Well… I’m sorry I did.  In fact, I am sorry that I have involved myself with this company at all.  So dissatisfied, that I created a list on twitter for “Companies I Hate” and added Stream as the number one entry.  ***Edit: Stream Energy and I have come to a resolution for my particular concern. The resolution has been added later in this blog post.

Stream Energy's website - Jan. 2010 (click to see full-size)

Why?  Simple really – it all comes down to customer service.  But first, let’s look at their website again.  They claim, “With competitive rates and outstanding customer service, Stream Energy has quickly established itself as a leading power and gas utility company serving the needs of customers in Texas and Georgia.”

So they make a pretty bold claim here.  Not only will you get competitive rates, but you will get outstanding customer service.

First, the rates – they are in line with the others in my area.  Maybe a penny less per therm.  I have yet to get my bill, so I don’t know what surcharges are hidden in there and if in fact they will be less expensive.  The teaser rate is significantly less.  I’ll go along with the word “competitive” in this case.

Now, lets talk about customer service.  Or should I say dis-service.

I’m going to skip the whole PITA (pain in the ass) online application (which wastes a good 20 minutes [if you read everything] and  requires a follow up confirmation call) and skip right to the confirmation portion.  I was told I had a morning hook-up scheduled (hours between 8 AM and noon) and that I had to be on premises to pay a $25.00 connect fee.  Since my alternative residence is only 15 minutes away, I asked if they could call me en-route so that I could meet them.  I was told this was not possible.  OK, I can live with that so I made arrangements to not have appointments that morning so that I could sit in a house with no running water and no heat in order to wait for gas hook up.   Please note: The confirmation date was a good week and a half out and the premises in question is already equipped with a gas meter hook up.

Did they arrive on time?  If my watch was set for the Hawaiian Time Zone (UTC -10h), then yes.  A service tech did not arrive until 3:42 PM.  Yep, I waited almost twice as long as the window promised in a cold house, losing billable time.

Now I am hungry and have my afternoon appointments in jeopardy because the hook up has not occurred yet.  I call my clients and reschedule.  I call Stream to find out what the deal with my hook up is.   Did I call Stream Energy?  You bet I did. By the way – if you don’t know your account number, you will need to go through several menu choices to talk to a representative.

Here’s where I get mad.  I am now told that my hook up is an all day appointment.  I ask how long is a day – what are the working hours?  I am told it shows as all day.  Yes, you told me that.  When does the day end?  4 PM? 5PM? 7PM?  Worse, I felt as if I couldn’t ask my question because the CSR kept interrupting me before I finished asking my question.  How can you help me if you don’t listen to my question?  I am given the phone number for Atlanta Gas Light.  Great, another number to call because Stream can’t answer my question.  Inefficient and rude.

I call AGL.  They send a tech over who tells me that I didn’t need to be on premises and I don’t need to pay $25.00 on the spot.  Great – now Stream totally had me waiting there for no reason and I lost a complete day of billable time.   A whole day of billable time to save on 2 months of service.  Yeah – that’s a good deal!

***Resolution communication

So what to do?  Turn to social media.  They have FaceBook and Twitter plastered on their website.  Unfortunately, on FaceBook – its a FAN page.  At this point I am anything but a FAN.  So I tweet.  I decide I am going to Tweet at least once a day until I either receive a response from Stream OR get sick of bashing a company.

It took Stream Energy ONE WEEK to respond to me.  The initial contact did come from a Sr. Executive (name and position withheld without release permission).   I also recognize that every story has 3 sides:  both parties and the truth which lies somewhere in-between.   I’m also sure my view is still obscured by what I perceived to be lack of respect, rudeness, and a wasted day.  AND I appreciate them reaching out.  That act restores some credibility.

So after a few other e-mails, I receive a few phone calls (yes they were persistent since I did not return the calls at first) from a senior leader of their customer service team.   He informed me that he had personally looked into the matter and that they would be using this situation as a learning experience for their representatives.  Hopefully my experience will benefit other customers.  The key points for me as a learning experience are as follows:

1. Provide accurate appointment data such as time, presence required, and fees to the customer for hook-up day.
2. If Stream can’t provide #1, then provide flexibility to the customer such as a courtesy call before the tech arrives. If that’s another company’s responsibility – work it out.  Stream is who I buy gas from.
3. Don’t make me call a third party.  Stream is my contact – and should handle it.
4. Ensure Stream’s customer service representatives listen to the customer’s concerns or questions.  And ensure they don’t provide vague unhelpful information.

I wish that was the end of the story.  Unfortunately its not.  And the rest of the story becomes a great case study for what to do/not do in terms of using social media for business development.

About two hours after hanging up the phone with the Customer Service leader, the same Sr. Executive whom initiated contact sent a follow up e-mail.  He kindly suggested I consider deleting my tweets and any related posts.  I kindly declined.

Here are the lessons learned for utilizing Social Media as a business strategy.

1. If you are create a social media business presence, be prepared to respond via social media  For example:
   • Visitors to your FaceBook page may not want to be a “fan” or “like” everything about your company.  Provide contact information access to your company there OR allow people to post content.
   • If you have a Twitter account for your company, be prepared to respond to tweets and questions in a timely fashion.  If you are just squatting on the Twitter handle – disclose that.
2. Establish some sort of “brand reputation” or “monitoring” strategy.  This can be an expensive solution such as Radian 6 or a cheap roll your own solution with Google Alerts.  It’s not hard and it will allow you to catch issues before they become serious problems.
3. Treat every faux-pas as a learning opportunity.  In this case, Stream did that.  Unfortunately they dropped the ball when they requested it go away.  Embrace your mistakes.  Show the world your company cares and adapts to legitimate concerns of the customer.  This will only help your brand.

I welcome any posts from Stream Energy on this matter.  I also welcome any thoughts or comments regarding Stream Energy’s request to consider removing my tweets and posts.

How to participate in either conference

These aren’t your typical conferences.  They are conducted using a web conferencing tool.  Not that a web conferencing tool is earthshaking new.  The meat of the conference happens in the social media based communities.  For Social Media Tools Week, this is in the back-chat channel occurring on Twitter and Google Wave.  Feel free to use ChickenFox’s Conversation Dashboard.

For LearnTrends, this will happen in Twitter as well as the LearnTrends Ning community.  Be a casual observer, or an active participant.  The choice is up to you.

LearnTrends 2009

LearnTrends is an online conference created by Jay Cross and his peers.  This year will focus on Convergence in the Workplace.  From my experience, its a great place to hear new ideas from the pioneers of informal and social learning.  The conference sessions this year will run Tuesday Nov 17 through Thursday Nov 19.  All you need to do is register to attend.

All presenters are asked to save half their time for questions and discussion with you. LearnTrends is hosted on the Elluminate platform. Show up a few minutes early to download Elluminate’s Java start file. All sound will be Voice Over IP. No telephone links. If you want to speak, you need to have a headset to avoid audio feedback.  Link to online event.

The Twitter hashtag is #learntrends. Tweet away but please use Elluminate’s chat function for questions for presenters.

Social Media Tools Week 2009

A similar type of venue to LearnTrends.  Come hear some thought leaders in the social media space in a packed schedule.  Contribute your thoughts in the back-chat.  This conference runs all week.  Again, all you need to do is register.  Even though it has already started, its not too late!

Discuss the conference on several platforms:

Google Wave search the public timeline (with:public SMTW)

Twitter hashtag #SMTW

My Irish friends are keen on discussing the upcoming Ireland-France play off match.  Well, that and posting where they are all going for a pint via the map and voting gadgets while my day is just getting started.

My learning and development peers and I have been discussing how we believe Wave will be a revolutionary tool for distance learning because of its ability to provide a rich collaborative environment for breakout sessions.   So then I started wondering – how would this work on my mobile phone?

I haven’t had the opportunity to test it on my old Windows Mobile or Android phones yet, but I did fire it up on the iPhone.  It gives a warning screen that it’s “not a supported browser”, but you can bypass that and it’ll run.  It’s missing some of the features of the normal version of Wave, but works well.

Then I discovered App-It.  App-It is a web page at www.AppIt.us.  It’s quite simple in that it is a list of links to Google apps, like Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Latitude, voice, etc.  Just make Wave shortcut, by clicking the (+) button in your browser and “Add to Home Screen”.  This creates an icon on the desktop for convenient use.  Now I’m in Google heaven as I use these apps on daily basis for my business.

Are you a Wave user?  if so, what are your thoughts?  How have you used it so far?

New Media Atlanta logo

Friday September 25, 2009 will mark an inflection point for social media events in Atlanta.  The question is, in what direction are we trending.  Atlanta has several Social Media events already.  They range from small meetups to multi-day unconferences such as SoCon.  New Media Atlanta is the new kid on the block and brings with it lofty aspirations and polished marketing.

First, lets look at how the event was marketed.  This is important because there were a lot of people in attendance.  Many of them paid what they considered to be a reasonable sum of money to attend.

The New Media Atlanta conference is a high level, business dialog about how social media is changing marketing and messaging – and in fact, changing the nature of all communications.   We’ll talk about strategies to leverage its power to build your company, product, brand, service, etc.

Have you been curious about what social media can mean for your own business?

Are you interested in learning from a group of experts who have the experience to guide you along the way long-term?

Does a chance to meet some real-world social media leaders, authors and speakers appeal to you?

This conference is meant for you and other business owners who are engaging in social media but haven’t quite made the leap to exponential success.

Maybe those people (myself included) should have honed in on the words “high level” because this is what the morning was… High Level.  Unfortunately, the event hosts exacerbated the problem by starting late and kicking the event off with a good hour of “thank-our sponsors.”  Even though, the marketing was beautiful, the event well coordinated, and the facilities fabulous – serious credibility had been lost before the kickoff keynote speaker took the stage.  And it had already seeped into the conference backchannel conversations (on twitter and backnoise).

To make things worse, the opening keynote tried to adapt his presentation because of the sentiment trending in the backchannel.  He stated “the conference sucked so far.”  This was followed by two more presentations that were either retread presentations from another event or a glorified “look at me” show.   The backchannel toxicity escalates further.  Thank goodness it’s lunch time.

Lunch provided a welcome respite, needed food and drink (since both were banned from the auditorium), and the chance to speak with the closing keynote speaker – Chris Brogan.  Chris was kind enough to chat with everyone and sign copies of his book “Trust Agents.“  Unfortunately, it was not good enough to keep me at the conference – especially since it was being live streamed.  So I, and a whole bunch of other people, left the conference.

I’m not sorry.  I got to avoid the Friday afternoon Atlanta traffic.  I still got to watch the conference, although I was not there in person.  And I was still able to follow the backchannel – which was still toxic.   Content wise, the afternoon picked up.  The panel was good, and Chris Brogan did not disappoint.  Here’s why – he addressed the backchannel.  He made it part of his presentation, or a better term would be a conversation.   I am sorry that I did not go to the after party.  and skipping the Atlanta traffic was worth it.

I know many people were disappointed with the conference.  It’s a real shame because if the content issues are addressed, this could be a great event – especially since the people organizing it know how to market it and make it look good.  I don’t want to say the “Lipstick on a pig” line, but I do live in the South.  Do I feel like I got my money’s worth?  The answer would be “no.”  Admittedly, I left early.  However I blocked a day off from clients and I paid for the event – so there were some significant investments made.  Leaving allowed me to recoup about 40% of that.  Would I go again next year?  The answer is maybe.  It is contingent upon the content.  I will also be asking a lot more questions about the content before agreeing to go.

So in a nutshell, here are the salient points about the conference:

1. Don’t start late with a bunch of advertising
2. consider putting your keynote speaker first – especially if you have a high powered panel later.
3. If it is going to be “high level” content, don’t bill it as a business solution solver.
4. If you are going to bill it as business oriented, have more business representation present (from multiple industries)
5. Encourage your presenters to bring “fresh material”, I don’t want to see last years presentation – again.
6. Pay attention to the backchannel and adjust as needed
7. Kudos for putting the event together and executing on it.  Event planning and execution is hard work.
8. Bowling shirts are COOL.

Over the next few days, I’ll be post ing a few more blog posts related to the backchannel conversations.  This topic has many facets for exploration, and the one I want to discuss is its role in learning and development.

Were you at New Media Atlanta?  What were your thoughts? What’s your feedback?  What were your snarky backchannel comments?

That phrase has been swimming around in my head since.  It’s so true.  It is all transition, so what does happen next?

Here in America, we are in serious transition mode.  We have a relatively new government administration proposing enormous changes to the fabric of business and personal wealth and benefits.  We have a global economic crisis which has impacted employment.  Because of this, the workforce is even more inter-generational mixed than expected.  And those generations like to do things differently.

Social Media is an agent of change in this case.  It’s one that can be applied in many different aspects.  And while it will evolve over time, the principles behind it remain the same.  “Social” business has been around for a long time – it didn’t start with the advent of Facebook or Twitter. The only thing that has changed is the ubiquitousness or cost of entry to applying these business practices on a massive scale.   Let’s think about it for a minute… Twenty years ago, did you research an item before purchase?  Did you ask other people their opinions?  Of course you did.  You may have had to wait for that Consumer Reports article, or may have only had one or two people to ask about it.  Where now because things are so digital, you can find hundred of opinions and rating s on almost every single item for purchase.  When it comes to buying something (especially a service), we would rather work with people we know and trust.  Social media allows us to do that with the power of crowdsourcing.

Business is in transition.  The customer/client/participant is now in the driver’s seat.  The flexible companies/providers will be the ones to thrive in the new era.  All it takes is listening skills and a willingness to trust the customer.  It’s all transition, what happens next is up to them (and you if you listen).

image provided by Steve Gasser

Games are a great way to introduce and reinforce learning because they help drive home application of the topic.  Steve’s game is quick and simple.  I’d have to say it is one of the best exercises that I have seen in a long time.  I am jealous that I didn’t think of it first.  Steve is openly giving it to the community, for which I admire him even more.  I plan to use it and adapt it.  I hope you will too.  Thanks Steve!

Steve’s blog post and materials may be found here:

http://www.stevegasser.com/social-media-for-non-profits-the-game/

In the first post, “I want to be KISSED“, I performed a quick social media presence assessment.  The results of the assessment showed a few places where the existing social media strategy utilized by KISS, could be improved.  The second post, “Oshawa – KISSed, Not Missed!” explored the media backlash toward KISS for not including Oshawa, Canada on the North American Tour even though the city won the KISS fan-routing tour contest.  Oshawa is getting a concert and Gene Simmons was a little outraged at the media for spoiling a surprise.

Anyway, I received this e-mail from KISSonline about the pre-sale.  This e-mail had a different look to it from previous ones.  Hmm, need to go investigate further.  Sure enough – at least from a social media site perspective (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, iLike, and Twitter), the sights have a more cohesive appearance.  I’d like to think someone over at the KISS organization read my first post (since I did send a copy to them) and take action.  At least someone there realized they had a disconnect and addressed it.   Kudos to KISS.

PRLog (Press Release) – Sep 08, 2009 – Palo Alto, CA, September 8 – Palo Alto based Social Media Academy announces its Black Diamond global social media consultant network. Certified social media consultants from the US, Europe, Singapore and Australia are set to collaborate on a global scale to help small, medium and large businesses create social media programs that are specifically tailored to their social media ecosystems. The group engages based on unified methodologies from the Social Media Academy, including the Four-Quadrant Social Media Assessment model, the Strategy Hexagon for developing a robust social media plan, and five other standardized methodologies.

Axel Schultze, Founder, CEO Social Media Academy

Social Media Academy founder Axel Schultze said: “Business leaders have a hard time to select a social media consultant that is right for them. Too many self proclaimed social media experts only confuse customers. We conquer this problem by creating a worldwide standard for methodologies, strategy development and social media execution plans. The Black Diamond Network consists of a worldwide network of certified social media consultants with a very transparent and unified experience profile.”

“Mark Moore, from Atlanta, GA, one of the founding members said: “One of our big advantages is our globally standardized methodology approach. Any member can jump into any project and knows exactly how we all work. This provides a great project security for small and large customers”. Boughty Canton, another founding member, from Singapore commented: “Businesses begin to understand that social media is not just a marketing tool but a general business strategy. As Black Diamonds members, we help companies to think and execute strategically”. Wendy Soucie from Wisconsin said: “An important aspect of the Black Diamond Network is our ability to provide very cost efficient social media packages to small businesses. Even though we are connected in a global network – the individual Black Diamonds operate locally. Each Black Diamond brings to the engagement an understanding of a particular regional area or even a vertical market dynamic.” Rick Speciale from Sydney, Australia and Catherine Sherwood from Albuquerque, NM see another advantage of the Black Diam ond group in the collaboration of different subject matter experts. “We both focus on the financial services industry. Collaborating with other experts while maintaining a standardized operating method gives customers the breadth and depth in expertise they expect”. Barbara Daniels from Mesa, AZ, also one of the founding members stated: “We collaborate on projects and strategic engagements as a group, each bringing our unique talents and backgrounds to create a synergy in the fast-paced world of social media that is the first of its kind. We take social media far beyond the marketing aspect, assisting companies in building mindshare and market share by imploring the proven principles and standardized methodologies of the Social Media Academy.”

The Black Diamond group is orche strated by the Social Media Academy and organizes knowledge webinars in the US, Europe and Asia helping businesses to better comprehend the impact social media has to their business, their market and their ecosystem. The Knowledge webinar series starts in September and is free of charge. A Black Diamond reception is established to help companies find the best social media strategist for their respective needs. The next leadership class, which is the base education to become a black diamond, starts September 16.

More details are available at: http://socialmedia-academy.com/BlackDiamonds

More corresponding links:

Social Media Academy http://socialmedia-academy.com

Social Media Leadership class http://socialmedia-academy.com/html/us-leadershipclass.cfm

Social Media Academy Methodology overview http://socialmedia-academy.com/html/methodologies.cfm

Social sites from people mentioned in this press release:

Axel Schultze http://xeeSM.com/AxelS

Barbara Daniels http://xeeSM.com/wk4coffee

Boughton Canton http://xeeSM.com/Boughty

Catherine Sherwood http://xeeSM.com/CatherineSherwood

Mark Moore http://xeeSM.com/RMarkMoore/

Rick Speciale http://xeeSM.com/speciale/

Walter Adamson http://xeeSM.com/walter/

Wendy Soucie http://xeeSM.com/wendysoucie/

# # # The Social Media Academy is an education and research institute providing education for business professionals from all industries on how to best apply social media to their respective businesses.

Disclaimer: Issuers of the press releases are solely responsible for the content of their press releases. PRLog.Org can’t be held liable for the contents of the press releases. Report Abuse

Observe, Plan, Execute

Yesterday I was reminded of why organizations need to at least monitor their brand in the social media space, even if they choose not to participate in it.  I received a following notice on Twitter from an Id that was representing themselves as a directory resource for a particular city that relies on tourism and honeymoons.  Not a bad idea from a social media perspective.

So I go to check it out – especially since they had a large number of followers and numerous tweets.  My Oh My… what a surprise… 600 plus tweets of what appeared to be randomly generated tweets which every once in a while created some images of questionable activities with Bollywood movies.  I joke not… “committed the sin of Onan with ostensible Hindi movies” and “remembers the halcyon days of grotesque nightclubs” were actual tweets.  OK,  probably not as racy as you were expecting, BUT how would you feel if these tweets were coming from an account representing your company or posing as your company?  Twitter has a new service for “verifying” accounts, however you need to justify your need for these types of accounts right now.

So it gets a bit worse.  In Twitter, you can have a web URL in your profile.  There was one in this case, so I clicked on it.  Nothing racy on the other end, but it was an incomplete website.  It looks like someone is attempting to build a directory of businesses in this tourist town.  Again, not a bad idea, but what if you are the local government or the chamber of commerce for this town and already have an official site?
This case study gives us two lessons to consider…

First, what is at stake here is the town’s brand.  Regardless of your participation in social media, if you have a brand to protect, you should at least establish a program of “monitoring” your brand.  This program could range from using Google Alerts to a more robust tool such as those produced by Techrigy or Scoutlabs.  All options essentially let you start for free.  If you have limited volume, the “free” version of Techrigy or Scoutlabs may be all you need.  I personally use a combination of Google Alerts and a paid version of ScoutLabs.  I love the graphing capability of Techrigy, but for where my business volume is, Scoutlabs is the better fiscal choice.

The next step of your “monitoring” initiative is to define how you or your company will respond to events that occur.   These don’t necessarily need to be “bad” events.  You could reward those people who really promote your business.  Or you can intervene when needed.  Its better to be informed than blind.  I call these reactions “Engagement Scripts” and they should be shared with everyone who communicates on behalf of your company.  In severe cases, you may need legal counsel.

You may be thinking that I am blowing this case study out of proportion.  Maybe the city in question was  “alpha testing” some new social media initiatives and they just didn’t have the content completed yet.  I can go along with that hypothesis, and I would encourage the company (city in this case) to test things privately.  There is no reason to flood Twitter with 600 worthless messages – it still reflects poorly on the brand.

That leads us to lesson two…  Plan your social media initiatives.  By doing something as described in this case study, you are taking a shot-gun approach to social media programs.  What are you trying to accomplish?  Who are you trying to engage?  Take the time to conduct an assessment to learn where your respective ecosystem is. The Four Quadrant Assessment Methodology (as defined by the Social Media Academy, and my personal preference) looks at where people are in the social web, sentiment analysis, key interests and reflections in the following areas:

• Customer mapping and field assessment
• Brand analysis
• Partner and alliance analysis
• Competition analysis

I’m not suggesting you get paralyzed by analysis.  Think of it as clarifying the conversations you want to have and making them meaningful.  Shooting fish in a barrel may be easy, but shooting the falls in a barrel is not one of my recommended actions.  Do a little homework and planning, then go catch your trophy fish.  I look forward to hearing about it.

And that’s one of the first steps in defining your social media strategy… Identify your customer and where they participate on the social web.

So if you feel like your social media programs  or initiatives are a bit mushy?  Maybe its time to assess where the conversations you want to be involved in are happening.   So take a bite of that granola bar and go find your community!