Connectedness and Customer Service
Blog PostWhile social technology can automate and innovate many processes, I believe it is the human behind the technology that makes best-in-class customer service. To that end, connectedness is a quality I would recommend preserving and nurturing at the front lines. I explain this recommendation with a personal customer service story from Austin, Texas.
Thinking Beyond The Usual Suspects
Blog PostA few weeks ago, my colleague, Caroline Dangson, wrote about when to outsource social media responsibilities. Many companies outsource large portions, if not all, of their social programs to their agencies. Outsourcing happens for a few reasons, with the lack of internal resources and expertise being at the top of that list. However, as Caroline points out, companies should make the right investments in-house to maximize the return on their investment in social programs.
Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus
Blog PostTwo years ago, I joined Dachis Group as employee #1. This week, I start my third year with the company and it's fun to glance back and see what we've accomplished. But it's even more energizing to look ahead and see where we're going...
Connecting the Dots Between the Cloud and Enterprise 2.0
Blog PostYesterday in Portland at OSCON's Cloud Summit I spoke about major emerging trends in business, IT, and the Web. Specifically, I explored how Enterprise 2.0, Cloud Computing, and something known as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) have converged on top of the same "problem space" to become the essential fabric for how we solve the business problems in our organizations.
Put Your Social Communications on a Diet
Blog PostThe abundance of opportunities to communicate in social media can be the medium's greatest curse. Abundance means brands don't consider their actions the way they do elsewhere where a scarcity demands a clear justification for participation. The result? Low-effort, but low-value communications that are a lot like white bread: cheap, easy and not particularly good for you. The fact is that brands can do better. They can eat whole wheat (even if it doesn't taste as good).
Communication as Work: In Real Life
Blog PostIn my last post I wrote about communication being an important aspect of knowledge work and decision making. I can sometimes get a little too academic with how things are supposed to work and so I thought I'd write a follow-up post that uses a concrete example (IRL for some) of how communication helped me and my colleague, Tom Cummings, just the other night. The setup here isn't that important other than to to say we were at the beginning stages of a new project and decided a brainstorming session was in order. We found an empty conference room, a whiteboard and started to get our ideas down.
Social Layering Can Help Bring IT and the Business Together
Blog PostIf I could wave my magic wand and make one major change to accelerate our work in the social business design field, it would be to improve the often fraught relationship between 'the business' and IT departments.
Balancing Brand and Supporting Personalities
Blog PostThis was a eventful week for brands in social media. Personalities representing brands were in the spotlight for entertaining us in Social Media Marketing and helping us in Social Media Servicing.
Communication as Work
Blog PostA knowledge worker spends a good portion of the day communicating - meetings, status reports, emails, phone calls, water cooler talks. Much of this activity is considered unproductive overhead; when you look at a calendar full of meetings you wonder when you’re going to get any REAL work done. And while many popular forms of communication may be inefficient and ineffective, communication is work; perhaps the most important work knowledge workers do.
What Works in Social Business
Blog PostAt our recent Social Business Summit 2010 in Austin, Dion Hinchcliffe gave a presentation about the state of Social Business Strategies in 2010, and more importantly what is working and why. His 56 slides are included below, in the event that you weren't able to attend the summit. They cover topics such as social business benefits, the social supply chain, and communities.