Well after quite an eventful day there is quite alot to talk about. The experiment has been up and running for three days now so here is a quick recap.
For those of you who are unaware of the purpose of this experiment, what am i trying to achieve?
The original story can be summarised as follows. I am a discruntled customer of Finnish insurance company IF who has had his travel insurance claim turned down. This was after having been told by the company's emergency telephone number's customer service person that it was covered and that the insurance company would pay for flights home and additional hotel costs in particular. I therefore based my behaviour while still abroad on this information and bought expensive flights home the very next day. IF did not pay for this claim. After exhausintg the existing channels i decided to try handling the claim publically through social media.
I am trying to use social media publisise this case and to gain support. I am also attempting to test and evaluate my own methods as i go along way through a series of related blog posts that i am writing about social media channels, performance and their evaluation. I want to know whether an individual customer can leverage social media to empower themselves. Companies have time and time again been shown to succesfully leverage social media but can a single individual overpower the might of an organisation using the same tools?
I am reacting to the situation as it happens and trying my best to adapt. This is totally adhoc and still ongoing now!
Where are we Now?
Where are we with IF Insurance?
Today we had our second response from IF today via their Facebook Group Page. See the thread here. Read the related blog post. Up until this time i have simply posted to IF's own facebook page to query them on this issue and have merely asked for customer service.
I wanted to see does the fact that the case is now being handled publically affect how the case is being handled.
In short communicating with IF has not resulted in overturning their previous decision not to pay out the insurance claim.
This has been desipte my best efforts to show them why a quick positive response from them would be in their interest. Read more here.
However IF have admitted that they should have done things better and that they consider themselves to be at fault with regard passing on incorrect information to us their consumer who acted upon this.
For me this is as good as accepting liability.
As this is how it appears to me i have asked them. Do IF expect their customers to be held accountable for their own errors?
I am waiting for a response. Show your support for Social Media Customer Empowerment by liking the thread.
How are we doing with Raising Awareness about this Issue?
On the blog
In terms of generating traffic to the blog we have been gaining traffic steadily over the three days. In fact today will be the record for the number of hits so attention is growing. I hope to pass 750 visitors today which i think is not at all bad for a 3 day old blog.
Also the blog has been republished a couple of times on other sites thanks to @leighdow and @Nwstd for that. This helped generate additional traffic to the blog site and i appreciate that.
I am still lacking comments on my blog though although it is being tweeted and shared via Facebook farely regularly.
On Twitter
Today has been a very good day on twitter. We managed to double the number of followers we got in the first two days so there is a degree of viralicity (is that a word).
I also attempted for the first time to direct message persons whom i felt could help raise awareness of this experiment. Read the blog post here. Not sure if this will work out let's see.
On Facebook
There are two issues here. My own group and IF's group. Based upon some analysis and discussion in this blog post i concluded that;
"It is easy for a company to ignore an independent counter productive kind of group when it is not visible to their stakeholders and the group itself needs to be found by people who are looking for it. Even if this kind of group is found it seems to me that in all likelihood the group has already been discontinued and is not actively managed or promoted."
"Facebook groups are not good for promoting individual causes that are not widely known about. This is because they need to be searched out and known about. They are not easily found when you do not look for them or at least expect them to exist"
I have concluded that to put pressure on IF the best place to do so is on their own social media.
Currently the support i recieve is disjointed across several sites and medias. I have drawn alot of attention in particular to the Blog and Twitter but i need to translate that into action and particularly on IF's own media. I am currently still lone wolfing in terms of actions despite the amount of passive support and interest. A few exceptions, you know who you are thanks especially @jukkan :-)
I need to focus on hitting them where it hurts and drawing traffic not only to my story but to theirs. I especially need to find ways to activate those persons who are drawn to my experiement. Suggestions are always welcome BTW!
So what is in store for tomorrow?
I will again await the next response from IF and i will base my next behaviour upon their response. I still have some surprises up my sleave. This experiment is totally adhoc and freeform the method and the strategies are evolving according to the situation.
I will continue to try and self analyse the use of social media in this experiment and will probably start to publish more statistics.
I am also considering expanding the scope of the social media i am currently employing so as to broaden the discussion base, to raise awareness in other medias and to exploit certain characteristics of other social medias other than, blogs, twitter and facebook. These media will not necessarily be my own.
Tomorrow is another day and let's see what it brings...........
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