Archives for posts with tag: Maersk Line

Social customer service and the Man in the Machine: Maersk Line’s social media study (part 4)

April 26, 2013 //
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A screenshot of @AskCiti, Citibank's Customer Service handle on Twitter

Citibank’s Customer Service handle on Twitter – @AskCiti – is a good example of how you can humanize your brand and (most likely) improve customer satisfaction by getting some of your named customer service employees plugged in.

Moving on from my previous post about the value of social media and future directions for Maersk Line, it’s now time to zoom in on one of the new areas: Social Customer Service.

There are many good reasons why we in Maersk Line (and other companies for that matter) should care about social customer service, i.e. servicing customers via various social media outlets – in a structured way, involving colleagues from customer service.

The main reasons are:

  • Call-deflection. Customers find the answer to their (repetitive) questions online and don’t need to call the company.
  • Faster response time. If you have a global setup you can easily achieve a response time of less than 1 hour.
  • It’s easier for our customers. It’s basically about following the customers so it’s easy for them – and they are spending more and more time on social media networks.
  • It can work miracles when major incidents occur. A few tweets, a handful of replies and most customers will be well informed.
  • The human touch. Allowing customers to get to know some of your employees who are allowed to bring their own personality (within the boundaries of the brand, of course).

Overall, the story is that the companies – if they get it right – can serve their customers better and in a more efficient way without losing the personal touch.

I should probably explain a bit further.

Open channels means call-deflection
The increased efficiency alluded to stems from accessibility and learning: by bringing customer interactions out into the open (for example via a dedicated customer service profile on Twitter) companies experience genuine call-deflection, because customers are able to find answers to their questions among previous responses.

In other words, the information is no longer hidden in closed 1-to-1 channels such as telephone or email. From time to time customers will even answer each others questions without the company having to reply.

Humanizing the digital interaction points
However, making the system more efficient is not the whole story. It is also about humanizing the interaction points.

Ten years ago, if you asked people what technology would do to our ways of interacting and more specifically how it would influence an area like Customer Service, most people would have predicted a more automated, AI-like landscape where ‘machines’ could do most of the work (and we could relax and stop caring).

What is interesting – and surprising – about social media is that they have shown us a different way, that is to say that we can become more efficient while at the same time continuing to interact with our customers in a personal and relevant way.

One of the best examples of how valuable it can be to respond in a human and personal way is that of mobile company O2 who calmed a twitstorm last Summer – and did so in the most awe-inspiring way.

Or are we becoming machine-like?
A question some would want to ask is whether it also works the other way around: That by getting people plugged in and digitalizing the interaction points we end up being machine-like. I think not. There are many reasons why people become machine-like, but I don’t see social media as being one of them.

Quite the contrary: Social media are effectively challenging the formal and even rigid ways some people and companies tend to interact.

machine_man_1924

The modern customer service agent? Some sceptics will claim that technologies are making us machine-like, and not the other way around. That’s an old fear as this illustration from 1924 of “The Man in the Machine” can testify to.

A two-fold objective for Maersk Line
So to summarize, Maersk Line has a two-fold objective in terms of what we want to achieve through customer service via social media: we want to optimise our procedures and increase customer satisfaction at the same time.

Having a person in the machine has proven to be imperative. Our customers want to have a relationship with us, and they want to be heard. Some of them even want to do all of this via social media.

PS: I should add that we are planning to launch a number of social costumer service solutions in Maersk Line.

Next up: Social selling and teaching where our customers learn. 

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Categories Customer Service, Maersk Line, Social Customer Service, Social media, Study

What is the value of social media? Maersk Line’s social media study (part 3)

April 14, 2013 //
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4 instagrams

Four of @MaerskLine’s own Instagram photos. From left to right: A bird’s-eye view of Edith Maersk; the stern of Emma Maersk; a bus being discharged from Olga Maersk in Bangkok the 1950s; and the “Wall of #maersk” in our CEO’s office.

In my previous posts about Maersk Line’s social media study I wrote about first that social media has to somehow add value to the bottom line, secondly I summarized what we’ve done in the first year and a bit. Now, it’s time (finally) to look at the actual study.

In light of our current (and future, I should add) minimal use of resources, we decided to complete the study by internal means, i.e. we wrote it ourselves. But we also decided to try involving leading international experts through a number of so-called Hangouts on Google+. This was a success.

From singular to complex value creation
The very first question we were able to answer concerned the value of our past and present value creation via the social media. This exercise was almost absurd. First of all, it is impossible to quantify added value of this kind conclusively, since it originates both directly and indirectly, both in the short and long term.

Value creation is no longer (and probably never has been) singular. It is quite all right to measure singular outcomes, but if one wants to document the total business value, simply looking at a few quantitative parameters is pointless.

Nevertheless, we were able to determine that the Return on Investment (ROI) from our Facebook page is approximately 1500%. And the results are even better on Twitter, where we have barely used any resources but have a base of followers which has a 15x greater pull.

In other words, our average Twitter follower is 15 times more influential than the average Twitter user, and when we share something on Twitter, we therefore tend to find that it ripples out into the networks of most relevance to us.

What’s next is what’s interesting
Jay Baer, the President of Convince & Convert and a leading social media strategist, played a major part in the study. He said:

“It is of little value to look at the value of what you have achieved, or of what you are achieving right now for that matter. The important thing is what you intend to do going forward.  Only then you will find out what it is worth, and that will depend on what you do now.”

“Through your explorative approach to social media, you have managed to bring the company culture with you. You have generated momentum, and that is the most valuable of all that you have achieved, because that is what you need to build on.”

Jay Baer, one of the world’s leading social media consultants according to both Forbes and leading on magazine Mashable, talks about what we’ve done in social media in ‘year one’.

Jay Baer, one of the world’s leading social media consultants according to
both Forbes and Mashable, talks about what we’ve done in social media in ‘year one’.

Jay Baer continued: “Bringing the culture with you is by far the most difficult task. Even large companies, which are one-tenth of your size, cannot get it right. They are afraid to let go, as a result of which their social media programme dies before it has even begun.”

Detrimental not to adapt
Michael Chui, who was the driving force behind the social media study published by McKinsey last summer, made it clear that social media can no longer be ignored. It is imperative for all large companies to adopt social media as an integral part of the organisation, or, as he said to us in one of the first Hangouts:

“It will be detrimental for companies that are unable to adapt and exploit the social technologies and the associated optimisation opportunities. This may not happen this year or next year, but it will not be long. If you do not do it, your competitors will, and then, sooner or later, you will be outperformed.”

Michael Chui of McKinsey in a Hangout with us. In the Hangout, Michael Chui went through all the major findings in McKinsey’s social media study – and helped translate the findings into the world of Maersk Line.

Michael Chui of McKinsey in a Hangout with us. In the Hangout, Michael Chui went through all the major findings in McKinsey’s social media study – and helped translate the findings into the world of Maersk Line.

Next step: to get it out into the business
That was the evaluation part. We then shifted our focus to what we should do in the future. The McKinsey study outlined 10 ways in which social media or technologies can create value for large companies. Of those 10, we identified the four we considered to be the most prudent for us to focus on in the coming years.

Besides our current area, in which we communicate via the official Maersk Line channels, which is an approach rooted in our communications department, we will focus on our customer service, sales and internal use of social technologies for collaboration purposes.

Next post: How we plan to use social media in customer service.

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Categories B2B, Convince & Convert, Jay Baer, Maersk Line, Michael Chui, ROI, Social media, Study

Getting started with social media: Maersk Line’s social media study (part 2)

March 28, 2013 //
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Two of our early IGs, featuring Estelle Maersk on the left and my son Wilfred on the right, in front of the giant Emma Maersk scale model in the Maersk HQ.

Two of our early IGs, featuring Estelle Maersk on the left and my son Wilfred on the right, in front of the giant Emma Maersk scale model in Copenhagen.

So, moving on from my previous post, let’s have a look at how we got started and what we’ve done to date in Maersk Line with regards to social media.

First of all, our approach has been one of insourcing. I was basically recruited to do the job, starting 1 October 2011,  and I have been running with it ever since. This approach was chosen by management because they realized that it was the only way forward if it was to be credible as well as cost-efficient.

What has worked really well for us, and what the management fully understood, is the big amount of trust and empowerment that came my way. If you want to humanize the brand and ensure speed of posting you need to work with minimal oversight.

Where are we today?
So what’s the status after a year and a half? We currently have a presence on 12 social media sites, two of which are Chinese. We use these platforms in very different ways, with respect for the different users out there. However, a common trend spans the entire spectrum, namely that we regard it as a communication tool as opposed to a marketing exercise.

If you ask me, this approach does not make it boring, quite the contrary. Our presence is characterised as being very visual, narrative, trustworthy, based on that which is current and close to the business. Our aim is to engage and enter into dialogues. And we endeavour to humanise our somewhat hardware-driven business.

The top line (social) numbers
We have over 830,000 fans on Facebook, on which our engagement rate consistently falls between 5-10%. Also, we have 45,000 followers on Twitter, and 30,000 followers on LinkedIn.

In addition to all of this, we have 22,000 followers on Instagram. We have received considerable praise for our use of Instagram (and photos in general), even from Instagram themselves. Recently, we became one of their “suggested users”.

Here’s a short case video that summarizes what we’ve done the past year and a half (I know, I know, it’s a bit to the dramatic side):

 
From mass media to corporate journalism
But what is it worth? Perhaps nothing? We don’t know for certain. But we believe we know that there is much more to social media than… social media alone.

Social media is merely a concept. It is a measure of where the media landscape and technology have brought us, specifically to the point where technology has become so sophisticated that it is capable of mirroring our behaviour and the actual structure of society right down to the individual level.

In other words: a society consists of individuals who are interconnected. The same can be said about the role of social media. Away with mass media; today, that space belongs to the users. And in that space we all become editors of our own lives. How do I wish to present myself? Who am I? How do I want to spend my time? With whom? Where? Etc.

What is interesting for companies is that they are also, or have the opportunity to be, publishers of their own stories. Companies have become news media agencies in their own right. But they will not get very far unless they are trustworthy. This is where the concept of corporate journalism comes in: the most digitally-advanced companies have started to employ people who report on what goes on in the company with journalistic integrity.

After all, if you fail to divulge your mistakes, no one can learn from them, in which case the company stagnates.

Next up in this short series: What is the value of social media for a B2B company like ours?

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Categories B2B, Facebook, Instagram, Maersk Line, Social media, Study

Unlocking the full potential of social media: Maersk Line’s social media study (part 1)

March 17, 2013 //
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Part of the #maersk Instagram picture“What in the world is a container shipping company doing in the social media?!” We have been asked this question repeatedly since we announced our presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram almost a year and a half ago.

The short answer is: because it adds value to the bottom line. Had this not been the case, we would (almost) not have any reason to be there.

Until now, social media have primarily been the domain of our communication department, but we are currently moving into the second phase of our strategy which will involve incorporating them into the actual business.

In order to determine what role social media should play in our business in the long term, we recently completed a study. In addition to evaluating our current value creation, this study also outlines our next step.

The cover of Maersk Line's Social Media Study 2012

The cover of Maersk Line’s Social Media Study 2012 entitled “The Next Step: How to unlock the full potential of social media”.

Over the next few weeks, I will attempt to extract the key aspects of the study in a number of blog posts.

But before we get to the study itself, it makes sense to outline what we have done to date, during the first phase of the programme.

So that’s what my next post will be about.

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Categories B2B, Maersk Line, Social media, Study

Maersk on Facebook: A balance between openness and trust

August 2, 2012 //
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Here’s an article that was featured on ShippingWatch.dk last month. Great to see that people are paying attention. You can read it here. There’s also a related article from the day before (included in the printed version on Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten).
 

Maersk on Facebook: A balance between openness and trust

Since Maersk Line joined Facebook, shared trust and greater transparency has been needed, and more so than the employees of the old company have been used to in the past. So says Jonathan Wichmann, the man behind Maersk’s active use of social media.

BY JAKOB VESTERAGER

Maersk Line’s solid position within the social media has at times been a balance between opening up to the public and keeping with the management’s reliance on Maersk Line’s name not becoming tainted, explains Jonathan Wichmann, Head of Social Media for Maersk Line.

“Social media is about sharing and thinking a little differently than how the employees of Maersk Line have been used to. Back then, if you had knowledge of something or a question about something, you would probably not share that with others. But now people are starting to realize that just because you explain how to do something, that does not mean everybody will start copy you. Only you grow smarter together,” says Jonathan Wichmann.

Maersk Line is trying to do just that by being present on a number of social media sites on which the company has set up forums for people in the industry as well as a Facebook page, on which the company has more than 300.000 followers. Jonathan Wichmann handles Maersk Line’s presence on the social media sites by himself, and about half of his working hours are spent on this task.

Credibility

Wichmann is not scared that the open strategy will lead to negative publicity. He believes that the openness gives a company like Maersk Line more credibility, especially if you also upload things that are not altogether positive. For instance, Wichmann insisted that Maersk Line upload a picture of the ship Maersk Norwich which ran into a whale in early June.

“I had to persuade some people that we should do it even though it was not a positive thing. It is not a picture attesting our greatness – after all we collided with a whale. But it is probably the post which has been shared the most. It is an important parameter to consider when you want to reach as many people as possible,” says Jonathan Wichmann, who explains that he and others often monitor what the followers on Facebook write about a given picture.

“I am not anxious at all, but then again, I am not a Maersk man. Yet, from the beginning, it has been a kind of exercise in trust on part of the management. They thought ‘now we will try and see how it goes and see if you can work with us.’ If I do something that backfires then the trust is broken a little, but slowly they start to become more at ease with the situation and they see that it actually is not so bad when we write about the negative stuff and provide a more realistic picture of our company. It only makes us more credible.”

When Wichmann joined Maersk Line a little more than half a year ago, he had not dared to hope he would get the opportunity to launch a strategy for the social media as extensive as it actually became.

“I was unsure of how much they would let me work with it because it is such a large organization. So I did a presentation the first week I was there, it was for then CCO Hanne B. Sørensen and she approved it immediately. I went to work on Twitter, Facebook etc. and after two weeks, it was already set in motion. The management was a little skeptical and watched the number of friends on Facebook, but we got 13.000 friends in a very short amount of time and I think that convinced them to support the project,” says Jonathan Wichmann. Today, Hanne B. Sørensen is CEO of Maersk Tankers.

Facebook – a fad?

So far there has not been a lot of competition amongst shipping companies within the social media, and not many companies have a Facebook page or any other social media site. But Jonathan Wichmann is sure that most are considering it.

“CMA CGM has created a Facebook page, but not a lot is happening on there. They do not use it actively. I think there are a lot of people looking at us. I can feel them here and there. I think they are sitting there going ‘is this just a fad or should we do the same?’”

“Right now, social media is a fad but that is the way it is with all new things. But I think the social media is spreading and on the way to becoming a standard for how you do things in real life. Being part of a company and understanding the mechanisms of social media before our competitors is an advantage and likely to stay that way,” says Jonathan Wichmann.

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Categories Maersk Line

Why 300,000 fans on Facebook could turn out to be worthless

June 1, 2012 //
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Mark Zuckerberg on stage, talking about engagement.
But just how engaging is Facebook really?
(Image credit: news.cnet.com).

(This blog post was originally published on Maersk Line’s intranet)

By Jonathan Wichmann, Head of Social Media, Maersk Line

People just can’t help themselves. The crowds are cheering. The media is telling the story (even the shipping press). Experts are using it as a best practice case. It’s even in the Mærsk Post.

In short, everyone (almost) I meet tells me how amazing it is.

I’m of course talking about social media.

Of course, I appreciate all this attention and enthusiasm. But we risk missing the point if we focus too hard on the numbers.

Why? Because social media is not just about being popular and getting attention. Having a lot of fans is valuable (and it means that we prioritise our social media interactions), but the real value (for the business) of social media has to do with high quality engagement.

The value of social media

In theory, the value of one interaction can be worth more than 300,000 likes on Facebook.

Let me give you an example:

On LinkedIn we’ve created a group called ‘The Shipping Circle’. Here, we’ve invited shipping experts to join discussions about the future of the industry.

Some of the members have written long and very insightful posts about what we could do next in order to remain at the top of the shipping game.

What I’m trying to say is that it is a real possibility that just one single good idea from here could turn out to be worth millions, if not billions, of dollars.

Compare this to the value of a ‘like’ on Facebook.

It’s a way of thinking

For a company like ours social media creates most value when it challenges the way we think and interact. In fact, social media is a mindset, a way of thinking and working together. It’s based on the fact that we are social animals, and that means we can only benefit from sharing our thoughts and ideas with each other.

This leads me to the most brilliant part of social media: it doesn’t discriminate. The housebound and the shy are as visible as the active and the outspoken. Even those who are not very social in real life can share their thoughts too.

Maersk Line can definitely benefit from this. Time will tell when and where.

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Categories B2B, Facebook, Jonathan Wichmann, Maersk Line, ROI, Shipping, Social media

An article by J. Boye about, well, my work for Maersk Line.

January 20, 2012 //
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Last week I was phoned up by Janus Boye who is the CEO and founder J. Boye “the international community for web & internet professionals”. In other words, a quite influential blogger on things like internet and not least social media.

Maybe it’s due to the fact that Janus is a Dane, but he had nevertheless noticed the recent success of Maersk Line within social media. And he found it to be interesting and even surprising, given the fact that Maersk Line is a B2B company in a quite conservative industry. The background being that B2B companies have struggled for years to find meaning in and reasons to engage with social media.

In a way, we in Maersk Line have somehow succeeded in paving the way for other B2B companies. Quite flattering if you think about it. And maybe stretching it a bit too far.

You can read the article Janus wrote here.

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Categories B2B, Digital communication, Facebook, Jonathan Wichmann, Social media
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