are good communicators.

How does the volume of communication from social media outlets compare to that of traditional communication sources for your company such as e-mails and telephone communication?  In other words, are more customers calling you, or are they communicating with you through social media?

The bulk is still from our call centers, and that has not changed.  But, there is a growing amount of information and feedback coming from Social Media and we’re choosing to listen and jump in and be a part of the conversation.

Do you give the customers that contact you through social media means any sort of special treatment such as priority customer service or special incentives? If so, why?

We are coming out with special offers for our social media customers.  That’s a test for us.  We’re looking at special offers, but we’re not sure if they’ll be exclusive to social media or not.  In terms of customer service, all of our customers are important.  We’re trying to figure out what’s the right mix of service.  There is recognition that this is the age of the empowered consumer, though.  Before, if there was an unhappy customer, he might tell 5 friends, but now, with a couple of clicks, he can tell x number of people.  We don’t want to put anyone at a disadvantage – they’re all important.  It might look different from the outside looking in, though, because as we said earlier, social media is more personalized.  We do recognize the risk of not providing good service, but that service isn’t prioritized to social media.

Tabitha: By the nature of things, social media channels are so much smaller than traditional channels.  It’s much more personal.  It doesn’t make others less important, but it does make the experience more personal.  Verizon is working very hard at getting people on their team who can understand all profiles and all sorts of people.

[End of Interview]

Check out http://www22.verizon.com/socialmedia for a link to many different Verizon Social Media presences!

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Thank you so much, Beth, Tabitha, and Cheryl!  I really appreciate the insight into how a large corporation like Verizon is using social media.

(Note to my readers: This transcription was read over by Verizon’s PR department and very minor changes were made, however, no major changes were made that in any way affect the validity or quality of this interview.)