by Elizabeth Hines | May 21, 2018 | Blog, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
Millennial talent seeks employment opportunities with companies that promote transparency, technology, excellence, and social change.
We write often about the supply chain talent gap and how supply chain companies should be proactively recruiting millennials to join their companies. So a recent Harvard Business Review article, which talks about how companies that “young people find dull” (like electrical distributors and manufacturers) can make their businesses seem “cool,” seemed particularly relevant.
While we adamantly disagree that the supply chain isn’t cool, we do think it’s important that logistics and supply chain companies think strategically about recruiting millennial talent.
Millennial talent and the vision thing
According to a new study by strategy firm Department26, “Transparency is the millennial standard operating procedure in the workplace.” Honesty and security are top of mind for this generation that came of age just as the country plunged into The Great Recession.
Beer kegs and ping pong are nice, but millennials are more impressed with leadership that sets goals and delivers on them. They want to know how their role contributes to the organization’s success, and they want to know the effort they’re putting into a job is worth it.
“Setting them up for success means regular check-ins, both positive and constructive feedback as a rule, and structured mentorship,” write the authors of the Department26 study.
People say millennial talent doesn’t work for money, and it’s true that they’re not motivated by salary alone. Younger employees want meaningful work that enhances their personal growth.
They also want flexible work rules that show an employer respects and trusts them. Sharing details of your strategic plan or examples of how your HR policies reward personal initiative can help millennial talent see your “boring” business in a new way.
“The thought of not being granted flexibility in exchange for hitting performance metrics is absurd to millennials, and it’s a concept that’s diametrically opposed to the freedom they crave,” the study concludes.
Talk tech
Logistics or trucking can sound dull to the iPhone generation — until you paint a picture of forward momentum and innovation that might surprise them.
Automation, robotics, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, drones and the Internet of Things (IoT) are reshaping the industry. Companies like Amazon, Pfizer and Wal-Mart are experimenting with new technologies to reduce costs, boost productivity, and improve handling performance.
“Wearable technology could soon become a standard must-have in the logistics industry,” according to a recent story in The Business Journals. “As these technologies continue to carve out their role in the global logistics industry, we’re likely to see previously unimagined levels of optimization — from manufacturing to warehousing to delivery.”
Find ways to change hearts and minds by exposing young people to the realities of today’s supply chain. If they think it’s boring, it’s because they really don’t know what it is.
Be the best damn supply chain company anywhere
People want to work for “the best” — the most innovative, the most profitable, or the most admired brand — in every industry. Workers are proud to say they work for a company recognized as being the best at what it does because it says they’re the best, too.
Even millennial talent that has never thought about a career in logistics might reconsider if they’re being recruited by an industry leader.
Celebrate excellence at your company. Promote the awards you’ve won. Share customer testimonials, positive media coverage, and community recognition with prospective recruits.
It also helps to do well by doing good. This is a generation that trusts business, not government, to create positive social change. “Millennials are hungry for a work culture that inspires them. At a macro level, companies should communicate clear plans that reflect their core values,” says Department26.
HBR author Bill Taylor summarizes these sentiments well: “What [millennials] value is the chance to join companies that make a difference and where the work brings out the best in them.”
How is your company recruiting millennial talent?
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by Elizabeth Hines | May 2, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Customer Service, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Supply Chain
A new study shows that businesses that reply to customer reviews receive better ratings overall than those that do not respond.
I’ve written before about the rising popularity of B2B user review sites and how supply chain and logistics businesses can use them to increase organic traffic and lead-to-sale conversion rates. B2B buyers are increasingly considering user reviews when making purchasing decisions. That’s great for business — when the reviews are good.
But what if you get bad reviews?
A brand new study published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) shows that businesses that reply to customer reviews get better ratings overall. This means that bad reviews don’t necessarily spell disaster — but they do mean that you should incorporate a response plan into your overall marketing strategy.
Replying to reviews is an important part of online reputation management — which is especially crucial in the B2B space, where companies live and die by their reputation. So how does responding to reviews improve your online reputation?
A study in why to reply to customer reviews
To examine this question, Professors Davide Proserpio and Giorgos Zervas looked at tens of thousands of hotel reviews and responses from TripAdvisor. What they found was that “when hotels start responding, they receive 12% more reviews and their ratings increase, on average, by 0.12 stars.”
While 0.12 may not seem like a lot, in the scale of TripAdvisor’s 5 star system, where ratings are rounded to the nearest half star, it has a significant impact on customers’ perceptions.
Proserpio and Zervas found that “approximately one-third of the hotels we studied increased their rounded ratings by half a star or more within six months of their first management response.”
Improved ratings are related to management response
So why is it that the hotels started to get more and better reviews when management started responding?
The researchers examined every facet of the data to rule out other factors that would undermine causality, and found that in fact “improved ratings can be directly linked to management responses,” rather than improvements made to facilities or services.
To explain it, the researchers make the analogy of eating at your favorite restaurant and your meal arrives late. You complain to your dinner companions, but when the manager checks in seconds later and asks how everything is, “for a moment, you consider complaining, but instead choose to avoid confrontation and focus on enjoying the rest of your meal.”
Essentially, by humanizing your presence on review sites, you discourage potentially awkward online interactions.
The researchers conclude, “While negative reviews are unavoidable, our work shows that managers can actively participate in shaping their firms’ online reputations. By monitoring and responding to reviews, a manager can make sure that when negative reviews come in — as they inevitably will — they can respond constructively and maybe even raise their firm’s rating along the way.”
Do you always reply to customer reviews on user review sites?
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by Elizabeth Hines | Apr 24, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Customer Service, Logistics, Marketing, Strategy, Supply Chain
While automation technology can streamline many processes and functions, customer-service automation can sometimes backfire and lose you business.
We’ve talked a lot recently about implementing automation technology into your sales and marketing operations. It can be a great tool for saving time and money while increasing your communication and customization with prospects and leads.
But a recent Harvard Business Review article by Ryan W. Buell, Professor at Harvard Business School, reminds us that the benefits of automation “aren’t universally rosy,” particularly when it comes to customer service. Here’s why customer-service automation isn’t always the best answer.
Your brand is at stake
People like technology when it works. But they can be unforgiving when it doesn’t. Customer service is the part of your business that is most likely to cause lasting damage to your reputation when automation fails.
Any point of contact between your company and your customers is part of customer service. Outbound emails, chatbots, automatic order confirmations, and interactive voice response (call trees) are all part of the customer experience. If any one of them disappoints, you’ve given customers a reason to think twice before doing business with you again.
Solving problems is more important than saving time
People want technology to make life easier and ordinary tasks faster. That’s why digital boarding passes, on-demand ride services like Uber and Lyft, and electronic payment systems like Venmo are “good” technology. With simple interfaces and a specific purpose, they make it easier to accomplish something that would take longer to do without them. People perceive companies that offer these services as innovative, helpful, and even indispensable.
If, on the other hand, “an action would be seen as annoying when performed by a person, chances are it will be annoying when performed by technology,” according to Buell.
Call trees are the most egregious example of bad automation, especially when callers are forced to listen to product pitches or survey requests before they can talk to someone who can solve their problem. “The best uses of technology are likely to make customers and employees feel more, rather than less, valuable to your organization,” says Buell.
No one wants to talk to a machine
Humans are emotional and social beings. Buell suggests “an instantaneous connection to a gracious and well-informed human should be a short stroll, click, or tap away.”
Machines are information deliverers, not problem solvers. They can’t deal with ambiguity or non-conforming situations. As they get smarter and more connected, they can fool you into believing they’re thinking when, really, they’re just processing inputs and responding based on rules. That’s not the same as hearing, caring and reacting with empathy. And that’s why great customer service should always include easy access to a human being.
When electronic service isn’t responsive, it can make your customers’ problems worse, not better. Tasks that require creativity or are unique to individual circumstances don’t lend themselves to automation.
Don’t let technology take center stage
Technology should be invisible to as great an extent as possible. When servers and cashiers are slaves to tablets and POS systems, they’re not making eye contact and talking to customers. When callers are asked to repeat the same account information while navigating from one department to another, they get justifiably irritated, which puts your call center agents on the defensive before they’ve even said a word. Automated services that are difficult to use or don’t lead to the right outcomes are more annoying than satisfying.
Experts at TechTarget offer the following advice to keep service technology in the background where it belongs:
- Unify management of different customer service channels whenever possible to provide consistent service.
- Integrate customer data so callers don’t have to repeat the same information over and over.
- Integrate business processes across departments to create logical hand-offs and a path to solving customer problems.
- Make it easy to reach a human at any time!
- Make sure humans test and update automated services on a regular basis.
If you’re looking at customer-service automation as a way to improve productivity, don’t make the mistake of prioritizing cost savings over customer satisfaction. Never underestimate the value of human connections for both employees and customers.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Apr 2, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Logistics, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
If you’re looking to increase your brand awareness, and quickly, here are 10 tricks to accelerate your efforts.
If you took Psychology 101 in school (or even if you didn’t), you know that people are more likely to buy from brand names they’re familiar with than those they don’t know. This goes for purchasing things like medicine, and for procuring components or parts as part of the supply chain.
That’s why so many of our clients come to us looking to build brand awareness as one of their main goals. They want to customers to know about them — and sooner rather than later.
Particularly if your business is new, you’re trying to change an existing market perception, or you have to make your marketing dollars work fast to meet a boss’ deadline, you need to grow brand awareness quickly. We’ve got some ideas to accelerate your efforts.
10 tricks to grow brand awareness quickly
1) Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories is an on-trend platform that delivers targeted content to B2B buyers and builds brand awareness with potential customers. This feature consists of sequences of content that a user posts over a 24-hour period. Besides photos, Stories can include video and Boomerangs, seconds-long motion clips that play forwards and backwards.
2) Partner with other brands
Creating a promotional partnership with a brand that is ancillary to your role in the supply chain can be a huge boost to your brand awareness, if you choose wisely in your partnership. You benefit from its image and reputation and build collegiality.
3) Start content partnerships
Again, this is all about leveraging other people’s audiences to spread the word about your brand. Reach out to the blogs or media sites your target buyers frequent to see if you can author a post for them. Invite them to guest author on your blog. Basically, create two-way content partnerships where you will ensure that your brand’s name will come across the screens of target buyers.
4) Make sharing easy
This is a great way to let your successes go to work for you. Make it easy for your audience and followers to share your content with their networks. Give them sharing options for email, social media — heck, put share links on anything and everything. Social media is a powerful tool in building your brand. Don’t underuse it.
5) Hold social media contests
Everybody loves to win a contest. Use your social media platforms to create contests in which followers submit a photo or video, and let other users vote for their favorites. Contestants will share the link with their networks, and your brand awareness grows exponentially.
6) Try paid social advertising
Facebook and Twitter ads are relatively cheap, and both platforms do a great job of making sure your content gets to your target audience. You can set metrics and customize your preferences for a targeted audience in a variety of ways. It’s one of the most effective ways to grow brand awareness quickly with a very particular audience, though you have to pay to play.
7) Infographics
These are eye-catching and colorful ways to display interesting data and statistics, and are often overlooked for the content powerhouses they are. They’re prime candidates to be shared far and wide on social media.
8) Personality
Having a memorable personality for your brand isn’t just for B2C companies. While you don’t need to hire the Old Spice Guy, letting your content have a voice and perspective is important. Buyers want to know they’re dealing with a human being.
9) Podcasts
Starting your own industry podcast, perhaps interviewing your own executives and other industry experts, is a great way to build your brand and simultaneously develop relationships with your supply chain peers.
10) Become a resource
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Your most important asset is your knowledge and expertise, not your products and services. Content marketing is all about being a trusted resource for your audience. Ditch the blatant sales pitch in your content and think about how you can help your target buyers instead.
How do you grow brand awareness quickly?
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by Elizabeth Hines | Mar 27, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Current Events, Marketing, Social Media
Also in social media news March 2018: Snapchat allows branded content ads; Facebook is testing Messenger Broadcasts; and Twitter tests prioritizing news tweets.
With the increasing popularity of automation tools and chatbot technology, social media platforms are working to regulate how brands are reaching their target audiences. Trying to ensure that users aren’t being inundated with spam posts or fake news, Twitter, Facebook and many others are coming out with stricter rules and regulations. This could mean extra work for smaller brands trying to keep up with the latest changes to make sure their content is getting as much reach as possible.
But there are real benefits to using automation tools, especially when it comes to social media management. Facebook, for example, is testing a new Messenger Broadcast that would help smaller businesses, which don’t already utilize chatbots, blast messages to users that have started a conversation with their Pages. These small but helpful updates will allow companies to have a greater reach without extra work for their marketers.
Here’s your social media news for March 2018.
Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal furthers distrust
Facebook issued yet another apology to its users after news broke that a quiz app developed by a Cambridge University researcher leaked personal data from about 50 million people in 2014. Political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which was affiliated with President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, allegedly used the data to create psychological profiles to influence voters. Users responded with a #deleteFacebook campaign, in which those angered by Facebook’s mishandling of the data are encouraging widespread removal of all Facebook-associated apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp. Fronetics is staying on top of this situation and will continue to provide social media recommendations in light of such reports.
Facebook ends Explore Feed
Adam Mosseri, head of Facebook News Feed, announced plans to discontinue the Explore Feed on the website in early March. Facebook introduced Explore Feed in October as, essentially, a second News Feed that acted as a dedicated place for Pages. User feedback showed that “Explore isn’t an effective way for people to discover new content on Facebook,” and actually made it harder for users in test areas to access important information.
Twitter cracks down on automation and bot usage
Twitter released a new set of rules and regulations that prohibits developers from using Twitter automation and bot programs to simultaneously post identical content from multiple accounts. It also bans users from performing actions — such as likes, retweets, or scheduling tweets — from multiple accounts. “One of the most common spam violations we see is the use of multiple accounts and the Twitter developer platform to attempt to artificially amplify or inflate the prominence of certain Tweets,” writes Yoel Roth on Twitter’s blog.
YouTube adds new live-streaming tools and features
YouTube introduced a new chat replay feature that unfolds exactly as it did when the video was streaming live. Users can now watch videos that originally aired live and follow the conversations that took place alongside of the video, even after the live stream is over. This new feature supports YouTube’s mission to add “ways to watch live videos and interact with your community in real time.”
Facebook tests messenger broadcasts
Facebook is testing a new messaging tool directed at small businesses that haven’t jumped on the chatbot bandwagon. TechCrunch reports that Messenger Broadcasts allow companies to blast a message to anyone who has already started a conversation with them in Messenger. The new tool is currently being tested among a small percentage of Pages in the U.S., Mexico, and Thailand. Facebook hopes to turn the messaging tool into a paid product for small businesses and limit the number of messages that can be broadcast to cut down on spam.
Twitter test makes news the first thing users see in the timeline
Twitter recently confirmed a test of a news reel that would put news highlights at the top of users’ feeds. According to BuzzFeed, Twitter will select news items to appear in boxes at the top of the timeline. Twitter says the test is designed to “highlight the platform’s bent towards current happenings” while making news easier to find. This test comes in the aftermath of Facebook also trying to prioritize news events over Pages, while also fighting increasing fake news.
Snapchat allows branded content ads
Snapchat will now allow publishers to share branded content among the articles and videos they post. “Starting now Discover publishers are allowed to distribute branded content within the Snap Ads that run in their Publisher Stories,” a Snapchat spokesman said in an emailed statement. Snapchat Discover generated more than $100 million in ad revenue for its media partners in 2017, and this latest update will hope to boost even more ad sales.
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