End of Day 3 Summary: Where are we now?

Well after quite an eventful day there is quite alot to talk about. The experiment has been up and running for three days now so here is a quick recap.

For those of you who are unaware of the purpose of this experiment, what am i trying to achieve?

The original story can be summarised as follows. I am a discruntled customer of Finnish insurance company IF who has had his travel insurance claim turned down. This was after having been told by the company's emergency telephone number's customer service person that it was covered and that the insurance company would pay for flights home and additional hotel costs in particular. I therefore based my behaviour while still abroad on this information and bought expensive flights home the very next day. IF did not pay for this claim. After exhausintg the existing channels i decided to try handling the claim publically through social media.

I am trying to use social media publisise this case and to gain support. I am also attempting to test and evaluate my own methods as i go along way through a series of related blog posts that i am writing about social media channels, performance and their evaluation. I want to know whether an individual customer can leverage social media to empower themselves. Companies have time and time again been shown to succesfully leverage social media but can a single individual overpower the might of an organisation using the same tools?

I am reacting to the situation as it happens and trying my best to adapt. This is totally adhoc and still ongoing now!

Where are we Now?

Where are we with IF Insurance?

Today we had our second response from IF today via their Facebook Group Page. See the thread here. Read the related blog post. Up until this time i have simply posted to IF's own facebook page to query them on this issue and have merely asked for customer service.

I wanted to see does the fact that the case is now being handled publically affect how the case is being handled.

In short communicating with IF has not resulted in overturning their previous decision not to pay out the insurance claim.

This has been desipte my best efforts to show them why a quick positive response from them would be in their interest. Read more here.

However IF have admitted that they should have done things better and that they consider themselves to be at fault with regard passing on incorrect information to us their consumer who acted upon this.

For me this is as good as accepting liability.

As this is how it appears to me i have asked them. Do IF expect their customers to be held accountable for their own errors?

I am waiting for a response. Show your support for Social Media Customer Empowerment by liking the thread.

How are we doing with Raising Awareness about this Issue?

On the blog

In terms of generating traffic to the blog we have been gaining traffic steadily over the three days. In fact today will be the record for the number of hits so attention is growing. I hope to pass 750 visitors today which i think is not at all bad for a 3 day old blog.

Also the blog has been republished a couple of times on other sites thanks to @leighdow and @Nwstd for that. This helped generate additional traffic to the blog site and i appreciate that.

I am still lacking comments on my blog though although it is being tweeted and shared via Facebook farely regularly.

On Twitter

Today has been a very good day on twitter. We managed to double the number of followers we got in the first two days so there is a degree of viralicity (is that a word).

I also attempted for the first time to direct message persons whom i felt could help raise awareness of this experiment. Read the blog post here. Not sure if this will work out let's see.

On Facebook

There are two issues here. My own group and IF's group. Based upon some analysis and discussion in this blog post i concluded that;

"It is easy for a company to ignore an independent counter productive kind of group when it is not visible to their stakeholders and the group itself needs to be found by people who are looking for it. Even if this kind of group is found it seems to me that in all likelihood the group has already been discontinued and is not actively managed or promoted."

"Facebook groups are not good for promoting individual causes that are not widely known about. This is because they need to be searched out and known about. They are not easily found when you do not look for them or at least expect them to exist"

I have concluded that to put pressure on IF the best place to do so is on their own social media.

Currently the support i recieve is disjointed across several sites and medias. I have drawn alot of attention in particular to the Blog and Twitter but i need to translate that into action and particularly on IF's own media. I am currently still lone wolfing in terms of actions despite the amount of passive support and interest. A few exceptions, you know who you are thanks especially @jukkan :-)

I need to focus on hitting them where it hurts and drawing traffic not only to my story but to theirs. I especially need to find ways to activate those persons who are drawn to my experiement. Suggestions are always welcome BTW!

So what is in store for tomorrow?

I will again await the next response from IF and i will base my next behaviour upon their response. I still have some surprises up my sleave. This experiment is totally adhoc and freeform the method and the strategies are evolving according to the situation.

I will continue to try and self analyse the use of social media in this experiment and will probably start to publish more statistics.

I am also considering expanding the scope of the social media i am currently employing so as to broaden the discussion base, to raise awareness in other medias and to exploit certain characteristics of other social medias other than, blogs, twitter and facebook. These media will not necessarily be my own.

Tomorrow is another day and let's see what it brings...........

IF's Second Response: Am i Surprised?

So i just received a rather lengthly response from IF regarding the claim. I was happy to receive the response but disappointed that IF's first objective seems to get me off their social media by directing me down other channels i have alread tried and failed with. I want to settle this very publically and in my channels as the customer.

Remember one of the major goals of  this experiment is to see if we can use social media to overturn an insurance claim decision by a major insurer in Finland.

Well unfortunately i think if missed their opportunity to demonstrate excellent customer service see the previous blog post. Obviously they did not read that post ;-) However it seems at least to me that they seem to at least accepting some responsibility for the error. But is that enough for me, hell no. Currently i am not their customer as i left as a result of this. With this kind of response allthough clearly very nicely written it is not at all enough to placate me.

I will once again wait for their response and based upon this may have to up the anti. It may very well be that despite all of my best efforts that IF will not agree to pay this through "Nice" communication.

In any case i have added my comments already to the blog. I find it very hard to accept that IF accept responsibility for their customer service error but are still refusing to settle the claim. What do you think? Comment directly on http://www.facebook.com/ifvahinkovakuutusyhtio If's own facebook group please.

Upping the Anti: Trying to Muster Support On Twitter

As part of my strategy to increase interest in my story and experiment I have been trying to follow people who are in Finland and may have an interested in following the story on the blog, twitter or facebook.

I have also started to retweet my blog posts more than once at different times as each tweet has been shown to result in a spike in Interest.

Above: Basic Blog Stats from http://myifinsurancestory.blogspot.com/

I think that this has been going quite well considering everything started from scratch a couple of days ago.

We have now over 500 visitors on the blog.
Have gained about 40 followers on the new twitter account.

However in alot of social media stories there is often talk of an explosion of growth of interest. Social media spread virally. This experiment to be succesful is going to be on a very short time line. We need to strike while the iron is hot.

As such i have done something that i really wasn't so happy about. I have direct messaged people in Twitter who i think are better able to enable a viral explosion of interest in this story against IF insurance. I have left these under the twitter account at the risk of annoying my followers and others in twitter. In retrospect i should have thought a little more about the content of the message particularly but there you are. I am flying by the seat of my pants on this experiment and making it up as i go :-)

Below is the quick overview of some of the people i feel can help. These are generally classic media in Finland TV and Newspapers and people who tweet about social media who have a very high number of followers. If just one of these works then it was worth it. Sorry for those i may have annoyed!!

Again we wait and see what happens......

What is the value of a Facebook group?

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At this point in the blog I thought that I would start to evaluate the performance of some of the channels I am trying to utilise. In particular the Facebook groups that are in play here. First there is my Facebook group which i created for the purpose of enabling debate by people who did not wish to comment on the blog or whom wished to get information via Facebook about updates to the blog experiment rather than Twitter. Social Media on the visitors terms, not tied to the blog, RSS, email or Twitter. So how has this performed?
My Own Facebook Group
	Well as you can see my Facebook group has not been that succesful. This does not mean i will give up on it yet :-) There are only 2 members including myself Only content comes from me with the exception of 1 comment
Well what can the reasoning behind this be? Well how have I promoted the group? Firstly I promoted the group through my own Facebook profile. I have also added the information on to the blog where the main content related to the experiment is being held. I have also started very recently (1 minute ago) to publish twits specifically related to the Facebook group.
IF’s Facebook Group IF’s own group as below has a little over 5000 members. Concidently it was about 4800 before my little endeavor started a couple of days ago. Of course I have no way to verify what affect my actions had because I cannot see the historical trend data in any case there has been a moderate increase in numbers there recently.   This has been in the absence of any visible actions by IF on their Facebook group at least. Of course other media may have had an effect. IF are currently utilising television advertising in Finland. So what content is on IF's Group Now?
	Marko wants to get a reward for being the 5000nth member. Then my post and social media experiment.
	Kai is someone complaining about the wait times for customer service Sini is telling her customer satisfaction story of being rescued off the motorway
Interestingly this is all on the first page of the Facebook group mixed in with the usual company communication and PR articles which I won’t bother mention here.
Well what do these examples teach me about Facebook groups? People only find groups when they are actively looking for them. Facebook is not good at making it easy to find groups you may be interested in. Users need to know they exist or at least think they may exist e.g. in the case of a large company’s group. Secondly these people need to have a reason to want to join the group. Joining a group is a way of showing support but is generally passive and if you are not really that interested can potentially bung up your own Facebook home page. This in itself may hold you back from joining. As such the content has to be very interesting to you and you will probably want to have a vested interest in participating or at least following. In the case of small to medium size companies an investigation would almost certainly show that a high proportion of people who are member of a Facebook group either work for or have worked for/with the company in question. They may also be other stakeholders such as shareholders who have a vested interest in following what is happenning with the organisation. Other members are ones who wish to communicate with the company and generally want or expect something. They join the group to win something or because they want to actually place negative information about the company onto the group wall. In my opinion these are the only real group members or the ones that have real value. What is the benefit of a Facebook group to an Organisation? If you are a company therefore you want to get as many members as possible (sorry obviously) but why? Well this depends on the industry but based upon IF’s wall. Simply the organization should be trying to  show how great their customer service is and be showcasing their success stories. The main benefit of which is brand enhancement, allowing customers to get service via Social Media (if they want). If you wish people to be more active then there needs to be content that your stakeholders are interested in. This depends upon your brand and your market but in the Financials and Insurance segment perhaps content that Coca Cola would add to their Facebook group is not the type of content that your group members want. Currently IF have a competition running on their Facebook group to sing their “marketing jingle” and win 100 euro gift coupon. It would be nice to know how successful this has been for IF. Not something I would usually associate with the insurance industry. What are the benefits for Individuals to start groups? Coincidently: In this experiment I have also found a Facebook group (in Finnish sorry). The groups purpose is to try and get people to boycott IF Insurance. This group also has only two members. This group however at this point is not open so you cannot comment without joining which somehow defeats the object of the group. I guess this occurred as a result of yet another facebook update but indicates also that an individuals interest waivers over time and of course this is expected. An individual trying to draw attention to his or her cause will have a limit where they stop believing they can make a difference and give up. This is of course true also in this experiement. Let's see where my own limit is? In the case of a company the company will always have an interest in preserving their brand and presence in social media (unless it is just a fad?) and hence over time the group gains members and content even if the content is only provided by the company itself. Often once you join a group it is quite a rare thing to leave those groups so the overall trend is upwards. That is unless something external (like this experiment) has an affect on individuals desire to participate in the given group. If you consider the boycott  IF group and the performance of my own independent group then it seems clear to me that if you want to cause pain or influence a company then the best place to do it is on their own social media and try and garner support there. It is easy for a company to ignore an independent counter productive kind of group when it is not visible to their stakeholders and the group itself needs to be found by people who are looking for it. Even if this kind of group is found it seems to me that in all likelihood the group has already been discontinued and is not actively managed or promoted. As such to make this experiment more successful and to help show that we as consumers have power anyone who wishes to show support or finds what I am doing interesting please like my comments/posts on IF’s own Facebook Group.

IF Insurance experiment: Sorry I Forgot IF's Opportunity

Sorry i totally forgot this from my previous post, IF have an opportunity here. I must be stupid!!

After i finished the previous post i realised perhaps i had been thinking about this the wrong way around. In short i switched back from the customer perspective to the corporate perspective.

Instead of thinking about what the risks were for IF in terms of not generating a positive outcome for me their consumer, i should have thought about what are their current opportunities?

IF have not yet responded to my original request on their Facebook group. This of course means that they have not yet decided how to respond or what to do.

What IF?

Straight out of the blocks they respond by saying

"Yes we would be happy to pay your claim, we are sorry"

What a turn around for me personally i am totally satisfied, the social media experiment is a total success and i get my money back :-)

What do IF get?:

1. IF settled a claim publically and silence and negativity and remove all risk.
2. IF get a brilliant customer service story to tell and re-use in their marketing for an absolute bargain price. You cannot buy that kind of exposure.
3. IF will reduce their resource consumption and costs on this issue. IF must have already spent 10 hours on this claim with a cost in Finland to IF of at least 500 euros. Coincidently the amount that this claim is worth approximately.

As companies always think about ROI, what is the ROI of continuing to resist paying out this claim?

Financially it will continue to cost them money as they will continue to have to deal with at least my traffic on their website, what about damage to reputation and brand? What is the risk? What is the optimum financial way for IF to deal with this now.

If I was a business manager at IF i would settle, reduce the risk, limit the costs and get a brilliant marketing story to tell but that is just me. And all for the bargain price of 500 euros.

Let's see what happens tomorrow :-)

Social Experiment Day 2: My Current thoughts and an updated strategy

When i started this blog it was, to be honest, mostly because of my total frustration at IF insurance.
I threw the blog and social media together in a few hours with alot of anger inside to be honest and not alot of real thought. I felt like all other channels had failed and that i had nothing else to lose. This is still true but now that i have this blog i have a real curiosity to see are we as consumers really empowered by social media? Is the hype all true in the respect that it is just hype?

I have always had an interest in social media and i must say it is usually from the other side of the fence so to speak. I have often thought about how a "company" can leverage social media for their own benefits but this time i am sitting opposite a large organisation. I am  just an individual. i have started my social media for this experiment from scratch, i have not leveraged my existing twitter account and followers. In this respect this strategy that i am applying could be carried out by anyone anywhere. You do not need to be a social media expert or have a million followers to apply pressure to an organisation to meet your own personal service expectations.  Can i as an individual really become empowered?
Although i have been active myself in social media for some time i have not previously been a contributor, i like to read and learn from others mostly by reading their blogs and applying what i learn from other peoples experiences. For the first time i am learning by doing and this in itself is exhillarating. I am now a contributor to the social media world :-)
As far as my evolving social media strategy is concerned i have given some more thought to this. At this point i do not want to place negative comments on IF's own social media. I want to give the organisation a chance to respond and react to the "risk" of not acting in a positive way. This in itself will give an indication of how seriously IF consider the possible implications in this scenario at this point in time.

Do IF continue as they did in the conventional claim channels or do they change their behaviour because they perceive a risk in not doing so because now their actions are public?

It seems to me that the key indicator in getting IF's previous decision not to pay the claim all comes down two main things.

• Reasoning my case in a public forum. I personally believe that i have a pretty good case regardless of social media. Is this enough by itself? It wasn't in the conventional channels.
• Levels of perceived risk for IF. By using social media this is the main variable that i can affect.

How have I increased IF's risk this far?

• What i have done in IF's own social media makes the problem apparent. This applies risk as it is visible to their stakeholders who care enough to "like" their facebook pages or "follow" their IF twitter account.
• IF are able to remove this content which limits their risk if they want to but runs the risk of further infuriating me and escalating the situation.
• Risk increases as others contribute to IF's Facebook group in a negative or supportive way.
• What i have done here: My own social media. I am documenting the process in a social media that IF cannot control. Even if they remove content from their own social media it still exists.
• Having thought about this, the level of risk increases to IF with the popularity of this blog, my new facebook group and the new twitter account.

With these points in mind what can I do to increase IF's level of risk?

Increase popularity of my own social media content.

I really wanted to start from scratch with this to see if i can nurture organic growth across the social media community. I do not want to spam people with direct messages because i do not want to irritate people. I want support i gain to be totally by voluntary means. As such i am not direct messaging people but i of course want to gain support of people who may have in interest in following or supporting this story. As such i have decided to use Twitter as my main channel to gain support.

My strategy that i impemented just a short while ago is simply to search out people who may have an interest in following this story or may be able to support my cause. Using Twitter i started by looking for people who were interested in CRM, Social Media, Marketing, Organisational communication, the insurance industry and conventional media such as news papers or television. I tried to find people who were in Finland in particular as i felt that this would increase the risk to IF as in this case i am hoping to Influence IF Finland.

I hope that by following these people (some of you readers are hopefully some of  these people) then twitter users in particular will start to take an interest in this story. On this blog there is information about IF's own social media and my own. Visitors can choose for themselves how or if they want to support this and on whichever channel they like.

Improvements to my own social media channels.

You will all be pleased to know that i recognise the need to have content that people are interested in hence i am trying to be a better blogger and writer :-)

I have added now new buttons to the blog which stream my Twitter feed in the left column. I think there are some cross scripting issues with IE as i seem to sometimes get a warning but I am not technical enough to solve these. I also added a button so people can follow the blog on my Twitter directly and also RSS.

Finally, I have also added links directly to the Facebook group that i created. I should also probably increase visibility to IF's own facebook group as this is where real pressure could be applied. I will get onto that later. People can now also like the blog in Facebook. (Now done)

I hope that by adding these features the growth of the popularity of this story/experiment will spread through channels that i do not control. This is where the real power of social media lies! I think this will also make or break the experiment.
Epilogue
IF the social media community of people who have a vested interest in social media, engagement, CRM and SCRM don't support this then i guess that no-one will and this in itself will mean something.

Let's see what happens, i seem to be getting more excited about this that i have almost forgotten about the claim itself........ almost.

So End of Day 1 of the Experiment

So i am pleased to see that actually in my absence from my computer during the day actions that i put in motion have generated some response.

I have new followers on the purpose created IF Social Experiment Twitter account. See the links on the blog which i have added on the right and i promise to add some more graphically pleasing links later ;-)

I have had the blog shared and twitted by others and very nicely i have also had a third party google + mention thanks @jukkan for that one. See Google + mention.

I have also pleasantly had a reply from IF via their own social media Facebook page where i also pasted a link to this blog. See related links on this blog.

"Hi Daniel! Thank you for your feedback. We'll check this case with If's claims handling specialists and we'll get back to you at the beginning of next week. Thank you for your patience!"

I must say i was very pleasantly surprised to get a reply on Saturday i did not expect that in Finland!!

So that is basically the news part over with. Generally i am quite happy with the progress. There has been some response from the social media community and also some from IF themselves. I am refusing to start to believe that anything positive will come from this in terms of overturning IF's decision. Mostly as i am not sure that i want to build up my hopes.

I want to believe in the power of social media but i am not sold yet. Perhaps if we had a 100 000 followers and the traditional media services started to pay attention then there would be real attention.

Is it enough just to post directly to a company's public social profile for all to see when you are just one voice or a few and when IF themselves only have 5000 odd members on their page of which perhaps 1% will be active and of those most will work for the company? Do they really care about the content that appears there?

When you consider that in Finland IF must have easily 200 000 customers (just guessing here). Are they prepared to tollerate bad publicity on their own pages? Will they just delete content that i post when they get tired of it? In which case my own social media is the channel that will preserve the conversation. If IF decide to remove my content from their pages then from time to time this story may continue to appear on their Facebook page as a continued pest to them (or is that just cruel and mean?)

In all honesty when they publish their response, and i hope that they do it publically, then i will be very surprised to see any change. I can say that the response i would normally expect would be that IF would stick to their current line and justification for none payment.

"Their Elisa agent did not promise to pay" But now i am using the magical social network so let's see.

I must note that it is surprisingly very clear to anyone who reads IF's terms and conditions (only availble in Finnish BTW) that

IF do not pay when a company goes bankrupt so in my mind a trained monkey should have been able to clearly say "sorry IF do not cover these costs when a company goes bankrupt".

If this message cannot be clearly communicated so that it is not misunderstood then should we as customers be responsible. Especially when we as consumers make decisions and act based upon what has been communicated. Let's see what IF think. To be continued...........