@christineptran

5 Ways TurboTax Embraces Customers

In my research role, I spend a lot of time scouring the internet looking at how companies use social technologies. One of my favorite examples is TurboTax, as they’ve weaved a social experience into many parts of the customer experience.

Let’s take a look at a few simple ideas that demonstrate traditional word of mouth, yet are amplified by social technologies.

1. Make it easy for customers to recommend your product if they like it

TurboTax knows that when you finish your taxes, you feel good. “A moment of real delight,” was how Christine Morrison described it in a presentation this year. TurboTax saw an opportunity to enable customers to share this “delight” with friends. After finishing their taxes using TurboTax, customers have the option of posting a comment to Facebook that they’re “DONE.” According to Christine, this led to 10 million free impressions and a four times greater click through rate than banner ads – resulting in a 33% higher conversion rate.

Here’s what it looks like after you’ve finished your taxes:

Here’s what it looks like after you’ve written a review:

2. Enable prospects to find product reviews by friends or customers with similar profiles

TurboTax recognized that product reviews are more relevant when they’re from people we trust or people like us.  A TurboTax prospect can filter product reviews by friends, using their Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter log-ins. If no friends have written reviews, prospects can filter recommendations by “people like me.”  This is done through a short questionnaire with questions such as “I had a job change this year,” “I rent my home/own my home,” or “I have kids/I don’t have kids.” TurboTax’s Friendlyzer technology pulls reviews from people that have submitted reviews matching similar profiles.

Here’s a sample of the questionnaire:

Here’s the Friendlyzer technology searching for product reviews based on similar profiles:

3. Help customers with the product by serving up contextual community discussions

TurboTax integrates its community forums into their product by serving up contextual information. As customers use the TurboTax product, every page viewed by the customer has a window pane of relevant questions/answered driven by its LiveCommunity. Not only does this help customers with difficult tax questions as they use TurboTax, it highlights a vibrant community and encourages customers to participate. TurboTax has at least 100 super users. Their top super user – a retired CPA – answered 50,000 questions in one year and had 5 million views. TurboTax knows how to leverage its super users to scale and improve the product experience for customers.

4. Embrace customers and their feedback into improving the product

TurboTax created an Inner Circle community to intake customer insights, which today boasts 25,000 members. Similar to My Starbucks Idea or Dell’s Ideastorm, customers can share and vote for ways to improve TurboTax.  Recently the Inner Circle even asked members what “feature customers could do without.” (You have to log in to see the post). Beyond customer co-creation, the Inner Circle is a community of customer advocates who are more engaged with TurboTax than their average customer. TurboTax has recognized top Inner Circle members, hosting membership appreciation nights or webinars on customer-driven product changes.

5.  Use social technologies and integrate customer relations across the organization, not just in marketing

TurboTax is a pioneer in using social technologies, but it didn’t happen overnight. And, using social technologies is not just an outgrowth of Marketing at TurboTax. Christine Morrison, who started as a Product Manager for the Inner Circle program, and now serves as Senior Manager of Social Media and Corp Comm, told me that using social technologies has always “been part of Intuit’s DNA.”

Know of other companies I should profile like this? Please add your suggestions below. Thanks!

7 Social Experiences in E-Commerce

Later this year, Altimeter Group will be hosting our first conference, Rise of Social Commerce, taking place Oct. 6-7, at the Four Seasons in Palo Alto.

In advance of this event, I’ll be spending time researching relevant case examples. What could be more fun than marrying two topics I love: Technology and shopping?!

So how are companies using social technologies to improve the customer shopping experience? Here are 7 examples I’ve found recently:

1. Recommendations, Reviews, and Ratings

Recommendations, Reviews, and Ratings are standard for any e-commerce site.  But using our social log-ins to access friend recommendations makes this information more powerful. Imagine shopping for a laptop at a Best Buy store, using one of the display computers to read reviews on a particular model, then filtering and finding a friend’s review. Next step: Call your friend for more information. Powerful.

Example: TurboTax’s microsite friendslikeyou.com relies on Gigya’s social brokering technology to allow customers and prospects to log in using their Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter IDs and search for product reviews by  friends. Below, the site is scanning its database for my Twitter contacts.  It turns out none of my friends have written a review, so TurboTax refers me to complete a short questionnaire so it can find reviews by “people like me.”

2. Facebook Likes

The Facebook Like button is similar to recommendations, reviews, and ratings, in that its a form of social proof. I’m identifying it separately because it has the potential for much greater reach. Liking a product or brand is an extremely lightweight activity, lending itself to greater usage. And, every Like publishes to an average of 130 friends’ news feed, igniting word of mouth through layers of extended networks.

Example: Levi’s shoppers can Like any item and add a comment when it publishes to their news feed.

3. Wish Lists

Having a public wish list is like having a wedding registry, except year round. Imagine signing up for a public wish list on your favorite retail site, say Powell’s or DSW, and publishing this on a Facebook app for all your friend’s to see. You’ll never have to exchange a birthday gift again! I haven’t seen such an app yet, but here’s the public wish list feature from Urban Outfitters.

Example: Urban Outfitters shoppers create public wish lists and share these with their friends, as well as search for their friends’ wishlists.

4. Group Buying

When Groupon first launched, I’d send deals to all my friends to make sure there’d be enough people buying the deals. The idea was that a minimum number of purchases were required for the deal to “tip”,” usually at least a couple hundred. These days, that doesn’t ever seem to be a problem – at least in San Francisco – as Groupon has become wildly successful. It’s a great business model which offers a triple win for Groupon, local business, and consumers. Naturally, Groupon has spawned imitators like LivingSocial, SocialBuy, Poggled – and now Yipit is aggregating them all.

Example: Group buying and a-deal-a-day rolled into one with Groupon. It’s also added Facebook Connect so you can share, purchase, and experience Groupon deals with friends.

5. Purchase History

Remember when Facebook launched their Beacon social advertising program? Seems like they still haven’t learned to let users opt in, not opt out. Blippy is like Beacon without being jammed down your throat. Shoppers opt in and share their purchase history with friends, or publicly. Public purchase histories have the same social impact as friend recommendations and reviews. Imagine iTunes having a purchase history pane within its application window. What a great way to discover, and buy, new music.

Example: Blippy users share what they’ve purchased, for how much, and where.

6. Loyalty Check-Ins

Foursquare is picking up a lot of steam, though I admit I’m not one of their early adopters. My circle of friends tends to loathe the habit of checking smartphones during dinner. For those without this problem, checking in to a favorite cafe, bar, restaurant, etc. means potentially being recognized with reward points. Businesses can learn more about their customers, identify and reward customer advocates, and promote word of mouth. Location based services (LBS) include Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, Google Latitude, Yelp, and possibly Facebook later.

Example: First, Starbucks teamed up with Foursquare to offer Barista badges and discounts to Starbucks “mayors.” Now, The Standard Hotel has reportedly launched a campaign to offer reward points to people who check in at their hotels via Topguest.

Photo credit: johnhaydon

7. Real-time co-shopping

Finally, here’s an example Charlene Li tweeted about yesterday. Mattel is using Decision Step’s ShopTogether technology on its  e-commerce site Shop.Mattel.com. Two or more customers can browse and chat together, making shopping decisions in real time. Charlotte Russe has been using ShopTogether for years to help teens co-shop for prom dresses.

Example: On Shop.Mattel.com, customers can invite their friends or family to shop together, browsing and chatting with each other in real time.

Of course there are more examples of how e-commerce sites are using social technologies to improve the shopping experience. I’ll follow up again with more examples in a later post. In the meantime, please feel free to share examples you’ve spotted.

A couple awesome web apps

I have the fortune of attending South by Southwest this year as an official blogger – I’ll be covering the Accelerator event on Monday and Tuesday.

Along with a handful of thought provoking sessions attended (more on that later), I made a couple really great discoveries today at the South by Southwest exhibit hall.

With Animoto, you can upload your photos and videos, and pick your favorite song. Animoto does the rest – using an analyzer, it’ll set the pace of your photos and videos to the beat of the song. It’s simple and beautiful.

Check out this little slideshow I put together from my Buenos Aires trip last summer.

Sliderocket, another cool service I came across today, offers speakers a way to create and manage presentations in the cloud, leveraging the web to pull in all kinds of media and making it easy to access slides and other assets, share files, and gather analytics.

Here’s a video from their site explaining how it works. It’s nearly as fast as it looks in the video, at least from what I saw at their booth today.

Also, go to their YouTube site or view this video of their founder putting together a sample presentation.

Amazing. These rich web applications are examples of the kinds of engaging experiences that many users desire and will soon be accustomed to. Further, both Animoto and Sliderocket are incredibly utilitarian.

The questions for us to think about are: What are our customers’ needs? What problems can we help them solve? How can we incentivize certain behaviors through rich web applications? How can rich web application enhance our customers’ experiences?

Some research on consumer trust

Today, I spent some time researching consumer trust, specifically, who consumers trust when making buying decisions.

Your first instincts are right – we trust our friends and family first. That’s why companies are tripping all over themselves to develop and implement social strategy programs. They hope that some of their biggest fans are your family and friends, and more importantly, that your family and friends are speaking on their behalf.

Here are the most notable studies published within the last year:

Trendstream, a London-based research consultancy, surveyed 32,000 consumers worldwide in 2009 and published the results in their Global Web Index (you can view a neat interactive map of internet behaviors here).

According to their research, close friends and family members score highest on trust, when it comes to opinions on brands we’re considering buying. Click on the image to view a larger version.

Earlier in the year, Nielsen published the frequently cited data below. From a survey of 25,000 internet consumers across 50 countries, Nielsen’s Global Online Consumer Survey reports that 9 out 10 people trust recommendations from people they know. Not far behind are consumer opinions posted online, and interestingly – brand websites.

You wouldn’t think that brand websites would still be relevant would ya? (Though this data is global, US only data for brand websites is the same.)

Most recently, Edelman published their Trust Barometer 2010. There were a few gasps of disbelief, with headlines such as Consumers Trust Their Friends Less. Though really, this research is less about consumers and more about the general opinion of corporate America.  Hard to believe that it’s looking up! Maybe it has to do with companies using social marketing to develop more person-to-person dialogue. Anyway, I’m including the Trust Barometer in this list because you’ll likely come across it if you’re looking for data on consumer trust.

Bottom line:

First, you can probably find research to support any position. Second, it’s a no-brainer that we trust our friends and family most. Yet, companies have to figure out how to facilitate more sharing and advocacy on behalf of their brands where friends and families interact.

Seaworld doesn’t shy away from backlash

Here’s an example of a company that has embraced direct, two-way conversation to engage their customers, and hasn’t shied away when the going gets tough.

You may have heard last week that a Seaworld killer whale killed its trainer. You can find some commentary here and here. This woman was well trained and knew the risks of her job. Yet her death isn’t without controversy. Animal lovers have come to the defense of Shamu and animals everywhere. And Seaworld has responded appropriately.

The @shamu Twitter account sent out this tweet last Thursday:

Seaworld has responded via its blog, with a message from the president, a tribute to the trainer, a statement from the family, and more.

And, most importantly, Seaworld keeps its Facebook fan page open to a lively debate – only shutting it down momentarily last week because of “inappropriate photos and videos.” Comments on the page include angry vitriol, reasoned criticisms and defense, and condolences for the trainer’s family.

The truth is, many of those with the sharpest criticisms were probably never fans of Seaworld or any other animal park. Having a platform for their remarks, at Seaworld’s fan page and blog, may show that the company is listening. More likely, it helps contain some of the nasty comments that would otherwise be circulating the rest of the social web – and be searchable later.

I think animal parks can serve important educational purposes, though I’m not a big fan of small concrete pools and training animals to do tricks.

Still, Seaworld responds appropriately – really, the only way it can, once it’s embraced a two-way conversation with customers.

Southwest Airlines on the Social Media Defensive

By now, most of us have seen examples of social marketing disasters (Domino’s Pizza, Motrin Moms). The mainstream media and blogosphere love this stuff.

On Saturday, filmmaker Kevin Smith took a standby flight on Southwest Airlines, on his way back from MacWorld in SF. Essentially, Kevin got booted for not fitting into a single seat. He was rightfully upset (read the details in the links posted here) and tweeted about it. With over 1.6 million followers (as of 2 days after the incident, anyway), a small firestorm erupted between @ThatKevinSmith, Southwest Airlines, and his most ardent fans.

Here are some of Kevin’s initial tweets. There are many, many more. Read them, they’re fun.

Here’s Southwest Airlines response:

The next day, Southwest addressed the issue via its blog. Unfortunately, it took a good idea and executed badly. It offered the half-a$$ed apology:

“You’ve read about these situations before. Southwest instituted our Customer of Size policy more than 25 years ago. The policy requires passengers that can not fit safely and comfortably in one seat to purchase an additional seat while traveling. This policy is not unique to Southwest Airlines and it is not a revenue generator.”

Customers took notice, with comments like this: “A heartfelt apology is not usually followed by justification of the action. Pathetic” and “Apparently your mother never taught you how to apologize.”

So the conversation continued on the Twittersphere and on Southwest’s blog.

Finally, Southwest offered this post the next day, expressing a bit more contrition: “The communication among our Employees was not as sharp as it should have been and, it’s apparent that Southwest could have handled this situation differently.”

Okay, so what does this all mean – how much does it really hurt Southwest?

Apologies were made within 48 hours. Kevin Smith even says he’s done talking about it. Southwest has long-standing goodwill with customers, low fares, and an unbeatable refund policy.

Really, it’ll probably just be a minor bump as far as PR crises go. Though things might be different had Southwest handled this more poorly.

The really important lesson from this is that if your company chooses to embrace social media, you’ve got to think about the kind of relationship you want with your customers (ahem, esp customers with 1.6 million followers) and what this means. In fact, even if your company doesn’t embrace social media, you should have a crises response plan if situations like this arise.

Southwest’s social strategy is mature relative to many others, yet according to its own admission:

“It is not our customary method of Customer Relations to be so public in how we work through these situations.”

Southwest may not have anticipated all the ways customer relations might look like with social media in the mix.

Bottom line:

There are going to be very public discussions about your brand amongst your customers, with and/or without you. At the very least, have a go-to response plan in place and provide the proper training to every customer-facing employee in your company.

If Toyota Had a CCO

photo credit: blue_j

On the drive home last night, I heard this Talk of the Nation story on NPR: How to Bounce Back from a PR Disaster. Obviously about Toyota if you’ve been following news for the past week. A good listen – and imho, the most reasonable assessment of the situation I’ve heard and read yet.

Take a look at the news and you see headlines like: Toyota’s Digital Disaster, Toyota broke cardinal rule of crisis management, and Toyota’s Recall Antics Spread Virally.

My take?  You can’t argue with decades of leadership in automotive reliability. It’ll take a lot more than this recall (which happen all the time and affect all companies) to diminish my trust in Toyota.

By the way, I just bought a new used car, and during the process only sought out Toyotas, Scions (Toyota brand), and Hondas. Reliability was my top criteria. While I ended up with a Honda, this recall and the so-called “PR disaster” wouldn’t have turned me a way from a Toyota if I were still looking for a car.

Though it does appear that I don’t represent the mainstream view, as public perception of the Toyota brand has dropped significantly.

So what’s Toyota to do?

A couple posts ago, I wrote about an HBR article concerning the customer-centric organization. In it, the authors presented their vision of the Chief Customer Officer.

Imagine if Toyota had a Chief Customer Officer.

As the public face of the company and most senior internal evangelist, a Toyota CCO would be the first to acknowledge the issue and offer a sincere apology to customers. A Toyota CCO would brief the executive team on how to handle the customer crisis from a customer-centric point of view. A Toyota CCO would engage dealerships, ensuring a positive experience for customers who bring in their Toyotas for repairs.

A Toyota CCO would work closely with corporate communications and customer support to disseminate this message to its customers, wherever they may be off- and online. A Toyota CCO would reach out to, seek feedback from, and rally customer advocates, who prior to the crisis were already engaged in a formalized customer advocacy program. A Toyota CCO would coordinate efforts to listen to customers – collecting customer sentiment/feedback and funneling it back to the company. A Toyota CCO would empower a team to respond to detractors (like this one) and redirect the message back to Toyota.

I don’t think Toyota’s botched the recall by any means (yet). In fact, I think they’re handling it as best as most companies would. But Toyota would be better served if it had a CCO, who could coordinate the customer-centric response and inject the customer point of view across all facets of the recall process.

From Transactions to Relationships

There’s a really great, in-depth article in this month’s Harvard Business Review titled Rethinking Marketing. You can read an excerpt here and below, but you’ll have to pick up an issue at your bookstore or pay online to read the article in full.

This excerpt outlines what most of us already know, yet captures the sentiments really well so I wanted to include it:

“…Never before have companies had such powerful technologies for interacting directly with customers, collecting and mining information about them, and tailoring their offerings accordingly. And never before have customers expected to interact so deeply with companies, and each other, to shape the products and services they use. To be sure, most companies use customer relationship management and other technologies to get a handle on customers, but no amount of technology can really improve the situation as long as companies are set up to market products rather than cultivate customers. To compete in this aggressively interactive environment, companies must shift their focus from driving transactions to maximizing customer lifetime value. That means making products and brands subservient to long-term customer relationships. And that means changing strategy and structure across the organization—and reinventing the marketing department altogether.”

Heard it before? It’s amazing how relevant the Cluetrain Manifesto is still, more than 10 years after it’s publication. The above sentiments also remind me of a number of essays by U of Michigan professor C.K. Prahalad on customer “co-creation.”

But this lengthy article goes beyond describing the changing landscape of marketing. The authors continue in great detail, to lay out their vision for an organization that is restructured to respond to and embrace these changes. To move from a traditional company to a customer cultivating company.

Altimeter Group advises clients to shift their thinking from transactions towards relationships. Similarly, this article discusses the following shifts:

• Away from Product/Brand Manager-Driven towards Customer Manager-Driven
• Away from pushing products towards building long-term customer relationships
• Away from product profitability towards customer profitability
• Away from brand equity toward customer equity
• Away from a marketing department towards a “customer department”
• And most interestingly: Away from a CMO towards a CCO, or Chief Customer Officer. The authors note that there are more 300 CCOs worldwide today.

Get your hands on a copy of this article and read all the details in its entirely. A great read and highly recommended.

Ditching Social Media

I may read about, blog about, research, and generally spend lots of time on what many call social media, but personally I try my hardest to avoid the term.

Why don’t I like it? Mainly because it’s been used to describe just about everything that’s happening on the web to the point that it’s almost useless. I understand that easy to use, widespread publishing tools like blogging platforms and Twitter have disrupted traditional media – and in regards to this upheaval, a term like social media makes a lot of sense.

But for companies that want to listen to and and start a dialogue with their customers, the term social media is less relevant.

For me, a more interesting way to reference what’s happening on the web in terms of customer-company interaction is to focus on the relationships and the community.

People now have infinite numbers of tools at their disposal to share, communicate, and discover. Companies do too. And both are taking advantage of the spirit of openness online to build relationships. People with their families, friends, and networks. Companies with their customers. People are nurturing personal and professional communities. Companies are nurturing communities around their products/services. Brilliant.

If I had a company, I’d ditch the social media strategy, and focus on how to build relationships with and community among my customers. For me, the terms are: customer strategy, customer engagement, and something like community management, community marketing, or community development. If you’ve got a suggestion, I’d love to hear it.