Unveiling Telefónica Europe's social business strategy
Telefónica Europe enlisted the help of FreshNetworks to turn it into a "social business" and to develop a social media strategy for its organization with aims to achieving commercial success.
Achieving commercial success from social media is about more than just having a presence on Twitter or gaining ‘Likes’ on Facebook; it requires a clear understanding of how it can be used as part of your existing brand or business strategy.
When it’s most effective, social media touches many different areas of a business – from product development and innovation, to customer services and marketing or PR – so to ensure a social media strategy is implemented successfully, it’s important to gain buy-in and involvement from all the key stakeholders right across an organization.
This un-siloed, cross-team approach to social media is a key characteristic for social business – something that Telefónica Europe is whole-heartedly embracing.
Telefónica Europe, known as O2 to its customers, is a leading provider of mobile, fixed and broadband services in the UK, Germany, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. With 56.9 million customers and reported 2011 Q1 revenues of €3,892 million, the company has been actively using social media for some time, though use across the business was not always consistent and tended to prioritize brand and communication activities over other areas of the business.
Social media agency FreshNetworks was commissioned to work with Telefónica Europe to develop a European-wide social media strategy to align social media use across each of the company’s business units and to help staff use it to enhance the whole customer experience.
Social media aims
Social business is about using social media across all levels of a business, typically starting from the top down.
As Matt Rhodes, client services director at FreshNetworks explains: “To become a social business you need to embed social media throughout your organization. Rather than just a marketing channel, social media is a toolkit that you can use to help change the way your business works internally, ultimately saving costs or generating additional revenue. And to make this a success you need a focused team and a set of metrics that can be applied across teams, departments and markets.
“Social media is as much about workforce and enterprise levels of engagement as it is about customer engagement. Becoming a truly social business often requires making fundamental changes to the way in which a business operates.”
Telefónica Europe wanted to bring together the various teams and activities across its European businesses and to develop a common approach; a single European strategy across multiple markets, teams and departments, to ensure consistency and gain buy-in from key stakeholders across the business.
Understanding where social media was adding value to the business was a key driver for this approach, as was being able to compare the benefit it was bringing to the different countries.
A set of common business aims were needed, as was a way of measuring and proving the impact social media was having on the business metrics that were already used to measure the performance of each country. A key area of focus was looking at how social media could be used to improve and enhance customer experience cross all existing and new social media channels for all business units.
Telefónica Europe’s social media strategy has been built on existing best practice within the company, as well as challenging its individuals to use social media across new and different areas of their business.
Together FreshNetworks and Telefónica Europe started by evaluating the company’s current use of social media across all O2 branded businesses. Not only did this help to determine the strategic aims of each business unit, but, more importantly, it helped to highlight where the business was currently realizing value from social media, and the quick wins and opportunities for improving customer experience in the long run.
“Customer experience is a definite growth enabler for Telefónica Europe and so embedding social media across the whole business, is essential for us”, Graham Webster, director of customer experience at Telefónica Europe believes. “Using social media across Europe in a consistent way is vital to ensure that customers engage with our business in a way that encourages long-term, sustainable relationships”.
Once the audit was complete, the next step was to develop a consistent strategy for the use of social media across multiple European markets in support of Telefónica’s commercial brand, O2, and its Brussels-based Public Affairs department. This included developing three-year aims and objectives for Telefónica Europe’s social business strategy; the whole process also took into account each local market’s needs and conditions.
To maintain momentum, and measure success, FreshNetworks developed an analytical framework to track progress from all social media activity across multiple European markets. This was built on existing measures used across the business – rather than developing new measures, it was about showing how social media contributes to the core measures of success for the business.
Social media strategy
One of the main challenges in developing a social media strategy for Telefónica Europe was that FreshNetworks needed to provide a solution that allowed the individual business propositions in each country and market to still flourish in their own right, whilst providing a common framework and direction and for Telefónica Europe as a whole.
FreshNetworks worked closely with senior stakeholders at Telefónica Europe to devise a social media strategy that compliments the brand’s existing business aims and provides a clear framework for all Telefónica Europe businesses to operate within. Getting senior level support early on has also helped to educate the wider workforce in the early stages of implementation.
Telefónica Europe’s social business strategy went through several iterations to ensure it was suitable for use across multiple markets and FreshNetworks worked collaboratively with teams across Europe to develop a consistent approach that could be rolled-out across five major European markets (UK, Ireland, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia), whilst also allowing each individual market a degree of flexibility.
Rhodes made sure his team communicated and interacted with key members of the Telefónica Europe social media project team on a regular basis from the outset to ensure that “going forward, all messaging and the use of social media remain consistent, while still allowing each business unit the opportunity to engage through the medium that best suits its market and audience.”
In order to further aid the roll-out process and encourage staff uptake, Telefónica Europe’s social media strategy has been built on existing best practice within the company, as well as challenging its individuals to use social media across new and different areas of their business. FreshNetworks is also running forums once a quarter to help staff share best practice, encourage collaboration and to generate new and innovative ways to use social media.
A social media framework, which focuses on the use of social media across the business as a whole, has also been developed, allowing the teams across Europe to share experience and advice in a common language.
“As Telefónica Europe will have common aims and measurements, we expect to be able to better analyse results from social media” says Webster.
FreshNetworks is also helping to put in place guidelines to help with internal communications, escalation policies and to assist staff in using social media in a consistent way.
Rolling out Telefónica Europe’s social business strategy
FreshNetworks is now involved in the process of implementing and rolling out Telefónica Europe’s social media strategy.
They are developing, testing and embedding social media programmes across Europe in different departments and teams including Customer Experience, Brand, Communications and Customer Contact Centres.
As the retained social media agency for all Group-sponsored social media projects and programmes, FreshNetworks are creating internal communities of practice to allow better sharing and collaboration between countries and teams working on social media.
Part of the process of embedding social media throughout a business involves educating and training internal staff in each country. Moving beyond the remit of a traditional agency, and more towards a consultancy, FreshNetworks will be providing education and training for 29,000 employees and will help to resource social media moving forward.
“Our European social media strategy development has brought much-needed advice and experience from Social Media experts. FreshNetworks has helped us come up with a measurable, sustainable social media strategy. We’re looking forward to working with them on social media across Europe over the next few months,” concludes Graham Webster, Director of Customer Experience, Telefónica Europe.
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