UK Online Companies Struggle To Integrate Social Customer Service

New research has found that many UK consumers are being let down by a poor standards of customer service through website, email and social media channels.

(Tesco provide a fantastic experience - try them out @UKTesco) 

The 2012 Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study evaluated 100 leading companies on their ability to provide answers to 10 routine questions via the web as well as their speed and accuracy when responding to email. 

The study found that websites could only answer 53% of customer questions, while company responses to email queries had declined since 2011. Social media use had doubled, although many companies still failed to integrate social media into their overall customer service strategy.

Fashion retailers were best at web customer service, answering 75% of questions asked on their websites, whereas CD/DVD/booksellers and food retailers performed worst, answering just 40% of questions.

Researchers were unable to email nearly a quarter (23%) of the companies in the study, as they either had removed the opportunity for non-customers to contact them through this channel or email addresses were not easy to find. Just 39% of the 100 businesses responded with an accurate answer via email and on average companies took 64 hours and 33 minutes to reply to emails – 44 hours longer than a similar study undertaken in 2011.

In addition, there was a wide variation in response times with two companies replying to email questions in 19 minutes and another taking a month to reply. Overall every one of the ten sectors surveyed answered emails slower than in 2011.

The study also found a huge difference between best and worst - for example, fashion companies answered 75% of questions asked on their websites, while CD/DVD/Booksellers and food retailers replied to only 40%.

While web performance improved from the average of 50% of questions answered in 2011 to 53% in 2012, over a quarter (28%) of companies performed worse in 2012 than last year despite being asked exactly the same questions through the same channels. 

“At a time when recession is putting unprecedented strain on many companies, customer service is critical if businesses want to win and retain consumers – but this study shows that many organisations are still struggling to provide basic information or answer customer emails,” said Dee Roche, global marketing director at Eptica.

“The fact that the performance of many companies has worsened over the last twelve months is disappointing to see – poor service will simply endanger sales in today’s competitive market. Customers want to be able to contact companies through their channel of choice, so businesses need to adopt a joined-up, multichannel approach if they are to meet their needs,” Roche added.

Many companies seemed to be more successful in some channels than in others. Food retailers could only answer 40% of questions asked via the web, but successfully responded to 70% of emails.

The study also looked at how companies were using social media to engage and interact with their customers. On the positive side, social media use had nearly doubled, with 64 companies having Facebook pages (against 33 in 2011) and 70 with Twitter (up from 36 in 2011). However only 11% linked customer service to these social media channels.

Roche said: “Social media is transforming how consumers approach customer service as it provides a megaphone for them to broadcast their complaints to the world. So it is positive to see that companies are embracing this new channel – they now need to integrate it with their overall customer service strategy to deliver a joined-up approach that is both consistent and efficient.” 

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

How The Radio Stations Are Getting Social

There is something both jarring and grimly amusing about hearing aging and/or serious radio presenters talk about Twitter, hash tags and Facebook pages. At the other end of the DJ age range such talk can sound like a mass of achingly modern techno-babble. But social media is a major part of everyday life and radio stations have realised they need to be connected to all the communicating going on around them.

 

Producers, presenters, broadcast engineers and IT types are still working out exactly how to do that but in the last year Tweets and Facebook postings have joined emails, texts and the old warhorse, live phone calls, as broadcasters up their game not just to get listeners to interact with them but for them to interact with the listeners.

 

How to make this work was a feature of last year's Radio Academy Festival. In his presentation 'From TOGs to the Twitterati - Connecting Old Media with the Social Media Generation', Dan McQuillin, managing director of software developer and distributor Broadcast Bionics, argued that audiences were ahead of the radio stations in using and exploiting social media.

 

At next week's festival, to be held again at The Lowry, Salford Quays in Greater Manchester, Bruce Daisley, Twitter's UK director, will present 'Only On Twitter' and discuss how the 140 character online networking message service can bring broadcasters closer to their audiences, as well as "bringing you more of them and making them value you even more".

 

Broadcast Bionics will be at the Radio Fair exhibition within the Festival to promote PhoneBOX v4 (screen shot pictured), the latest incarnation of the company's call handling system. This builds on previous incarnations by adding management and display of relevant Facebook posts and Tweets alongside information about incoming calls, the music and artist being played and general news or entertainment information, with the ability to arrange everything into different categories, or channels, and distribute it anywhere in a station as necessary.

 

McQuillin says development of PhoneBOX v4 began 18 months ago based on the idea of going "beyond telephony" and looking a a fuller interactive experience for radio, which he calls "the Social Studio". The aim is to bring "state of the art" social media into the studio where the presenter can work with it and include the audience more in the show.

 

"We need to break down the walls between the needs of the broadcast studio and the digital/online world," McQuillin says. "The studio side doesn't necessarily need to understand the social stuff, the presenters and producers just want to make something work and talk to the people who want to talk to them."

 

As with a lot of technology today, the "backend" - how everything actually works and is put together - can remain more or less a mystery to the people using the information it provides. The key thing, McQuillin states, is presenting the information in a way the presenter can use easily. "As soon as a Lady Gaga track is playing we should be able to bring up all social media about her," he explains.

 

But this is only a part of what McQuillin and other proponents of the Social Studio envisage. "There are varying strands to it, like a series of channels," he says. "There are the different sites for the radio station and people can switch between those according to what is being discussed. The listeners are ahead of the broadcasters in terms of using social media and they don't want to just listen any more. This means there can be sub-channels with people commenting about the station, or talking about the music and the news, with the presenter also having access to feeds so that he/she can contribute to what is going on or start new threads."

 

The radio studio is unlikely to change fundamentally but, as McQuillin observes, there does need to be a shift in how it operates: "Up to now the radio studio has been the place where information is combined with audio and then pushed out at the audience. Now the process is bi-directional, with the audience getting involved because they want to do more than just passively listen to the radio."

 

Full integration is likely to pose problems but the biggest shift is likely to be one of perception, how radio people and the audience see themselves today in what has always been a symbiotic relationship, albeit with one previously passive partner. "Stations don't have listeners any more," concludes McQuillin. "The audience wants to be involved as much as possible, so the radio station needs to be the one listening, with bigger ears not a bigger mouth."

 

 

www.radioacademy.org

www.bionics.co.uk 

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21 Rules For Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies

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Facebook Phone Is Coming - Just Delayed...

Almost as persistent as rumours that Microsoft is building its own ‘Surface Phone’ are claims that Facebook is also developing a handset of its own. The company has issued numerous denials of this in the past; its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, even stated just over three months ago that it “wouldn't make much sense” for Facebook to build its own device, given that the social network benefits greatly from its ubiquity across multiple platforms.

But the rumour has resurfaced once more, this time via Pocket-lint, who claim that they have a “very reliable source” who’s confirmed that the oft-mooted device is more than just the stuff of hearsay, and is a very real handset that’s currently in development. Indeed, the source says that the handset is being built by HTC and is presently known as the ‘Opera UL’, unambiguously adding that “it is the Facebook phone, made for Facebook”.

A device known as the HTC Opera UL has also appeared on the online NenaMark2 benchmark test, with specs including a 1.4GHz processor of unknown build, a Qualcomm Adreno 305 GPU and HD (1280x720px) display, along with Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean.

As for when the mystery handset might be revealed, your guess as is as good as ours. The source said that “apparently, it’s been delayed”, but that obviously says nothing to help narrow down a specific timeframe.

Frankly though, this rumour’s done the rounds so many times that we’ll only really believe it when Zuckerberg confirms it himself.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Facebook Tweaks It's Edgerank - More Engaged Brands Appear More Often

Facebook released some tweaks to the EdgeRank formula last week which makes it more likely that posts from brands with high engagement get priority placement in feeds over posts with little engagement. Samuel Junghenn founder of Digital Marketing Agency Think Big Online says this change should not affect Facebook Pages with a good social media strategy.

Facebook released some tweaks to the EdgeRank formula last week which makes it more likely that posts from brands with high engagement get priority placement in feeds over posts with little engagement. Samuel Junghenn founder of Digital Marketing Agency Think Big Online says this change should not affect Facebook Pages with a good social media strategy.

“Essentially a good social media strategy will have users liking and engaging with a Page which would make their posts more prominent in users Feeds. While some people are crying out over this, it’s those people who need to start analyzing why their posts aren’t getting any engagement.” Said Mr Junghenn.

The change in the EdgeRank formula by Facebook is trying to direct users to posts and pages, which have more engagement. This is a logical change by Facebook, it’s like ranking a page in Google with more links. More engagement is a measure of a posts or pages success and as such it should achieve higher rankings.

“While some page owners are protesting the latest changes I see this as a positive step forward for Facebook in improving their user experience. The down side will be that brands who can afford to promote posts will be able to artificially inflate their engagement and get better positions. But this has to be expected, Facebook is a for profit company so they need to help their advertisers.” Said Mr Junghenn.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

How Greggs Won 2 Digital Awards For Superstar Doughnuts

Greggs has won two digital awards for a social media campaign, which helped to sell more than one million doughnuts nationwide.

The ‘Greggs Superstar Doughnut Awards’ campaign, created by digital marketing agency STEEL London, won a gold and silver award at this year’s Digita Impact Awards.

The campaign aimed to raise awareness and drive sales of a new range of doughnuts launched by the high street bakery firm, by turning the products into superstar characters on social media websites Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The doughnut superstars led ‘real’ lives, with jobs, friends, back stories and they competed to be crowned the Greggs Superstar Doughnut of the Year, which Greggs’ online users had to vote on.

Moray Twaddle, marketing manager for Greggs, said: “Our Superstar Doughnut campaign provided us with an innovative and effective campaign that created record levels of engagement across our digital audiences and complemented our in-store campaign activity.

“We wanted to do something different to generate awareness of our new range of doughnuts and position them as fun and relevant products, so that people would reappraise Greggs’ sweet offer. We certainly achieved these aims – and had a lot of fun as well.”

As a result of the campaign, Greggs sold 1.5 million doughnuts from its new range, as well as selling thousands more through doughnut vouchers claimed by consumers on Twitter through a hashtag topic called #DoughnutDay.

In addition, it generated 150,000 online visits to the Greggs website and helped to significantly increase follower and page ‘like’ numbers on Twitter and Facebook.

Andy Hinder, chief executive at STEEL London, said: "The success of our campaign is stark evidence that, when done right, social media has the power to have a direct and positive impact on sales and improve financial results without breaking the bank.”

Greggs and STEEL London picked up gold in the Best use of digital in the food and beverages sector category, alongside a silver for Best use of digital in the retail sector.

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Facebook Employees Have Lost $2 Million On Average Since IPO

Facebook‘s declining stock value hasn’t just been bad for investors — it has also had a significant impact on the fortunes of Facebook employees.

Facebook employees have lost an average of $2 million each since the company went public in May, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited new data from the compensation research firm Equilar. As of Friday, the average employee’s stocks in the company were worth $2.5 million.

This average doesn’t factor in executives at the company, some of whom lost much more. Sheryl Sandberg, the company’s COO, has lost more than $700 million since the IPO. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and CEO, has lost an astounding $10.5 billion.

Facebook went public at $38 per share, but the stock quickly declined and went as low as $17.55 in early September. The stock has since rebounded slightly and closed Friday at just under $21, but it’s still well below the IPO price.

To be sure, the average Facebook employee — like the company’s executives — still has a handsome amount of money in Facebook stocks, but the larger problem is what this decline does to employee morale and talent retention. Many employees likely had dreams of selling the stock above the IPO price when the employee lockup periods expire at the end of this month. Instead, employees must either delay selling off their stock in the hopes that it rebounds, or else take a significantly lower payout — either of which may impact their personal plans.

Zuckerberg and other executives have begun to acknowledge the employee morale problem in public and in private, reportedly holding all-hands meetings to address employee concerns about the company’s falling stock price. Facebook certainly isn’t the only tech company whose stock price has fallen since the IPO — Groupon and Zynga have both seen their stocks collapse — but if Facebook’s stock continues to sag, it could distract employees, make it harder to defend against poaching and more difficult for Facebook to acquire other companies.

What’s more, there is still the question of whether and when the company’s stock price will return to IPO levels. Barron’s recently argued that the stock is overvalued even now and should be priced at $15 a share. Last month, Facebook’s own underwriters Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan cut their 12-month price targets for the stock to well below the $38 IPO price. Doug Anmuth, an analyst with JP Morgan, now has a price target of $28 for the stock.

If that proves correct, it will be a long time before Facebook employees really see their fortunes improve.

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

11 mobile startups that will change marketing

We've all heard the numbers. More than half of the mobile phones in the U.S. today are smartphones. And according to a recent MIT study, tablets have already penetrated 10 percent of the market in less than three years. That's a faster adoption rate than we saw with smartphones -- or any other technology, for that matter.

Digital marketers are sprinting to catch up with this rapid rate of smartphone and tablet adoption. Industry observers predict that mobile advertising will grow from an estimated $5 billion today to $18 billion by 2015. And not surprisingly, scores of companies are emerging to help marketers decide where and how to allocate those dollars.

It's the Wild West out there in the mobile landscape. So which companies really deserve your attention (and, consequently, your marketing dollars)? To helps marketers cut through the clutter, iMedia is hosting the 2nd annual Next Wave Start-Up Challenge and Showcase. From a pool of 27 nominated companies, 11 of the best mobile startups in the media and marketing landscape have been selected, via iMedia community voting, to pitch to more than 300 digital marketing elites at theiMedia Breakthrough Summit. Mobile innovation experts and advisors from top-tier brands, agency incubators, and the venture community will vote on site to determine the Next Wave winner.

The 11 presenting finalists were selected within three categories: mobile campaign management and analysis, mobile entertainment, and mobile shopping and commerce. Let's take a look at the value they hold for marketers.

Mobile campaign management and analysis

Appsnack

Hungry? Appsnack creates and delivers in-app rich media campaigns for advertisers, publishers, and app developers. Based in Emeryville, Calif., the company develops mini-app creative units that launch from one-touch expanding banners and full-screen experiences on consumers' mobile phones and tablets.

Importantly, Appsnack's bite-sized creative units aren't served up willy-nilly. As a division of Exponential Interactive, Appsnack leverages Exponential's e-X Advertising Intelligence platform to provide insight into consumers' mobile context, behavior, and location. The result is a brand advertising solution that delivers relevant, high-impact advertising at the opportune moment.

In addition, Appsnack allows publishers and app developers to better monetize the display ads in mobile apps. The company provides direct access to brand advertising budgets through the delivery of mini-app brand experiences, launched directly through the existing inventory of publishers and app developers.

Media Armor

Marketers across the board have felt it: Consumers are now shopping on multiple devices and in so many channels, how do they make marketing relevant to each individual? One evening, Eric Brown and Elizabeth Zalman, chewing over this issue at dinner, decided to do something about it and created Media Armor.

Boston-based Media Armor allows brands to drive cross-channel revenue though relevant cross-channel display advertising based on who consumers are and what they are doing, anywhere. Media Armor claims, "It is the first company to unify consumer-level data across any channel (online, in-store, catalog, mobile), effectively translating CRM strategies to online, smartphone, and tablet display advertising."

For example, a consumer's smartphone, tablet, laptop, and in-store activity become linked to drive messaging. If the consumer has never engaged with a brand but "looks like" their best customers, they will see an acquisition message on any internet-enabled device. If they visit a store and purchase, a retention message is sent on any of their devices. If they visit the online site at work, they will receive remarketing instead. Because Media Armor tracks actions after messaging, the company knows exactly what message to send next, based upon past actions. As consumer behavior shifts, so should advertiser's messaging strategy. Media Armor opens the door to flexible cross-channel marketing, providing a shield of protection against irrelevant, untimely messages. According to Zalman, the platform's co-founder, Media Armor offers "the holy grail of marketing: cross-channel relevance, cross-channel revenue, consumer-level conversations."

Placed

Put simply, Placed shows advertisers the businesses where individuals are consuming their mobile content. Need a company to sift through the noisy location data created by the wide-spread adoption of smartphones? Placed analyzes location data and presents it in a clear, actionable format for advertisers, publishers, and developers.

With Placed Analytics, marketers can see the places where users are interacting with their app. For instance, as founder and CEO David Shim explains, "In less than four clicks, Placed enables marketers to understand that 14 percent of site visits occurred while a user was nearby a Starbucks, 23 percent of app sessions occurred nearby electronic retailers, and 38 percent of mobile coupons were accessed at either Walmart or Target."

With Placed, marketers are able to identify opportunities to enhance their product by understanding the locations where their content is consumed. For example, if 55 percent of an app's use occurs while users are in transit, a marketer can implement voice controls within the app to encourage safe use.

The Seattle-based company's goal is to "connect the digital and physical worlds to deliver location insights to the masses." As a result, Placed has made its solution available to marketers and app developers for free.

ThinkNear

Have you heard of situational targeting? At ThinkNear, it's the bread and butter of operations. Rather than hit people with irrelevant ads, ThinkNear leverages situational targeting to help advertisers connect with consumers based on location, behavior, and context. The Los Angeles-based company pairs precise location targeting capabilities with a variety of real-time data, such as weather, traffic, and events, to engage customers when they are ready on mobile apps and optimized websites.

According to ThinkNear's CEO and co-founder, Eli Portnoy, the company "focuses all of its time on and excels at providing the most precise location targeting available, which in turn enables an incredible amount of campaign types that were never before possible." For example, when consumers face weather delays at an airport, hotel advertisers can reach stranded users with messages regarding overnight stays.

Also, with ThinkNear, advertisers can access billions of location-enabled impressions, targetable within 100 meters, and every impression is bought individually, in real time. Meaning, advertisers pay only for the impressions that work.

So, does the company face any challenges? As Portnoy told iMedia, "One of the things holding everyone back is that the [mobile] ecosystem feels like the Wild West. This is somewhat common in the early days of a new medium." However, Portnoy remains optimistic and expects "that the leaders will emerge, and the space will become a bit easier to navigate in the not-too-distant future."

Mobile entertainment

iMediaShare

Available for iPhone, iPad, and Android, iMediaShare is a cloud-based mobile media discovery and control technology designed for the connected home. iMediaShare makes it easy for users to stream media from their mobile phone to internet-enabled TVs, game consoles, and other connected devices with no cables, syncing, or complicated set-up.

Users simply open the app, choose a connected device, enter their Wi-Fi password, and share their videos, pictures, and music with others. In addition, the app delivers thousands of on-demand options for consumers -- from popular shows to breaking news -- and media automatically adapts to the best suitable format for the screen of choice (i.e., HD, 3D, etc.).

iMediaShare's distribution technology makes it easier for content providers to be everywhere for their customers, and it enables media companies to engage millions of viewers on multiple connected devices. In addition, the company offers digital marketers an outlet for highly segmented, accurately placed ads.

Mimiboard

For centuries, bulletin boards have served as valuable surfaces for posting messages and connecting with one's community. With the rapid rise of connectivity and smartphone adoption, South Africa-based Mimiboard has taken the bulletin board and made it virtual.

Mimiboard allows users to upload announcements (texts, tweets, or shout-outs like traffic reports); news (real citizen journalism in action); and advertisements (local ads placed by the community on the board -- things for sale, services, etc.) to engage and trade with one another. Anyone can create a Mimiboard, give it a name, assign categories to it, and get the community to pin notes onto the board. Once this begins, the board can be added to the user's website, mobile site, Facebook page, or blog.

By serving as a virtual hub of social engagement, Mimiboard has great potential to solve every publisher's problem: maintaining an engaged community of followers. A digital board that is updated with local, relevant content in real time might be a strong solution.   

SeeMail

SeeMail is a photo-sharing app that adds something new to photos -- voice. Inspired by the short notes written on the back of old photos, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based SeeMail was created to add context to images, allowing the story behind the photo to travel along with it. The company claims it is "the first and only app to combine images, voice, captions, and location in a mobile peer-to-peer photo-sharing experience."  

By adding human voice, SeeMail attaches a greater level of emotion and feeling to digital picture sharing, something that can be lost online as pictures are shared without context.   

From a digital marketing perspective, SeeMail's value is in providing brands with the opportunity to personalize their offerings with voice. Brands are now able to communicate their stories on a much deeper level by showing consumers the people behind the products (or, as SeeMail might say, the story behind the photo).

Mobile shopping and commerce

good2gether

Based in Melrose, Mass., good2gether helps businesses that do good advertise by connecting them with consumers who care and the local causes they both support. Retailers, restaurants, businesses, and more can use good2gether to inform consumers about their positive impact in the local community.

How does it work? A business attaches a "DoGood" badge to a wall or window that is embedded with information such as the causes it supports and special offers the company is making to benefit nonprofit organizations. When a consumer taps the badge with an NFC-enabled mobile device, information associated with the good the business does is delivered through the "DoGood" mobile app. Users can then check in, learn ways to get involved, find deals that benefit both the consumer and local causes, or donate directly. If consumers don't have an NFC-enabled device, they can simply launch the app and a list of socially responsible businesses appears on the screen.

The company's "DoGood Corporate Social Responsibility Dashboard" allows businesses to manage their DoGood badge network by understanding how many people are checking in, what causes matter to users, how information is being shared socially, etc. Put simply: The app enables and encourages social responsibility while providing a medium through which business can reach consumers. 

Pogoseat

Have you ever snuck down to better seats at a game only to be embarrassingly escorted back by an usher? Well, Pogoseat allows fans to upgrade their seats at sporting events or concerts from their smartphones -- without all the risk. The app provides a map of the stadium or venue, identifies the empty seats, and allows users to purchase upgrades. These in-game seat upgrades are priced according to the user's original seat location and time left in the game or event, and they factor in any promotional discounts applied by the team or venue.

Pogoseat is quick and easy. Users sign in with Facebook, Twitter, LinkdIn, or a Pogoseat user name; enter their existing ticket information; use the map to purchase seat upgrades using PayPal, Amazon, or a credit card; and present the original ticket and the electronic upgrade to the usher when they move to their new seats.

Pogoseat is currently working with several brands to offer free or discounted upgrades at events. With regard to the app's potential brand value, Pogoseat's co-founder Abel Cuskelly said, "Imagine, for example, a wireless service that wants to offer its customers a free seat upgrade at the next football game they attend. Pogoseat can identify every fan in the stadium who's a customer of that wireless service and automatically offer a free upgrade that fans and customers can redeem at any time during the game."

Point Inside

Based just outside of Seattle, Point Inside is a leader in mobile shopper engagement. Its Interact platform combines indoor shopper and product location technologies with shopper purchase intent data to deliver highly relevant, personalized advertising to in-store customers. With Point Inside, retailers and brands can engage with shoppers in three ways. First, by understanding shopper and product locations, the platform connects users to in-store physical assets. Second, it provides users with routes through the store while suggesting additional products along the way. Lastly, Point Inside delivers a channel for brands and retailers to reach consumers with the perfect message at the perfect time.

Discussing the service's unique value, Point Inside's CMO Todd Sherman said, "This hyper-targeted 'private ad network' has information on the shopper's current purchase intents -- through their shopping list -- as well as their purchase history and, in some cases, their location within the store (section and aisle). This deep understanding of the shopper creates the most targeted ad network for brand advertisers, where they can leverage knowledge of the shopper to determine the best combination of what, when, and how to engage and convert."

When asked about the greatest hurdle Point Inside is currently facing, Sherman explained that it's all about awareness: "The biggest hurdle had been retailers' awareness of the benefits of engaging shoppers through mobile devices. This has decreased significantly over the last 12 months." However, with platforms like Point Inside on the rise, it's hard to believe that this lack of awareness will continue much longer.

Rumgr

Rumgr is a mobile app that lets people buy and sell with friends and neighbors -- something Craigslist should have done years ago. When users open the app, items for sale appear in the app's image feed and are presented in order of proximity. Selling items on Rumgr is as simple as uploading a photo -- no descriptions, no tags, and no location details necessary. The result is a mobile shopping environment that encourages hyper-local purchases and excites users with the possibility of stumbling upon random, unique items -- just like a garage sale.

So, what unique value does Rumgr offer brand advertisers? As the company's marketing lead Ana Yoerg told iMedia, "Our platform is not and will not be ad-supported. However, we are open to brand involvement. For example, we can promote venues (e.g., Starbucks) by providing 'recommended' meeting points for the item exchange." In addition, Rumgr could offer a valuable service to brick and mortar stores by helping them manage their excess clearance items. "These deeply discounted items (50-80 percent off) would be eligible to list on Rumgr as part of the Rack program," Yoerg explains. "Buyers can 'follow' their local store on Rumgr to view items on the clearance rack in their feed, which pushes them into stores for those items and more."

Since the summer of 2012, Rumgr launched news tools for Facebook integration, faster communication, more control over items for sale, and transaction history. In addition, the company introduced "Groups," which are smaller marketplaces based around common locations, such as the workplace. 

http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Social Media & The Finance / Loan Industry - The Greatest Story Never Told?

(Infographic via MediaBistro AllTwitter & CEO.com)

Just over a year ago, I received a phone call from the Compliance Department. No one ever wants to receive a call from Compliance, and the tone of voice on the other end of the line told me it wasn’t to ask how my weekend was.

“Brian, I need to talk to you about your LinkedIn account.”

“Really?” I asked, feeling relieved. LinkedIn seemed a far more innocuous subject than any other, considering my day-to-day responsibilities. I worked at a boutique investment bank in midtown Manhattan, re-selling distressed, asset-backed bank loans. In English, that means I took people’s bank loans for mortgages, cars, condos, etc., and packaged them into pools of other similar loans and sold them to buyers for anywhere between a few cents to, let’s say, $0.75 on the dollar (still a great deal!), depending on the quality of the “asset” and loan. The loans were “distressed” because since 2008 we had been in the biggest economic tsunami since The Great Depression. The housing bubble had burst, and home foreclosures were occurring across the nation at an alarming rate. We were never busier, and I was already counting my year-end bonus.

So you can imagine my relief when Compliance just wanted to talk about my LinkedIn account. “It seems you have your Twitter account feed on your LinkedIn profile,” she said.

At that point in time, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hadn’t yet released their ominous-sounding, “Risk Examination Alert – Investment Advisor Use of Social Media”. Neither had the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. (FINRA) released guidance on the issue of social media. It was generally assumed that we didn’t have to comply with the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, which prohibits advertising. Basically, Broker/Dealers (BDs) had no official guidelines on how to deal with the use of social media.

Summoning my knowledge as a Series 7 & 63 certified Broker/Dealer, I responded, “But I’m not talking about stocks or giving any financial advice whatsoever.”

“Yes, but you could,” she threatened.

Right then I knew: I was working in the wrong industry.

That may sound awfully dramatic, but it speaks to a larger issue regarding the perception large corporations have of social media in general. The global community has the ability to connect and communicate like never before, yet for the most part, social media is vastly underutilized by too many corporations. Forget about individual voices with something to say. I’m talking about big companies doing great impressions of the silence in the wind.

Since then, FINRA regulates what BDs can do with social media, but several of the laws are so out-of-touch that it’s ridiculous. For example, records of all social media correspondence must be maintained. “Liking a Page” on Facebook is allowed and encouraged since it is not considered a type of testimonial, but “Liking a Status Update” is an “endorsement” of another user’s post and is a violation. Yikes. Certainly not encouraging for open and direct communication.

Did you know that less than one in 25 (3.8%) of Fortune 500 CEOs use Twitter? Only nine Fortune 500 CEOs have tweeted at least once in the past 100 days. Interestingly, Rupert Murdoch is the most active CEO, bucking the excuse that someone is either too old or out of touch to engage in social media.

[View the full infographic]

I see this as money literally left on the table. As the infographic above shows, a recent study by Chadwick Martin Bailey says that 50% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company after following their tweets.

In addition to driving sales, investment firms are missing the opportunity to start a serious rebranding of their images. We all witnessed incredible vitriol from Americans in the vastly divergent camps of the Tea Party and organized members of Occupy Wall Street all voicing their anger towards abuses in the financial marketplace. Neil Barofsky attests in his book, Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, to abject abuses of our trust as to how the $700B in TARP bailout money was used by banks.

Never before has a change in public perception been more necessary, and it may be the biggest marketing challenge of all time. But social media allows people and brands to connect in an unprecedented fashion. Now firms can influence the dialogue and address what people are saying.

Social Media provides data about what customers want, need, and desire. Investment firms and banks can fundamentally change the way they interact with customers and create great consumer experiences. This can drive real change within the organization, and there is real ROI that can be measured when a customer explicitly says what they want.

Major banks also have a tremendous opportunity to elevate the dialogue surrounding their industry. There are wonderful philanthropic efforts within that affect people in meaningful ways. Social media gives banks a voice to tell this story and become more than a faceless institution. Instead, they can actually talk and share ideas with the public to create a great customer experience.

I suggest that there is a huge opportunity to change the dialogue with the American public and social media landscape. I know that as a general rule, the finance community is a slow adopter of technology, but I also know that real changes are being made within these institutions. It’s time to let the public know that investment firms employ people who genuinely care about helping you and your family grow your income.

So feel free to connect with me on Twitter at @B_RockNYC where you will not get stock picks but you will get movie quotes, and a myriad of thoughts ranging from the spiritual to the absurd. Because I have a voice and I have a story to tell. I believe that your company does too. If not, it could be the greatest story never told.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-media-finance-the-greatest-story-never-told-0264657#KZtEC0tv7BsOtTKf.99

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Cloud Based Loan Processing Called "A Game Changer"

Time is money, and entrepreneurs never seem to have enough of both.

This is particularly true for small business owners who can spend hours filling out a tsunami of documents to apply for government-backed loans. And when the exhaustive paperwork finally plods through an esoteric loan processing system, all small business owners can do is anxiously wait…and wait.

Credit union executives know this is not the ideal member service scenario, yet they may be hamstrung by loan processing systems that haven’t kept up with the accelerated pace of today’s business markets. Now more than ever, entrepreneurs under fierce competitive pressures need better and faster service from their financial services partners. For credit unions, better and faster service is a key differentiation point that can retain and acquire new members.

Executives of the $2.2 billion Northwest Federal Credit Union of Herndon, Va., believe they’ve found a new, cloud-based solution that will keep driving that all-important differentiator of delivering exceptional service to members, including entrepreneurs who cannot afford to lose time, money and opportunity.

The new solution comes from nCino, which was spun off as an separate software firm in February from Live Oak Bank in Wilmington, N.C. Though Live Oak is just five years old, it has become the third-largest originator of Small Business Administration loans. 

Pierre Naudé, nCino CEO, said while Live Oak was exploding with growth, problems surfaced with the loan origination system, making it increasingly difficult for executives to monitor and manage their key metrics. The bank’s loan origination system was overwhelmed with paperwork. The heavily regulated SBA loans have as many as 150 documents that need to be reviewed by a complex web of people in the loan processing system. Live Oak employees had to spend time walking desk-to-desk to monitor the status of loans.

Realizing there had to be a better way, Live Oak executives searched for a new solution and found force.com, a SalesForce.com workflow cloud-based platform on which the bank designed a new operating system with two simple goals: Create heightened transparency throughout the entire loan origination landscape and build a portfolio management system that would increase efficiencies throughout the bank.

Through its business relationships with Live Oak, Northwest FCU executives got a first look at the solution about two years ago, recently becoming the first credit union in the U.S. to purchase the nCino’s solution.

“I have seen a lot of systems, and I was really impressed with what this system can do, particularly on the SBA loan side and with commercial loans in general,” said Jim Northington, Northwest’s chief credit officer. “The way our system was set up at Northwest, the processes were pretty fragmented.”

For example, in addition to using several systems that made loan tracking onerous, lenders working in other buildings had to lug their paper-stuffed files to another building to meet with other employees and manually review what documents were completed, what documents were missing and find out the status of the loans in the processing system assembly line.

“Now, it’s a matter of sitting in front of your desktop, having everything in front of you on the screen, taking minutes as opposed to having people spend a lot of time leaving their desks, carrying folders and looking for something or someone,” explained Northwest Chief Loan Officer Colleen Daly. “This efficiency has enabled us to do more with less.”

The nCino system is designed to continuously monitor all of the process steps and they are moving forward. For example, if a process is not completed in the expected time frame, the system automatically sends an email alert to the next process step that the loan is not being handled in the expected time frame. That prompts the loan officer to make a phone or email inquiry to find out what the holdup is without leaving his desk and looking for something or someone.

“We saw the nCino solution as a way to pull everything together to track loans, have the loans routed to the right people and then have an audit trail that enables you to track where those decisions were made and who made them,” said Northington.

Northwest began using the nCino solution in April, Northwest does not have formal metrics to share. Nevertheless, executives have noticed a 15% to 20% improvement in process efficiencies.

Based on metrics from Live Oak’s experience, nCino’s solution reduced the average time to process a commercial loans (start to close) from 65 days to 40 days. What drives this reduction, Naudé said, is nCino’s document manager system.

In traditional systems, documents go through a rigorous, serial step process from one department to another. But nCino took a social media approach by designing its document manager system as a loan wall, enabling authorized credit union employees to work on their own process steps on the same loans simultaneously.

“So anyone from the most senior manager to the most junior clerk in the credit union can actually look at the loan origination process and spot outstanding issues,” said Naudé. “That level of transparency is speeding up the process.”

Other metrics shared by Naudé include:

• 54% decrease in document exceptions,
• 19 % increase in loan volume,
• 22%  increase in staff efficiency and
• 17% reduction in operating costs.

Greg Gibson, Northwest’s chief financial and chief operating officer, said he was excited that the nCino solution has the potential do enhance the credit union’s market differentiation by letting entrepreneurs track the progress of their loan online.

“This is a big feature for borrowers because it helps them monitor the loan process, giving them the ability to estimate when their loans will be approved,” said Gibson. “Northwest works to create a very positive member experience, and this feature is a potential differentiator that will provide value to borrowers.”

The nCino system also enables managers to oversee the workload by department and employees, how many loans are being processed by every employee, as well as the history and performance of every loan and loan referrals.

So impressed with nCino’s solution, Northwest is collaborating with the software company to develop loan origination system for home mortgages and consumer loans.

In particular, Gibson has been impressed by nCino’s flexible architecture, which allows Northwest to make customized changes in less than a day and at a lower cost. That’s in stark contrast to other solution providers, which can take months and charge a higher cost to make changes, Gibson said.

“It is completely different from the way software has been created and delivered in the past from my personal experience,” Gibson said. “That is a complete game changer.”