Social media has prompted huge changes in the way people access and share information, which has resulted in new challenges, lessons and opportunities for businesses and organizations all over the world. Consumer opinion, once confined to word of mouth and the call center, is now more readily expressed to wider audiences and is more influential for brands than it ever has been in the past.

In this White Paper, we look at our brand, Aramex, and how it has utilized social media to become one of the most recognizable brands online in the Arab world, engaging with thousands of customers on a daily basis. Aramex is a global logistics and transportation solutions provider that serves businesses and individuals under its brand and its Shop and Ship subsidiary.

Objectives
We aim to share our experiences, lessons and findings while utilizing social media for delivering customer service. We will probe into some of the opportunities this medium presents to companies and budding entrepreneurs seeking to use social media. We hope that you will find our insights useful in your own efforts to use the medium as a customer touch point.

Aramex ventured into using social media in the early days of the medium, communicating with bloggers initially, and then expanding its activities as adoption rates increased. A water-shed moment came in 2005, when a blogger shared a service mishap. Aramex CEO Fadi Ghandour commented on the post, surprising the blogger but also marking an increased awareness that the company’s brand and image was affected by conversations online.

Being a customer-centric company, Aramex knew that it had to tune into online conversations started by its customers and use technology in its operations to create better services and customer experiences. These interactions also proved that social media was not only an opportunity to engage with customers, but also to potentially create a new level of trust with them.

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How to avoid customer complaints from spiraling out of control? Handle customer issues swiftly in a timely manner to avoid bigger service failures and a potential PR fiasco.

Case Profile: The Power and Influence of Bloggers Online
In 2005, a Jordanian blogger complained about the Shop and Ship staff calling for an address every time a package was received, which caught the attention of Aramex's CEO.
The blogger’s frustration reached the point of coming up with a nickname for the company, later instigating the creation of a mock-up logo. Ghandour commented on the blog and invited the blogger to Aramex’s offices in Jordan. Aramex listened to the bloggers’ problem and proposition for an ideal solution, based on which, a team of engineers put forth a system that would store customers’ addresses.

Key Learning: Integrating social media feedback and product development to enhance customer experience.
Key Result: Development of a CRM system to respond to and engage with customers online.

This marked a turning point for Aramex to prepare for any potential crisis that may emerge. To prompt this shift, it followed the below diagram of needs, devised by the Altimeter Group.


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Recognizing the potential of social media, and under the leadership of the CEO, Aramex’s marketing and customer relationship management teams joined forces to rally support from other departments to work on materializing the company’s vision of using social media in a corporate context. The management team carefully evaluated the reach and effectiveness of social media platforms compared to more traditional customer service tools such as the call center.

While initial concerns about engaging directly with customers online were allayed by early achievements, an important consideration revolved around institutionalizing this function across the company’s global network. Pertinent questions had to be answered, such as: Who should have access? Who should respond to customers online? What are the best practices for online conversations?

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What to do prior to venturing into the social sphere? Outline your goals and overarching objectives according to your company’s needs – set expectations and be realistic about achieving them.

This movement to embrace social media required putting forth a comprehensive plan and strategic direction. First on the list was defining the goals to drive social media:

• Serve customers online
• Enhance products and services by using feedback from customers
• Manage the Aramex brand online and provide an additional outlet for corporate communications.

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Adapting to web culture Look within your network of employees for active conversationalists who can truly embrace and embody web culture, while preserving the integrity of your brand.

Case Profile: Finding Common Ground between You and the Web
Albeit social media enjoys top management support at Aramex, after sparking initial interest at the company, more was required to be done prior to implementation. This was triggered by many issues:

- Since the company mainly serves business markets, it faced the challenge of adapting its brand to the casual and conversational communication style on the web – all the while remaining true to its values and personality.
- The lack of knowledge and prior experience in the Middle East created skepticism and some internal resistance to the value social media can create.

Key Learning: Look for internal ‘allies’ who can carry your voice online – earn them as ambassadors who can represent your brand externally and internally.
Key Result: Putting forth what may well be one of the first digital road maps and strategies for a corporation in the Middle East.

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How to get buy-in to adopt social media at your company? Begin by doing a well-prepared presentation to decision-makers demonstrating the power of social media and linking it to achieving your firm’s objectives, short and long term.

Once laying the groundwork for utilizing social media was complete, Aramex set up a three-tier digital roadmap to plan for and deliver the goals it set out to achieve. Within the roadmap is a process of constant revision and improvement, bearing in mind the shifting dynamics of the platforms and technologies being used, and customers’ attitudes towards them.
Before starting its engagement in social media, Aramex clearly defined its target audiences, their characteristics, behavioral traits, and the value that the company can provide to each group.


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What business purposes can Twitter serve? - A customer service touch point to answer inquiries - A knowledge sharing hub and tool - A platform to mobilize volunteering efforts, promote social entrepreneurs and initiatives, and disseminate tips and news on entrepreneurship

Another step that Aramex took was mapping out which channels it will utilize.

The figure below outlines each of Aramex’s digital assets.



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Once Aramex developed a digital strategy and roadmap, implementing the strategy required taking practical decisions translated into an action plan that includes:

• Conduct social media in-house or outsource the function
• Identify the teams and individuals responsible for handling each function, a process which includes:
• Setting the criteria for selecting team members
• Providing training on using social media for customer service
• Devising guidelines, policies and engineering a workflow of actionable steps
• Setting targets, such as response times and number of customers engaged, in a time frame
• Defining ownership of the channels internally
• Define channels used for each target group
• Devise a mechanism to channel feedback from customers into the company’s product development efforts
• Engineer a process for handling online customer requests

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Training your people on using social media Employees should be trained on three levels: technical, tonality and online customer relationship management.

Case Profile: Building the Team to Lead Social Media
Aramex’s belief that customer service is a core function and not a periphery activity, led to the decision of keeping social media engagement in-house. The central online unit, located at Aramex’s headquarters in Amman, Jordan, was a cross-functional team, combining the efforts of marketing, customer service, customer relationship management, IT, sustainability and HR. This virtual team, which was trained to ensure a consistent and professional attitude when engaging with customers online, works in close cooperation with station managers and customer service personnel in key Aramex stations.

Key Learning: Identify a core team, alongside key personnel from different functional teams and geographic areas to ensure implementing a holistic approach to social media.

Key Result: Greater control over quality of interactions and content, also shorter turnaround to resolve customer cases.

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What Tools to Use to Supplement your Social Media Efforts?
Aramex utilizes a combination of free and paid-for tools to perform the following functions online:
- Monitor online activity and buzz about Aramex
- Reply to and engage with customers online
- Generate monthly traffic reports and other statistics to measure, benchmark and quantify progress
- Document interactions with customers and identify key influencers online
For start-ups who are bootstrapping on a tight budget, Aramex has experimented with several free tools, such as:
- Google Alerts, Klout and Backtype (for tracking conversations and monitoring)
- Hootsuite (monitoring buzz on Twitter)

Prior to engaging with customers online, Aramex sets a criteria to measure and track its progress to benchmarks its performance.
Below, you can view an example by the Altimeter Group in defining success criteria when using Facebook.

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How to devise tonality guidelines for your online front-liners?

Talk with a human voice, not like a robot
Employees are encouraged to bring out their individual touch and personality when replying to customers, without being excessively casual.

Don’t parrot policy
Employees are empowered and expected to deliver solutions, not give excuses or hide behind policies.

Avoid jargon
Because the logistics industry is largely technical, it’s easy to get caught up in trade-speak. The online team always tries to simplify industry-specific knowledge to terms that customers are familiar with.

Respect Web communication conventions Intruding on conversations, being excessively formal, not respecting the democratic, transparent nature of the web are all taboos to Aramex when engaging online.

Listen to the customer
It is important to tune into your customers before speaking or engaging with them. Zeroing in on their needs is the first step to getting into a conversation with your audience.

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The Difference Between being "Talked to" and "Talked about"
While the Shop and Ship online chat service represents a platform for customers to directly interact with staff, Twitter users are not always directing their conversation at the company. There is a difference between when a customer mentions Aramex in a post casually, or attempts to talk to Aramex directly through social media. This distinction necessitates a policy of positive intervention - Aramex team members make it clear they’re there to help if the customer wants that help. This requires that employees maintain an understanding of the difference between positively contributing to a conversation and intruding on one.



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Case Profile: How to Overcome Cultural and Geographic Differences when Engaging on Social Media?
Bearing in mind that Aramex operates in over 60 countries, the need for localization is imperative. Every country has unique language idiosyncrasies, distinctive cultural values, and behavioral standards. Aramex aims to respond to customers in their language of choice; so coordination with local stations is crucial. Although most of the current interactions are in English, Aramex plans to further localize by creating customized pages and a presence for non-English speaking countries, such as Turkey, China, Morocco and more.

Key Learning: Tap into your existing resources to activate localized engagement through social media. The centralized social media team works with customer service teams globally to do this.
Key Result: Out of Aramex’s interactions, it interacts with over 20,000 users using Facebook in over 20 languages.


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The applications of using social media in a corporate context are numerous. Beyond delivering customer service and enhancing user engagement, it also contributes to driving innovation, improving existing services, mobilizing volunteers in corporate activism initiatives as well as generating sales leads.

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Nurture relationships with key influencers to gauge feedback Maintain constant contact with key influencers who talk about your brand to continuously solicit their feedback when a new development happens in your industry.

Case Profile: Social Media Driving Product Innovation
Interactions over social media led to product enhancements and innovations; a prime example being the expansion of the Shop and Ship service to include a route from China to the Middle East, North Africa, India and parts of Europe. Inspired by customers who wanted to shop for more affordable products that were not available in Europe or the US, Aramex began studying the feasibility of this new solution, which ultimately led to a successful product.

Key Learning: Listen and study customer suggestions, then tailor solutions to the comments that are financially feasible or profitable.
Key Result: Creating a new solution that helped increase the number of shipments by over 8,000 and weighing more than 20,000 kilograms in under a year.



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Case Profile: Delivering Service Enhancements
In Kuwait, a number of delays in customs clearance resulted in an influx of customer complaints. This drove Aramex to perform an exercise in crowdsourcing, a process of outsourcing a task to a large group of people, by asking customers to suggest ways to improve the process of customs inspection, then taking actions to rectify the situation.

Key Learning: Recruit your fans and loyal customers as testers and idea developers. They’ll even help in promoting your new solution.
Key Result: In addition to finding a solution for customs issues, a number of customer touch points were created or improved. This included developing mobile applications, and implementing improvements on the ticketing queue system in a number of Aramex branches.


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Case Profile: How to Use Social Media to do Good?
Deliver Hope to Gaza was an Aramex-led campaign in response to the assault on Gaza in December 2008 through January 2009, where social media carried the message to millions of people across the Middle East and further afield. With the aim of encouraging donations of humanitarian aid and mobilizing volunteers to assist with the packing process, Aramex relied heavily on social media to spread the word out. More details on the campaign were documented in a White Paper.

Key Learning: Build it and they will come: enable fans to become ambassadors of your campaign by giving them a platform to work, promote and engage with peers.
Key Result: The campaign attracted over 1,500 volunteers working over two months after collecting 600 tons of donations in two weeks.

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Case Profile: Using Social Media to Generate Sales Leads
At the end of the day, using social media needs to assist in creating and generating new business. Through Aramex’s experience, it’s best not to let this be the driving factor behind using social media, but to be implemented at a later stage, especially when customers start to experience an added value from your online presence. Recruiting loyal and dedicated fans will help spread your campaigns both online and offline - this can be witnessed through Shop and Ship’s experience with getting new subscribers with little investment in advertising.

Key Learning: Don’t let ROI be your prime indicator for your online presence. Instead focus on building a loyal following and then start offering new offers and discounts exclusively to your followers – what we like to refer to as ROR (Return on Relationships).
Key Result: See the graphs below.


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In essence, social media is a budding communication medium. To claim that one owns absolute knowledge, or that there are rules etched in stone, is to discredit the need to experiment with using this medium. Aramex looks at social media not as a revolution in communicating with stakeholders, but as an evolution that enables conversations to take place in a transparent, democratic and timely fashion. Our aim is to share the lessons learnt, the experiences gained, and the journey in which a tedious process of trial and error was applied. Upon your foray into social media, we strongly recommend that you approach this medium with a similar open mind and outlook.

Social media on its own is not a magic wand in which customers will immediately become enamored with your business or brand. It should be applied as part of a holistic vision to communicate and engage with customers – thus more traditional communication tools should not be discarded in favor of this emerging tool.