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Responses to my posts over the last couple of weeks have really got me thinking about this issue. I’d think it’s always nicer to have someone from the company who can react quickly without having to check back with the client about details, but this isn’t always possible, especially with large organisations.
From the Starhub post, it seemed like most people felt like their Twitter efforts were still a small, isolated part of customer service, poised to be properly established when the timing is right, and perhaps when more training is done.
The possible problem with leaving things to agencies, is that, as Jonathan points out, for better or worse, they are now representing your company. So when bad PR happens, your brand is automatically tainted as well. Arguably this can happen even if the person engaging is in-house, but if the communication plan is discussed properly internally and placed in the hands of someone who knows how to engage, the risk might be slightly reduced.
Finally, there’s the issue of the agency taking advantage of clients. At this moment while social media is the shiny new object, clients are going to need training for everything from monitoring to engagement, which is fine and good. But again there’s the extra unnecessary step of back and forth between agency and client, and as Liana points out in the comments, when someone from the organisation itself is responding, it’s easier to maintain the “feel” and “culture” of the organisation compared to if someone was responding on the organisation’s behalf.
To close, I guess at this point while everyone is still finding their footing in social media, it doesn’t really matter because mistakes are going to be made anyway. The important thing is to really bring those learning experiences into the DNA of the company, and begin to empower people in-house who will truly understand the organisation to be your spokespersons, rather than the agency professional who may be better at it, but ultimately is probably juggling three different accounts.
And one way to get this moving a little faster, is to get someone with some rudimentary knowledge of social media on board now, so that when your organisation is finally ready to take on the responsibility fully, you’ll at least have someone ready.
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Comments
05.03.09
User engagement is the new buzzword. In this world where real time communication is enabling people to voice their concerns, issues in different channels, it become even more imperative for companies to engage with users at user level and not at corporate level. This might require a complete reorganization in terms of marketing and sales strategies.
I recently read a article on how Target achieve success in reaching out to people via their facebook page in compare to walmart just on the way they engaged users at user level.
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