This interview with Marianne is the ninth in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work performance.
RD> Are you a gamer?
MC> I haven't been a 'gamer' since I was a teenager. Back in the day, I enjoyed playing Mario Brothers.
RD> How do you learn?
MC> I'm definitely a visual learner.
RD> At the recent Customer Response Summit, you discussed how your company uses social media to manage customer experience. What led you to take on such an initiative?
MC> It's really Go Daddy's customers who led us into the social media space. A number of years ago, we took notice of many customers discussing Go Daddy and asking questions out in this public space. From years of experience providing the industry's best customer service, with 24/7 telephone and e-mail support, we've learned to make ourselves available in just about any and all of the communication platforms our customers might seek engagement.
RD> What were the unique challenges that social media channels presented that you and your team had to overcome?
MC> There are definitely challenges when communicating through social media. Expectations of real-time responses can be demanding from a resource perspective. To meet this challenge, we expanded our social media team to a "24/7" staff. We also cross train members in other areas where appropriate.
RD> Is Go Daddy focused only in B2B customers or personal websites (which is more consumer)? What % of your outreach are Small-Medium Enterprises v. Large enterprises?
MC> Go Daddy is focused on ALL of our 8.6 million global customers. Each and every one is important to Go Daddy as we want to provide them the tools and support to succeed online, quickly and affordably. A slight majority of Go Daddy customers are Small-Medium enterprises - but we have millions of personal users and large business customers as well.
RD> Do you use social media as a channel for selling (i.e. new customer acquisition) too? What kind of resistance do you see among B2B companies like yours in utilizing social selling?
MC> As the world's largest domain name registrar and top Web hosting provider, Go Daddy uses social media to interact with our customers, fans and followers on many levels. We discuss public relations events, brand initiatives, recruiting information as well as straight marketing promotions such as product discounts. For the most part, our fans and followers have been quite receptive to these types of promotions, which are geared toward them and offer a benefit. Go Daddy closely manages the frequency in which we communicate these types of messages out to our community - we are cognizant of customers' time and do our best each and every day to communicate only what they want to hear.
RD> I think employees, especially younger know how to use the tools faster than others but still do not know how to use the content to their advantage -- that requires critical thinking skills. How do you teach critical thinking skills now? Do you envision using games/simulations to teach employees what to do in this space?
MC> Go Daddy has an experienced, dedicated social media team. They are out there every day communicating with Go Daddy customers and potential customers. Our social media team members were selected because they have a strong knowledge of our company, our products and because they have excellent "people skills." Many of Go Daddy's social media employees have customer service experience from working directly within our highest escalation department, the Office of the President. Our external hires in the social media realm have spent considerable time training with the Office of the President team to build that knowledge.
As far as training our employees, Go Daddy uses a number of methods and is always looking to try out new techniques.
RD> How successful have you been in crowd-sourcing solutions?
MC> Yes, Go Daddy has had success in crowd sourcing. Through our ongoing engagement on social media platforms, we've built relationships over time, which is how crowd sourcing transpires. Go Daddy has a loyal community, which understands and appreciates our best-in-class 24/7-customer support, low prices and top-notch quality products - they love speaking about Go Daddy and we love to hear it!
RD> In your experience what are the key factors that are driving company adoption?
MC> There are a number of factors that help drive company adoption.
First, it is to acknowledge and address any and all service issues that arise. Until you step up and help the customer solve their issue, they simply will not be open to engage with you on any other level.
Second, bi-directional communication is so important - folks do not just want to be talked TO - they like to share and express their opinions as much as they like to hear what's going on around them.
Third, but certainly not least, when Go Daddy communicates with our community, it's around all sorts of topics - a charitable contribution, a business tip from our CEO and Founder Bob Parsons to help an entrepreneur succeed, an order-level discount, news about one of our famous Go Daddy Girls, and so on. In other words, Go Daddy stays open and is actively sharing company information on all sorts of levels.
RD> Thank you for your time Marianne. Good Luck with your strategies.
MC> You are welcome!
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