Another great visual--

Starting an Enterprise Community

Enterprise Communities are typically driven by a need to improve IP and software process internally or with 3rd party partners. Success of these communities is often measured by cost reduction, productivity, quality improvement and risk reduction. What makes a successful Enterprise community is one in which there becomes noticeable improvements in an organizations leanness, transparency, openness, quick release cycles, web based development. These are organizations who want to reap the benefits and proven successes of Open Source within their company boundaries.

If you're starting a new community within your Enterprise or Organization, you'll want to consider the following important concepts and write a Community Plan that covers

• CommunitySteps123: A practical, step-by-step approach to getting your Collaborative Software Development Community started

• CommunityGoals: Reuse, Accelerated OnBoarding, Breaking down silos, etc

• CommunityMetrics: How you measure the success of your community

• CommunityTaxonomy: How to categorize your projects

• CommunityCodeMigration: Migration options to consider for your community

• CommunityProjectOnBoarding: process for getting new projects created

• CommunityUserOnBoarding: how users register and get started in the community

• CommunityProjectGuidelines: public vs. private, contribution models, etc

• CommunityALM: Incorporating ALM into your community

• CommunityTeam: Community Manager, Community Support, Internal Sponsor/Representative/Spokesperson

• CommunityOutreachPlan: how to communicate important community information to the rest of the Enterprise

• CommunityTraining: Both Enterprise and Open Source Communities need a training plan, but how you go about training is slightly different for each

• CommunitySupportStructure: Tier 1,2,3 Support, Support metrics, FAQs, Community Support Page

• CommunityHomePage : What information you need to display on your Community Home page

Growing the Enterprise Community

Communities grow as users become aware of subcommunities’ benefits. Users discover resources outside their silos that provide valuable resources and the Community’s sphere of influence increases. If you're looking to grow your Enterprise Community, you'll want to consider the following important concepts

• CommunityMaturity: Many communities need time to mature before they are able to meet all of the community goals set forth

• SeedingtheCommunity : Identify where there are growth opportunities within the community

• NurturetheCommunity : Lower the barrier of entry for new contributors

Why You Need a Full-Time CommunityManager

Secure Transparency breeds Trust which drives Reuse

Attachments:

CommunityComponents.jpg [CMPlan/CommunityComponents.jpg]

About two weeks ago I wrote my post on What a Social CRM Strategy is all about. Despite the great responses and discussions in the comments I think there is still a huge part missing: How do you do it? The Strategic Framework statement I concluded with, provides just a very rough indication of the direction I believe one should work towards as well as how this can be achieved.

Does anyone have a map?

Several people in the Twitter #scrm accidental community have since written posts with views on how to proceed (you can find links to these posts at the bottom of this one). In general there seems some kind of agreement that there’s still lots of ground to cover and we should enjoy the ride. Nevertheless we should start now, plan our journey, cross the bridge when we get there and learn from our mistakes. And, this is a hell of a job, if you do not have a map.

Social CRM has not arrived (yet), not as a technology, nor as a strategy. The absence of a clear map does not mean though, that we cannot plan our journey. The journey will not be mapped out like you plan your journey from home to work and back. There are still many unknown variables and a huge number of what-if questions. There is more we don’t know than there is we do know. Fortunately more blanks are being filled every day.

Not knowing is no excuse for not going

So, what do you do? Sit around and wait for it to have happened? Jump-in without a good view on what could happen and how you would deal with those circumstances? I hope not for both questions.

What could be a sensible way to proceed is to develop a “portfolio of real-options“, or – in other words – a map that provides you with a series of options to choose from or decline. A map that allows you to value (technology) investments and other Social CRM strategic choices based on the implications of each step along the way — without committing to anything before you have to or want to (Please read any of the suggested reads at the bottom of this post).

If you understand your options you’re half way there

Creating a map of “real-options” is not a light task. If one reads the academic papers on this, it is actually complicated. Complicated because it requires a deep understanding of your business, your Customers, your competitors and all the variables that are in play to make your Social CRM Strategy successful. First you need to understand the “value-to-cost” ratio (also referred to as NPV or ROI) of the project/investment or initiative. Secondly you need to make an assessment of the risk/uncertainty involved in combination with how long you can afford NOT to make a decision (remember: you do not have to make a decision, you may; basically this provides you with a window of time to mitigate the risks or fill out the blanks to decrease uncertainty). The theory names this “volatility“. As you can imagine: the lower the volatility and the higher the value-to-cost ratio the stronger the advice to invest now.

What’s in it for you

The above may not make it clear for you how this can help you. Here are my views on this:

• First of all creating a “real-options” mapping for only one investment (or real-option), will provide you with the insights on what variables are important to understand. E.g. when you map the risks involved, you would want to mitigate those, hence you need to start better understanding the variables that mitigate the risks. At the same time you will (or should) start small (research) projects to find out more about the variables and what drives their values. The journey (and the fun!) starts here.
• Secondly creating a portfolio of “real-options” will provide you with insights on how all these options of the Strategy are linked (or not). (Do not limit yourself in the definition of options and linking them together. You should be creative here. But do not forget: you need to make them “real” eventually). Whenever you fill out one of the blanks in one of the strategic projects, you have the ability to assess the (potential) effect on other real-options of the strategy. When one thing moves, all things (can) move. This in itself is fascinating. Most of all you will recognize that you are actually executing the strategy and learning along the way.
• Thirdly you make wise business decisions and still you may (probably will) fail. The good part is that you will notice quickly, with no major harm done yet. As one says: it is ok to fail, but do it quick and learn.

These are my 2 cents to the debate on how to proceed with a Social CRM Strategy. Bottom line: you can start the journey, and have the fun, in a business smart way, today!

Let me know if it makes sense to you. I’m enjoying the journey, I hope you are too.

Wim Rampen

Further reads:

Esteban Kolsky: The slow path to SCRM

Prem Kumar: All roads lead to Social CRM; But “Hanoz Dili Dur Ast”?

Mitch Lieberman: Social CRM is a journey – not a destination

Wall-Street Journal/MIT Sloan: Stay Loose

Harvard Business Review: Strategy as a Portfolio of Options (PDF)

Credit Suisse | First Boston: Get Real (PDF)

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Social CRM – The Stake is in the Ground -
• What A Social CRM Strategy is all about..
• Social CRM, Communities and Customer Segmentation
• Social CRM is dead, long live Social Business Strategy

July 6th, 2009

Time to Put A Stake in The Ground on Social CRM

Posted by Paul Greenberg @ 1:00 am

Categories: CRM Strategy, Enterprise 2.0, Social CRM, Thought Leadership

Tags: Customer, Business, Tool, CRM, Social CRM..., SCRM Business Strategy, Co-creation, Advertising & Promotion, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Software

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The debate and discussion about what defines Social CRM a.k.a. CRM 2.0 vs. its traditional parent has been going on for about 2 years pretty regularly and started, according to thought leader Graham Hill almost a decade before that.

Personally, I’m done defining it and am moving on.  I think enough time has been spent trying to decide what we’re calling it and what it is.  I think that we’ve reached the point that though there is no one point of view, there is a general idea of what we have.  So this post, which will be on ZDNET and PGreenblog is my stake in the ground for the definition of Social CRM.   If anyone asks me what the definition is, they are going to be referred to this post on either blog. I’m putting it on both blogs, but it has implications for each blog that are somewhat different. Check toward the end of the post where I’ll discuss how I’m going to approach each one.

Also, for this post, I still will welcome comments and discussion on the definition if you want. But I’m really ready personally to move on.

Why?

First, there seems to be a consensus on the definition already. We all agree on its general characteristics. We see it as the use of social and traditional CRM tools and processes to support a strategy of customer engagement.  Or some permutation of that.

Second, there’s too much other work on Social CRM to do.  Its time to start figuring out and documenting the business models, policies, practices, processes, social characteristics, applications, and the methodologies that we need to actually carry it out.  There is some great work going on in those Social CRM areas already with folks like Graham Hill, Denis Pombriant, Thomas Vander Wal, Brent Leary, Prem Kumar, Chris Carfi, Bill Band, Natalie Petouhoff, Mike Fauscette, Michael Maoz and Ray Wang, among others (please forgive me if I didn’t mention you. There are many others).  But we need to create a repository for all this work - and an institution that can represent it agnostically. Right now, the body of practice out there is all over the place.  Even with this, the work on Social CRM’s “how” needs a dramatic escalation now.

So, I’m providing one last aggregate look at what I see Social CRM to be.  When the 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light comes out, you’ll see a lot of the what and how in that nearly 800 pages. This is the condensed - black hole condensed - version of that.

I hope that I’m reflecting the consensus. If not, I’m sure the discussion will go on. But as far as I go, I’m interested in the more substantive discussions on what we actually have to do - not how it differs from traditional CRM nor what we’re talking about when it comes to “social” and whether or not we are going to call it CRM 2.0 or social CRM.

My Take On It

Okay, here’s my take on Social CRM’s definition.

1. I’m conceding to “Social CRM” as the term of choice, rather than CRM 2.0. If ZDNET will let me, I’ll change the name of the blog to “Social CRM: The Conversation”  CRM 2.0 has been a placeholder at best and obscuring at worst - it doesn’t reflect the customer’s control of the business ecosystem all that well.  Social CRM is a better, though not great, reflection of what we’re talking about.  Let’s use the acronym of the Twitterverse group for it - SCRM or sCRM. I don’t care which.
2. The customer controls the business ecosystem and the conversation, but not the business a.k.a. company a.k.a. enterprise itself.  What that means is that while customers have much greater control over their destinies in how they interact with businesses, make no mistake about it, they don’t run the business, nor does the business have to concede everything to the customer.
3. What this means is that SCRM is an extension of CRM, not a replacement for CRM. Its a dramatic change in what it adds to the features, functions and characteristics of CRM but it is still based on the time honored principle that a business needs its customers and prefers them profitable and that same business needs to run itself effectively too.
4. The transformation that’s sparked the need for Social CRM seems to have occurred in 2004. It has been a social revolution in how we communicate, not a revolution in how we do business per se. All institutions that humans interact with have been affected by things like the cellphone/smartphone, the new social web tools and the instant availability of information in an aggregated and organized way that provides intelligence to the person on the street, not just the enterprise.
5. Part of that transformation affects how we trust and thus who we trust. Since 2004, “someone like me” is the most trusted source, not businesses, NGOs, government agencies or corporate leaders.  That means that peer trust is how influence and impact germinates and then propagates most effectively - at least as of now.
6. The lesson for business, in terms of Social CRM is that we are now at a point that the customers’ expectations are so great and their demands so empowered that our SCRM business strategy needs to be built around collaboration and customer engagement, not traditional operational customer management.
7. We’ve moved from the transaction to the interaction with customers, though we haven’t eliminated the transaction - or the data associated with it.
8. Businesses still need to run their operations, set goals that are cognizant of what the customer wants and needs, but not determined by that.  They need to map their goals and objectives to the customers’ goals and objectives  to make it work for all concerned.
9. That means that we need to recognize that there is an extended enterprise value chain which consists of the company, its suppliers, vendors and agencies that the enterprise has to deal with. There is a separate “personal value chain” which is the total greater than the sum of its parts of what an individual customer needs to achieve whatever their personal agenda is.
10. For the company to succeed, since they cannot control the personal value chain of the customer, nor should they want to, they can only provide what the customer needs to satisfy that part of the customer’s personal agenda that is associated with their enterprise.  That means products, services, tools and experiences that allow the customer that satisfying interaction.
11. The intersection of the extended enterprise value chain and the customer’s use of part of his personal value chain to satisfy that personal agenda creates the possibility for a collaborative value chain that engages the customer in the activities of the business sufficiently to provide each (the company and the customer) with what they need from the other to derive individual and mutually beneficial value.
12. That means that transparency and authenticity become more than buzzwords because in order for the customer to make intelligent decisions on how they are going to interact with the company and the level of that interaction, they need that visibility and honesty from the company.
13. That also means that the companies need to make the decision that its a good thing to allow the customer to have that increased level of knowledge, access and honesty - it can help the company immensely in their engagements with their customers. That’s a cultural issue that has to be resolved for Social CRM to work.
14. If these aforementioned conditions are met,  the customer is afforded the ability to co-create by the company. What that means is not all that pat. It can mean anything from customers and the company collaborating on product development, to customer suggestions on how to improve a company process, to customers helping other customers solve customer service issues, to even doing what gamers do and modifying game play using tools for scenario creation which adds value to the game. Co-creation is the ability of the company and customer to create additional value for each other - what form it takes is not always THE BIG THING.  But co-creation, mutually derived value, is at the core of SCRM.
15. SCRM differs from Enterprise 2.0 though is integrally related to it. Enterprise 2.0 is organized around increasing the productivity of the workforce in all that it does utilizing new collaborative tools to do so. It uses those tools to aggregate and organize information and systems.  However, though different, Enterprise 2.0 is integrally related because part of that improvement in productivity increases the effectiveness of employee-customer interactions.  It also increases the company’s ability to capture useful information and knowledge about customers, not just boatloads of data. But what it doesn’t do is provide avenues for the customers to engage themselves with the company. That’s not its purpose. That is the purpose of SCRM.
16. SCRM also changes the nature of what kind of customer is optimal for you. Rather than aiming at a satisfied customer (an increasingly useless metric) and even rather than thinking that a loyal customer is your best customer, your objective should be to create advocates and settle for loyal customers.
17. How you measure customer value changes when you’re thinking about SCRM. Rather than just Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) - which reflects the direct financial value of a customer to a company over the life of his relationship to that company, think too about Customer Referral Value (CRV) which measures how valuable influential customers are when they tell others about your company, not just promise to.
18. When you look at the SCRM applications out there - there are no actual SCRM suites, no matter what the claims of any company on either the CRM or social tools side.  What you do have are effective and important applications that increase the ability of employees to interact with customers - though they are not tools that facilitate the actual interaction.  You also have the integration of social media and community building tools with traditional CRM tools which are providing effective combinations which are leading toward SCRM.  I want to emphasize. These are all good tools. They are worthy of any company’s consideration. There is just no SCRM suite out there - as of yet or in the near future.  Which doesn’t matter one iota.

I’d say that covers the basics.

A Shorter Definition

For a shorter definition of SCRM, I’d say:

“CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.”

Well, it may not be tweetable but it’s shorter.

A Tweetable Definition

“The company’s response to the customer’s control of the conversation.”

With the quotes and the period, its 71 characters.  Get rid of the period and you can just write it twice.

What’s Next?

Let me reiterate something. This is my stake in the ground. It would be presumptuous of me to assume I can halt a discussion that I no longer want to participate in. That said, in presentations etc. I’m going to continue to give the definition of SCRM because people will be asking.  But I’m not going to try to define it anymore. I know what it is. I think that most people who read my stuff know it too - and many who don’t, also know it.  I also am no longer going to engage in discussions or defenses of whether or not it’s “necessary” or “marketing hype” or any of that.  Again, stake in the ground. While there is plenty of room for traditional CRM strategies, the change in the customer necessitates some sort of commitment to social CRM to succeed with that neo-customer.

So, here’s what I’m going to be doing and not doing from here on.

1. No more debates on what Social CRM is, though I certainly will discuss what it is in presentations and when else it makes sense. But I’m not trying to define it any more
2. No more detailed defenses on whether or not its necessary. Its existence is always necessary. Its use is necessary in appropriate situations.
3. No more calling it CRM 2.0 for me. Its Social CRM.
4. In all the venues I have when it comes to discussing Social CRM, it will be the new business models, the processes, the methodologies, the practices, reviews of the applications that are part of the SCRM universe - and debunking the claims of those apps if need be.   I’ll be providing as many success and failure stories as I humanly can so we can develop a body of practice.
5. For ZDNET, now that the book is done, I’m going to focus on what the ZDNET audience loves the best - the technology and processes of Social CRM - related or otherwise. Plus the practitioner stories of successful implementation.  There will be deviations from that but that’s my ZDNET primary direction. Plus I’m going to try to change the blog name, if it doesn’t wreak too much havoc to Social CRM: The Conversation
6. For PGreenblog, the focus will be on the discussions ranging from the business models, the social psychology, the economics to the theoretical concepts and the practical strategies.  I’ll look at the culture of the companies, the nature of the customer’s thinking, the effect of style on all of this, etc.  I’ll do the best I can with what the line of business person needs to know and what the academician needs to explore.
7. I’m going to spend some time trying to create an institution to capture all of this called the Institute for the Future of Business and the Customer (IFBC) which will include the actual B2B and B2C and B2G customer on its leadership body with the company leaders. Unlike any other institution of its kind that I know of.  This is not an easy task. I’ve been trying for two years to do this already and have made some progress but it needs a good academic institution and an endowed chair and a couple of companies to underwrite it. It is an agnostic body that will attempt to aggregate and organize all this incredible knowledge on how companies and customers engage and establish what the new business world looks like going forth.   Ambitious, even grandiose? Maybe. But I’m going to try or go down in flames trying.

That’s it. Stake is in the ground. Comments on the definition per se are welcome this one last time on either of the blogs that you see this.

But I’m done. AND I’m just starting.

In addition to being the author of the best-selling "CRM at the Speed of Light: Essential Customer Strategies for the 21st Century," Paul Greenberg is President of The 56 Group, LLC, a customer strategy consulting firm, focused on cutting edge CRM strategic services and a founding partner of the CRM training company, BPT Partners, LLC. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

Email Paul Greenberg

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Forbes CMO Network, An Insightful Resource For Marketing Leaders
I’m serving CMOs by teaming up with the Forbes as a regular contributor. My goal? To guide marketing leadership on how to leverage disruptive technologies and meet business goals.   At a more detailed level, this blog will continue to aim at providing nitty-gritty breakdowns, frameworks, and insights.  Use these two resources in tandem to both develop strategies, and then implement best practices across the organization.

[Companies Must Develop A Holistic Strategy, As Social Technologies Impact Every Customer Touchpoint]

Social Technologies are a Horizontal –Not A Vertical Approach
It continues to amaze the market that such simple social technologies can impact the entire organization.  In fact, social technologies, at the core, allow people to connect to each other without a middle person in the way.  As a result, expect social technologies to impact every employee and customer touchpoint.   CMOs must prepare in their 2010 planning how to leverage social, not as a skunkworks but as a strategic shift in all communications.

Three Resources to Use:

1. Use the Forbes CMO article as a guide for your marketing leadership, pass along this article “CMOs: Consumers Are Connected. You Need To Be, Too”.
2. Below, use the detailed matrix (and the links within them) for the strategists who need to plan out the actual programs.
3. Leave a comment with other suggestions, and benefit from working with the very savvy Web Strategy community, who I learn from every single day (thank you).

Web Strategy Matrix:  Social Technologies Impact Every Customer Touchpoint

Medium	Description and Examples	Market Maturity	Impacts To Brands
Digital Advertising	Facebook launched “Social Ads” that allow advertisements to appear based on your profile information and friends.	Infantile	As profiles become portable (like Facebook or Google connect) people can share their personal info for contextual experiences, expect advertising to improve CTRs as social data is added.  See how an interactive ad benefitted from my Facebook data.
Search Marketing (Paid and SEO)	For years, bloggers heavy linking and frequent content have scored high on SERP pages. Recently, Google and Microsoft partnered with Twitter, to offer “Social Search” which means users could received customized SERP based on their friends behaviors and preferences.	Pre-Teen	Social search will impact a prospects search results are impacted by their friends, this complicates the traditional search marketing strategy of simple keyword placement. Conversational marketing becomes a key factor in search strategy. Learn more about Social Search.
Email Marketing	Many email vendors like Responsys, ExactTarget, Constant Contact and Zeta Interactive provide simple ways to “share this” email with their friends on social networks. More advanced vendors are offering advanced monitoring, and innovative companies like Flowtown are using email addresses to identify a prospects social networks	Infantile	Email marketers can no longer be in broadcast mode, but must be prepared for emails to be shared with each other. Furthermore, they should seek how to influence content on the newsfeed in social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.  Learn how email and social networks are interlaced.
Web Campaigns/Microsites	Traditional microsites now have social components from simple “Share this” features to viral videos and community dialog. On the extreme side, Skittles allowed the whole site to be taken over by consumers.	Adult	A marketing campaign today without social elements is asking to be ignored. To benefit from word of mouth, marketers know spurring a conversation will cause the campaign to spread.
Corporate Site	Corporate sites are integrating social features, From Community Platforms like Mzinga, Awareness, Pluck, Kickapps, Liveworld (client) they encourage customers to talk back.	Young Adult	Even if companies don’t want their website to be social, they can’t stop it. Google’s “SideWiki” product allows any webpage to be social using a browser plugin.
Mobile, Location Based	Location based social networks are quickly emerging among early adopters. Foursquare, Gowalla, and even Twitter are allowing people to share their location, time, and social context.	Infantile	Advertising and special offers becomes more targeted as brands can triangulate contextual information for consumers –but only if they desire to see it.
Sales Efforts	Ok, this isn’t a medium, nor the two listed below, but it impacts the scope of the CMO. Most marketers provide sales enablement resources, now these sales folks are armed with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. In fact, many sales folks have had their digital rolodex in LinkedIn for years.	Young Adult	For savvy marketers, providing social marketing skill training to sales folks will provide them with best practices, and teach them to do more quicker. Those that do nothing run the risk of PR nightmares and even legal problems for the untrained department. Learn about social media policies.
Support Efforts	What happens in customer support now echos on the social web, from Dooce’s flare up with Maytag to Domino’s Employees snotting on Youtube.  Furthermore, customers self-support each other in forums, Facebook, and GetSatisfaction.	Adult	Marketers must provide a holistic experience to customers, as they don’t care what department you’re in.  Read more about Social Support.
Product Development	A handful of savvy companies like Dell, Starbucks, and Nokia are using social tools to improve the innovation process using tools from Salesforce ideas, Uservoice, or Getsatisfaction	Infantile	Customers want to innovate with brand, use these free resources to improve brand messaging, test new features, and to develop an army of advocates.  Learn how some companies have benefitted from co-innovation.
Real World and Events	Physical events are now impacted by social technologies, and even virtual events.  Attendees will connect to each other, comment about the event, and discuss if even after the event has concluded.	Adult	Event marketers must develop a strategy to encompass both pre, during, and post event to be successful.  Here’s a playbook to integrate social and events.

Sharing This Content
Occasionally, I get a few emails from people asking if they can use my blog posts in their presentations. Here’s my policy: You cannot package up this content and sell it without my permission. However, it is ok to use for educational purposes as long as you give me credit on the slide, mention it verbally, and link to my blog. Creative Commons defines this as: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Love to hear your comments below, and how social impacts all digital channels.

Thanks to Christine Tran, Altimeter Researcher for her editorial expertise on the Forbes piece.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Forbes, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

At the Altimeter Group, I cover Customer Strategy, which encompasses not only marketing, but also support, expect our discussion to grow as social technologies impact the whole enterprise.

The Social Support movement is afoot (see opportunities), and more companies will be connecting existing marketing and support systems with the social web. Many companies, like Comcast, Wells Fargo, Intel, BestBuy, JetBLue are responding to customers and in some cases, supporting them in near real time.

The challenge is that these teams are unable to scale, even a support team of ten full time folks at Comcast will have a hard time responding to all customers in all social channels. As a result, expect companies to resort to scalable ways to respond to customers, such as:

The Four Social Support Strategies

1) Do Nothing: Use Legacy Support Channels
Some companies will not respond to customers, it’s not in their culture, exposes them to risk, have specific legal or federal restrictions in place, or simply don’t get this space. In this case, these companies may only choose to support customers in their formal forms of support in 1800 numbers or on the official company websites

2) Employee Based Support:  Employees Respond to Customers
Many companies are assigning people in their support or product teams to respond to customers in the social web. The more conservative the company, the less people are officially able to support. Take for example financial services company Wells Fargo has a handful of “Social Concierges” that tweet on the @Ask_WellsFargo account, they set expectations around hours of service (insert banker’s hours joke here) and not to disclose account information. On the flip side, Best Buy encourages their thousands and thousands of “Blue Shirt” employees to respond using a Twitter CMS system that response from the official @Twelpforce account.

3) Peer Based Support: Customer to Customer Other companies will approach this by encouraging their top customers to respond on their behalf. By creating online communities where customers can self-support each other using Q&A features like Salesforce “Answers”, or my Lithium’s unique Twitter alerting system that encourages advocates to respond to prospects.  (Lithium is an Altimeter Group client).  It’s not just on branded communities, many companies encourage support from third party sites such as Get Satisfaction, who centralizes support for all products.

4) Automated Social Support: Computer Generated Tweets
Social CRM systems are going to be intelligent, in fact, they’ll start to incorporate bot-like features you can find in web-based chat support, or the logic from interactive voice systems (IVR), and respond to customers. Support and product teams can already tweet from some CRM interfaces, so attaching an intelligence module will be the next step –it could even come from existing employee Twitter handles.

Web Strategy Matrix:  The Four Social Support Strategies

	Benefit	Downside
Rely on Legacy Systems	This keeps customers in the right process and funnel that the company is used to. Secondly, it doesn’t reinforce that customers should yell at their friends to get help from a company	Missed opportunities: Angry customers could revolt starting a Groundswell, or leave an opportunity for competitors to swoop in and take dissatisfied customers.
Employee to Customer	Provides a personal touch to help and assist customers, builds relations and trust	For large companies, this is not scalable, and will result in companies prioritizing responses to the most authoritative or most urgent. If rolled out to support in all social avenues, it can be costly.  Lastly, it teaches customers to yell at their friends to get support.
Peer Based Support	Companies can reduce costs by having customers self-support each other. Collectively, customers may often know more about the company’s products than the actual product team.	Unfortunately, not all questions may get answered in a timely way, or answered correctly by staff who may have the inside details. Also, content in knowledge bases, wikis, forums, and Q&A features are often unstructured, messy, and hard to navigate.
Automated Social Support	Companies can quickly scale by responding to customers faster, and more accurately, using automated responses.	Some customers may feel cheated if they find out they are talking to a bot, and it may be more difficult to build that personal relationship.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 9:44 am and is filed under Social CRM, Social Media, Social Support, Support. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.