Case Study company

O2 is the commercial brand of Telefónica UK Limited and is a leading digital communications company. With over 23 million customers, O2 runs 2G, 3G and 4G networks across the UK, as well as operating O2 Wifi and owning half of Tesco Mobile. O2 has over 450 retail stores and sponsors The O2 Academy venues and the England rugby team.





The interviewee





Kristian Lorenzon currently holds the position of Senior social media marketing plan pdf Manager at O2 Telefónica UK, after spending the past few years of his career specializing in digital and social media packages planning for various UK and global brands. Kristian oversees O2’s central social media strategy, governance and the delivery of commercial and customer engagement activities. Areas of particular interest include consumer responses to new media, and social media’s role in omni-channel retailing.

Their social media marketing plan pdf

O2 coordinates company-wide activity through main company social profiles. This gives the brand the ability to integrate social media campaigns with a centralized brand presence. All social channels usage throughout the organization is governed by a single policy and a central team of social experts manage all social network activations. O2 uses a hub-and-spoke business model to ensure there is a single source of governance and communication through social platforms. This model provides direct support and consultancy to the various business units within the organization, allowing for scalability as social network channels become an increasingly important and in-demand resource within the organization.



Over the past three years, the organization has developed a bespoke social listening and insights tool that gives business intelligence and the company’s marketers invaluable information about its customers to inform campaigns and decision making e.g. interests, hobbies, desires, sentiment and likelihood to recommend.





Their journey to measuring Social ROI

O2 decided to be active on social networks in 2008 and like many brands there was no clear strategy; rather the objective was to test and learn on the fast-growing channels like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Conversation levels were a lot lower than they are now and there was no expectation for O2 to be actively interacting with customers. People were talking about services and products (70 per cent), sponsorships (20 per cent) and product and network support (10 per cent).



The brand built goodwill by starting to do a certain degree of customer service on channels including forums and Twitter. At this stage, there were no set KPIs in place and no measures of commercial return on investment. The only measures in place were channel based including reach, interactions and clicks. These days, the brand can be found responding to customers on most online channels. Customer services now make up 80 per cent of all in-bound enquiries on social networks; the remainder of mentions are campaign, brand and sponsorship related. This is where valuation becomes rather difficult. What’s the value of not being able to respond to a customer in a crisis? How does that compare with mentions around a campaign?





What they measure





Channel measurement is arguably the easiest of the three. O2 look at data points that include but are not limited to: Impressions, Visits, Followers, Mentions, Share of Voice, Sentiment and Clicks.



Campaign measurement is more bespoke and built around specific objectives surrounding each campaign that could include: Awareness, Referrals/Leads, Message Association, Brand Association, Change in Sentiment, Conversion, Favourability and Purchase Intent.



Commercial measurement is arguably the most important when reporting on overall performance, focus for business and return on investment. These include: Customer Satisfaction, Cost Savings and Revenue.



Tata Consulting Services (2013) suggest that almost two-thirds of big businesses have at least one full-time employee dedicated to execute social media marketing plan pdf , but only 10 per cent are reporting benefits to the business resulting from the investments. These figures are astonishing, especially when you consider a brand like O2 has around 30 people touching social networks on a daily basis. These are large investments that need to be measured and to set KPIs. O2 have three defined areas of social campaigns measurement which are broken down into channel, campaign and commercial.Channel measurement is arguably the easiest of the three. O2 look at data points that include but are not limited to: Impressions, Visits, Followers, Mentions, Share of Voice, Sentiment and Clicks.Campaign measurement is more bespoke and built around specific objectives surrounding each campaign that could include: Awareness, Referrals/Leads, Message Association, Brand Association, Change in Sentiment, Conversion, Favourability and Purchase Intent.Commercial measurement is arguably the most important when reporting on overall performance, focus for business and return on investment. These include: Customer Satisfaction, Cost Savings and Revenue.

How they measure

There are many metrics in place to measure the effectiveness of social campaign communications at O2. The most important and influential of these are commercial objectives including Customer Satisfaction (CSI), Cost Savings and Revenue.





Customer satisfaction and value

O2 have linked CSI to customer value (profitability) so they can make the case for investment in customer experience across different customer touch points. To measure CSI, over 30,000 interviews are conducted annually. The CSI measure itself is based on three questions:

In general, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with O2? How well does O2 meet with your expectations? Try to imagine a telecommunications company, perfect in all regards. How close or far from this ideal is O2?



Drivers analysis is used to identify which touch points have the highest impact on overall satisfaction. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and forums are included as part of this analysis to help O2 understand how they are performing in specific areas. Overall, as of October 2013, customers that interact with O2 on social media have on average four points higher satisfaction versus other touch points. This means that customers interacting with O2 on social media have a higher long-term value than others that don’t.





Cost savings

On average, 5,000 customer service interactions occur each week on social media. This accounts for a significant cost saving for the business with more than 90 per cent of customer interactions on social media resulting in a deflection from call centres. This is measured on a monthly basis by looking at the cost of servicing customers on social media versus voice. The calculation is as follows:





Revenue

O2 use industry recognized social networking sites and analytics platforms in order to understand the customer journey. Revenue through social media is measured on final click, i.e., after a customer engages with content across O2 social media channels do they end up making a purchase on the O2 online store.





Customer response on social

There are up to 30 people within O2 that touch social media on a daily basis, the large majority of these people are Community Managers and Customer Service Agents. All social media interactions come through one central monitoring and engagement tool that was purpose built for O2 UK to manage large volumes of mentions, interactions and agents.



O2 monitor all brand and product terms online and actively respond to customer enquiries across main social network platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+) and forums. All mentions are screened by O2’s Community Managers who operate from 8.00 am to 10.00 pm daily. General brand chatter and “banter” is dealt with by front-line Community Managers who engage in meaningful conversation with customers. All customer service enquires including billing, tariff and upgrades are tagged and sent through to the relevant customer service agent to respond to the customer in private on the relevant social networking channel. These interactions equate to an average of 5,000 per week, with an average voice deflection rate of 90 per cent on a channel that is more cost-effective to operate.





Lesson learned

Start with customer insight and measure what matters to customers. Customer satisfaction is the number one KPI at O2, as happier customers stay longer and are more valuable to the brand. Channel and campaign measures are very important but it is important to understand the relationship between measures and the linkage to commercial objectives. Commercial value = commercial investment in channel.



Drive actionable insights and feedback into business from social networks. Fully integrate social media marketing plan pdf through Business, Brand, Marketing and Sales/Service. Use social data to tell a story about the customer in order to drive positive change and improvements to products and services.