I lead a team of Best Buy employees who are responsible for the management and moderation of most of Best Buy’s online community engagements. The team’s structure provides for rapid responses to customers and actionable insights to business teams. The team is comprised of two supervisors, a video producer, a technical administrator, 21 Community Connectors and me. When I describe the team to others, they have an internal framework to understand what is generally meant by the common titles of supervisor, etc. However, when I discuss the role of “Connector,” I see confusion in their eyes. Some jump to “community manager,” others to “contact center agent” and some to “business analyst.” The truth is, elements of all are intertwined in the connector position.
Best Buy’s Community Connectors are the critical component of our widely heralded success in social media. They are employees with deep knowledge in a variety of products, policies and procedures as well as the company’s tone, voice and brand. The Connectors monitor online brand conversations, and based on their application of our rules of engagement choose whether the brand should join an online discussion. From an operational perspective, as much as we would like to, we can’t join every conversation. So who chooses? Oftentimes, it is our Connectors. They engage authentically, transparently and meaningfully. They protect and enhance the brand in an ever-evolving social medium.
Since our Connectors touch the online customer conversation in such a unique and special manner, who better to provide insights around the social conversation? While Best Buy has other teams that also analyze and report on social conversations and other consumer contacts, the Connectors are well positioned to see elements of the customer experience in real-time. If items arise that require immediate business action, our team has built a structure and procedures to rapidly transmit those insights. For other insights, many of our Connectors prepare weekly reports for the various business teams they support. These short reports are complementary to reports other business teams prepare. Through these weekly reports, Connectors evaluate conversations over time, developing insights cultivated from various online locations and providing them to business leaders for review and action.
Because Best Buy’s social media is so focused on transparency, our Connectors make the most of their responses to customers online – therefore, every response is a one-to-many communication. Sometimes a Connector may be helping a customer with a highly unique situation and other times they are providing responses and resolution for thousands of customers.
Social media is the execution of a personalized brand voice on a massive scale. As it grows and develops to change the 19th and 20th century business models, it is inevitable that the 21st century’s business structure and functions will evolve to incorporate this critical new layer of complexity. Best Buy’s Community Connectors are an example of the evolution of job roles and create a new career path for those fostered on listening, engaging and advocating.
on:
CES: Do the possibilit
