Whirlpool: Building Communities Online and Offline with 'Building Blocks' — Live from BlogWell

2:10 — Kurt Vanderah introduces Whirlpool‘s Senior Manager of Interactive Communications, Brian Snyder, and Senior Manager of Consumer Care, Scott Spiegel.

2:11 — Kurt: This section is sponsored by Radian6.

2:12 — Brian: I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about softball. There’s that time in the middle of the season when you make that slide into home that reminds you you’re not in college anymore. And what is the result of this? Grass stains. So then where do you turn for answers on how to deal with this? Maybe social media.

2:13 — Brian: Whirlpool is a leader in the laundry business, but Whirlpool is only one of our brands. Each brand is more than just a price point. Each offers a unique solution to customers, and these customers want to talk to the people who make their products.

2:14 — Brian: We have 3 teams at Whirlpool: our PR Team, our Consumer Care Team, and our Digital Marketing Team. Their functions are to engage, serve, and connect with customers. We make sure all three of these groups are working together and are following best practices.

2:15 — Scott: On the Consumer Care Team, we listen — and we do this well. In social media, we use Facebook, Twitter, and a handful of other consumer forums.

2:16 — Traditionally, we responded to consumers by phone. When we first started using social media for customer care, we used a similar approach. We tried figuring out who individuals were so we could contact them and take the conversations offline.

2:17 — Scott: We came up with the concept of  “digital detectives.”  Our customer care team worked this way for about a year and then realized that we really had to start interacting. In social media, it’s more than just one-on-one relationships. We had some anxiety about responding publicly, but we had to overcome that.

2:18 — Scott: Now, we do respond publicly and we resolve privately. When we see a distressed customer, we’ll respond in the same venue where he or she made that request for help. With more involved problems, we’ll ask for contact information and we’ll take it offline to resolve it.

2:19 –  Scott: How do we know this is working? Customers come back and respond in the same venue by saying “thanks.”  We know now that we are finally putting the “social” in social media.

2:21 — Brian: we faced major consumer care events with our dishwasher recall. The first instinct is to reach out to customers and let them know what is going on. This recall marked the first time we used social media to do this. It took a lot of cooperation between our teams. As soon as a press release went out, we simultaneously had proactive Tweets and Facebook updates go out. We used existing social media presences, and also created a new Maytag Facebook page on the day of the recall.

2:24 — Brian: We also increased staff on our digital detective team. We created a YouTube “how-to” video — a short, step-by-step video that people could watch to find out if they were affected. What we didn’t count on was a slight computer system outage. The only way people could get to us was through Facebook and Twitter.

2:26 — Brian: We weren’t ready to respond. We did see customers coming to our aid and communicating with each other, but we wish we had been more prepared for this.

2:28 — Brian: We have a very deep partnership with Habitat for Humanity. We asked, “how can we use social media to extend this experience?”  To do this, we made Facebook our home base. It soon became a hub for volunteers and a way for people to bring excitement to the cause.

2:30 — Brian: This led to volunteers posting photos and sharing stories with family and friends back home. Additionally, we had a UStream channel where people could go to watch the build as it was happening.  After the build, those stories became even stronger. The cool part was our volunteers became the voice of the brand online.

2:32 — Brian: What we learned: Social media starts with brand priorities. You should look for opportunities to collaborate internally, be prepared, stick to your values, listen, learn, experiment, and iterate rapidly.

Q&A

Q: How did you account for a spike in traffic with the recall?

A: We did augment our staff ahead of time, so we were pretty well-prepared.

Q: Melissa of Bosch Power Tools: How many people do you have on staff monitoring social media?

A: Scott: We have three full-time employees on a regular basis.

Q: Amy from 3M: I am currently working on customer relations team training. What does that look like for you guys?

A: Scott: For us, it’s kind of a learn as you go experience. Some of the folks doing it for us have customer relations experience. We take resources we have in the company and utilize our customer service skills.

Q: I have a question about customer care vs. PR. Do you pass things on to other teams?

A: Absolutely. We look at what the impact might be. Problems are always addressed first by the Consumer Care Team. If it’s a large problem, the PR team will be involved. Also, people from other teams are always listening. We can usually send a quick email and it will be taken care of.

Q: What tools or communication structures do you have to make sure brand managers are coordinating with one another?

A: Each brand has a community manager. They are responsible for engagement, day in and day out. It’s all about what makes sense for each brand. What are the priorities, and what are the tools that support their goals?

Q: How did you determine which brands use which tools?

A: Brand managers set brand priorities, so it’s really up to them. We also use both market research and intuition to tap into customer needs.