How Twitter Chats Can Build Topical Understanding and Community #GenerationSilos

In 2009, when I got the idea that online customer service via Twitter would be the future (and an idea for a book), I wanted community input. I found a like minded individual, Jeffrey Kingman, to join me in a #custserv (customer service) chat.

The #custserv chat was a success and has been running on Tuesday nights at 9pm ET for over five years. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of participants have joined in the chat. Each sharing opinions that have helped form the practices in customer service today.

When I postulated another idea, I was inspired by the large amount of social media engagement surrounding the generations. It seems that Millennials, Baby Boomers and GenX-ers all have their own hashtags; I was culpable too, as I had written a chapter about marketing to the generations in my customer service book.

But what bothered me about the current conversation was that the hashtags and the tweets generally served to promote differences, versus the commonalities, of those of us making our way in the 21st century.

Last November, I participated in the launch of IBM Verse with 31 other social business influencers. (IBM Verse is a powerful new email and collaboration tool guided by analytics). During that event, we brainstormed the future of work and the role that different generations played, that conversation inspired this chat.

#GenerationSilos was born

I was lucky enough to team up with @IBMSocialBiz for the #GenerationSilos chat and with Jason Eng as co-host. With Jason as my wingman, I was assured the chat would be balanced and would cover varying points of view.

The chat was scheduled for Wednesday, March 18. I fully forgot that the entire social media world would be at SXSW and that the day prior was St. Patrick's Day. We had a lot of promoting to do. Launching a new hashtag means a lot of work and we didn't have much time. Twitter promotion began on the 15th, the Sunday prior, and a framing post went on my blog on Monday the 16th. The theme was "Are we creating silos between generations? Are millennials the future of work? Tune in to find out!"

When you plan an online chat, be sure you have a list of questions that cover the topic, ten are good for a one-hour chat. Planned questions enable the moderators to keep participants on topic. Without questions, a crowd will often splinter into individual sub-discussions.  We prepared questions that opened discussion on the topic, the trend to siloing the generations.

The chat was held on CrowdChat, a platform that enhances the conversation, allowing comments to share on Twitter, automatically with the #GenerationSilos hashtag. Comments longer than 140 characters are posted truncated on Twitter with a link back to the chat platform. It is very efficient.

Five minutes prior to the chat, I watched the chat page and there was three of us in the room, Jason, IBMSocialBiz and me. I wondered if anyone would even show up. By 6pm PT a crowd began to fill in. We welcomed the community and the questions began.

By 6:37 pm, the chat was trending worldwide on Twitter and the conversation was interactive and eye opening. The two top questions in the chat were

• Millennials say they have challenged the status quo. Does this differ from the mantra "Don't trust anyone over 30"?
• What are the biggest myths you hear about millennials?

You can visit the transcript and find the answers here on CrowdChat. We ended up with 3,227 views, a reach of 23.6M and a total of 484 posts.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by to share their ideas. It proved that Twitter chats can really be a place where ideas are exchanged and solutions can be found.

Know Your Customers Expectations: #Millennials

In my book, The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide: How to Connect with Customers to Sell More, I discuss the importance of reaching your customer where they are most confortable. Each generation has their own niche needs and wants and I go into depth on each of the Generational cohorts.

Millennials may also be known as the Gen Y preceded by Generation Next, this group is the largest consumer market since the Baby Boomers. They are the approximately 80 million individuals born between 1977 and 1995 to possibly the early 2000s who grew up with the Internet. Although generations generally span twenty years, some demographic definers suggest the actual dates are 1975 to 2000, while others suggest a time frame of 1985 to 2005.  Advertising Age, the influential magazine for advertising, marketing and media professionals coined the term “Gen Y” in 1993 targeting late X-ers born between 1974 and 1980-- so these are truly children of the advertising era. Having been raised in the 1990s, their parents worked extra hard to strike a balance between work and family after the workaholic atmosphere of the ’80s. 

Generation Y comprises the children of the Boomers, and is sometimes called “Echo Boomers” since their large numbers are due to the fact that the huge parental cohort chose to reproduce at this time. This generation has an estimated 80 million members and has finally eclipsed the last birth explosion of 78.2 million Baby Boomers.  

Members of Generation Y have been influenced by their parents to value education. They’ve worked several part-time jobs and already know what they want from their careers once they reach the marketplace. To Gen Y, technology is a fait accompli. They’re aware of every up-and-coming trend and are the first to embrace or reject it. The spontaneity of the Internet keeps them ahead of most businesses; for instance, they seem to know what their favorite stars are wearing almost before the designers and retailers do.  To this cohort, online customer service is crucial to their decision making as they have the experience to research one company over another; benefits such as expedited shipping and generous return policies rank high. They’re style-conscious, tech-savvy, and "prematurely affluent" due to their boomer parents’ prosperity. Millennials appreciate when entertainment is part of the message they receive from retailers.  Retro themes are very popular in this group -- even reflecting times as recent as the ‘80s.  

Online marketing expert Kelly Mooney, in a 2006 study, found that while Gen Y’s are “self-expressive, confident and optimistic, they are also assimilative, risk averse and rarely make a purchase decision without consulting their peer networks. Just like Boomers, they have strong opinions, but more so than Boomers, they feel compelled to share their opinions with their massive peer networks.”Authenticity and transparency in the way you do business is important to this group. Their interpretation of how things should be done gives them the innate talent to sniff out sleazy sales techniques. Give them community to share with their peers instead of marketing at them. 

According to Ken Gronback, author of The Age Curve: How to profit From the Coming Demographic Storm, “Gen Y is already consuming at 500% of the level of their Boomer parents age for age in adjusted dollars.” In other words, this generation may just become the largest spenders in history. 

However, the perception of entitlement issue rears its ugly head with this group. They are sometimes referred to as the ‘Trophy Generation’, which reflects a current trend in children’s competitive sports -- as well as in many other aspects of their lives -- where “no one loses” and everyone gets a trophy to promote the sense that they’ve all done well. Many in this cohort are the aforementioned “boomerang” generation; delaying the transition of passing into adulthood by living at home.   

Members of this generation tend to want lots of attention and have the need to feel “special.” If you approach this crowd with “what you can do for them” and offer a community with spontaneity, you’re got their attention.

Please also visit my website for more interesting tips and observations.

My SXSW Experience - Real Talk: The Online Customer Service Shift Panel

Friends had suggested I go to SXSW many times, but I never really saw the value. Then in mid 2012, I hear from +Kip Wetzel (whom I admire for his work in taking the reins of the @ComcastCares account in 2011). He told me he had a plan for a panel and when he was through with his convincing pitch, I knew this was a disruptive topic for the customer service industry. My book on the subject came out in 2011; this panel could be groundbreaking. It was time the philosophy of reaching the customer where they want to be reached become the norm.

Kip craftily assembled a group of folks with the backgrounds to handle the topic: 

• +Carla Saavedra Kochalski "Manager of Social Media & Digital Content for Samsung Mobile USA's Customer Care Team" - but in reality a very talented young woman who truly "gets' the customer and can apply balance to social media custiomer service. She's been a driving force in enterprise-level social media strategy since 2010.
• +Bianca Buckridee "Social Media Operations Manager @ChaseSupport" American Banker Magazine said: "She has a thousand-watt smail that never seems to sitch off and a sunny personality that has surely servived her well on the front lines of customer service." She grasped the value of customer social media comments as early as 2009, and has been on a mission to perfect the outreach ever since.
• +Brooks Thomas "Southwest Air: Emerging Media. A journalist who's defined "emerging media for his brand. He personalizes the airline's blog with words like, "I know how your morning went down. Your synchronized yawn-and-stretch routine happened as it always does. You almost tripped on a Tonka truck on your way to the bathroom. You groggily stumbled down..." Customers can related to a brand through his words.

Three incredibly intuitive and smart people. It was my job to keep the peace and help steer the conversation. I didn't have to do much steering. To a packed room of 500, we not only got our points across, but engaged the audience ... below is the Powerpoint, and a portion of the panel on video. I hope to see everyone next year and see how the #custserv philosophy has advanced.


Our Powerpoint - thanks to +Bianca Buckridee ...

SXSW Real Talk: The Online Customer Service Shift

Real Talk: The Online Customer Service Shift - SXSW Twitter

Our panel: Bianca Buckridee (JP Morgan Chase), Brooks E Thomas (Southwest Air), Carla Saavedra (Samsung Mobile US) and I at addressed 500 social media, brands and customer service enthusiasts.

The crowd responded with a ton of Tweets including comments, quotes and links that carried actionable insights. Before I post the deck online, I thought I'd share this valuable collection

SXSW Panel "Real Talk: The Online Customer Service Shift" Tweetstream from Marsha Collier

The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide: How to Connect with Your Customers to Sell More (Google Affiliate Ad)