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.

View the conversation on Facebook.

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.

1. Search for all social media used by the company in question and decide how to use it for your own means.
2. Decide on which social media you will create for yourself and for which purposes you will use that.

Advantages to utilising the company's own Social Media

1. You can hold the conversation in a public forum in front of the company's own audience.
2. 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).
3. You can apply greater pressure to the company to act (note only when you have a valid argument) (See Rules of Engagement)
4. 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)
5. You can disrupt the company's own marketing messaging through utilisation an interference strategy.

Advantatages in utilising your own Social Media

1. You can tell the story entirely in your own way
2. You can have full control of all content being produced
3. You can utilise your own marketing and promotion channels to generate further interest
4. 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.

Based upon the above criteria for using either your own or your company's social media you can make a decision how best to utilise each channel. I will post my own thoughts about how to best utilise the main channels and the advantages and disadvantaged of each in subsequent posts.

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.

Social CRM Company Engagement Framework Part 1.The rules of Engagement

The purpose of this framework is to guide individuals who wish to engage companies in a dialogue related to a particular conflict or service request. Usually this framework will be employed after conventional channels and dialogue has failed or broken down. This is due to the additional effort required by the customer to implement this framework over and above that required by the companies own conventional channels. The idea is that by moving the conversation to a public arena i.e. a social media run by the company then this will further empower the customer and increase the likelihood of a succesful outcome for the customer.

This framework has been constructed based upon lessons learned through the engagement with If vahinkovakuutus a Finnish insurance company in relationship to travel insurance claim that If refused to pay.

Part 1: The Rules of Engagement of Social CRM from the Customers Perspective

Operating in the Target Company's Own Social Media

When engaging a company on their own social media the following guidelines should be applied.

1. Only engage a company in this way when you have a valid argument. This is not a strategy for just venting your anger or trying to get some revenge.
2. Do not alienate your audience! Remember that when you are communicating with a company on their own social media, their audience is also your audience. You should be attempting to win them over with a valid argument. By gaining their support you will put additional pressure onto the company in question. As such do not do or say anything that may risk you having the audience turn against you.
3. Remain calm do not show your anger. Undoubtedly in this kind of situation you are experiencing feelings of anger and hostility. Displaying these will not help you at all. Do not post offensive or derrogatory comments about the company in question. If you do, you risk being percieved as an angry customer who justs wants to have a rant.
4. Try to avoid opinions and stick to the facts. When you add your opinion to much you increase the risk of alienating your audience. Let them make up their own minds. This is difficult i know.
5. Express how the experience has made you feel. This, if done in the correct way, will help garner support for your cause and generate sympathy from the audience. It makes it easier for them to empathise.
6. Express and highlight how the company's behaviour impacts their other customers and stakeholders. This adds weight to your own personal story and argument and further distances you from being perceived as an individual upset and angry customer.
7. Outline your arguments clearly and concisely. When you do this is it very difficult for the company not to answer you as this will reflect badly upon them if they refuse to engage you.
8. State clearly what you expect from the company and what actions you require for them. Numbering these helps (in a long thread for example). Ask them directly to respond to each. In this way you can avoid the conversation being taken of topic.
9. Attempt to control the conversation as if it were a debate. If a company does not directly answer your concerns, questions or requirements pull them up on it and request that they answer the questions directly and if pushed ask them to answer yes no.
10. Do not allow the company to steer the conversation away from your requirements. This is a diversionary and delay tactic. They know that at some point in time you will get tired.
11. Do not allow the company to steer you away from their social media and into hidden channels. You have failed already in these hidden channels. This is just a way for the company to get rid of you. If a company attempts this it will reflect badly upon them not you.
12. Do not give up until the dialogue is really at an end. Badly run companies or companies with something to hide will ultimately continue to avoid the questions. If you keep pulling them up on this you should be able to to garner more support form their audience and add additioal pressure to the company.
13. Be prepared that the company will not meet your expectations. In this case you still win. You have lost nothing but your time. As long as you had a valid argument, if the company does not resolve this issue for you then it is them who ultimately will come out of this worse. Even if you are financially out of pocket you still would have been even if you had not engaged them through social media. As a customer you had nothing to lose so try to think of it that way.
14. If the company does meet your expectations and resolve the case through social media let them know your gratitude. Post this publically. In this way it will help the company appreciate the value of serving cusotmers in this way and also let others know that this kind of strategy can be applied succesfully with this company.

Operating in your own social media

As part of this framework it is a strong advantage to adopt your own social media related to the engagement process. This is so as to tell your side of the story, preserve a record of the dialogue that you are in control of. In affect you are running your own campaign from where you can publicise your story and garner further support by leveraging your own socail media. More about this in a later post.

When utilising your own channels, it is more acceptable to be biased and slightly more opinionated. After all you are trying to push out your marketing message related to this story in the same way that a company uses their own media to push theirs. By being more oppinionated you will also generate more interest and discussion around the subject. This is also to your advantage.

As well as the rules of engagement from the aforementioned section, you should also be aware of the following.

1. Again avoid alienating your audience. How you behave in these channels is important you do not want to be seen to act in a way that is underhand, coercive or in a way similar to that of the company you are trying to engage. You should not profit financially from the engagement process other than for any compensation you are attempting to get from the company you are engaging. If you do this will damage your argument and own image.
2. Show gratitutude to all who participate and engage them in conversation. Anyone who comments or replies to you deserves a thankyou or a return comment if posting on a blog for example. Of course dependent upon the media you are using.
3. It is ok, not everyone has to agree with you. Do not attack people who disagree with you but engage them also you can learn about why they feel that way. By having an open dialogue with a real discussion you will actually draw more attention to your story. If you are receiving a lot of negative feedback you can use this to evaluate if you should continue your engagement process or not.
4. You need to behave in a the same way that you are expecting your engaged company to behave. Your actions need to be transparent and you need to be trusted. You must set an example.

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.

Summary of My Dialogue with If Vahinkovakuutus

Discussion held on If's Facebook Page

So that future and new visitors to this blog can get a quick overview of the story and the dialogue that took place between If Vahinkovakuutusyhtiö in Finland and myself i have decided to write a summary of the discussion. Just the highlights.

This will also act as a sitemap of sorts and let you easily navigate to posts that you may want to read more about. So here are the highlights.

February 5th 2012. Malev go bankrupt, we are stuck in Turkey. We call If Vahinkovakuutus Emergency Customer Service

We travel to the airport discover that our flight has been cancelled. We call If vakuutus's emergency customer service and are led to beleive that everything is ok and that we are covered. We were told to pay the costs ourselves and claim when we get home. In response to this we buy very expensive flights home the next day in the belief that If vahinkoivakuutus will pay. See post.

February 6th 2012. We make our claim and If Vahinkovakuutus inform us that they will not pay.

We fly home and make the claim on If's web service. After a week or so we receive a large envelope from If vahinkovakuutus with a thick bundle of terms and conditions and a decision not to pay. See Post.

February 14th 2012. We visit the If Vahinkovakuuutus shop for personal customer service

We visit an If vahinkovakuutus shop to discover that we cannot get customer service related to claims there. If offices only sell insurance and they do not address your customer service needs as an existing customer other than to sell you more insurance. See Post.

February 15th 2012. We call If Vahinkovakuutus's customer service number

We call If vahinkovakuutus and they say that they will investigate and get back to us. They send us an email the next day saying they have heard the phone conversation and as they did not promise to pay and based upon their terms and conditions they will not pay. See post.

I also requested the copy of the phone call conversation on this day.

February 18th 2012. I start the blog and engage If Vahinkovakuutus on Facebook.

After feeling totally ripped off and having bought really expensive flights home at additional expense to myself. I decided to start this blog and engage If vahinkovakuutus on their own Facebook page This is deliberately in a public forum where If could not hide. This is also the first day that If respond but it is a "we will get back to you message" See Post. However i also see this as an opportunity for If Vahinkovakuutus and write a post describing that.

February 20th 2012. If vahinkovakuutus's First Real Response.

• If vahinkovakuutus admit that they failed in their communication (accepting liability in my eyes)
• If still refuse to pay as in their terms and conditions they do not pay travel insurance when companies go bankrupt (what is the point have travel insurance)
• If Vahinkovakuutus try and get me off their social media by directing me down other channels that they can control (Nice Social CRM)
• I respond by saying that i want to resolve the case in this public forum and ask, is it really the customer's responsibility to pay for their admitted mistakes. See post.

February 21st 2012. If still argue that their terms and conditions state that they can't pay

• If vahinkovakuutus stick to their terms and conditions argument
• They state that it would not be fair to pay this for their other customers.
• I reply with concrete demands of what i expect and re-emphasise that this is not about the terms and conditions. I expect payment because of the false and misleading information supplied to me and the resulting additional costs i incurred as a result of this..
• At this time i also write a post about Finnish culture with mention to adherence to rules and customer service. See Post.

• I supply If vahinkovakuutus with a concrete list of my expectations from them
• Change your terms and conditions so the If Vahinkovakuutus are liable for giving out false or misleading information. This is to protect their other customers.
• Review and publish the results on Facebook relating to not outsourcing their emergency customer phone service to an unqualified third party without detailed knowledge of their policies.
• Review and publish the results on Facebook relating to not offering personal face to face customer service relating to claims in their If vahinkovakuutus shops.
• Settle the claim and pay my personal costs incurred as a result of information supplied to me by them.

February 21st-23rd 2012 If Vahinkovakuutus are silent

• After no word from If vakuutus i believe that they are not going to answer me and are waiting for me to go away. (Again nice Social CRM).
• As a result of the silence I engage in a strategy of interference in their other Social Media conversations. See post
• I believe that If vakuutus have lost any opportunity they had to turn this into a social CRM success story. See Post.

February 23rd 2012 If Vahinkovakuutus re-engage me but don't answer my requests

• I will never know the reasons for why If vahinkovakuutus decided to re-engage but they did.
• They again try to get me off their social media saying they do not want to handle it there and wish to do it privately. (I bet you do). Again nice social CRM, isnt SCRM about the customers needs?
• They do not answer any of my questions but agree to pass the feedback forward.
• I again ask for a copy of the phone conversation which this discussion is based.
• I try to help them by also supplying a link demonstrating how to engage a customer through social media. See Link. See my post on the subject.

February 25th 2012 If vahinkovakuutus request that i stop linking to my Blog

• If vahinkovakuutus request that i should not publicise my story on their social media.
• Sorry no you cannot control a public forum. This is a place for customers to engage you on their terms. This is not your own private marketing channel. This is not your website. Very nice social CRM once again.
• I agree to stop interferring with their other marketing messaging on Facebook while they engage me in this conversation.See orignal post.

February 27th 2012 If Vahinkovakuutus can you please just answer the questions!

• After getting pretty tired of If vahinkovakuutus i start a new thread as the conversation was getting a bit long and congested.
• I simply reiterate the questions I asked to them on February 21st and request that they answer them Yes/No and with their justification. I want to bring this to an end i have wasted enough time on If.
• See post.

February 28th 2012 If Vahinovakuutus reply with an answer a politician would be proud of

• If vakuutus give a reply that is basically marketing drivel about your feedback being valuable. They do not answer any of the questions.
• I request again for them to answer them with simple yes/no answers.
• My post is not very flattering of If Vahinkovakuutus. I am getting quite tired of engaging If for over 2 weeks and getting no where.
• I notice on the same day that i have been blocked from If Insurance's other regional facebook pages. After posting on the subject my user rights are mysteriously returned. Again nice social CRM. As a reaction i post the story to If's competitor's Facebook pages. See my post on the subject.

February 29th 2012. If vahinkovakuutus's final response and Mine

• I receive a final response (see post) from If stating that they will not handle this in the public areena
• They do not answer any of my questions
• They again try to drive me off the social media to another channel they do not want to discuss with me anymore.
• I post my last comments to them in the dialogue. I am not very flattering of If unsurprisingly.
• If's silence and refusal to answer the genuine questions concerning not only me but their other customers tells me more about If Vahinkovakuutus than anything they have done so far. Their Social CRM behaviour has been of a very poor standard.

February 29th 2012 If Vahinkovakuutus have the last word

• Upon cancelling my insurances with If and moving them to Pohjola i discover If want to charge me 30 euros to do so. They claim that this is to stop people cancelling their insurance after only a few months. I have had my insurances with them for years. Nice customer service touch once again, well done.

I still have not had the recording of the conversation as is my legal right and cannot verify anything that If vahinkovakuutus have stated regarding that conversation.

View the original If Vahinkovakuutus conversation threads on Facebook.

Part 1 here
Part 2 here
What do you think about If Vahinkovakuutus? Find them on Facebook

Still Time for If Vahinkovakuutus to add insult to Injury

If Vahinkovakutus will even try and rip you off when you leave. You cannot trust If at all

Nice story relating to cancelling your matkavakuutus. Thanks again If Vahinkovakuutus. A nice touch to end my pain with you as a service provider.

View the feed on facebook

If Vahinkovakuutus charge you 30 euros to cancel your Travel Insurance with them even though you have had it for years. Nice Customer Service once again!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Original Post added to If Insurance Swedens Facebook Group

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 :-)



Visit Tapiola's Facebook Group

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!

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

Read the full thread

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.

View If Sweden's 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/

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.

1. Gaining regular twitter followers who regularly visit the blog as well as promoting it.
2. Piggybacking on If' vakuutus's own social media.

By placing my story directly onto If vakuutus's facebook wall i have managed to get a lot of traffic of theirs to visit my blog. This is great in this situation because i have been able to really get attention of people who actually care about If insurance, what they do and their practices.
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.

Channel Performance Analysis

Well after four days i thought i would write something about how succesful the channels that i have been utilising in this endeavour have been.

As a recap the main channels i have created are:

A dedicated Twitter Account @IFinsurance (surprised i was able to get this user name)
A dedicated Facebook Group IF Vakuutus Social Experiment
This blog, no link required ;-)

The pre-existing channels that i am utilising are:

IF's Own Facebook Group. If Vahinkovakuutusyhtiö I am particularly trying to draw attention to mine and If vakuutus's conversation there.

As described earlier i plan to expand upon the utilisisation of If vakuutus's own social media later. Read on to understand why.

Twitter as a Channel

Prior to this experiement i was a Twitter user and had been for a few years. However admittedly i was that kind of user who was just a "follower" i was not a contributor other than the occasional retweet of content i found interesting. In all honesty i think that summarises most Twitter users. I used it as a way of getting up to date info about the things i was interested in, when i wanted it. On twitter there is always something new.

With this in mind i understandably did not have many followers around 50 of mostly people i already knew based upon around 300 tweets of my own (sorry retweets, the occasional tweet from services i had subscribed to and those that i had connected other social media to) Unsuprisingly then that my followers were low.

Just as a quick point i just do not get people who post things like "I just ran 30minutes hard via heia heia" Quite honeslty who cares! I don't even care about what my "real friends are doing". Anyway back to the point.

Well having started the new Twitter account @Ifinsurance for the sole purpose of publising this blog and story i am pleased i have been more succesful. For a while i did ponder if i should carry this out through my own @daniel_miles account but decided against it. I decided to have a campaign specific twitter account for people who just want to follow the story and not my other tweets. I also was afraid that i would annoy some of the followers of my personal Twitter account with the changed content of my account. So having balanced this against the advantage of already having a starting base of followers i decided to start from scratch.

So how has my new Twitter account performed.

Well with Just 100 tweets i managed to gain 75 followers in less than 3days merely by tweeting the story. This is 50% more followers than my personal Twitter account in roughly 1 3rd of the tweets and in 1% of the time. In this sense then i would certainly consider this a success if you were to measure this against my prior performance.

This has well been publisised else where in the blogosphere but Content is King, contributors get more followers! As well as just publising my story i have also tried to add content that may be relevant also to people who simply follow social media. Hence for example this post which has nothing really to do with the story with IF directly.

I have also managed to have the blog republished on other news sites each day. I have been retweeted countless times and have had several @mentions. I have also gained a couple of followers who seem to be pretty closely following me and retweeting a lot of what i tweet thanks for that!!

In this sense it seems i have managed to at least generate some interest among the twitter crowd. Further more by looking at the traffic statistics to the blog i can see that around 45% of the traffic has been coming from the shortened bit.ly type of link which indicates a lot of traffic from Twitter. More about the site traffic in the other sections.

On the whole then i have been pretty happy with Twitter as a channel, well at least based upon my previous experiences.

My Own Facebook Group.

This has been less of a success in terms of gaining members, i am now at 4 :-). I desribed my reasoning behind this in a previous post so won't go into it in too much detail here.

Generally though i felt that facebook groups needed to be known about and were better suited for companies than individuals as a channel to garner support for something.

In any case lookin at the traffic coming into the blog I can see that the top contributor for traffic has been facebook so although the Group has not gained members perhaps it has contributed to traffic. However i believe that the biggest contributor to the referring site was probably If Vakuutus's own Facebook group. See below.

If Vakuutus's Own Facebook Group

In my opinion this has been the best channel to utilise, even more so than Twitter. This is why,

1. By Utilising If vakuutus's own social media and existing following you are able to piggy bag on If vakuutus's own success.
2. By Utilising If vakuutus's own social media you are able to reach out to their own stakeholders. Who else would be on their social media?
3. By having a constant presence there and maintaining your position at the top of their wall you are able to get a regular stream of traffic to your blog and to your story.
4. By placing your content directly to If vakuutus's own facebook wall you are able to disrupt or interfere directly with their marketing messaging, branding and campaigning. This dilutes the power of their own social media as a tool and increases the risk and pressure upon them to act.

40% of Traffic is coming from Facebook and most likely alot of it is coming from If vakuutus's own group page.

The Success of My Own Blog

Well as i tweeted early i have now had more than 1000 visitors to the site so in that respect i am really happy.

The blog has been tweeted and shared directly from the blog in all, around 100 times so roughly 10% of visitors have spread the word further. Of course i cannot really tell how many times outside of my own social media the word has spread. I am sure though that for the 1000 visitors i have had many more have had some contact with the story even though they may not have visited the blog.

Coincidently i would like to know if If vakuutus's own traffic to their Facebook Group page has increased. I did note previously that they got 250 odd new members there after i started. This trend seems to have slowed now though.

Anyway i see the main strengths of the blog as:

1. You can have a media that you can control and tell your own story.
2. You have a single location where you want to drive traffic to (admittedly it is nice to drive traffic to the converation with IF also)
3. If If vakuutus's decide to start boycotting me or deleting my posts from their social media then there is a complete record of the story outside of their control including the Facebook conversation with them. Deleting it does not make it go away. 
4. If vakuutus cannot control this media, they can only contribute. BTW they are free to do so). It would be nice to see them trying to tell their story on my blog.
5. Long after this story is dead people will still be able to find the blog. It will be a constant reminder to If vakuutus of this event. And who knows from time to time it will get retweeted, shared or even posted back on If vakuutus's wall. In this respect If vakuutus particularly should be aware and think how they should act. The degree to which this occurs i feel is dependent upon how If vakuutus react to it postively or negatively.

Summary of Basic Stats to Date (First 4 days)

1. 1100 Blog Vistis
2. Blog republished 4 times in other online news papers (that i know about, i was tweeted to be told)
3. 40% of Traffic from Facebook and mostly likely If Vakuutus's own Facebook group.
4. 45% of Traffic from Twitter or bit.ly type links
5. 10% of Traffic from Direct Links implying they have saved the blog to their favourites
6. 75 New Twitter Followers on the new account (gained 25 on my personal) 150 people following my Twitter media related to this then.
7. Countless retweets and mentions and several avid supporters
8. 45% or so of blog traffic coming from Finland despite the English Language.
9. Only about 10% of Twitter followers are from Finland though interestingly.

Engaging Companies in Social Media Channels Politely Does Not Work

Well after the latest If vakuutus's response it seems clear to me that If vakuutus have missed their opportunity to turn this into customer service and marketing success story. Something i wished that they had because this alone would have shown that social media has empowered the consumer and that companies have recognised this and have changed their behaviour accordingly. This has not worked.

As such previously i was playing the role of a customer who was merely trying to communicate and engage with a company in a public channel with the hope that this combined with a growing support and interest base via this blog and the @IFinsurance twitter account would change their behaviour.

In this Experiment: Using a company's own Social Media as a channel to engage a company does not guarantee success even with a valid case and a growing social media presence.

As such a change in strategy is required so as to apply more pressure to If vakuutus through publicising the case and further damaging their brand image.

I will continue to try and engage with people in Finland, the conventional media, persons interested in social media, the insurance industry and PR and Marketing Generally. I will do this primarily through Twitter @Ifinsurance.

I have also expanded my use of Twitter. I decided that instead of just posting my own content i will redistribute content created by others writing about relevant subject material. I realise that social media is not only about pushing your own messaging but also spreading the word and collaborating with others. If i do not spread the message of others how can i expect others to spread my word. As such i have started a process of retweeting other relevant content via my twitter account.

I will adopt a new strategy of Interference Against If vakuutus.

Actually i am not sure if this is wise but i feel that at this point in time it is the only option really left to me. To try and increase the pressuse on IF i will interfere with their other customer dialogue on their own facebook group page and expand on this later to further increase the pressure if IF continue to resist.

This is a risky strategy as i risk alienating my own audience. I hope that this is not the case.

I have communicated very clearly with IF via their facebook wall what i hope to achieve and what will bring this to an end. If know what they need to do to stop this.

I have started the policy of interference see IF vakuutus's Facebook group to start with....... more to follow if necessary.

Please note i am not telling any lies about If vakuutus's, i will only post truthful comments. IF are very welcome to comment. I will continue to promote my own story via the blog. This is a very important fact, i do not want to do anything that could be conceived as slander. This is and always will be an entirely legal endeavour!!!

My primary goal is to publisize my story and disrupt If vakuuts's own brand messaging through factual story telling and interaction with people who are posting on the IF Facebook group.

I do not think that this is unreasonable. What do you think?

You can get live updates of the conversation on the Facebook thread by liking it. http://t.co/JlbiA65M Liking will also show support. Comments of course also appreciated. Follow the conversation live also on Twitter @IFinsurance.