Proactive versus reactive conversation management.

How to engage in conversations? How are we managing consumer expectations as soon as we start answering questions on social media? Many companies just do social media campaigns and fail to follow up on their social media efforts. In other words: they do a great campaign to attract people to their Facebook fan page, but fail to answer the questions and solve the problems of this new crowd. In a conversation era, there is no marketing without service.

On top of that, there’s the dilemma of managing expectations: many don’t want to open ‘the floodgates’ to consumers reacting to their online efforts, just because they have the perception (or self-knowledge) that they won’t be able to handle that. They adopt a more reactive approach to what’s happening online, maybe to, someday, change into a more proactive conversations company.

That’s why we usually plot conversation efforts on proactive versus reactive axes and service versus marketing axes.

Note: we use Observe, Facilitate and Join as elements of the existing Observe-Facilitate-Join model.

That makes four kinds of conversation management:

1. Reactive and marketing-driven: OBSERVE: Converse. Approach people based on their expressed needs. E.g. a consumer says: “I am looking for a decent place to stay in Amsterdam, can anybody advise us?”
2. Reactive and service-driven: OBSERVE: Engage. Approach people who have expressed their problems or discomfort with your products or service. E.g. “I can’t seem to get product X/Y working”.
3. Proactive and marketing-driven: FACILITATE & JOIN: Activate. Make it easy for people to share their love for the product. Directly activate people. E.g. coupons, discounts, campaigns.
4. Proactive and service-driven: FACILITATE & JOIN: Inform. Pursue a content strategy, inform people, proactively support people, make things easier. E.g. FAQ, corporate blogs, pushed notifications.

What do you think? Makes sense?

Written in 2011, left as it was. Where I took it later: Managing rising customer expectations.

Original: Proactive versus reactive conversation management, 31 May 2011. Historical links may no longer work.