Food Lion is a regional grocery store chain with stores in the Southeastern US.  I had an “interesting” experience last weekend while making a last minute run to the local Food Lion store for two cans of baked beans, an onion and a green pepper.

I’m in the express checkout line trying to navigate the payment pad when the clerk hands me a pad of preprinted forms and asked me to fill out one explaining why I thought he should be employee of the week.  Seriously!  So all this guy has done is swiped four items (remember this, it gets better) and pushed a button.  Why should he be employee of the week?  What things are being measured to qualify one for this honor?  Still trying to focus on the difference between the “Yes” and the “OK” button on the payment pad, I told him I didn’t know why he should have that title, and he said, “that’s OK, just put it on the form”.  So apparently, collecting the most forms makes you employee of the week.  I guess working the express lane is a advantage in this contest.

Needless to say, I ignored the request.  After I paid, I noticed that he had not put my pepper and onion in the bag and had, in fact, rung them separately thinking they belonged to the person behind me.

I’m pretty sure this program was something that the local management came up with.  I’m sure they had the best intentions: improve performance of the team through competition and improved the quality of the customer experience, but their approach was completely wrong.

This program was focused on the employees, not the customer.  It resulted in the employees being more concerned with scoring points that delivering consistently great experiences.  The “express” checkout line was slowed down as a result and the overall customer experience suffered.  Employee of the week/month programs are fine, as long as they don’t get in the way of what should be the primary objective: taking care of the customer.

One of the best things about Twitter is the powerful interface (API) that allows third party applications to be developed,  Since it was introduced in October, 2006, hundreds of Twitter apps, hacks & mashups have been built to extend the product’s functionality.

I have been a regular Twitter user since early 2007 and currently follow close to 800 people, which isn’t that large compared to some other Twitter friends. The big problem for me (and why I don’t follow more people), is that with that much inbound traffic in my Twitter stream, I can easily miss tweets that I would want to see.  It reminds me of that classic scene from I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ethel are have a job wrapping chocolates.

I’ve been thinking that the answer to this problem would be an application which lets me filter my Twitter stream into manageable groups.  I could have one group for “Local People”, one for “Thought Leaders”, one for “Friends in Australia”; you get the idea.  I even started talking to some local developers about building an app like this.

As it turns out, I was not alone thinking stream filters would be a great idea.  Yesterday, I learned about a new Adobe AIR app called TweetDeck that features full integration with Summize, and lets you (wait for it……) create customized groups of those you follow on Twitter.

Authored by Iain Dodsworth, TweetDeck is one of the most useful Twitter apps I’ve seen to date.
It offers four major columns in which to organize Twitter data: “All Tweets”, which is your “with friends” timeline, “Replies”, “Search”, which will keep a running search window open for a term you’ve selected, and “Group”, which lets you make a sub-set of those you follow on Twitter.  You can have multiple groups.

The other interesting departure in this app is that it maintains a local database on your computer, so if you wake up in the morning and Twitter is down (a real possibility), you could still look at and reply to tweets “offline”.  TweetDeck stores you offline tweets and submits them to Twitter once the FailWhale goes away.  Now that’s a useful feature and a great workaround for the API limitation that prevents other external clients from seeing older tweets.

TweetDecks is still very much “in Beta” and likely to have a few issues of its own, but the feature set makes it well worth checking out.

Target always puts their outdoor living stuff on clearance around the July 4 holiday, so I made a trip to my local store this morning to see what kinds of deals I could find.  This particular store has just been renovated and enlarged to their new format with an expanded grocery section.  While the outdoor living secion was a bit picked over (I guess I’m not the only one who knows about this little secret), my wife and I did manage to run the aisles grabbing interesting looking snacks for the weekend.  Then I same across this shelf:

I guess having rodents in grocery stores is a pretty common thing and that Target is not alone in deploying traps to keep the population down, but I’ve just never noticed them so prominently displayed like this.  Snacks, anyone???

Make a claim which is true only because of a small disclaimer. Then, repeated it to the point that people take it on face value. Its one of the oldest marketing ploys in the book and it’s what AT&T is doing with their “More Bars in More Places” campaign. You’ve seen them. TV ads that present a humorous situation, often based in the US, where someone isn’t receiving an important call because they don’t have AT&T. The disclaimer at the bottom clarifies that “More Bars in More Places than any other Network” is based on Global coverage. So yes, technically AT&T has more bars in more places, but does the target domestic audience really care that I can get AT&T Wireless coverage outside of the US. I don’t think so. Without the disclaimer, their domestic coverage does not live up to the claim. From Ad Age:

Consumers ‘equate bars with satisfaction and quality. It might work if people believe it.’ “Consumer Reports doesn’t. In its 2006 telecommunications survey, which was conducted last September and tallied the surveys of 42,000 readers, AT&T, formerly Cingular, had average or worse scores for dropped calls in the 20 cities it surveyed. As for ‘more bars’ or, as the Consumer Reports survey put it, no service,’ Cingular also was rated as average or worse in each city with the exception of Dallas, where it was rated better than average.

This campaign replaced the “Fewest Dropped Calls” campaign which ended last year. AT&T was unable to support that claim, even with a disclaimer. It seems AT&T has a history of using deceptive marketing tactics to make their product sound better than it really is.

As a customer of less than a year, I am constantly frustrated by seeing “No Service” on my phone in places that should (and according to AT&T’s coverage map, do) have coverage. Perhaps they should have another disclaimer that says “as long as you are not inside a building, like your house”! It’s bad enough that their service does not live up to expectations. What irks me the most is the frequent running of those TV spots which are clearly meant to put lipstick on a pig. Every time I see one of those ads, I feel compelled to requote the tagline, “No Bars in More Places than any other Network”.

I really like Twitter.  It has connected me with many more great people in the last two years than any of the other Social Media channels I participate in.  A while back, I started using Twitterfeed to send a tweet whenever I posted a new blog entry.  Shortly after setting that up, I noticed that Greg Verdino had a separate Twitter account for his blog feeds.  I asked him why and he told me that it allowed his followers to decide whether or not they wanted that information.  I considered doing the same, but figured that posting a new blog entry qualified for “what are you doing”, so I left the feed as it was.

Recently, I loaded Mobile Scrobbler on my iPhone and set up a new Twitterfeed that listed the most recent song that I had listened to every 30 minutes.  As a music lover, listening to new music is “what I am doing” a lot of the time, so this seemed a natural thing to post to Twitter.  It generated some great conversations about music and connected me with a lot of new friends who also introduced me to some other great artists.

It also had a downside.  Several people whose friendships I value, stopped following me.   I didn’t know why, so I half-kidding, I asked “was it something I said?”.  The answer I got was that the frequent tweets about what I was listening to was just adding to the noise in their Twitter streams.  In other words, the music feeds were not adding value to these followers.  Curious, I publicly asked my friends in Twitterville whether they liked or disliked the music feeds.  I got about a dozen replies with the opinion split about 50/50.  OK, some some people find it to be of value, some do not, and some of those find it annoying enough to stop following me altogether.

That got me thinking about what I wanted to be using Twitter for.  Before I follow someone, I check out their blog or website and look at their recent tweets.  If I see something that looks interesting I follow them.  Usually, the people I follow are saying much more than just what they are doing.  Meaningful interaction is more important to me than reading a bunch of 140 character status updates. Following over 700 people, it’s easy to miss the valuable tweets because of the noise, so If someone I am following stops being interesting or never interacts with me, I stop following them.

Which brings me to my dilemma.  At the end of the day, it’s important to give your audience something of value or they will just a soon take their eyes and ears somewhere else.  Posting music feeds is clearly a “what are you doing” thing and some of my audience has found it to be valuable.  On the other hand, I can see how it can be noise to someone else and I don’t want to drive away friends who I otherwise have interesting conversations with.   The solution it seems is to follow Greg Verdino’s lead and create a second Twitter account for my music, photo and blog feeds; which I have just done.  I have turned off all Twitterfeeds into my main Twitter account (which you can follow here).  If you want to keep up with the other stuff, by all means follow me here.

I’ve been a passionate proponent for business adoption of emerging social technologies . In my previous role at a major US retailer, I led the charge into Second Life and set up blogs for insight sharing between employees. Spending time in the the Social Media echo chamber can lead to the belief that Social Media’s time is now, but the truth is, the majority of US consumers don’t get Social Media.

Forrester’s Sr. Analyst Jeremiah Owyang shared their Groundswell tool this evening on his blog. The tool allows you to look at the Social Technographics (how people use social technologies) for different segments of the population. This is valuable information to consider when creating a social media strategy. Creating a blog may be of little value if your core customer segments don’t read them. Looking at the different levels of participation across age groups, I’m struck by two things:

1. Just over 10% of the US Boomer population (45-54) are “Creators” or “Joiners” Over half of the Boomer population falls into the “Inactive” category. This may explain the blank stares I get from friends and business associates when I talk about Twitter or blogging. It also says a lot about the unwillingness of business executives, many of whom fall into this demographic, to allocate funding to social media.
2. The level of participation by US Millenials (18 24) is off the charts. 62% of this group are “Joiners” and 39% are creating social media content. These people are totally engaged with social media. It’s often their primary means of communication and creating relationships. In a way, their are defined by their online identities.

Owyang asks if this a generational thing. Will Gen Y continue to communicate this way for the rest of their lives? Or is this a life stage experience where only the young participate online. I agree with Owyang that it is the former. This demographic is quickly becoming the target market for most companies making it more important than ever for companies to begin a regular evaluation of their social media strategy. It may not seem important today. The ROI case may not be obvious, but in time it will be. Getting involved now better positions you to compete for these customers later.

Data from Forrester Research Technographics® surveys, 2007. For further details on the Social Technographics profile, see groundswell.forrester.com.

Last year, agency execs Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton organized 100 influential bloggers from around the world and produced “The Age of Conversation“. The individual essays taken as a group describe how conversations, enabled by social media technology, are transforming the business marketing landscape and how the various marketing disciplines have to change the way they talk to their consumers to be heard.

This year, McLellan and Heaton decided to do it all aver again with The Age of Conversation 2008 - Why Don’t They Get It? Once again the proceeds from the book go to Variety - the Children’s Charity — which serves children across the entire globe, but unlike last year’s book, this one has more than twice the number of authors, each focusing on one of eight sub-topics:

• Manifestos
• Keeping Secrets in the Age of Conversation
• Moving from Conversation to Action
• The Accidental Marketer
• A New Brand of Creative
• My Marketing Tragedy
• Business Model Evolution
• Life in the Conversation Lane

I contributed a page to Life in the Conversation Lane. Here’s a snippet:

“It’s amazing to watch young children on a playground. They interact and develop friendships with kids they don’t know, share new ideas, expand their imaginations, learn new things through conversation and interaction, experiment, innovate, collaborate to build things and to accomplish goals as a team.”

The new book should be out later this summer. In the meantime, check out the individual blogs of the other contributers:

Adam Crowe, Adrian Ho, Aki Spicer, Alex Henault, Amy Jussel, Andrew Odom, Andy Nulman, Andy Sernovitz, Andy Whitlock, Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi, Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob Carlton, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Bradley Spitzer, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich, C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Clay Parker Jones, Chris Brown, Colin McKay, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Cord Silverstein, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson, Daniel Honigman, Dan Goldstein, Dan Schawbel, Dana VanDen Heuvel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Darryl Patterson, Dave Davison, Dave Origano, David Armano, David Bausola, David Berkowitz, David Brazeal, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham, Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner, Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Emily Reed, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller, Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson, G. Kofi Annan, Gareth Kay, Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins, G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Graham Hill, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming, Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber, J. Erik Potter, J.C. Hutchins, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeremy Middleton, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, Joe Talbott, John Herrington, John Jantsch, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Flowers, Justin Foster, Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Katie Konrath, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kris Hoet, Krishna De, Kristin Gorski, Laura Fitton, Laurence Helene Borei, Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Barnes-Johnston, Louise Mangan, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux, Marcus Brown, Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Mark McSpadden, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Hawkins, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel, Monica Wright, Nathan Gilliatt, Nathan Snell, Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice, Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz, Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert, Paul Isakson, Paul Marobella, Paul McEnany, Paul Tedesco, Paul Williams, Pet Campbell, Pete Deutschman, Peter Corbett, Phil Gerbyshak, Phil Lewis, Phil Soden, Piet Wulleman, Rachel Steiner, Sreeraj Menon, Reginald Adkins, Richard Huntington, Rishi Desai, Beeker Northam, Rob Mortimer, Robert Hruzek, Roberta Rosenberg, Robyn McMaster, Roger von Oech, Rohit Bhargava, Ron Shevlin, Ryan Barrett, Ryan Karpeles, Ryan Rasmussen, Sam Huleatt, Sandy Renshaw, Scott Goodson, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Scott White, Sean Howard, Sean Scott, Seni Thomas, Seth Gaffney, Shama Hyder, Sheila Scarborough, Sheryl Steadman, Simon Payn, Sonia Simone, Spike Jones, Stanley Johnson, Stephen Collins, Stephen Cribbett, Stephen Landau, Stephen Smith, Steve Bannister, Steve Hardy, Steve Portigal, Steve Roesler, Steven Verbruggen, Steve Woodruff, Sue Edworthy, Susan Bird, Susan Gunelius, Susan Heywood, Tammy Lenski, Terrell Meek, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Knoll, Tiffany Kenyon, Tim Brunelle, Tim Buesing, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, Tim Longhurst, Tim Mannveille, Tim Tyler, Timothy Johnson, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Andrlik, Troy Rutter, Troy Worman, Uwe Hook, Valeria Maltoni, Vandana Ahuja, Vanessa DiMauro, Veronique Rabuteau, Wayne Buckhanan, William Azaroff, Yves Van Landeghem

There is a small, award-winning burger franchise call Five Guys Burgers & Fries. Their menu consists of basically four things: burgers, fries, hot dogs and soft drinks. No breakfast, no salads, no chicken and no wait staff. Their products don’t have names like “Whopper” or “Big Mac”. They’re call “hamburger” and “bacon cheeseburger”. Everything is cooked to order so it’s fresh and hot and the team behind the counter operate like a well-oiled machine with a clear focus on delivering a great product. They know that you come in hungry so while you are waiting for your meal, they have cases of roasted peanuts to crack open and munch on.

I went to Five Guys tonight to pick up dinner for the family. While I was chowing down on peanuts by the cash register, one of the employees was sweeping the area of spent shells. As she approached me, I started to move away to give her room, but she stopped me and said, ” You stay right there. You’re the customer”. So I did for a minute, but then moved over to the pickup counter. That’s when I saw this sign:

As customers, we interact with lots of organizations every day. Some of those experiences are bad and most are unremarkable, but occasionally you have a really great experience. I suspect that the organizations that really deliver have at their foundation, something like this baked into their cultural DNA.

Organizations can make all kinds of operational adjustments in the quest to deliver a better experience, but without a culture that gets this simple idea, they will not succeed.

What do you think? Think about some of your best customer experiences. Do those organizations get it?

Todd Feldman, a former colleague from Circuit City, wrote a post earlier this month at his blog which included this humorous video from Current TV.

If you spend time in Social Media like Todd and I do, the things spoofed in the video are pretty funny, but I wonder of this is what Social Media looks like to people outside of the social media echo chamber. I know a few people with the word “Chief” in their title who are responsible for making decisions about how their company messages its brand to the world.  Most of them perceive social media much like it is presented here. If this is what social media looks like to them, then we as evangelists need to get busy.

What has you experience been with executive decision makers? Do they have similar perceptions? How do we change that perception?

Yesterday, I was having a conversation about Social Media with a guy responsible for a major US retailer’s e-commerce site. His position was that nobody has figured out how to monetize Social Media; therefore there’s not a compelling reason to invest in it. I argued that the point is not to use Social Media to generate Revenue directly, but rather to drive engagement with the Brand and to use it as part of a Sense & Respond mechanism. In a timely turn of events, someone on Twitter pointed me to a post over at Online Marketing Blog titled: “Top 10 Reasons for Monitoring brands in Social Media“. Written by the Marketing VP at Radian6, a company that coincidentally provides Social Media monitoring tools, I think this makes a compelling case for convincing organizational leaders of the need to wade into the Social Media pool and start monitoring and participating in the conversation. I have included the entire post below….

[Editor's note: We're excited to share this next guest post from David Alston of Radian6. A fast emerging leader in the field of social media measurement, Radian6 (a TopRank client) provides social media monitoring tools to hundreds of leading PR firms, ad agencies and brand marketers.]

David is VP Marketing at Radian6 in New Brunswick, Canada with previous experience at several tech startups in the interactive advertising and the video over IP space. Most recently, he was partner and VP of Marketing at PR firm, Revolution Strategy. His blog is TweetPR.

Social media has simplified the art of the soapbox shout. Information is shared with the masses now using easy-to-use Web 2.0 tools and is recorded and cached for infinity. A shout out loud in social media has no geographic boundaries and is not time-limited. These two points make the non-stop monitoring of social media an important to-do for any brand owner. And monitoring social media does not just mean blogs. It should include video and image sharing sites and microblogging sites like Twitter, along with opinion and discussion forums.

As a provider of the tools for monitoring hundreds and even thousands of well known brands online, we’ve found a multitude of reasons for paying attention to what’s being said in social media. Here are the top ten:

The complaint – Watch for posts complaining about your products or services, company, and staff. Catching something early means getting a chance to show how responsive you are. A complaint is an opportunity to demonstrate problem-solving abilities. A posted complaint may also draw out other comments from people with the same concern, which provides an opportunity to reach out to them as well. And who knows, impressing customer with great customer service may generate some positive posts about how you resolved the problems.

The compliment – Compliments can come in many forms. It could be a congratulations message about a recent award. It could be a customer raving about the experience they just had with a product or with customer service. Social media compliments are the online equivalent of those old school references or testimonials of days past. Create a delicio.us account or use another social bookmarking utility and save all of these compliments in a list for future use. Potential clients looking for reassurance on a purchase decision would love to see what others think of your company and products.

The expressed need – The best way to watch for expressed needs is to look for keywords often used to describe those needs. People shout out what they are doing and ask the general public for advice occasionally when they are about to make a purchase. Both of these situations provide an opportunity to reach out with an offer of assistance or a free demo for example. While this may seem intrusive at first glance consider that great retail clerk who offers to help when you are trying to locate a pair of shoes in your size. A social media poster often appreciates that someone is listening and does not mind an offer of assistance expecially if it’s done in a helpful way.

The competitor – If you are watching your industry and the keywords used to describe it you will probably be the first to know when a new competitor appears on the scene. From a competitive intelligence perspective you may also wish to be alerted any time a competitor’s name is used. Knowing this may highlight opportunities to reach out to potential customers who have indicated they are trialing a competitor or dissatisfied with a competitor’s product or service. You may also discover which industry players are advocates for competitive brands giving you the opportunity to reach out and see if they are interested in knowing more about what you have to offer. Competitors will also often talk about subjects they are strategically interested in and being able to stay on top of those discussions allows you to anticipate potential future moves.

The crowd – Topics will often pop up online that draw huge crowds from a page visits or commenting perspective. There is a lot to be learned in discussion threads especially when they have the potential to affect your brand. Following the swarms can give you a better understanding of current sentiment and thinking towards a certain topic and who the players are that have opinions on it. It also may point out a topic that you will need to monitor going forward. Tracking a topic’s viral nature and how long it lives can give you an idea of its relative importance. You may also decide to participate in the crowd discussion thread early in the process, giving your company exposure to those currently involved in the discussion and to those yet to join.

The influencer – Influencers within a space can carry a lot of weight. They gain there power either from the number of times they post on a topic, the number of people who link to their posts on a topic, the number of people gathering to comment and how engaged visitors to their posts become. The hive that forms around an influencer helps spread an opinion on a brand faster and that opinion express potentially carries more weight. Often an influencer’s post appears prominently in a topic’s Google search results thus affecting the views of even more potential customers. Knowing who these influencers are and their opinions of your brands helps you determine who to reach out to for help as advocates or to understand why they currently hold a negative view.

The crisis – Discussions happening in social media can serve as an early warning system before an issue goes mainstream. By using advanced tools you can observe new words popping more frequently about your brands. If you were an airline, as an example, the sudden appearance of the word “cancellations” along with the words “bad” and “customer service” would immediate trigger a need to drill into the posts driving them. Tracking these “crisis” words over time on a go forward basis would also then help gauge the effectiveness of any outreach campaigns to address the underlying issues.

The ROI – There has been a lot of buzz lately on how to successful measure online marketing and outreach campaigns. Much of the focus has centered around the topic of engagement. While a universal engagement metric has yet to be agreed upon there are still a number of effective ways to measure engagement and ROI in general. Track the mentions of a brand in user-generated content before, during and after a campaign. Isolate positive words associated with a particular brand and gauge the number of times they were used over a period of time. Alternatively, you could sort all posts mentioning a particular brand or topic by number of comments or views to uncover the top 50 discussions where potentially engagement was the highest.

The audit – A brand is the sum of all conversations and is no longer completely controlled by the corporation. By analyzing social media a corporation or agency can score a brand’s overall user sentiment, determine which words are commonly associated with it, understand which competitors rank closest in buzz or online mentions, uncover which sites are advocates, and rank which social media channels contain more discussion versus others. By isolating which sites are discussing your brand or a competitor’s brand, an audit can also help pinpoint possible ad placement opportunities for reaching the most valuable and engaged audiences.

The thread – With so many social media channels to shout out on, conversations often become splintered. A discussion can start within one channel and quick leap into another making it rather difficult to follow. Following discussions using keywords associated with it can help bridge the thread across all types of social media. This thread would then appear as a connected conversation for easy analysis.

Customers, prospects and peers are discussing your brand, your industry and your competitors right now in social media: with or without you. Unfortunately, choosing not to listen doesn’t make those conversations go away. Actively listening means protecting brand reputation, discovering opportunities, staying competititive and avoiding runaway crisis’.