January 8, 2013
REI Gets Personal On Twitter
Social media has become a place for consumers to vent. As evidenced in a discussion on this site last month, "Who Needs Call Centers When There’s Twitter?," many are learning that the fastest way to get a response to their complaints is to go public on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.
But social media isn’t just a public woodshed. Many individuals go online to connect with friends, family and even brands and companies they like. An article published on the Fast Company website last week discussed the author’s "wow experience" with REI following a tweeted question to the retailer: "What is the best gift suggestion you have this year?"
In under an hour, REI posted a personal video response to the tweet. The author admitted to being "flattered" that "someone actually took time to create a custom response for me."
REI, according to the article, created its social media team five years ago. Today, three people within the co-op are charged with connecting with the members. One element of that was the decision to create custom videos this past holiday season as part of REI’s #giftpicks program. To respond quickly, REI enlisted store associates known as Green Vests to offer personalized suggestions. It made a believer out of the Fast Company author. We wonder how many others were won over in a similar manner.
Discussion Questions
What wows you most about how REI is using social media? Can you point to other retailers that have impressed you with their ability to extend their connections with consumers via social media?
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Not only does REI take social media seriously, they deliver a “wow” response. If you shop REI, you know that their sales associates are passionate about the outdoors. Who better to respond to consumers than people who share their passions?
Customer loyalty is about real, human, emotional connections between customers and brands, which are best represented through their employees like the ‘Green Vest’ in the video. The response time for a bespoke video like this is equally impressive, too.
REI delivers a great, authentic customer experience in its stores and, smartly, it extends that experience via social media. This article made the rounds here at rDialogue yesterday, not coincidentally, as it’s a textbook example of social as another channel for customer engagement and ‘relevant dialogue’.
Unfortunately, most retail brands utterly fail at connecting with customers across channels, social included. One that doesn’t, at least via social and increasingly via email, is Brooks Brothers. They engage directly with customers via @brooksbrothers and are making real strides in delivering more relevance via email as well.
Hurray for REI! Most companies see social media as a way to monitor and respond to customer comments. The best companies do that, and they also push content to their community by creating videos on how best to use their products, answering frequently asked questions and more.
Two things can really impress me about how companies use social media:
This admirable effort by REI underscores a crucial insight by the custodians of the brand—REI best customers match up nicely with heavy twitter users. This may not be true for other retail brands, so don’t emulate this practice without a little prior self-examination.
Caveats aside, REI’s “personalized” video responses were no-doubt persuasive for the journalist and few others who experienced them. I’m more impressed with the way the retailer’s social media team has used a handful of typical customer tweets as prompts for these videos, which are really aimed at larger audiences—not at individuals.
REI’s twitter response method probably wouldn’t work on me very well, even though I’m a periodic customer. But as a 50-something, I’m not core to the REI culture. REI is wise to identify its target shoppers and cater to them in the way they like. If the shoppers tweet, then REI should tweet back.
What wows me about REI’s use of social media is that they interact with their customers in manner that is parallel to how the customer uses social media with friends and family. That makes the experience personalized a step more intimate than just customized.
Can’t wait to hear who else is out there with this approach. No other retailer comes to mind for me.
REI’s use of product-specific video content is a winner. Leveraging rich media content and blending it with the online product pages and social media should be a rewarding practice for retailers and customers.
REI is a lifestyle brand, but the nature of their product lines means frequency of store visits can be something of a challenge. The opportunity of well-crafted media and messaging via social media can be a big help to keep them top of the mind with customers.
Really impressive execution by REI and all the more so because they did it with a small, agile social media team of 3 people. REI does a great job with social in general. The outdoor category with its focus on activities and the ease of creating or finding compelling imagery of customers using products in stunning locations lends itself very well to social media engagement.
One of REI’s biggest competitors, Backcountry.com, also has a robust and engaging social media presence.
Best Buy was the early guy to the dedicated Twitter support party (Twelpforce) but I admire how REI takes a thoughtful approach to everything it tries, from new store formats to QR codes, and now, its Twitter outreach. REI’s business model and brand loyalty factor should make managing the effort a heckuva lot easier than it is for behemoths like Best Buy.
Check out a company called Needle. They moderate chat on the client site. The moderator is “brand right” and thus able to dialogue with customers in real-time. It is a smart, responsive business solution for social engagement—impressive. Check out Skullcandy or Under Armour. Not a Call Center—fan sourcing. I do not have a “dog in the hunt”—just impressed.
In the beginning, there was a shopper who visited a local store. The shopper finds an associate and asks: “what’s a popular gift for the holidays?” The associate, taking a special interest in the shopper, asks his coworkers for some ideas. She compiles a list and hands them to the shopper who happens to work at a local office complex. The shopper, liking the list, makes a photocopy and puts it on the bulletin board. The others see the list, make copies (going viral) and visit the store.
Later, a district manager visits the store. He sees a shopper using the photocopied list and asks about its origin. What happens next is all about culture.
Fast forward to now:
A shopper tweets: #Gift @REI “what’s popular?”
REI notices this as a common question, realizes that 140 characters won’t do (big insight!)
Makes some low-fi video’s to match the intimacy of UGC.
Management blesses the process.
Someone notices, social happens….
Wow. Wow to REI’s connecting all of the dots to make this work. And what might this be? Perhaps we can call it: Twitter Initiated FAQ Videos – Twit-FAQ-Vid’s.
So, what’s your Twit-FAQ-Vid’s strategy? 1. Do you know your common questions by your common shopping contexts? 2. Have you found folks in your organization (and customers) who have the talent and qualities that make the TFV-friendly? 3. Have you figured out how to spec/make/approve/distribute TFV’s quickly?
Fast forward to later:
A shopper tweets: #gift @REI do you have a TFV for Burning Man gifts, something other than glow sticks!
I don’t know about REI but I have been very impressed with @jasonsdeli. They always retweet me thanking me for coming in when I check in on Foursquare. Last week, I tweeted that I was headed for @Jasonsdeli and wanted to break out of my mold. Any suggestion? They tweeted back within minutes 2 suggestions and they surely looked at what I usually ordered because their suggestions were spot on. Their constant retweets of checking thank yous keep jasonsdeli front of mind and I now drop in about once every week.
Customized social media responses might best be used as video versions of Frequently Asked Questions. “Customized” would be an appropriate term because it would be responding to customer-asked questions. For REI, they could get started on this library of videos for mid-year use. And, let’s face it, the question REI responded to was pretty generic. Their response could have been created months in advance.
Social Media deserves attention only with full awareness of how limited the audience is and will be for some time to come. The vast majority of retail customers would prefer live phone attendants to a social media and/or e-mail communication. When one looks at the numbers of volume dollar spending consumers with social media communication capable hand held devices as a percent of total volume dollar spending consumers the numbers are small.
There are many big ticket retail stores that may find marketing benefits with use of social media but the average spending consumer still wants person to person issue settlement. Facebook and the competition are the new chat rooms while twitter and the likes are present day instant message services. Building a social media department may be a good idea if and only if there is sufficient return on this investment making real contributions to corporate profit. Including a formula for this measurement would have been a nice addition to this article.