Nissan: Facebook may replace phone banks

SEATTLE–Consumers are changing how they look for information, and that could force Nissan North America to move operators out of phone banks and onto the Internet.

“Currently, our social media staff can handle the volume of questions and problems that are showing up on Web sites,” said Erich Marx, Nissan’s director of marketing communications, responsible for social media. But he believes the number of people asking questions on Nissan’s Facebook page or venting about a complaint could double over the next year. “We will need to rethink the staffing that we have.”

That could mean shifting some employees out of Nissan’s traditional consumer affairs operations, including its multiple toll-free call centers, so they can monitor sites such as Facebook and the Web pages for Nissan’s individual nameplates. No changes have been proposed yet.

“People are less inclined to pick up a telephone and call you for information. They don’t want to wait. They don’t want to be told that an operator will be with you shortly,” Marx said during a vehicle-launch event in Seattle. “They just want to send you an e-mail. Or they send you a text, or they post something on Facebook.”

Nissan’s small social media group tries to resolve beefs or straighten out confusion without interfering with dealer relations. It also attempts to involve Nissan’s consumer affairs staff in problems.

“There are new issues involved in this,” Marx said. “When a customer posts a problem on our Facebook page, our 260,000 fans see it. We have to handle it well.

“As a policy, we never remove a negative post. And we never ask a customer to go back and post anything after we’ve resolved the problem. But when they decide on their own to do that, that’s a great message for those 260,000 fans to see.”

(Source: Automotive News)

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Webtrends Announces New Social Marketing Suite

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Longtime analytics player Webtrends announced a social marketing suite called Webtrends Social, which is actually a revamped version of its Webtrends Apps product. The company says the suite will allow users to create and manage a Facebook presence without writing any code or integrate any other tools.

Of particular note is that Webtrends is one of the few companies with access to the invite-only Facebook Ads API, which means it will be able to create features that few if any of its competitors can replicate at this time.

Webtrends Social includes a page dashboard, wall management (including keyword filters and alerts) and tools for building and customizing branded Facebook apps. The app builder uses a drag-and-drop UI design to enable marketers to create apps without coding.

And of course it will feature analytics, based on data gathered from the Graph API, Insights API and the Ad API. The analytics will also track apps and campaigns.

Webtrends Social is a freemium product. The free version includes one Facebook page and one app. The mid-tier version, for companies with fewer than 100,000 fans, costs $250 a month. Webtrends did not disclose enterprise pricing.

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Longtime analytics player Webtrends announced a social marketing suite called Webtrends Social, which is actually a revamped version of its Webtrends Apps product. The company says the suite will allow users to create and manage a Facebook presence without writing any code or integrate any other tools.nnOf particular note is that Webtrends is one of the few companies with access to the invite-only Facebook Ads API, which means it will be able to create features that few if any of its competitors can replicate at this time.
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