What Does Content and Ad Review Have in Common with Customer Service?
Content review is a topical subject these days. We have witnessed Mark Z. in the hot seat being held accountable for content review standards and practices. But the requirement for content review extends beyond the major social media players: from not-for-profit social activism platforms to game publishers to media content platforms, the need for and challenges of content review are a pressing concern for many brands as we approach the dawn of a new decade.
At the core of content and ad review is the commitment to supporting the user experience. This is especially important in the age of native advertising, where ad content looks a whole lot like the content you’re publishing yourself. Readers have specific expectations when they come to your site or app, ranging from the type of topics you publish to the language, voice, and tone you use, to the imagery that accompanies that content. Ads need to align with those expectations while simultaneously being both legitimate and legal.
In our world, content review shares the same goals of any customer care program: delivering a high-quality experience to the end user. In the next few paragraphs, we will make the case for content review having a natural home with your outsourced customer care provider. After all, we see it as an extension of your brand and as another step in the evolution of back-office processing.
Outsourcing Content and Ad Review to Your Contact Center
Because customer care and content review share such similar goals, the infrastructure to support one (customer care) has the natural ability to extend to the other (content review). Essentially, content review is just a different kind of customer contact. Though there isn’t direct interaction between the agent and the customer, there is a relationship – in both scenarios, agents are protecting the company brand, mitigating risk, and ensuring an optimal end-user experience.
Because of this similarity, there is also crossover in the hiring profile of the ideal agent for both of these types of work. Consider that low-complexity transactional customer service is often relegated to AI-powered solutions, leaving complex customer care scenarios to individuals who are empowered to make intelligent decisions and who understand the impact of their work on the end user. In both cases, there is also thorough initial and ongoing training to ensure every agent has the intricacies of your brand top of mind and stays up-to-date with evolving policies.
Furthermore, both types of programs have clear Service Level Agreements (SLAs) where KPIs are carefully measured and calibrated. In customer service, that looks like average handle times, first call resolution rates, and customer satisfaction scores. In content and ad review, there is also an average handle time – how quickly can an agent evaluate and approve or deny a piece of content in accordance with brand guidelines? Accuracy, of course, is also a measurement – if something that was approved is later rejected, or vice versa, an agent must have the confidence to explain why – and this may lead to process improvements or training opportunities, just like in the customer service realm.
The Logistics of Content Review Outsourcing
Still have questions? Let’s look at an example. For one client who has outsourced their content review to Blue Ocean, we work in conjunction with their inhouse content review team – with language support and market support divided between our two teams. We operate on the same set of stringent policies that ensure user experience and legal requirements are met for every single advertisement regardless of market/language. And we are held to the same KPIs and deliverables as the inhouse team.
Things move fast in this world. Policies can change on a dime, and our client is opening new markets with new enterprise-level customers. We have to be able to adapt quickly – nimbleness is key – just as it is in the world of customer care. We calibrate weekly to ensure both teams are interpreting policy consistently. We have a robust SLA, in which our handle times and accuracy rates are carefully measured. By outsourcing content and ad review, our client expanded their hours of operations and scalability without adding any infrastructure or capital costs. All in all, the program is very similar to any of our other high-volume customer care projects.
As a customer care outsourcer, we’re seeing more and more work come through our doors that doesn’t fit the traditional customer service model. Content review is just one of the areas we excel in thanks to a robust infrastructure and commitment to the customer experience.