So to finish the story then.
If Vahinkovakuutus did finally give me the recording and based upon my girlfriends wishes not to publish it, i decided not to. The whole incident upset her quite a lot. So as not to make her feel worse i will leave it here.
However the basic content of the message was as remembered and described earlier in the blog.
If Vahinkovakuutus certainly implied that we were covered and gave examples of what was covered and sums of money. We were never told that we were not speaking to an If specialist and a generic customer service provider. We based our decisions of how and when to return home based upon this information at significantly greater costs to ourselves.
So with this and If´s continued resistance i decided to stop the effort here. Now the story is here and complete make up your own mind about what you think and if you wish to, try and learn from my successes and mistakes.
As far as the social experiment is concerned i certainly was succesful in a number of ways.
I did manage to generate interest in the story and traffic to the site.
I did manage to create additional pain and embarassment for If Vahinkovakuutus
I managed to use social media to publicise my story and certainly empowered myself more that through traditional channels.
In this respect the experiment was a success.
On the downside this did consume quite alot of time. There was no framework for me to follow, no examples of how others had tried to do the same thing. As a consequence i certainly made mistakes.
However the main things i learned through trial and error are,
You cannot force a story to go viral, you can enable it but people will only spread it if the content is relevant to them. In this respect a customer complaint story perhaps is not the best medium as this for the most part is a very personal thing and generally not too interesting to none engaged parties. To gain attention a story has to be so shocking or highly relevant to an audience to attract interest.
If you do attempt this kind of engagement, do not try to manipulate your channels too much for example repeated junk twitting does not work, asking people to perform tasks in your own interests does not work and should not be tried. Allow your story to grow organically based upon the content and style of writing and you will be succesful without having to resort to manipulating your own audience. This is something that i myself learnt the hard way from time to time during this process.
My advice is however to use statistical tools to follow how your actions perform. Ultimately this is the only way of measuring your success, especially if the party you are engaged with are silent or not acting how you would like them to act. Blogs and google analytics are a good starting point.
Well that is it, the blog navigation has been updated so that you can find things of interest to you. I hope you enjoy. Signing off.....
Until the next time a company ticks me off ;-)
Showing posts with label IF Vakuutus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IF Vakuutus. Show all posts
Monday, April 30, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
I have re-opened the dialogue with If Vahinkovakuutus
It is with very mixed feelings that i have reopened the dialogue with If vahinkovakuutus. If you have read my previous conclusions from my first attempt to engage them you will understand why.
In my opinion If vahinkovakuutus have publically shown themselves to be very untrustworthy, unethical and entirely non customer orientated. In any case as If vahinkovakuutus have still not given me the recording of the phone conversation that this whole experiment and engagement has been based upon then i have reopened the dialogue via their facebook pages to try and get it back.
I had not expected this course of events would be necessary but apparantly it is. Below is the screen shot of the new conversation. If vahinkovakuutus seem to be ignoring it currently. Again this can only serve to damage their public image further.
In my opinion If vahinkovakuutus have publically shown themselves to be very untrustworthy, unethical and entirely non customer orientated. In any case as If vahinkovakuutus have still not given me the recording of the phone conversation that this whole experiment and engagement has been based upon then i have reopened the dialogue via their facebook pages to try and get it back.
I had not expected this course of events would be necessary but apparantly it is. Below is the screen shot of the new conversation. If vahinkovakuutus seem to be ignoring it currently. Again this can only serve to damage their public image further.
 |
| View the conversation on Facebook. |
Monday, March 5, 2012
Social CRM Company Engagement Framework Part 2: Strategy
Once you have decided that you wish to engage a company in a dialogue via social media, the first thing to do is to think a little about your strategy. If you do this you will dramatically increase your chances of being succesful.
Formulate your Argument
You must have a clear concise reason for engaging the company in question. You must be able to communicate this in a very short concise way and as a few lines or bullet points. You must do this to succesfully engage your audience and the company alike. Whenever you discuss your arguments try and do it as shortly as possible.You will be more succesful when you activate your audience by describing how it impacts them personally so try and emphasise the impact on other customers in particular.
Make clear, short requests to what you expect the company to do. It is harder for the organisation to avoid short concise requests. By doing this you will be able to stop the dialogue becoming pages of boring marketing spin that your audience is not interested in.
Make sure that your arguments and requests are clearly summarised in all social medias you engage in.
Plan your use of social media
So as to be better able to plan this you need to do and think about two main things.
Advantatages in utilising your own Social Media
Main Strategic Tools
For the most part you will find that companies will have a presence on these tools.
Facebook group or page
Twitter
Google + (new but will become important)
LinkedIn Company Profile
YouTube Channel
Blogs.
Company's will probably be present in other channels but for the most part 95% of their audience should be present on at least one of these medias. As such i would recommend focussing on these. This is as the return on your time spent on other channels probably means it is not worth you focussing your efforts on those. Generally if a company is present in these channels then you should strongly consider making your own presence felt there.
If they are not there maybe you should still be, especially for Google +. In this way then you need to set up your own corresponding channels. In later posts i will describe how these corresponding profiles on the same channel should interact with each other and how to utiise each to its best advantage.
Should you make your presence felt in all the company's Social Media in the beginning.
Choose one channel to hold the conversation in. Facebook is good as almost everyone has a profile and you are able to maintain the dialogue in a thread and link to it. In the beginning of the dialogue you do not need to be present in the other channels.
There may be an advantage in moving into these channels later as you need to increase pressure on the company.
However by being present in these channels immediately, you may have an advantage as you can apply maximum pressure to the company immediately. By doing this though you also increase the likelihood that the company will feel like they are being attacked.
In my opinion you are most likely to get your positive response in the first few replies. After this the probability of succes will drastically drop. As such you may consider expansion of your utilisation of Social Media later if you do not get replies that you are satisfied with.
You need to Raise Attention as Quickly as Possible
One thing is clear. To increase your chance of success, you need to get as many people involved and active in regard your story as quicky as possible. This of course is the main driving factor in deciding how to utilise the social media and other traditional marketing channels in question. This is also a major reason for planning your actions first!!! The relative strengths and weaknesses of each channel will be discussed in upcoming posts.
You will need to ensure that you yourself produce good content and attract a wider audience
If you want to attract large numbers of visitors and support then you need to expand the scope of the story. People are generally not all that interested in a sustained bad cusotmer service story. You need generate content that will be of interest to people outside of the company's existing stakeholders. If you can expand outside of this target group with large enough numbers then you can apply significantly more pressure to the company.
To be succesful in this you need to be creative and think outside of the box. For my own story i turned this experience into a social media experiment. In this way i was able to attract an audience based upon the company's own stakeholders and an audience interested in Social CRM, PR, Customer Service, Marketing and Social Media. In this experiment this effectively doubled the level of traffic i experienced to my blog for example.
Ensure the longevity of your story
As mentioned above if you add content to your story via media such as blogs you ensure that not only does the story survive but that it is also relevant for others. As such the fact that your story will continue to attract traffic will apply more pressure to the company in question. They are less likely to act unprofessionally if they know that their story will survive and be found and read long after the dialogue is over.
Where do you want to steer traffic?
This is a tricky issue. You obviously want your audience to be active and to participate and be visible to the company you are trying to have a dialogue with but you also want to be able to tell your own side of the story and activate your audience. As such.....
Do not attempt to drive all of your new traffic straight to the company's own social media.
This may seem contrary to your goals but remember, for audiences reached through channels other than the company in questions own social media, they have not heard your side of the story you have not been able to influence them so that thay may feel like they want to act. For example it is very difficult to get someone to act based upon 160 characters in Twitter. They need more information to act upon.
As such I recommend steering these new audience to a location where you can outline your own side of the story and a media that you can control. In this experiment i used a blog. Once they have read the story then they are more likely to be activated in the discussion. In this way you can then steer them to the company's own social media where ideally you would like them to make their presence known to the company.
Analyse your own Performance
Use tools that will help you get statistical data about traffic volumes, referring sites/urls and locations, shares, likes and retweets that will help you meausure the success of your own campaign and let you know how successful you are at generating interest. Blogger for example offers these as default functionality for all blogs. In this way you will also be able to measure how much interest you are able to generate from the company's own social media locations. All of my upcoming channel posts will give information about how to analyse these channels also.
Interlink your own blog to the company's social media at every opportunity.
Whenever you have an opportuntiy, use your blog to drive people to the company's social media and conversely ensure that your social media is at the top of the company's social media's feed. In this way you can ensure a good flow of traffic between the two and the probability of activating visitors increases. This will also undoubtedly add more pressure on the company to act positively to your requests.
Focus on Improving Numbers Visible to the Company
Blog stats are only of value to you in terms of improving your marketing efforts and channel performance!! That is unless you make them visible to the company. Numbers that may affect and influence the company's behaviour and response to you are for example, number of twitter followers you have, number of comments, likes, mentions on their own/your social media. Number of members of your facebook group. Traffic generated to their own website through your blog. These are things the company should be looking at through their own analytics and these are the things you should be attempting to influence. Bare this in mind when measuring your own performance. The company will measure the risk to them through data visible to them.
What if a company decides not to engage you?
This is a serious conern. In my own experiment If vahinkovakuutus broke contact for a period of several days. I think they believed that i would just disappear. As a strategy to force them to re-engage i expanded my use of their own social media so as to start to interfere directly with all of their messaging.
In practical terms i commented and added my own material to all of their social media posts. I kept to the rules of engagement however and did not write any negative comments but merely asked the audience had they heard bout my story and linked to the blog.
I also blogged about it and put it out on Twitter. After two days If vahinkovakuutus, Finland re-engaged me.
What if a company decides to block you from their social media?
As above if a company blocks you it will look bad upon them as long as you have followed the rules of engagement. The simple strategy is to create another profile and continue to post. Also write about it and post that information via your own social media. This negative publicity will hopefully result in the company returning to dialogue.
What if you start to lose your audience?
Unfortunately if you lose the support of your own and/or your company's audience then you are in serious trouble. The ony advice i can give is to try and stop doing anything that you may have done to alienate them and apologise publically. However if you continue to lose support and especially if the audience start to publish content against you then i am afraid it is over. This is the time to stop. It sucks for you but the probability of being successful if this happens is almost zero. This is because the company will believe the people are on their side.
Formulate your Argument
You must have a clear concise reason for engaging the company in question. You must be able to communicate this in a very short concise way and as a few lines or bullet points. You must do this to succesfully engage your audience and the company alike. Whenever you discuss your arguments try and do it as shortly as possible.You will be more succesful when you activate your audience by describing how it impacts them personally so try and emphasise the impact on other customers in particular.
Make clear, short requests to what you expect the company to do. It is harder for the organisation to avoid short concise requests. By doing this you will be able to stop the dialogue becoming pages of boring marketing spin that your audience is not interested in.
Make sure that your arguments and requests are clearly summarised in all social medias you engage in.
Plan your use of social media
So as to be better able to plan this you need to do and think about two main things.
- Search for all social media used by the company in question and decide how to use it for your own means.
- Decide on which social media you will create for yourself and for which purposes you will use that.
- You can hold the conversation in a public forum in front of the company's own audience.
- You can piggyback on the company's own popularity to bring traffic to your own site where you can tell your own story. (See post).
- You can apply greater pressure to the company to act (note only when you have a valid argument) (See Rules of Engagement)
- You can embarass the company publically in front of their own audience if they do not act in a professional and considerate way. (See my own conclusions for If Vahinkovakuutus)
- You can disrupt the company's own marketing messaging through utilisation an interference strategy.
Advantatages in utilising your own Social Media
- You can tell the story entirely in your own way
- You can have full control of all content being produced
- You can utilise your own marketing and promotion channels to generate further interest
- You can provide a permanent record of the dialogue and the story. This can either be something the company is proud of or is a thorn in their side.
Main Strategic Tools
For the most part you will find that companies will have a presence on these tools.
Facebook group or page
Google + (new but will become important)
LinkedIn Company Profile
YouTube Channel
Blogs.
Company's will probably be present in other channels but for the most part 95% of their audience should be present on at least one of these medias. As such i would recommend focussing on these. This is as the return on your time spent on other channels probably means it is not worth you focussing your efforts on those. Generally if a company is present in these channels then you should strongly consider making your own presence felt there.
If they are not there maybe you should still be, especially for Google +. In this way then you need to set up your own corresponding channels. In later posts i will describe how these corresponding profiles on the same channel should interact with each other and how to utiise each to its best advantage.
Should you make your presence felt in all the company's Social Media in the beginning.
Choose one channel to hold the conversation in. Facebook is good as almost everyone has a profile and you are able to maintain the dialogue in a thread and link to it. In the beginning of the dialogue you do not need to be present in the other channels.
There may be an advantage in moving into these channels later as you need to increase pressure on the company.
However by being present in these channels immediately, you may have an advantage as you can apply maximum pressure to the company immediately. By doing this though you also increase the likelihood that the company will feel like they are being attacked.
In my opinion you are most likely to get your positive response in the first few replies. After this the probability of succes will drastically drop. As such you may consider expansion of your utilisation of Social Media later if you do not get replies that you are satisfied with.
You need to Raise Attention as Quickly as Possible
One thing is clear. To increase your chance of success, you need to get as many people involved and active in regard your story as quicky as possible. This of course is the main driving factor in deciding how to utilise the social media and other traditional marketing channels in question. This is also a major reason for planning your actions first!!! The relative strengths and weaknesses of each channel will be discussed in upcoming posts.
You will need to ensure that you yourself produce good content and attract a wider audience
If you want to attract large numbers of visitors and support then you need to expand the scope of the story. People are generally not all that interested in a sustained bad cusotmer service story. You need generate content that will be of interest to people outside of the company's existing stakeholders. If you can expand outside of this target group with large enough numbers then you can apply significantly more pressure to the company.
To be succesful in this you need to be creative and think outside of the box. For my own story i turned this experience into a social media experiment. In this way i was able to attract an audience based upon the company's own stakeholders and an audience interested in Social CRM, PR, Customer Service, Marketing and Social Media. In this experiment this effectively doubled the level of traffic i experienced to my blog for example.
Ensure the longevity of your story
As mentioned above if you add content to your story via media such as blogs you ensure that not only does the story survive but that it is also relevant for others. As such the fact that your story will continue to attract traffic will apply more pressure to the company in question. They are less likely to act unprofessionally if they know that their story will survive and be found and read long after the dialogue is over.
Where do you want to steer traffic?
This is a tricky issue. You obviously want your audience to be active and to participate and be visible to the company you are trying to have a dialogue with but you also want to be able to tell your own side of the story and activate your audience. As such.....
Do not attempt to drive all of your new traffic straight to the company's own social media.
This may seem contrary to your goals but remember, for audiences reached through channels other than the company in questions own social media, they have not heard your side of the story you have not been able to influence them so that thay may feel like they want to act. For example it is very difficult to get someone to act based upon 160 characters in Twitter. They need more information to act upon.
As such I recommend steering these new audience to a location where you can outline your own side of the story and a media that you can control. In this experiment i used a blog. Once they have read the story then they are more likely to be activated in the discussion. In this way you can then steer them to the company's own social media where ideally you would like them to make their presence known to the company.
Analyse your own Performance
Use tools that will help you get statistical data about traffic volumes, referring sites/urls and locations, shares, likes and retweets that will help you meausure the success of your own campaign and let you know how successful you are at generating interest. Blogger for example offers these as default functionality for all blogs. In this way you will also be able to measure how much interest you are able to generate from the company's own social media locations. All of my upcoming channel posts will give information about how to analyse these channels also.
Interlink your own blog to the company's social media at every opportunity.
Whenever you have an opportuntiy, use your blog to drive people to the company's social media and conversely ensure that your social media is at the top of the company's social media's feed. In this way you can ensure a good flow of traffic between the two and the probability of activating visitors increases. This will also undoubtedly add more pressure on the company to act positively to your requests.
Focus on Improving Numbers Visible to the Company
Blog stats are only of value to you in terms of improving your marketing efforts and channel performance!! That is unless you make them visible to the company. Numbers that may affect and influence the company's behaviour and response to you are for example, number of twitter followers you have, number of comments, likes, mentions on their own/your social media. Number of members of your facebook group. Traffic generated to their own website through your blog. These are things the company should be looking at through their own analytics and these are the things you should be attempting to influence. Bare this in mind when measuring your own performance. The company will measure the risk to them through data visible to them.
What if a company decides not to engage you?
This is a serious conern. In my own experiment If vahinkovakuutus broke contact for a period of several days. I think they believed that i would just disappear. As a strategy to force them to re-engage i expanded my use of their own social media so as to start to interfere directly with all of their messaging.
In practical terms i commented and added my own material to all of their social media posts. I kept to the rules of engagement however and did not write any negative comments but merely asked the audience had they heard bout my story and linked to the blog.
I also blogged about it and put it out on Twitter. After two days If vahinkovakuutus, Finland re-engaged me.
What if a company decides to block you from their social media?
As above if a company blocks you it will look bad upon them as long as you have followed the rules of engagement. The simple strategy is to create another profile and continue to post. Also write about it and post that information via your own social media. This negative publicity will hopefully result in the company returning to dialogue.
What if you start to lose your audience?
Unfortunately if you lose the support of your own and/or your company's audience then you are in serious trouble. The ony advice i can give is to try and stop doing anything that you may have done to alienate them and apologise publically. However if you continue to lose support and especially if the audience start to publish content against you then i am afraid it is over. This is the time to stop. It sucks for you but the probability of being successful if this happens is almost zero. This is because the company will believe the people are on their side.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
If Vahinkovakuutus Social CRM and Customer Service Conclusions
I am slightly cutting with tradition here and skipping the analysis and jumping straight to the conclusion. I will add stats and analysis later along with my Social CRM Customer orientated Engagement Framework (i may need to come up with a shorter name). I will base this upon what i have learnt in this experiment and with an eye to enabling other customers out there to learn from my mistakes and engage companies through social media successfully. This will be added to the blog in installments during the upcoming weeks.
IF Vahinkovakuutus Customer Service Conclusions
One of the goals of this experiment was of course to get customer service via social media and Facebook in particular. I will start by summarising my thoughts with regard to this.
How did this score as a customer service experience in terms of technology?
Well in terms of my own experience of having to wait for responses it is no different than any other chanel a company may have you operate in. You write your question and wait for your response so in this respect it is the same as email, phone, web portal or even face to face conversation. This is as almost always the response is, "we will get back to you". This means that actually the experience is not so much affected by the technology but more by the company in questions own practices. However for me personally, it is a more than acceptable form of communication and fits with my own online presence. It is convenient and more so than having to remember passwords or logging in securely to a dedicated service which in itself causes added pain. Not really a good place for passing secure documents but a nice place to have the conversation.
How did the experience score in terms of the service i received from If Vahinkovakuutus?
As i will discuss this in terms of SCRM in the next section i will just approach this in terms of general customer service.
With If vahinkovakuutus's responses i was annoyed in the delay in responses to my questions. Particularly where at one point they disengaged for two days and then still did not answer my questions. This made me feel like they were just ignoring my concerns and they were just hoping i would go away. This gave me the impression that they were childish. I was not attacking them i was not slandering them i was attempting to engage them in dialogue and discussion with what i felt was a valid argument.
I was also frustrated by If vahinkovakuutus's almost constant effort to get me off Facebook and force me back into their conventional channels. If vahinkovakuutus seem to only want to use Facebook as a marketing channel. They do not really want to engage me as a customer and they certainly do not want anything that could be perceived negatively there. What they do not understand they themselves can affect this perception by their own behaviour and how they react to the content that is placed there.
I was particularly disappointed that If Vahinkovakuutus did not want to publish results publically with regard their review into using a third party for their emergency customer service or for their lack of customer service in their shops. This just made me feel like they were not actually going to do anything and their promise to investigate this was just PR. I believe that they were not listening at all and i am left with the feeling that nothing will happen. I always felt like If vahinkovakutus had something to hide.
I was also very disapointed that, even though If admitted that they made mistakes, they still refused to compensate me for the costs that their miscommunication had caused me. This is something i just cannot get my head around to be honest. Basically the message i received is too bad we do not care!
Also the they refuse to even discuss any changes to their terms and conditions. I requested that they should, accept liability in the case if incorrect or misleading information supplied by them. This just makes me feel sorry for their other customers.
Finally, two weeks ago i asked for a copy of the phone call that If based their decision not to pay on, this has still not reached me. This suggests to me that they have something to hide or are afraid that i will publish it. This gives me the impression that If vahinkovakuutus are not a morale company and you cannot trust them.
Social CRM Conclusions
The main goal in this experiment was to engage a company through their own social media and to see, if by doing so, the customer has gained more power in the conversation than through conventional channels.
In this respect i think that although my own personal goals of changing If vahinkkovakuutus's behaviour for the benefit of their other customers and gaining compensation for myself were not succesful i believe the experiment has been. This is why.
Having engaged If vahinkovakuutus through their own private channels i was unsuccesful in achieving my personal goals. I was not going to get my money back anyway, so in this respect nothing ventured nothing gained applies. All that this has cost me is my time.
More importantly by engaging If vahinkovakuutus in this public space i brought awareness to my cause. By gaining support i was able to apply pressure to If vahinkovakuutus above that that i could have through their own channels. From this factor alone the probability of success must rise even with the real danger of annoying them. This is because all of the advantages are the customers. The cusotmer has nothing to lose That is as long as they do not alienate their audience.
This strategy also has the power to benefit the company through excellent customer service (as so often has been demonstrated) and has added value as a marketing tool. However the strategy also allows for the company to be embarassed publically and to devalue their own brand and disrupt their messaging. This has additional potency of course as the conversation is held on the company's own social media and infront of their own stakeholders. This is the worst case scenario for the company and involves the largest risk and cost for them. This of course depends upon how the company themselves behave and the ingenuity of the customer. Unfortunately for If vahinkovakuutus i feel that they fall firmly into the second category. If vahinkovakuutus have embarassed themselves and eroded their brand equity. This is why.
If' vahinkovakuutus's poor performance is not only about the poor customer service experience that i received (as discussed above) but also from their own attitude towards the use of social media. At all turns they attempted to get me off their Facebook group. They did not want to engage me there.
For some time, the fact that they tried to ignore me and hoped i would go away, is also a very immature attitude to this kind of dialogue. However in this situation i was able to diversify my strategy on their facebook page and other social media to interfere with their own marketing messaging. I believe that, this was the only reason that after two days they did re-engage me. In the social media world there is nowhere for them to hide and in this way the customer is empowered when they act in a civilised way. Again this must always be in a dialogue and never slanderous or you will lose your support and alienate your own audience. It is hard to do sometimes but, it essential to avoid losing your temper. You must always consider how you are perceived as an individual.
If vahinkovakuutus were aware of the risks of blocking me on the Finnish Facebook group. I had forseen that this may happen and had a backup plan but did not have to use it. I was however temporarily blocked from the other If Insurance local social media Facebook pages. I do not know where this decision came from but it says something about If's corporate culture with regard social media. Rights however were returned when i noticed and blogged about it. This again indicates a degree of empowerment. In terms of appearing as a caring socially responsible company this is of course totally unacceptable behaviour. The content that i added was of course not explicit or offensive to any of If's audience.
If vahinkovakuutus clearly only see social media as a way of pushing out their own message and they wish to control it at all cost. They even asked me not to post content related to my blog.
Sorry no you cannot control social media.
Facebook is a public forum, you may start the conversation but you should not try to control it. If vahinkovakuutus seem not at all interested in engaging customers in dialogue especially things that relate to their poor performance or things that are painful for them. Actually i believe this is a Finnish trait generally. This type of engagement is of course one of the mantras of Social CRM. I wonder if If vahinkovakuutus had ever heard of social CRM before this experience. One thing is for sure, they have now.
Additional benefit gained from engaging If vahinkovakuutus in the social media world is also in terms of the company's own costs related to the claim. By prolonging this claim i increased If's own financial costs for this claim dramatically and in all likelihood substantially more than the value of the original claim. This is another factor that empowers the customer. In traditional channels it is easy to diengage a customer when you have had enough of them. In the social media world it "looks bad" so it is harder for a company to do so. This means that as a customer you can continue to force the company to incur additional cost in handling your grievances and increase the pressure on them.
What was the ROI for If vahinkovakuutus?
How have If vahinkovakuutus come out of this experience? Financially the actual costs for handling the claim must be way above what they would have been had they just paid the claim in the beginning. They have also had a lot of negative publicity targeted at their own stakeholders and a permanent reminder of their poor performance preserved in this blog for all time and thanks to my SEO efforts this should be visible to people who search for If Vahinkovakuutus for the foreseeable future.
On top of this i can see from the stats that about 30 people visiting the site clicked an insurance related advertisement. Statistically and based upon the source of my traffic at least half of these were If customers or stakeholders as they came from If's own Facebook pages. I would love to know if even one of these customers switched from IF to a competitor as a result of this. This is a cost to If i cannot measure and only guess at.
Furthermore as half half of my traffic came from the UK and US and none of these are If countries this is probably the first that those people have ever heard of If vahinkovakuutus. As such this is the first impression that will affect their image of If vahinkovakuutus as a brand. You know what they say about first impressions. This becomes even more pertanent if If vahinkovakuutus decide to venture into those markets.
Really it beggars belief that a company could be this stubborn, childish and damn stupid. As a manager i would have settled in the beginning taken the opportunity and sold the marketing story. I would have eliminated all risk from this. Especially as the customers case is a valid one and the original value of the claim was only 500 euros. I thought insurance companies were big on assessing risk and ROI.
Well it just shows me that even in the face of a valid argument (by their own admission) they will not put their customers first even when it is in their interest to do so. I just cannot understand this, it makes no sense at all.
What was my own ROI for this Experiment?
Well personally i did not do well, i was unable to turn over the claim decision and admittedly i spent a lot of time on this. However i have learned alot about how to engage a company and i can share that with others and i will. This blog is an enduring testament to that.
In the upcoming weeks i will add new content here that will outline a Social CRM engagement model/framework from the customers perspective. The purpose of which is to show customers how to succesfully engage a company in dialogue pertaining in particular to Social CRM. I will also add more content related to analysis of channels and statistics. In this way customer's everywhere will be able to learn from my mistakes and successes to engage with their own service and product providers.
Perhaps then the ROI for me is in terms of legacy. I hope that others can learn from this experience and apply some of the techniques. I also hope that companies themselves will learn from this and learn how to and how not to engage customers. At least everyone (including me) should learn something about Social Customer Relationship Management.
Conclusion
During this process i tried to find other examples of someone trying this kind of engagement and was unable to do so. All of the literature seems to have been written from the company's perspective in terms of their marketing successes. As far as i know this is the first time a customer has deliberately attempted to engage a company in an organised dialogue and not a rant and as part of a wider self organised social media campaign. Of this i can be proud.
As a final note, i managed to gain 50% of my traffic through If vahinkovakuutus's own social media. This meant i was able to target their own audience, on my site, with insurance advertisements from If's competitors. Originally this was to increase the pain to If vahinkovakuutus. Although the revenues are small from this endeavour (a few cents so far) and profitiability was not the point of this experiment, in about 100 years i should have recouped the losses originally caused to me by If vahinkovakuutus. In this respect on a long enough time scale this endeavour will not have cost me anything. This means the only costs were incurred solely by If vahinkovakuutus.
Well done If, we salute you! Sometimes when you win you lose and sometimes when you lose you win. Given a long enough time scale of course.
IF Vahinkovakuutus Customer Service Conclusions
One of the goals of this experiment was of course to get customer service via social media and Facebook in particular. I will start by summarising my thoughts with regard to this.
How did this score as a customer service experience in terms of technology?
Well in terms of my own experience of having to wait for responses it is no different than any other chanel a company may have you operate in. You write your question and wait for your response so in this respect it is the same as email, phone, web portal or even face to face conversation. This is as almost always the response is, "we will get back to you". This means that actually the experience is not so much affected by the technology but more by the company in questions own practices. However for me personally, it is a more than acceptable form of communication and fits with my own online presence. It is convenient and more so than having to remember passwords or logging in securely to a dedicated service which in itself causes added pain. Not really a good place for passing secure documents but a nice place to have the conversation.
How did the experience score in terms of the service i received from If Vahinkovakuutus?
As i will discuss this in terms of SCRM in the next section i will just approach this in terms of general customer service.
With If vahinkovakuutus's responses i was annoyed in the delay in responses to my questions. Particularly where at one point they disengaged for two days and then still did not answer my questions. This made me feel like they were just ignoring my concerns and they were just hoping i would go away. This gave me the impression that they were childish. I was not attacking them i was not slandering them i was attempting to engage them in dialogue and discussion with what i felt was a valid argument.
I was also frustrated by If vahinkovakuutus's almost constant effort to get me off Facebook and force me back into their conventional channels. If vahinkovakuutus seem to only want to use Facebook as a marketing channel. They do not really want to engage me as a customer and they certainly do not want anything that could be perceived negatively there. What they do not understand they themselves can affect this perception by their own behaviour and how they react to the content that is placed there.
I was particularly disappointed that If Vahinkovakuutus did not want to publish results publically with regard their review into using a third party for their emergency customer service or for their lack of customer service in their shops. This just made me feel like they were not actually going to do anything and their promise to investigate this was just PR. I believe that they were not listening at all and i am left with the feeling that nothing will happen. I always felt like If vahinkovakutus had something to hide.
I was also very disapointed that, even though If admitted that they made mistakes, they still refused to compensate me for the costs that their miscommunication had caused me. This is something i just cannot get my head around to be honest. Basically the message i received is too bad we do not care!
Also the they refuse to even discuss any changes to their terms and conditions. I requested that they should, accept liability in the case if incorrect or misleading information supplied by them. This just makes me feel sorry for their other customers.
Finally, two weeks ago i asked for a copy of the phone call that If based their decision not to pay on, this has still not reached me. This suggests to me that they have something to hide or are afraid that i will publish it. This gives me the impression that If vahinkovakuutus are not a morale company and you cannot trust them.
Social CRM Conclusions
The main goal in this experiment was to engage a company through their own social media and to see, if by doing so, the customer has gained more power in the conversation than through conventional channels.
In this respect i think that although my own personal goals of changing If vahinkkovakuutus's behaviour for the benefit of their other customers and gaining compensation for myself were not succesful i believe the experiment has been. This is why.
Having engaged If vahinkovakuutus through their own private channels i was unsuccesful in achieving my personal goals. I was not going to get my money back anyway, so in this respect nothing ventured nothing gained applies. All that this has cost me is my time.
More importantly by engaging If vahinkovakuutus in this public space i brought awareness to my cause. By gaining support i was able to apply pressure to If vahinkovakuutus above that that i could have through their own channels. From this factor alone the probability of success must rise even with the real danger of annoying them. This is because all of the advantages are the customers. The cusotmer has nothing to lose That is as long as they do not alienate their audience.
This strategy also has the power to benefit the company through excellent customer service (as so often has been demonstrated) and has added value as a marketing tool. However the strategy also allows for the company to be embarassed publically and to devalue their own brand and disrupt their messaging. This has additional potency of course as the conversation is held on the company's own social media and infront of their own stakeholders. This is the worst case scenario for the company and involves the largest risk and cost for them. This of course depends upon how the company themselves behave and the ingenuity of the customer. Unfortunately for If vahinkovakuutus i feel that they fall firmly into the second category. If vahinkovakuutus have embarassed themselves and eroded their brand equity. This is why.
If' vahinkovakuutus's poor performance is not only about the poor customer service experience that i received (as discussed above) but also from their own attitude towards the use of social media. At all turns they attempted to get me off their Facebook group. They did not want to engage me there.
For some time, the fact that they tried to ignore me and hoped i would go away, is also a very immature attitude to this kind of dialogue. However in this situation i was able to diversify my strategy on their facebook page and other social media to interfere with their own marketing messaging. I believe that, this was the only reason that after two days they did re-engage me. In the social media world there is nowhere for them to hide and in this way the customer is empowered when they act in a civilised way. Again this must always be in a dialogue and never slanderous or you will lose your support and alienate your own audience. It is hard to do sometimes but, it essential to avoid losing your temper. You must always consider how you are perceived as an individual.
If vahinkovakuutus were aware of the risks of blocking me on the Finnish Facebook group. I had forseen that this may happen and had a backup plan but did not have to use it. I was however temporarily blocked from the other If Insurance local social media Facebook pages. I do not know where this decision came from but it says something about If's corporate culture with regard social media. Rights however were returned when i noticed and blogged about it. This again indicates a degree of empowerment. In terms of appearing as a caring socially responsible company this is of course totally unacceptable behaviour. The content that i added was of course not explicit or offensive to any of If's audience.
If vahinkovakuutus clearly only see social media as a way of pushing out their own message and they wish to control it at all cost. They even asked me not to post content related to my blog.
Sorry no you cannot control social media.
Facebook is a public forum, you may start the conversation but you should not try to control it. If vahinkovakuutus seem not at all interested in engaging customers in dialogue especially things that relate to their poor performance or things that are painful for them. Actually i believe this is a Finnish trait generally. This type of engagement is of course one of the mantras of Social CRM. I wonder if If vahinkovakuutus had ever heard of social CRM before this experience. One thing is for sure, they have now.
Additional benefit gained from engaging If vahinkovakuutus in the social media world is also in terms of the company's own costs related to the claim. By prolonging this claim i increased If's own financial costs for this claim dramatically and in all likelihood substantially more than the value of the original claim. This is another factor that empowers the customer. In traditional channels it is easy to diengage a customer when you have had enough of them. In the social media world it "looks bad" so it is harder for a company to do so. This means that as a customer you can continue to force the company to incur additional cost in handling your grievances and increase the pressure on them.
What was the ROI for If vahinkovakuutus?
How have If vahinkovakuutus come out of this experience? Financially the actual costs for handling the claim must be way above what they would have been had they just paid the claim in the beginning. They have also had a lot of negative publicity targeted at their own stakeholders and a permanent reminder of their poor performance preserved in this blog for all time and thanks to my SEO efforts this should be visible to people who search for If Vahinkovakuutus for the foreseeable future.
On top of this i can see from the stats that about 30 people visiting the site clicked an insurance related advertisement. Statistically and based upon the source of my traffic at least half of these were If customers or stakeholders as they came from If's own Facebook pages. I would love to know if even one of these customers switched from IF to a competitor as a result of this. This is a cost to If i cannot measure and only guess at.
Furthermore as half half of my traffic came from the UK and US and none of these are If countries this is probably the first that those people have ever heard of If vahinkovakuutus. As such this is the first impression that will affect their image of If vahinkovakuutus as a brand. You know what they say about first impressions. This becomes even more pertanent if If vahinkovakuutus decide to venture into those markets.
Really it beggars belief that a company could be this stubborn, childish and damn stupid. As a manager i would have settled in the beginning taken the opportunity and sold the marketing story. I would have eliminated all risk from this. Especially as the customers case is a valid one and the original value of the claim was only 500 euros. I thought insurance companies were big on assessing risk and ROI.
Well it just shows me that even in the face of a valid argument (by their own admission) they will not put their customers first even when it is in their interest to do so. I just cannot understand this, it makes no sense at all.
What was my own ROI for this Experiment?
Well personally i did not do well, i was unable to turn over the claim decision and admittedly i spent a lot of time on this. However i have learned alot about how to engage a company and i can share that with others and i will. This blog is an enduring testament to that.
In the upcoming weeks i will add new content here that will outline a Social CRM engagement model/framework from the customers perspective. The purpose of which is to show customers how to succesfully engage a company in dialogue pertaining in particular to Social CRM. I will also add more content related to analysis of channels and statistics. In this way customer's everywhere will be able to learn from my mistakes and successes to engage with their own service and product providers.
Perhaps then the ROI for me is in terms of legacy. I hope that others can learn from this experience and apply some of the techniques. I also hope that companies themselves will learn from this and learn how to and how not to engage customers. At least everyone (including me) should learn something about Social Customer Relationship Management.
Conclusion
During this process i tried to find other examples of someone trying this kind of engagement and was unable to do so. All of the literature seems to have been written from the company's perspective in terms of their marketing successes. As far as i know this is the first time a customer has deliberately attempted to engage a company in an organised dialogue and not a rant and as part of a wider self organised social media campaign. Of this i can be proud.
As a final note, i managed to gain 50% of my traffic through If vahinkovakuutus's own social media. This meant i was able to target their own audience, on my site, with insurance advertisements from If's competitors. Originally this was to increase the pain to If vahinkovakuutus. Although the revenues are small from this endeavour (a few cents so far) and profitiability was not the point of this experiment, in about 100 years i should have recouped the losses originally caused to me by If vahinkovakuutus. In this respect on a long enough time scale this endeavour will not have cost me anything. This means the only costs were incurred solely by If vahinkovakuutus.
Well done If, we salute you! Sometimes when you win you lose and sometimes when you lose you win. Given a long enough time scale of course.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
My Last Response: End of the Dialogue
Well as i just posted, If Vahinkovakuutus have given their last response to me. This is my final response to them on this subject. Pretty self explanatory so i won't comment any more but just leave it like this.
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| View the thread on Facebook. |
If Vahinkovakuutus's Last Response: End of the Dialogue
Well this is it. It seems that If vahinkovakuutus have lived up to my previous experiences of Finnish customer service. If are not going to do anything.
If Vahinkovakuutus have not agreed to change their terms and conditions so that if they supply wrong or misleading information to a customer that they will take responsibility for this.
If Vahinkovakuutus have not agreed to publish on their Facebook group the results of their review regarding the use of a third party in their emergency call centre.
If Vahinkovakuutus have not agreed to publish on Facebook the results of their review into the lack of customer service other than for sales in their shops.
If Vahinkovakuutus will not pay the additional expenses incurred to me personally as a result of their self admitted failures in communication.
Do you want an insurance company who treats their customers like this? They refuse to engage me in the arena that i wish. Why are they on Facebook? They obviously have not heard of SCRM (Social Customer Relationship Management) and the main reasons people engage companies on facebook. Increasingly customer service is one of them.
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| View the conversation thread on Facebook. |
Well it seems apparent from this If Vahinkovakuutus do not and never did want to engage me on facebook. With almost every response they have tried to eject me from their Facebook page. It is clear that this was something very new to them, they are not use to and do not like offerring customer service in a public forum. However the golden rule is if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about. It seems clear that If Vahinkovakuuts do have something to hide and they certainly do not want to share it on social media. least in my eyes they have performed poorly.
See my final response to this and the summary of the entire conversation.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
End of Day Summary Day 10
If Vahinkovakuutus Refuse to Give me Straight Answers
Well it has been another increasingly frustrating day. Yesterday i posted a request to If vahinkovakuutus to just answer my questions directly. I am tired of fighting with them. I have clearly outlined my argument and so have they. As such i posted some clear questions for them to answer.
Well their response to this was something a politician would have been proud of.
They totally avoided the questions and as such i reposted requesting clear answers to those questions. See below.
If Insurance have blocked me from their other regional Facebook Pages (see post here)
Nicely done and really in the spirit of social CRM. If you are just making your self look stupid. Nothing offensive was placed there and nothing critical of If. Yet again If vahinkovakuutus are trying to control social media as if they owned it and it was their own website. When will they learn social media etiquette states that you should not try and control the conversation especially when there none offensive content.
Interestingly i need to add an update. I am now unblocked and can post again. Is this a response to the above post?
I Finally Published the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Post (click here)
I promised to write a post about SEO for blogger blogs in particular for some time and now i have finally done it. I wish that i had known all of this information before i began but at least now i think i have fairly good SEO as my blog is appearing on the first page of google searches for the keywords i wanted.
I seem to have noticed a slight backlash against my strategy. (see post)
It seems that If vahinkovakuutus have experienced an increase in postive feedback on their Facebook page. Was this as a response to my own behaviour. I take a look at this possibility from a cultural perspective and consider that it may be a response to me being a foreigner and a defnsive position taken as they feel that i may be atacking Finland as a whole.
I have expanded my use of social media again
I have now posted on to If's competitors social media walls and referenced my story by stating
"aren't you glad you are not an If customer". Op-Pohjola coincidently liked my post.
Well it has been another increasingly frustrating day. Yesterday i posted a request to If vahinkovakuutus to just answer my questions directly. I am tired of fighting with them. I have clearly outlined my argument and so have they. As such i posted some clear questions for them to answer.
Well their response to this was something a politician would have been proud of.
They totally avoided the questions and as such i reposted requesting clear answers to those questions. See below.
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| View the thread here |
If Insurance have blocked me from their other regional Facebook Pages (see post here)
Nicely done and really in the spirit of social CRM. If you are just making your self look stupid. Nothing offensive was placed there and nothing critical of If. Yet again If vahinkovakuutus are trying to control social media as if they owned it and it was their own website. When will they learn social media etiquette states that you should not try and control the conversation especially when there none offensive content.
Interestingly i need to add an update. I am now unblocked and can post again. Is this a response to the above post?
I Finally Published the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Post (click here)
I promised to write a post about SEO for blogger blogs in particular for some time and now i have finally done it. I wish that i had known all of this information before i began but at least now i think i have fairly good SEO as my blog is appearing on the first page of google searches for the keywords i wanted.
I seem to have noticed a slight backlash against my strategy. (see post)
It seems that If vahinkovakuutus have experienced an increase in postive feedback on their Facebook page. Was this as a response to my own behaviour. I take a look at this possibility from a cultural perspective and consider that it may be a response to me being a foreigner and a defnsive position taken as they feel that i may be atacking Finland as a whole.
I have expanded my use of social media again
I have now posted on to If's competitors social media walls and referenced my story by stating
"aren't you glad you are not an If customer". Op-Pohjola coincidently liked my post.
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| Op Pohjola's Facebook Page Wall |
If Vahinkovakuutus have blocked me!
How is this for nice customer service and PR. In terms of social engagement If vahinkovakuutus have again failed.
This time it is not If Finland who are necessarily at fault. I have been blocked from using the other If regional facebook groups.
As i mentioned in a previous post i have been using If vahinkovakuutus's own social media as a piggybacking strategy and tool against them. This could have actually been beneficial to them if they had not lost the opportunity that i originally highlighted to them in the start of this story.
As i mentioned in the social media as a piggybacking strategy post i would later reveal how succesful this was. Well during the first day i did notice an increase in traffic from Latvia, Lithunia and Norway in particular but interestingly not from Sweden.
This was short lived however. Today for interest sake i decided to take a look to see if those original links i had put to link to my blog were still there.
As you can i see i did not put anything offensive or derogatory i just asked simply would you be interested in seeing what is going on in Finland?
Well it seems that this is enough for If Vahinkovakuutus to block me from their other Facebook groups. Well that is a nice engagement strategy. Granted it is not nice for those areas and they were just trying to protect their own customer base but i think that this goes against the principles of Social CRM. Also i believe that this also fuels the negative perception of If as a whole. I did not attack them i did not criticise them on their own social media i just tried to engage them. I only posted once on those Facebookg groups.
Once again nicely played If Vahinkovakuutus. You are showing the world that your social media strategy, social engagement and customer service suck.
In a response to this i have today mentioned politely the existence of this blog on If vahinkovakuutus's competitor's Facebook groups such as Tapiola and Pohjola. They cannot control that media :-)
This time it is not If Finland who are necessarily at fault. I have been blocked from using the other If regional facebook groups.
As i mentioned in a previous post i have been using If vahinkovakuutus's own social media as a piggybacking strategy and tool against them. This could have actually been beneficial to them if they had not lost the opportunity that i originally highlighted to them in the start of this story.
As i mentioned in the social media as a piggybacking strategy post i would later reveal how succesful this was. Well during the first day i did notice an increase in traffic from Latvia, Lithunia and Norway in particular but interestingly not from Sweden.
This was short lived however. Today for interest sake i decided to take a look to see if those original links i had put to link to my blog were still there.
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| Original Post added to If Insurance Swedens Facebook Group |
Well it seems that this is enough for If Vahinkovakuutus to block me from their other Facebook groups. Well that is a nice engagement strategy. Granted it is not nice for those areas and they were just trying to protect their own customer base but i think that this goes against the principles of Social CRM. Also i believe that this also fuels the negative perception of If as a whole. I did not attack them i did not criticise them on their own social media i just tried to engage them. I only posted once on those Facebookg groups.
Once again nicely played If Vahinkovakuutus. You are showing the world that your social media strategy, social engagement and customer service suck.
In a response to this i have today mentioned politely the existence of this blog on If vahinkovakuutus's competitor's Facebook groups such as Tapiola and Pohjola. They cannot control that media :-)
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| Visit Tapiola's Facebook Group |
Well the tide seems to be turning
Well today i noticed for the first time that there seems to be a new pattern emerging of people publishing their success stories onto If vahinkovakuutus's wall. This has happenned a few times now but it seems to have increased in response to my actions.
Well this may mean that i have alienated my audience to the point where they themselves want to actively defend If vahinkovakuutus. Or if have been very clever and carried out their own counter campaign?
Why would the Finns turn agains me? I have not only been trying to overturn my claim decision but have also tried to get if to change their own terms and policies so as to protect other customers. It seems to me if anything they should be getting behind me.
Well i think again there are factors at play outside of my control. This is namely the Finnish culture. Finns are very patriotic and truely believe in all things Finnish and Finland. Finland is the golden land. BTW that is why when Finns leave for foreign jobs they often say they are never coming back ;-)
Anyway with the rise of the True Finns political party and the increasing resistance to immigration of foreigners to Finland by the native population there has also been a clear switch of national attention to multiculturalism in Finland generally.
Well as a foreigner in Finland it may very well be that i have singled myself out as someone who goes against the tide, is not afraid to question and try something different. Also as a foreigner in Finland and with the sentiment to foreigners in this country i myself may have managed to portray myself actually as the bad guy in this story. Finns unite against the foreigner?
You may think this silly but it is probably true at least to some degree. I have encountered this so many times here almost to the point of stupidity.
In Finland there is a common dreaded word by all "putkiremontti". Basically it is when your appartment needs to be rennovated and have all the drains, water and often electricity replaced. This is usually carried out through all apparments simultaneously. Finland runs all its appartment buildings as independent companies that are run as democracies so when this happens there is a vote on the subject.
Well having been through this experience this is my story of Finns and Finland. At our housing company meeting we were presented with a proposal by the chairman's friend to do the work for an absolutely obsorbitant fee. I stood up and said that this was an absolute joke as the appartment building next door had paid half as much and that this was clearly a ploy to help the chairmans mate out. An old lady turned around and said to me "he does this work all the time, i am sure he knows what he is talking about, you should listen to him". The vote was passed and we paid double the price we should have.
Finns are very trusting, they do not like people who question, go against the tide, try something different or are of foreign origin. Unfortunately in this situation i am the entire wammy and as such perhaps have come in for a backlash from the Finns in spite of the rational argument that actually would benefit them if I am succesful.
However this would require a degree of empathy something that in my personal experience Finns are not good at.
If you are a Finn and are reading this you may not like what i am saying but consider this, what has happenned to me as a foreigner to actually make me think this way? We are formed by our experiences. We do not arrive with this impression of Finland it is programmed into us.
Well this may mean that i have alienated my audience to the point where they themselves want to actively defend If vahinkovakuutus. Or if have been very clever and carried out their own counter campaign?
Why would the Finns turn agains me? I have not only been trying to overturn my claim decision but have also tried to get if to change their own terms and policies so as to protect other customers. It seems to me if anything they should be getting behind me.
Well i think again there are factors at play outside of my control. This is namely the Finnish culture. Finns are very patriotic and truely believe in all things Finnish and Finland. Finland is the golden land. BTW that is why when Finns leave for foreign jobs they often say they are never coming back ;-)
Anyway with the rise of the True Finns political party and the increasing resistance to immigration of foreigners to Finland by the native population there has also been a clear switch of national attention to multiculturalism in Finland generally.
Well as a foreigner in Finland it may very well be that i have singled myself out as someone who goes against the tide, is not afraid to question and try something different. Also as a foreigner in Finland and with the sentiment to foreigners in this country i myself may have managed to portray myself actually as the bad guy in this story. Finns unite against the foreigner?
You may think this silly but it is probably true at least to some degree. I have encountered this so many times here almost to the point of stupidity.
In Finland there is a common dreaded word by all "putkiremontti". Basically it is when your appartment needs to be rennovated and have all the drains, water and often electricity replaced. This is usually carried out through all apparments simultaneously. Finland runs all its appartment buildings as independent companies that are run as democracies so when this happens there is a vote on the subject.
Well having been through this experience this is my story of Finns and Finland. At our housing company meeting we were presented with a proposal by the chairman's friend to do the work for an absolutely obsorbitant fee. I stood up and said that this was an absolute joke as the appartment building next door had paid half as much and that this was clearly a ploy to help the chairmans mate out. An old lady turned around and said to me "he does this work all the time, i am sure he knows what he is talking about, you should listen to him". The vote was passed and we paid double the price we should have.
Finns are very trusting, they do not like people who question, go against the tide, try something different or are of foreign origin. Unfortunately in this situation i am the entire wammy and as such perhaps have come in for a backlash from the Finns in spite of the rational argument that actually would benefit them if I am succesful.
However this would require a degree of empathy something that in my personal experience Finns are not good at.
If you are a Finn and are reading this you may not like what i am saying but consider this, what has happenned to me as a foreigner to actually make me think this way? We are formed by our experiences. We do not arrive with this impression of Finland it is programmed into us.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Can you please just answer the questions
As i mentioned in my previous post i have strated to think that my own ROI is getting a little bit out of hand with this project. As such i have moved away from the original facebook thread and have started another as a summary of that thread.
In short i summarised the argument by cutting and pasting the relevant parts of the thread into a more coherrent conversation. All parts of the image below themselves were images and no text content has been edited or changed. The text that is shown below is as it was originally written by the party. I even included my spelling mistakes.
I have added this to the top of If's wall. I have asked them simply.
I added the following as a comment below the main image. In the new thread.
I hope that this will now bring this to an end quickly, whatever that end may be. I do not want this to consume anymore of my own resources and time. Both side of the argument have been out forward so let's see what If vahinkovakuutus think. View their answers here.
In short i summarised the argument by cutting and pasting the relevant parts of the thread into a more coherrent conversation. All parts of the image below themselves were images and no text content has been edited or changed. The text that is shown below is as it was originally written by the party. I even included my spelling mistakes.
I have added this to the top of If's wall. I have asked them simply.
I hope that this will now bring this to an end quickly, whatever that end may be. I do not want this to consume anymore of my own resources and time. Both side of the argument have been out forward so let's see what If vahinkovakuutus think. View their answers here.
Daily Summary 8 and 9. Sorry i have been away.
Hi there faithful followers, sorry i have not been so active over the weekend. Let me explain,
When i started this endeavour i thought that if i could attract a lot of traffic to my blog i would be able to put alot of pressure onto If Vahinkovakuutus to conform to my wishes and agree to my terms.
I have been pretty happy with the amount of traffic i had generated regarding this story however to generate that amount of traffic did require an awful lot of effort and most importantly time.
This does not include only writing these posts and tweeting that they are out there. I have been spending an awful lot of time thinking about SEO and adding my blog to various blog directories (i will write about SEO for blogs when i get a chance). This is work that as a visitor is going on behind the scenes and requires a lot of effort.
Well in short the ammount of time i was spending on this especially in the evenings started to really affect my own personal home life and started to really annoy my girlfriend even though what i was attempting was in both of our interest.
In earlier posts i wrote about what was the ROI on this endeavour for If Vahinkovakuutus. Perhaps i should have thought about what is the ROI on this for me personally. Yes i have learned alot by doing about social engagement, yes i have been able to engage If vahinkovakuuts publically and have managed to cause them public embarassment and pain but at what price. Even if i was able to change If' vahinkovakuutus's policies and protect their other customers from having this experience. Even if i was able to get If vahinkovakuutus to agree to pay my costs caused by their miscommunication then this would still have been a huge layout in terms of my personal time and my own ROI. I guess then that this has made me an activist. I have never thought as myself as one before but i guess when you fight for something for the good of others way above your own personal good then this makes you an activist.
I guess in my naivity i thought that having read a lot of stories about how social media can go viral and spread and grow at unbelievable rates. I had thought that this would have happenned also to my story. I had thought that if i could trigger this kind of viral spreading then the resolution i was looking for with If vahinkovakuutus quickly and due to popular demand. Well as this has not happenned and i have not been able to engineer this then i will no longer spend a large part of my day attempting to do so.
However i have established a steady daily traffic of visits from people who are interested in this story so i can continue this endeavour by adding content here and finishing the story.
In any case, in this blog, If vahinkovakuutus will have a permanent record of how this customer service story was handled and long after i have stopped and this story ends there will be a constant reminder to If vahinkovakuutus and to anyone who finds this story that something was tried that as far as i can see was never tried before and that it may even have been succesful.
When i started this endeavour i thought that if i could attract a lot of traffic to my blog i would be able to put alot of pressure onto If Vahinkovakuutus to conform to my wishes and agree to my terms.
I have been pretty happy with the amount of traffic i had generated regarding this story however to generate that amount of traffic did require an awful lot of effort and most importantly time.
This does not include only writing these posts and tweeting that they are out there. I have been spending an awful lot of time thinking about SEO and adding my blog to various blog directories (i will write about SEO for blogs when i get a chance). This is work that as a visitor is going on behind the scenes and requires a lot of effort.
Well in short the ammount of time i was spending on this especially in the evenings started to really affect my own personal home life and started to really annoy my girlfriend even though what i was attempting was in both of our interest.
In earlier posts i wrote about what was the ROI on this endeavour for If Vahinkovakuutus. Perhaps i should have thought about what is the ROI on this for me personally. Yes i have learned alot by doing about social engagement, yes i have been able to engage If vahinkovakuuts publically and have managed to cause them public embarassment and pain but at what price. Even if i was able to change If' vahinkovakuutus's policies and protect their other customers from having this experience. Even if i was able to get If vahinkovakuutus to agree to pay my costs caused by their miscommunication then this would still have been a huge layout in terms of my personal time and my own ROI. I guess then that this has made me an activist. I have never thought as myself as one before but i guess when you fight for something for the good of others way above your own personal good then this makes you an activist.
I guess in my naivity i thought that having read a lot of stories about how social media can go viral and spread and grow at unbelievable rates. I had thought that this would have happenned also to my story. I had thought that if i could trigger this kind of viral spreading then the resolution i was looking for with If vahinkovakuutus quickly and due to popular demand. Well as this has not happenned and i have not been able to engineer this then i will no longer spend a large part of my day attempting to do so.
However i have established a steady daily traffic of visits from people who are interested in this story so i can continue this endeavour by adding content here and finishing the story.
In any case, in this blog, If vahinkovakuutus will have a permanent record of how this customer service story was handled and long after i have stopped and this story ends there will be a constant reminder to If vahinkovakuutus and to anyone who finds this story that something was tried that as far as i can see was never tried before and that it may even have been succesful.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Why Excellent Customer Service is Essential in the Insurance Industry
When we think of most companies they sell physical products and when i think back to my school day Geography classes something that we were drilled with then were the three main industry types, Primary (mining in particular), Secondary (manufacturing), Tertiary (Selling consumer products and the service industry).
Well for most of us as consuners we only ever have contact with the tertiary industry as part of our daily private lives.We buy, we use and we experience.
Most companies sell physical products. If i buy a TV i watch it, i use it, i experience it on a regular basis. The buying experience is a very small part of the overall equation and user experience. The products is used everyday or at least on a regular basis. For the most part, the manufacturer or the provider of the product is not involved in this at all. The only time that they may become involved is when something goes wrong. In many cases though this is the responsibility of the retailer to handle the end customers service request. As such for Sony or Samsung or LG the most important thing is the daily function and performance of the product and not so much the customer service.
If we think about the service industry such as a reastaurant they are selling a produc,t the food but, also an experience which is strongly affected by imeasurable factors such as ambience or atmosphere in the restaurant. The customers themselves contribute to this. However the company are able to nurture this in the design of the restaurant and most importantly the customer service they offer. People come back to restuarants because of the experience. The product i.e. the food, the ambience and the customer service. In this case all three are important.
This brings us to the Insurance industry. Despite what they like to think they do not sell products. The policies and the insurances you purchase are not products in themselves. They are not physical they are not affected by ambience. What insurance companies sell is piece of mind. You know, believe and trust that when something goes wrong they are there for you.
In If vahinkovakuutus's slogan they state "don't worry, we help". This is the core of what they do.
Unlike in the other industries there needs to be trust for the "product to work". Without trust there is no product and no customers.
As a customer you only ever really experience your product personally when something goes wrong. Day to day you experience the insurance product simply as piece of mind. Why else would you contact the insurance company. As such the essence of what an insurance company does and when you experience their product is when you need to test that piece of mind. As such as an insurance company it is essential that this is recognised and that the absolute most effective service for the customer is provided. In order to serve their customers an insurance company should focus their resources on customer service and supplying the customer with a superb experience.
When a customer approaches an insurance company it is when something bad has happenned to them personnally. This is a very personal and often painful and stressful time for them. They need help and for them they are experiencing some kind of emergency. Granted this iswith differing degrees of scale. Someone has died, their house has had fire damage, they are stranded abroad or ar sick or injured or they have had a road accident. These are incredibly stresful and worrying times for a customer and this is when they NEED a very professional, accurate, caring and personal service experience to help ease their pain and certainly not to add to it.
Well here are some facts about If vahinkovakuutus's customer service.
1. You cannot get face to face service related to claims in an If Vahinkvakuutus office. In Finland (You can in Denmark)
2. If offices in Finland only sell insurance. At least o me this indicates they care more about sales than service.
3. When you call If's emergency number representative you may be speaking to a third party (Elisa)who do not know If's policies and can cannot give you accurate information even about whether or not you are covered.
Think about it when you have a car accident, if someone dies or gets injured or your house burns down. In these most important situations.
Do you not want to be able to speak to someone personally face to face, would this help you?
Don't you want to know that the information you receive is accurate and correct and you can act upon it.
This is the essence of experiencing the insurance product and as such,
An insurance company's product can be measured by their customer service experience. In fact NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.
When you do not get this you may find that you have been sold "piece of mind" but with this kind of service you may get home and discover that your television box is full of rocks or your restaurant food has come straight out of a garbage can.
Without a great customer service experience can you really trust an insurance company?
So as to help IF improve their customer service experience this is what i have asked for.
Let me/If vahinkovkuutus know what you think. Post here or on their own wall.
Well for most of us as consuners we only ever have contact with the tertiary industry as part of our daily private lives.We buy, we use and we experience.
Most companies sell physical products. If i buy a TV i watch it, i use it, i experience it on a regular basis. The buying experience is a very small part of the overall equation and user experience. The products is used everyday or at least on a regular basis. For the most part, the manufacturer or the provider of the product is not involved in this at all. The only time that they may become involved is when something goes wrong. In many cases though this is the responsibility of the retailer to handle the end customers service request. As such for Sony or Samsung or LG the most important thing is the daily function and performance of the product and not so much the customer service.
If we think about the service industry such as a reastaurant they are selling a produc,t the food but, also an experience which is strongly affected by imeasurable factors such as ambience or atmosphere in the restaurant. The customers themselves contribute to this. However the company are able to nurture this in the design of the restaurant and most importantly the customer service they offer. People come back to restuarants because of the experience. The product i.e. the food, the ambience and the customer service. In this case all three are important.
This brings us to the Insurance industry. Despite what they like to think they do not sell products. The policies and the insurances you purchase are not products in themselves. They are not physical they are not affected by ambience. What insurance companies sell is piece of mind. You know, believe and trust that when something goes wrong they are there for you.
In If vahinkovakuutus's slogan they state "don't worry, we help". This is the core of what they do.
Unlike in the other industries there needs to be trust for the "product to work". Without trust there is no product and no customers.
As a customer you only ever really experience your product personally when something goes wrong. Day to day you experience the insurance product simply as piece of mind. Why else would you contact the insurance company. As such the essence of what an insurance company does and when you experience their product is when you need to test that piece of mind. As such as an insurance company it is essential that this is recognised and that the absolute most effective service for the customer is provided. In order to serve their customers an insurance company should focus their resources on customer service and supplying the customer with a superb experience.
When a customer approaches an insurance company it is when something bad has happenned to them personnally. This is a very personal and often painful and stressful time for them. They need help and for them they are experiencing some kind of emergency. Granted this iswith differing degrees of scale. Someone has died, their house has had fire damage, they are stranded abroad or ar sick or injured or they have had a road accident. These are incredibly stresful and worrying times for a customer and this is when they NEED a very professional, accurate, caring and personal service experience to help ease their pain and certainly not to add to it.
Well here are some facts about If vahinkovakuutus's customer service.
1. You cannot get face to face service related to claims in an If Vahinkvakuutus office. In Finland (You can in Denmark)
2. If offices in Finland only sell insurance. At least o me this indicates they care more about sales than service.
3. When you call If's emergency number representative you may be speaking to a third party (Elisa)who do not know If's policies and can cannot give you accurate information even about whether or not you are covered.
Think about it when you have a car accident, if someone dies or gets injured or your house burns down. In these most important situations.
Do you not want to be able to speak to someone personally face to face, would this help you?
Don't you want to know that the information you receive is accurate and correct and you can act upon it.
This is the essence of experiencing the insurance product and as such,
An insurance company's product can be measured by their customer service experience. In fact NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.
When you do not get this you may find that you have been sold "piece of mind" but with this kind of service you may get home and discover that your television box is full of rocks or your restaurant food has come straight out of a garbage can.
Without a great customer service experience can you really trust an insurance company?
So as to help IF improve their customer service experience this is what i have asked for.
 |
| Read the full thread |
If Vahinkovakuutus Respond: Sorry NO you Cannot Control Social Media
Well If Vahinkovakuutus have replied again and i think this time it seems even clearer to me that If vahinkovakuutus do not really understand the purpose of social media other than THEIR OWN marketing channel. Sorry Facebook is a forum and you cannot control it. It is not your website where you can control it.
You may have initiated the conversation but you are just a contributor! Here is their and my response.
What do you think? Feel free to post your comments on IF Vakuutusyhtiö's wall or here, wherever is appropriate for you!
You may have initiated the conversation but you are just a contributor! Here is their and my response.
What do you think? Feel free to post your comments on IF Vakuutusyhtiö's wall or here, wherever is appropriate for you!
If Vahinkovakuutus Story End of Day 7 Summary
Well End of Day 7 and sorry for not posting this last night as i had a cray day yesterday and the blog had to take a back seat so that i could actually spend some time with my girlfriend.
So the main thing today has to definitely be that after two days away If vainkovakuutus have re-engaged me. I wonder why this is. Did they realise i would not just go away? Where they thinking about what to say? Did they get annoyed by my action and decide to re-enter the forum. I guess i will never know.
Well i will post the discussion from yesterday here again and let you decide for youselves how to interpret it. My thoughts are discussed in this post.
So the main thing today has to definitely be that after two days away If vainkovakuutus have re-engaged me. I wonder why this is. Did they realise i would not just go away? Where they thinking about what to say? Did they get annoyed by my action and decide to re-enter the forum. I guess i will never know.
Well i will post the discussion from yesterday here again and let you decide for youselves how to interpret it. My thoughts are discussed in this post.
I especially like my link to how to deal with upset customers on social media.
That made me smile ;-) Here is that link for anyone who is interested.
In other News.
I am sorry but i did add advertisements to my blog. I am sorry if this annoys you but the purpose is not to profit but to present viewers with advertisements related to the blog such as insurance offers from providers other than if (although i did see one If advert appearing yesterday). You can read the entire story from this post.
As for the other time i could spend on the blog yesterday i have spent it trying to SEO (Search Engine optimise my blog) i.e. make it appear higher in search results and also have google index it in a more accurate way so as more insurace adverts will appear on the site. Man is this a time consuming endeavour and frankyl i am not sure that it is worth it in terms of hours spent agains benefit especially for a blog that is not going to be active forever. BTW this blog will end with the story i you had not guessed that already. Of course the existing content will still be there though. I will write a post about SEO later when i get a chance.
Well that is all for now. Keep reading and feel free to comment whether you agree, disagree or are impartial this is a totally open forum.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Using Advertising as a customer empowerment strategy.
Some of you may have noticed that i have this morning added advertisements to the blog.
As a first impression you will probably think i am trying to profit from this endeavour and social media experiment. Although i must admit that would be nice, we all dream of being millionaires ;-)
Unfortunately I don't think it is going to happen. Just to be clear profiting from this endeavour is not the goal of the experiement.
See below.
As a first impression you will probably think i am trying to profit from this endeavour and social media experiment. Although i must admit that would be nice, we all dream of being millionaires ;-)
Unfortunately I don't think it is going to happen. Just to be clear profiting from this endeavour is not the goal of the experiement.
See below.
I think that you can see from the above that this is not a profitability strategy.
As such why would i add advertisements to the blog?
There are a couple of reasons for this. Partly i am curious and want to learn what this is all about and how it works but also and more importantly as alot of you have seen Google have changed their privacy policy recently. The idea of which is basically so that they can target you more accurately with advertising.
Now as i understand it the advertisements that will appear on the site are going to be targeted at visitors based upon their previous history of searching google, other web behaviour, their referring source destination to the blog and the way in which the site has been indexed by Google themselves. In this way google adsense should target visitors with relevant advertisements.
This is something that companies of course have been doing for years and i have seen already that If Vakuutus are doing this themselves. As such the question is.
Can I use existing advertising in the Insurance Industry to apply additional pressure to If Vakuutus?
What i mean with this is,
Wouldn't it be great if one of my site visitors upon landing on the site was presented with a Tapiola or Pohjola advertisement to take insurance from them. As i am getting alot of traffic from If's own facebook pages. I am able to effectively place advertisements specifically for If's own customers or stakeholders. I am sure that If vakuutus in particular would not like that there own customers are firstly visiting my blog but then also being presented with advertisements for their competitors products.
Imaging what would happen if If vakuutus started to lose customers as a result of this advertising. In this experiement this has much more value as a pressure tactic than a profitability technique.
With this in mind how can i influence which advertisements are being presented on My blog? See my later post regarding SEO (search engine optimisation) and Google's affiliate network.
Let me know how succesful i am, let me know are you getting insurance ads? Once again i will update you as to how this pans out later.
If Vakuutus have re-engaged me!
Well thank you If vakuutus. I had almost given up on you. After two days since their last response i have had a new response from them. I do not know really why they have chosen to re-engage me, you would have to ask them, but i am grateful as it means i can still believe in them.
I have been a little critical of their approach in my blog and i have also adopted a strategy of interference on their own Facebook group. I have also added content to If Insurance's other local Facebook groups in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Latvia. Perhaps this has influenced them? Or perhaps it is the growing influence of this blog?
In any case this is what they have to say.
I have been a little critical of their approach in my blog and i have also adopted a strategy of interference on their own Facebook group. I have also added content to If Insurance's other local Facebook groups in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Latvia. Perhaps this has influenced them? Or perhaps it is the growing influence of this blog?
In any case this is what they have to say.
 |
| View the entire conversation on Facebook |
I think this is quite self explanatory they have agreed to my earlier request to review my feedback which is positive and indicates that they are listening. They are still refusing to settle the claim or reimburse me for the additional costs that i incurred caused by their mis-communication.
Most importantly though now that they have implied that they are considering my feedback it means that perhaps we can actually help protect the other If vakuutus customers from this happenning to them again in the future.
I think that this is the biggest measurement of success of this experiment and if we can achieve that then i will be extraordinarily happy. We will have proved that customers engagin through social media can influence a company so as to change their behaviour. Also from If vakuutus's point of view it will mean that they can still sell and spin this as a success story for themselves. I am once again optimistic and hoping that If will live up to my expectations.
For those who cannot remember my original demands here they are. You can access the entire thread from here.
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| View the entire thread on facebook |
Well amazingly i have now had another response from If Vakuutus. Correct me if i am wrong but i think that this is the first time this has happenned. Here is the new post from If Vakuutus and my own response.
 |
| View the thread on Facebook |
To be fair If vakuutus are being pretty apologetic but they still refuse to act in terms of settling the claim. However they do seem to be showing some movement in their attitude to re-evaluating their customer support practices which is part of what i want to hear.
I would also like to hear about the request that i made for If Vakuutus to change their terms and conditions so that If vakuutus are responsible for customer costs resulting from their incorrect or misleading information and not their customer.
BTW i should state that the requested phone call conversation was held entirely in Finnish between If and my Finnish girlfriend. We wanted to make sure there was no miscommunication as the phone call was very important to us. I am of course English so thought it was better if the conversation took place between native Finnish speakers. Shame If were not so dilligent in ensuring the competency of their 24hr emergency service number.
Let's see where If Vakuutus go from here. It seems to me that they are trying but without action they are just digging a hole for themselves.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
End of Day Summary Day 6: Still no word from IF Vakuutus
Well as i posted earlier today the main news has been that IF vakuutus seem to have stopped communicating and engaging me. They still have not answered my requests and it is still sitting on their facebook wall.
If Vakuutus's Wall Comment
Today i wrote about this as IF vakuutus's lost opportunity. This was based upon what i wrote as IF vakuutus's opportunity in the first post on the subject when the blog began.These are fast becoming the most popular posts on the blog.
I have not toally given up on If yet and hope that they choose to engage me tomorrow.
Development of Strategy
Well some of you may have noticed i have learned and have improved the look of the blog by adding more user friendly buttons from addthis.com the advantage of which are they are nicer for you and will give me some better statistics about their use and traffic generated from them. I can recommend this to others as they are really easy to use and setup.
If you are visiting this blog from Sweden, Norway, Denmark or Latvia then you probably arrived here from If's Facebook group pages in those countries so welcome to you.
I am not going to try and damage these If country's reputations or either try to interfere with their marketing as i am not their customer and i am not attempting to engage them directly. Comments from them are of course welcome also.
I have posted on these pages as i think that people visiting those pages may have an interest in seeing what is going on on If Finlands pages. Below is what i posted onto If Swedens Facebook wall.
Actually i just noticed they removed my If Sweden vs If Vakuutus Finland post. That is ok i do not mind. I wont put it back. Interesting they left the other post though.
I have also expanded my own use of social media channels to include my own YouTube channel Unfortunately i have not uploaded any rant videos directed at If Vakuutus Finland like the one i have previously posted here on the blog. but i am linking to If Finlands own YouTube advertisements where i now also have a presence. People can link to the blog via that media also.
I describe this type of content as a "Piggyback" Strategy as described in my earlier post today.
You are probably thinking about what i will do if If continue not to engage me. I will keep that under my hat for now but i think it is doing them more damage than good as described in the previous post today.
In terms of attracting interest it has been another record day on the blog today and again we have increased the twitter followers substantially and again have been replublished several times. Thanks to everyone contributing. You know who you are (i try to twit everyone to thank them, sorry if i missed anyone).
BTW i read a great blog today about how not to engage your upset customers via social media. So i will end with this. Seems that If broke most of these rules. Stay tuned! I have added this link to the relevant links section at the bottom of the post.
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-ways-to-deal-with-upset-customers-using-social-media/
If Vakuutus's Wall Comment
 |
| Read the full thread |
I have not toally given up on If yet and hope that they choose to engage me tomorrow.
Development of Strategy
Well some of you may have noticed i have learned and have improved the look of the blog by adding more user friendly buttons from addthis.com the advantage of which are they are nicer for you and will give me some better statistics about their use and traffic generated from them. I can recommend this to others as they are really easy to use and setup.
If you are visiting this blog from Sweden, Norway, Denmark or Latvia then you probably arrived here from If's Facebook group pages in those countries so welcome to you.
I am not going to try and damage these If country's reputations or either try to interfere with their marketing as i am not their customer and i am not attempting to engage them directly. Comments from them are of course welcome also.
I have posted on these pages as i think that people visiting those pages may have an interest in seeing what is going on on If Finlands pages. Below is what i posted onto If Swedens Facebook wall.
 |
| View If Sweden's Facebook wall |
I have also expanded my own use of social media channels to include my own YouTube channel Unfortunately i have not uploaded any rant videos directed at If Vakuutus Finland like the one i have previously posted here on the blog. but i am linking to If Finlands own YouTube advertisements where i now also have a presence. People can link to the blog via that media also.
I describe this type of content as a "Piggyback" Strategy as described in my earlier post today.
You are probably thinking about what i will do if If continue not to engage me. I will keep that under my hat for now but i think it is doing them more damage than good as described in the previous post today.
In terms of attracting interest it has been another record day on the blog today and again we have increased the twitter followers substantially and again have been replublished several times. Thanks to everyone contributing. You know who you are (i try to twit everyone to thank them, sorry if i missed anyone).
BTW i read a great blog today about how not to engage your upset customers via social media. So i will end with this. Seems that If broke most of these rules. Stay tuned! I have added this link to the relevant links section at the bottom of the post.
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-ways-to-deal-with-upset-customers-using-social-media/
Piggybacking as a Social Media Strategy
In this experiment i have discovered that the best way to get reliable traffic volumes to my blog has been through two main channels.
These are actually the most valuable visitors to the blog (sorry to my faithful twitter followers). The reason for this is that If actually care about those people they are their customers, employees and shareholders primarily. They are not so worried about a social media nerd (such as myself) sat at a computer, in his mother's basement in the back end of nowhere, Dakota USA. Sorry anyone fitting that description ;-)
As such as this has been such a succesful channel for me to gain attention and to steal and gain support of real If vakuutus's own followers. I have now expanded the use of this to other social media channels utilised by If.
If vakuutus's Youtube channel
I am now present on If vakuutus's youtube channel and all Finnish If videos. People who look at those comments can access my blog.
I have also set up my own Youtube channel as a distribution channel from If vakuutus's own video content to my blog.
There are a couple of problems with doing this on YouTube. Unlike on the If's facebook group it is difficult for me to add my own valuable content. Some of the videos do not allow your comments to incude links so people must first click your profile to get to your channel and then to the blog.
The second problem is that for the most part If vakuutus embed the videos from YouTube into their own pages. In this way the comments are not visible unless the site visitor clicks through to YouTube.
As such this is not a particularly good channel for generating traffic to my own social media but it is still a valid channel for interfering with If's marketing message and an annoyance to If vakuutus themselves.
Other If Vakuutus Facebook Groups
As i mentioned in my "Fun Post" If Finland Vs If Sweden the Finns are fiercely competitive with the Swedes. As such i have added to the Swedish If group the following.
Previously there has not been much traffic from Sweden so it will be interesting to see what happens now.
I am now also on If Insurance Denmark's, If Norway's and If Insurance Latvia's Facebook group pages.
- Gaining regular twitter followers who regularly visit the blog as well as promoting it.
- Piggybacking on If' vakuutus's own social media.
These are actually the most valuable visitors to the blog (sorry to my faithful twitter followers). The reason for this is that If actually care about those people they are their customers, employees and shareholders primarily. They are not so worried about a social media nerd (such as myself) sat at a computer, in his mother's basement in the back end of nowhere, Dakota USA. Sorry anyone fitting that description ;-)
As such as this has been such a succesful channel for me to gain attention and to steal and gain support of real If vakuutus's own followers. I have now expanded the use of this to other social media channels utilised by If.
If vakuutus's Youtube channel
I am now present on If vakuutus's youtube channel and all Finnish If videos. People who look at those comments can access my blog.
I have also set up my own Youtube channel as a distribution channel from If vakuutus's own video content to my blog.
There are a couple of problems with doing this on YouTube. Unlike on the If's facebook group it is difficult for me to add my own valuable content. Some of the videos do not allow your comments to incude links so people must first click your profile to get to your channel and then to the blog.
The second problem is that for the most part If vakuutus embed the videos from YouTube into their own pages. In this way the comments are not visible unless the site visitor clicks through to YouTube.
As such this is not a particularly good channel for generating traffic to my own social media but it is still a valid channel for interfering with If's marketing message and an annoyance to If vakuutus themselves.
Other If Vakuutus Facebook Groups
As i mentioned in my "Fun Post" If Finland Vs If Sweden the Finns are fiercely competitive with the Swedes. As such i have added to the Swedish If group the following.
 |
| Click to Visit If Swedens Facebook Group |
Previously there has not been much traffic from Sweden so it will be interesting to see what happens now.
I am now also on If Insurance Denmark's, If Norway's and If Insurance Latvia's Facebook group pages.
I will update you if this pattern changes in a later post.
A Bit of Fun: IF Vakuutus Finland vs IF Insurance Sweden
One thing about the Finns is their love hate relationship with Sweden. For a long period of it's history Finland was ruled by Sweden and of course this explains alot.
Like England and Germany's relationship this is usually most apparent on the sports field and being Scandanavia most importantly on the ice hockey rink. To summarise that relationship so far.
World Champiosnships Olympics (Gold, Silver Bronze, Total)
Finland 2,6,3, Total Medals 11 0,2,3, Total Medals 5
Sweden 8,17,15 Total Medals 40 2,2,4 Total Medals 8
The Finns wont like that at all but it is the truth. However nicely for the Finns in the world championship victories they did beat the Swedes which adds extra satisfaction!
Coincidently
Britain World Championships Ice Hockey 1,1,1, Total 3 Medals!! Amazing don't have a clue how that is possible.
In terms of love for the Swedes
This is most apparent in the amount of interest here in the Swedish royal family. Especially since the baby arrived.
Ok so the Match UP is IF Vakuutus Finland Online Marketing Vs IF Insurance Sweden Online Marketing
Finland and Sweden are countries of roughly the same size population (a couple of million difference) so the numbers can be interpretted in that way.
YouTube Performance
If Insurance have both a Swedish and Finnish advert. Both are identical except the language. See my Youtube channel for all the content described here.
The current one contains a girl getting out of the pool. Both of these adverts have approximately the same numebr of views and in fact Finland is slightly winning that competition. As such we need a tiebreaker.
Lets take a look at a slightly older advert. Their "Toy Shop advert" also on YouTube of course.
Swedish Advert views 3 756
Finnish Advert views just over 1 169
In this case there is a marked difference. Why?
The swedes applied a trick which worked amazingly well. They uploaded a video of the advert but also with info about how they made it. In the video the toy shop is destroyed and they explain how they did it.
Swedish: how the advert was made advert 73 576 views.
This is amazing they managed to get people to watch the whole advert first (nice one) and then they got to see how it was made. This undoubtedly is a big reason why the Swedes out performed the Finns. Why didn't Finland copy this? They usually do.
If Insurance Sweden win Youtube contest hands down
Twitter
Swedish Twitter 239 Tweets 135 Followers
Finnish Twitter 0 Tweets 27 followers including me (it was about 12 when i started)
Enough said If Vakuutus Finland have not adapted to twitter at all.
IF Insurance Sweden win Twitter competition hands down.
Facebook
In this one group membership is roughly equal.
Finland 5051 members 224 Talking about
Sweden 6504 members 169 Taling about
Finland win talking about, Sweden win membership (Did i affect this?)
Facebook Result Score Draw
LinkedIn
Well only IF Sweden have a profile that i could find so it can only go one way.
IF Insruance Sweden win the LinkedIn Competition.
Final Score
I Insurance Sweden Social Marketing 3 If Vakuutus Finland Social Marketing 0
Epilogue
When groupon came to Finland suddenly there were about 5 copies of the same business idea. That is once the Finns saw it worked.
The large volume of copies of foreign television shows and the lack of original Finnish made shows in Finland is testament to that also. Finns like to copy stuff that works generally and in terms of marketing especially original campaigns and marketing concepts are few and far between.
In my opinion Swedes are much more extravert and this generally leads to a more independent creative environment. Finns are a fairly homogenous population that strives to keep everyone the same. They are more introvert. Finns are not encouraged to be different and are actively encouraged to conform to the norm or to follow the rules i.e. expected norms of behaviour. In this way for professional fields that require creativity, independent thought and looking at and doing things in a different way that may be against the normal way of working, Finns are not culturally suited. This ultimately means they do not excel in fields that require alternative thinking or ways of working outside of the traditional or established means, roles and structures.
Like England and Germany's relationship this is usually most apparent on the sports field and being Scandanavia most importantly on the ice hockey rink. To summarise that relationship so far.
World Champiosnships Olympics (Gold, Silver Bronze, Total)
Finland 2,6,3, Total Medals 11 0,2,3, Total Medals 5
Sweden 8,17,15 Total Medals 40 2,2,4 Total Medals 8
The Finns wont like that at all but it is the truth. However nicely for the Finns in the world championship victories they did beat the Swedes which adds extra satisfaction!
Coincidently
Britain World Championships Ice Hockey 1,1,1, Total 3 Medals!! Amazing don't have a clue how that is possible.
In terms of love for the Swedes
This is most apparent in the amount of interest here in the Swedish royal family. Especially since the baby arrived.
Ok so the Match UP is IF Vakuutus Finland Online Marketing Vs IF Insurance Sweden Online Marketing
Finland and Sweden are countries of roughly the same size population (a couple of million difference) so the numbers can be interpretted in that way.
YouTube Performance
If Insurance have both a Swedish and Finnish advert. Both are identical except the language. See my Youtube channel for all the content described here.
The current one contains a girl getting out of the pool. Both of these adverts have approximately the same numebr of views and in fact Finland is slightly winning that competition. As such we need a tiebreaker.
Lets take a look at a slightly older advert. Their "Toy Shop advert" also on YouTube of course.
Swedish Advert views 3 756
Finnish Advert views just over 1 169
In this case there is a marked difference. Why?
The swedes applied a trick which worked amazingly well. They uploaded a video of the advert but also with info about how they made it. In the video the toy shop is destroyed and they explain how they did it.
Swedish: how the advert was made advert 73 576 views.
This is amazing they managed to get people to watch the whole advert first (nice one) and then they got to see how it was made. This undoubtedly is a big reason why the Swedes out performed the Finns. Why didn't Finland copy this? They usually do.
If Insurance Sweden win Youtube contest hands down
Swedish Twitter 239 Tweets 135 Followers
Finnish Twitter 0 Tweets 27 followers including me (it was about 12 when i started)
Enough said If Vakuutus Finland have not adapted to twitter at all.
IF Insurance Sweden win Twitter competition hands down.
In this one group membership is roughly equal.
Finland 5051 members 224 Talking about
Sweden 6504 members 169 Taling about
Finland win talking about, Sweden win membership (Did i affect this?)
Facebook Result Score Draw
Well only IF Sweden have a profile that i could find so it can only go one way.
IF Insruance Sweden win the LinkedIn Competition.
Final Score
I Insurance Sweden Social Marketing 3 If Vakuutus Finland Social Marketing 0
Epilogue
When groupon came to Finland suddenly there were about 5 copies of the same business idea. That is once the Finns saw it worked.
The large volume of copies of foreign television shows and the lack of original Finnish made shows in Finland is testament to that also. Finns like to copy stuff that works generally and in terms of marketing especially original campaigns and marketing concepts are few and far between.
In my opinion Swedes are much more extravert and this generally leads to a more independent creative environment. Finns are a fairly homogenous population that strives to keep everyone the same. They are more introvert. Finns are not encouraged to be different and are actively encouraged to conform to the norm or to follow the rules i.e. expected norms of behaviour. In this way for professional fields that require creativity, independent thought and looking at and doing things in a different way that may be against the normal way of working, Finns are not culturally suited. This ultimately means they do not excel in fields that require alternative thinking or ways of working outside of the traditional or established means, roles and structures.
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