We recently gave a talk at the Facilities Management and Service Management Expo<\/a>. The talk discussed the evolution of social networks and how companies can use them to improve their customer service and potentially make dramatic improvements to their systems and processes.<\/p>\n This post is based on the talk and covers the history of social networks from the original dial up networks of the 80s, through to the consumer social networks which really took off over the last decade, on to the present day where market places like Uber are getting all the coverage and then finally on to the latest innovation, market networks.<\/p>\n Once we’ve laid out the landscape, we’ll provide some pointers of how you can use social networks to grow your own business, based on our own experience of building the Okappy market network. How we generated traction and how we use networks to<\/p>\n Finally we’ll offer some insights we’ve picked up on our own journey about how to get started and how to monitor the effectiveness of what you’re doing.<\/p>\n So first, what is a social network?<\/p>\n You might think social networks are just about sharing videos of cats, but it\u2019s actually much bigger than that. Social networks have transformed the world.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div> Global digital snapshot. Source: We Are Social<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n There are now over 2.3 billion active social media users, a rise of 176 million in the last year (2015-2016) alone. <\/span><\/p>\n Speaking to electricians, plumbers, drainage contractors and the like, the general perception seems to be that social networks are a “nice to have”, something which is being used by the most progressive companies, but something which is not yet quite the right channel for the industry. <\/span><\/p>\n However, increasingly we are seeing people use social networks to find tradesmen. Individuals are demanding quicker and more transparent access to services and what people demand at home, they also expect from their work environments or public services.<\/span><\/p>\n So what do you need to know? How has social networking evolved and w<\/span>hat are the benefits to your company of using social media? <\/span><\/p>\n Social network timeline<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n <\/b><\/p>\n The big changes which we have witnessed over the last 30 or 40 years have been driven by software and communications technology which has allowed person-to-person meetings to happen in a virtual environment, wherever you are.<\/span><\/p>\n Bulletin boards were the first electronic social networks with tools such as Prestel gaining a small band of users in the 70s and 80s.<\/span><\/p>\n Then came the web and the first real growth of the internet.<\/span><\/p>\n The World Wide Web developed quickly and was soon followed by what\u2019s become known as <\/span>Web<\/b> 2.0<\/b>. This allowed people to easily edit websites and led, firstly, to people being able to create their own blogs and then to join forums and \u201csocial networks\u201d such as Friends Reunited (which finally closed in 2016), Myspace<\/a> (which is still around) and Facebook<\/a> (which is massive).<\/span><\/p>\n Development continued with variations on the above, Linkedin<\/a> for business, Ecademy and Twitter<\/a> for the status update were three such examples.<\/span><\/p>\n In the enterprise space, products such as Yammer<\/a> and Sharepoint<\/a> tried to bring social networking into the workplace. The aim was to improve communications internally and enable the sharing of knowledge. However, none of these networks have taken off to the same extent as the consumer networks, at least at this point in time.<\/span><\/p>\n But this is starting to change, Slack<\/a> has been growing massively, companies like Okappy<\/a> and Honeybook<\/a> have launched and Linkedin has just been bought by Microsoft, no doubt looking to embed its network and information more deeply into its products (as they did with Skype). Facebook is also trialling Facebook for Work<\/a>. So there’s certainly a lot going on.<\/span><\/p>\n Social network examples<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n There are many different social networks available. So for simplicity’s sake, I\u2019ve grouped them into three specific areas: s<\/span>ocial media, market places and market networks. <\/span><\/p>\n Social media is what what most people are familiar with when talking about social networks. Companies include Facebook with over 1.5 billion users around the world. Google+<\/a> with about 300 million users and Instagram with about 400 million users.<\/span><\/p>\n When talking about the number of users though, you have to take these figures with a pinch of salt. Often networks are used sporadically over time.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div> Social network engagement<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n In terms of engagement, the big winner is Facebook which reaches a much larger percent of the market whilst also seeing the most use as measured by the number of minutes spent online by their users.<\/span><\/p>\n An extension of social media is offered by more focused applications such as WhatsApp<\/a>, Vine<\/a> and Twitter. Whereas Facebook offers a full suite of services from photo sharing, events planning, messaging and a timeline. With Twitter for example, the main reason people use it is to post and see messages in your \u201ctimeline\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Instagram<\/a>, Pinterest<\/a>, Snapchat<\/a> are other examples. They all concentrate on one particular aspect of social media, i.e. messaging or photos, and do it really well. This follows a trend in software in general, moving away from one large complex application that tries to do everything to having much larger number of small, focused applications that do a one or two things really well and then connect with other applications (via APIs) to accomplish other tasks.<\/span><\/p>\n Social media does tend to be considered a more consumer focused technology, at least at the moment. However, an ever-increasing number of companies do use these channels well to promote their services and to form relationships with their customers.<\/span><\/p>\n Another type of network which is being talked about a lot at the moment is the electronic marketplace.<\/p>\n<\/div> Market place examples<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n These have actually been around a while, think of Ebay<\/a> and Ariba<\/a> which both saw massive growth over the last decade. However, market places have really started to gain momentum recently with the rise of companies like Uber, Airbnb and Tinder<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n They get a lot of press attention as they\u2019re often quite controversial and are often fighting existing regulation. A lot of these marketplace are cannibalising entrenched and often vociferous industries. Uber and AirBnB in particular are getting a lot of stick over the States.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019ll notice I put Tinder in the market places section. That was a bit tongue cheek, probably closer to social media but i think it serves to highlight the point that the different networks are not clearly defined, features do overlap,<\/span><\/p>\n The newest variant of social network is the market network and it’s expected to be the next big thing, see James Currier<\/a>‘s (Silicon Valley VC) post on TechCrunch<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div> Market network examples<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Market networks are similar to existing management systems from the likes of Oracle<\/a> or SAP<\/a> but tend to be much more focused, simpler and available anywhere via the internet. By combining cloud-based job management software<\/a> with the benefits of social media and market-places, market networks are expected to generate the next big area of growth.<\/span><\/p>\n Examples include <\/span>Honeybook<\/a>, which brings customers, event planners and venues together to make planning and running events easier. <\/span>Angel list, where investors can combine into syndicates and invest in startups. A<\/span>nd of course – us. Okappy<\/a>, a market network for the service sector.<\/span><\/p>\n The social networking space is large, diverse and rapidly changing. But if you’re a business, especially if you’re a small business like an electrical contractor<\/a>, plumber or drainage contractor. How do you use social networks to enhance your customer service? And where do you start?<\/p>\n Social networks for customer service<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Social media can be used to obtain customer feedback. And there\u2019s two main ways you can do this. 1) By monitoring what\u2019s already being said, and ideally joining in with the conversation or by 2) creating a way for customers to get in touch with you.<\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re a large organisation, particularly if you\u2019re a public sector organisation like a train operator, health service or council, there is likely to already be a lot of activity from the end consumer on platforms like Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\n There are lots of tools available for monitoring social media. Twitter, for example, allows you to search for your name or mentions. The use of hashtags is also a popular way of grouping tweets together. Often, and especially when customers have strong emotions to your service, twitter users will use a hashtag or quote your twitter handle. I<\/span>f they quote your twitter handle, then you will see this as a message in your timeline. Otherwise you can monitor for the use of particular hashtags or even just your company name.<\/span><\/p>\n The hashtag was popularised by Twitter but it is now being used more widely across many social networks as a way to group messages about certain subjects.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div> Rail-apps<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Other tools include Hootsuite<\/a> which lets you monitor multiple accounts. More specialised tools are also available, for example Rail-Apps. Rail-Apps is a small company based in Ipswich doin exciting things around social media monitoring to get an idea of how people feel about your service – good or bad. They allow train operators to capture questions and providing a route to answering them, either from an existing database of answers of by routing the message to a call-centre operative.<\/span><\/p>\n On one side of the coin is being able to monitor existing conversations about your company or service. The other side of the coin is actually putting in place systems or processes to improve what you\u2019re doing.<\/span><\/p>\n I mentioned how Rail-apps can identify queries and route them to the right person. In London, Enfield Council announced it has hired its first virtual employee, Amelia, in June 2016. Amelia will use artificial intelligence to learn how to respond to customers’ questions, thereby allowing the Enfield Council call-centre to concentrate on more complex queries.<\/span><\/p>\n But it doesn\u2019t have to be as complicated as that. Simply being active on social media, responding to queries and joining in the conversation can have a positive effect to how people feel about your company and can turn bad feeling into good.<\/span><\/p>\n And communicating on social media is becoming more and more important. According to a 2013 survey by J D Power, 67% of consumers have used a company\u2019s social media channel for customer services. The number of people using social media will have likely increased since then.<\/span><\/p>\n But beware, given the way people use social media, often short bursts of attention when they are bored, you need to respond to social media in a much more timely manner. Typically within about 60 minutes at most, so the days of 9-5 customer service are long gone.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div> Waterstones tweet<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div> Waterstones tweet reply<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n There are many examples of great customer service delivered via social media. The above tweet received over 16,000 retweets and 12,000 likes when David Willis tweeted that he had gotten stuck in the Trafalgar Square store of Waterstones<\/a> bookshop. Luckily Waterstone\u2019s was monitoring their twitter feed. Not only did they free him, they also responded with their own tweet 80 minutes later. Think what could have happened if he was locked in all night! He must have been reading an interesting book!<\/span><\/p>\n\n
What is a social network?<\/b><\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/media4.giphy.com\/media\/uWmYB9cbZpwdO\/200.gif\")
<\/h3>\n
How has the social network landscape evolved?<\/h3>\n<\/div>
What networks are available<\/b><\/h3>\n<\/div>
Social media<\/h3>\n
Market places<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Market networks<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Using social networks to enhance customer service<\/b><\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"Global](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/Digi_snapshot.png\")
![\"Social](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/Group-2.png\")
![\"Social](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/SME_Talk_slide_8.png\")
![\"Social](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/okappy-login-page-1.png\")
![\"Market](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/SME_Talk_slide_11.png\")
![\"Market](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/SME_Talk_slide_12.png\")
![\"Social](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/Screen-Shot-2016-06-17-at-13.58.07.png\")
![\"Rail-apps\"](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAMoAAAAJGQ5ZTNkOWUwLTJmMzQtNGI1Ny04NDQ3LWJmY2NjNzkzZmYyMQ.png\")
![\"Waterstones](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/waterstones-tweet-1.png\")
![\"Waterstones](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/waterstones-tweet-reply.png\")
![\"Online](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/unnamed.png\")
![\"Plugged](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/PluggedInSlide.png\")
![\"tired,](\"https:\/\/okappyimages.okappy.com\/tired-exhausted-woman-with-paperwork-357x238.png\")
<\/p>\n