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Klout: More social influence equals a better customer experience?

July 12, 2012 by Colin Shaw — Founder & CEO, Beyond Philosophy

I was very interested to see that organizations are starting to provide a better customer experience to people that have more social influence. You may have heard of Klout. It is a service that measures your influence in social media. I was interested to read in Forbes that Genesys has integrated Klout scores into their technology offering. Therefore, I guess if you have a high Klout score you could get better service than people with an average score or no score at all.

I presume this means you may decide to respond faster to these individuals, allocate more capable individuals to dealing with these people, or provide them with offers in the hope they will "influence" others. We all know celebrities are paid to be seen wearing/using certain products due to their influence on others. This is the first time I have seen this potentially being used for more "normal" people. You could argue this is what celebrities do all the time and what we are seeing is another form of celebrity status with a high degree of social influence.

It raises some interesting questions. I have been in a debate with a follower on twitter about whether this is morally correct. In my view it is OK and just again an extension of human nature. When I was speaking at a conference recently, a representative from Four Seasons hotels stated they looked at the number of followers to determine how influential people are. I wrote about Morton's, delivering a steak meal to an airport when a person with a high number of followers said that he would love a steak. Organizations are doing this anyway; it appears technology companies are enabling this to happen in a more efficient way.

We are always advising our clients to focus on what drives value for them. We emphasize that we are in business to make money. We normally determine value as being increased expenditure, customer retention, customer loyalty, Net Promoter score. Social influence is another value indicator.

Anyway, with a Klout score of 41, I am off to increase my Klout score so I can get a better level of service!

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