Here’s how Nokia describe the facility:

[Agora is] a Social Visualiser made up of six wide-screen LCD screens that brings together conversation, insight and consumer device activity about the Nokia brand in a real-time and easily digestible format.

The creation of Agora is the first time multiple listening systems have been brought together, implemented globally, and delivered in a visual format that makes content and data suitable for a wide range of diverse Nokia audiences. This allows Nokia to put social listening at the centre of its global business, with all of its workforce having access to this unique continuous insight so they can develop their brand and devices to fit in with the needs of its customers.

Have you seen anything similar in other mobile industry firms? I know many companies now have a “Situation Room” style social media monitoring centre where many of their outreach teams base themselves. I wonder how many companies are doing similar to Nokia and taking the product of these monitoring systems/centres and plotting it visually along the lines of Agora?

Dearest Twitter, the time has come for me to say goodbye to this account. After many years in the Orange PR team, I now have a new role within the company that focuses purely on social media and how best we can use it as a business….so no more tweeting PR/news from me I’m afraid :

This profile was set up to communicate news about Orange UK and that’s what it’ll continue to do… so from next week this account will become @OrangeUKnews.

For those who wish to stay in touch I’ll be tweeting from my new personal account @ConorMaples. Onwards and upwards folks, it’s been a blast. x

via TwitLonger — When you talk too much for Twitter.

I strongly recommend keeping tabs on what Conor’s up to via @conormaples.

Congratulations on the new role Conor and every success!

I’ve procrastinated enough. Now I need to actually do something about it. It’s time I owned an iPhone 4S instead of playing with test devices.

I have accounts on all the UK networks: Everything Everywhere, Three, Vodafone and o2. All of them are either eligible for upgrade or I can add a second line. I’ve got the budget to blow on a new device. I am ready to contract.

So I thought I’d use this opportunity to do a test of the UK mobile operator social selling apparatus.

I tweeted the following message and prepared for the deluge of responses:

Operators, I’m about to buy an iPhone 4S today. The custom could be yours. Just tweet me!

I was expecting to get a qualifying tweet within 5 minutes from one of the operators — you know, something to check that I’m not joking and to determine that I do wish to be engaged with a view to fulfilling a transaction.

I was then expecting for the conversation to a direct message and for the operator to explain that “Sarah” (i.e. some named individual) would like to give me a call to discuss.

Do remember that if I had initiated a phone call with any of the above operator sales lines, I’d have been able to do the deal within about 5 minutes or less. Remember I’m also an existing customer of each network so there’s no crazy extensive credit check — indeed, most of the operators (Vodafone for example) would be able to put any upfront costs on to next month’s bill, making the transaction very simple. I also knew precisely what I wanted to buy.

I’m also aware that as a mobile choppy, known to most operator PR teams, the chances are I’d get a skewed result. I wondered if some eagle-eyed observers would have spotted by tweet and have called their social teams to make sure my tweet got actioned.

I followed up my first Tweet with this one:

Meanwhile I’m writing a post about my intent to buy an iPhone today with o2 — at their store, as I’m assuming no operators will reach out

(You can find that post here)

So here are the results in no particular order:

T-Mobile: I heard absolutely nothing from them
Orange: Absolutely nothing
Vodafone: Nothing! [Come on Vodafone! What happened?? I have *FOUR* lines eligible for upgrade with you!]
Three: There was some interaction with their social team
o2: They did reach out!

Deary me.

I really did expect an overwhelming deluge.

I thought operators were really hot on social CRM! I really did. Of course, I expect if I’d actually engaged an account like @vodafoneukdeals (their Twitter profile for their online shop) I might have got somewhere.

I assumed that all the operators would have some kind of special monitoring in place, ready to pluck out messages like mine and stick them through the sales funnel.

Theoretically all I needed was for one of the social media teams to get someone from the sales team to phone me. The @ThreeUK social media team did volunteer to arrange a call. That’s probably the best response I had. They used the phrase “can we arrange a call?” which I interpreted as, “Can we have a chap from India call you.”

I replied back saying it was ok — and that I’d call 333 myself. I probably will. I just am not in the mood for the highly functional Indian call centres at the moment. I didn’t really want to give my life story to them either. If, however, ThreeUK had said “Sarah” or “Paul” or “Jeff” was going to call me, then I’d have probably reacted differently. Just, you see, I’ll probably be doing an upgrade with my Three account — and it’ll be an early upgrade, so there’s usually a bit of cash involved. I don’t mind that. However the last time I tried to do this, the Indian chap I spoke with was horrified at the £200 I’d need to pay. “Yeah, that’s fine,” I said. He tried to convince me to wait 6 months so he wouldn’t have to charge me that. He was well meaning. Very well meaning. But all I wanted was the handset and I was happy to pay. So I didn’t want another re-run of this.

But at least there was some interaction from Three.

o2 were pretty good too. I had a good dialogue with them across the afternoon. They didn’t offer to sell me a device (i.e. just get it done by phone/tweet/email or whatever). Instead they supported the process with me — because I had already indicated I intended buying a lease iPhone. I think that’s totally acceptable.

You’d think though, wouldn’t you, that operators would by now have some kind of system in place that tracks what *I* say in the context of spending money on telecommunications stuff. It’s all very well being able to interact with consumers by social media, but how about actually selling them stuff?

On the basis of around £250/month spend, I’m worth £3,000 a year to Vodafone. If you assume Vodafone UK company does about £5 billion-ish a year, I contribute 0.00006% of their revenues.

Not that much, I suppose. But a few of those start to add up.

Is there no “quick, Ewan wants to buy something” register that pops up and alerts the sales people sitting on their hands at the call centre? Or is the market on the social media channels that small that it’s really not worth bothering about? That could certainly be the case.

I’m sure I saw a rather nifty system from Amdocs at this year’s InTouch event that helped track and manage this kind of social customer interaction. I must ask them about it.

Meanwhile, what’s your reaction?

Was I expecting just a little bit too much? I’m sure the operator sales teams reading this would have rather they’d made the sale than ignored it. Did I do it the wrong way? Or perhaps I should have been more blatant? Maybe I should have addressed each operator directly with my sales intent, rather than have them come back to me?

Anyway, do let me know what you think. My next post will discuss my o2 in shop experience.

I still don’t have an iPhone 4S.

In the post, I wondered what noted social media expert James Whatley made of it. James is Engagement Strategy Director for 1000heads. He was kind enough to send me an email with his viewpoint. If you’re supervising or managing your company’s social media strategy, take note.

Here’s James….

- – - – -

Ewan,

In short; you’re spot on.

This really isn’t of any benefit to you, the devoted twitter follower of old or really to anyone else who makes up the sub-20,000 follower list. This competition is quite meaningless. I mean, what about the folk who have been with them since the start?

MotoMobile (I would imagine) has probably been through some tough old times in the past… *cough* motorola razr *cough* …and pre-android at least, one would imagine that they were pretty close to the brink. Building up a following of 20k+ followers is no easy feat, admittedly. To have got this far they must have had at least some kind of engagement strategy to build this up, right?

This strategy, with the right PR behind it, may well raise the profile of the presence significantly (as those who care not for the brand or the conversation sign up and race to be that 20,000th follower) but the quality of engagement will surely dip.

A better idea would be to offer a free device – at random – to any one of their 20,000 followers once they’d hit the magic number.

This competition doesn’t incentivise me as much as it doesn’t you… and I don’t even follow them.

There is no engagement here. No long term plan. This is simple carrot and stick. But the carrot isn’t for you, for all your hard work and support – it’s for the next donkey that turns up (who hasn’t done a damn thing).

MotoMobile’s tweet is poorly worded, it may as well say – “To thank YOU for YOUR support, we’re going to give a Moto device to SOMEONE ELSE!”

I could go to town on the lack of personalisation, the poor use of the Twitter B/G, the lack of intent to make their presence work that little bit harder… but that’d be too easy.

At the time of writing there are eight of your followers who have called you on this MotoMobile (and that’s not including Ewan and his post) -

http://twitter.com/mariobutter/statuses/20157994452
http://twitter.com/kartracer3886/statuses/20157541502
http://twitter.com/mobilevation/statuses/20157137867
http://twitter.com/MuslimGirl11/statuses/20157137552
http://twitter.com/agousetis/statuses/20156944877
http://twitter.com/fonixmunkee/statuses/20156939441
http://twitter.com/keyboardxbully/statuses/20156887935
http://twitter.com/mosherjm/statuses/20156882005

– Will you respond?

A recommendation:

Fair enough, it is quite difficult to retract a competition once it’s out in the public domain. So I would advise MotoMobile should stick with it but, once complete – open a new competition/giveaway to the participants of your MotoPic Monday entrants. Creating content AND raising the profile of one your weekly features.

Or maybe even (as one of Ewan’s commenters suggested) give a new (and maybe even better) prize out for free to one of your followers at random. Do this live, using Qik. Not only demonstrating your honesty and transparency but also showing off one of the best apps available for your device.

That wouldn’t be too hard… would it?

- – - – -

Nice recommendation James and thanks for taking the time.

And it’s a good job they are.

For a long time, T-Mobile have been the proverbial arse-in-the-corner, ignoring the blogosphere because it’s, well, unknown.. and filled with.. er… the great unwashed…

For any organisation accustomed to broadcasting to customers and potential customers, the utter shock at being held accountable and having to — one way or another — respond to questions from the great unwashed, well, it’s understandable.

Most marketing and public relations folk in big companies such as T-Mobile are doing correct thing and reading a lot about it, attending conferences to get good case studies and constantly doing their best to put off the meeting with the Communications Strategy meeting with the Chief Executive. Most CEOs these days love the concept of communicating directly.

It scares the hell out of most public relations people who’re used to rules. And proper ways of doing things.

The key point with the blogosphere is that it’s populated by people. Real people who, in the case of T-Mobile UK particularly — are actual customers. Or wannabe customers. Or potentially interested.

And when you come across big lumbering giants like T-Mobile, of course, you know it’s going to take them fooking years to understand and get comfortable with the new medium.

There’s no excuse for it. There’s no need. They should be hot footing it right into the blogosphere hot tub rather than standing at the back wrapped in a towel shivering.

T-Mobile’s Marketing and PR chaps have dipped a toe. And that’s a good thing. But they’ve done it with a plausible deniability safety-net.

If Will or Anna screw up, the Marketing Director can hang them out to dry.

I’d like to see some bollocks on the line. Not for any particular reason other than I — and most of you reading — are actually interested and — if pushed — rather passionate about T-Mobile. I’d like to know what’s going on. I’d like to ask questions. I’d like to hear from their directors. I’d like to tell them how to take more cash off me.

So I say right-on to T-Mobile UK for taking tentative steps. Well done for hiring NixonMcInnes — one of the best agencies to handle this sort of thing — but I’d like to see more, soon.

If you’d like to follow T-Mobile UK on Twitter — you can — SHOCK HORROR. The username you want is TMobileSharing.

I’m rather impressed to see that Vodafone has taken the jump into the social media space properly, with the launch of a Facebook application that lets you send text messages and have the cost of doing so billed to your Vodafone account.

Stuart Dredge over at PocketPicks caught this and points out that it’s not just for Vodafone customers — anyone (I think, in the UK) can use it. You can buy credits from the system — the cheapest rate is 7p per text, giving you rather a good saving over the standard 12.5p rate most Vodafone customers pay out of bundle. Still quite steep. Particularly when you can send your friends a ‘free’ Facebook message.

But the utility of being able to send messages directly to someone’s handset still generally wins, doesn’t it?

It’s good to see an operator getting stuck in with what looks like a solidly built application. It worked first-time for me and I now have 25 credits to blow!

You can add the application by visiting this address: http://apps.facebook.com/connecttofriends.