Today’s guest post is from Debi Kleiman, the Vice President of Product Marketing at Communispace, who will be speaking at Social Business Edge. A leader in generating insights via private online customer communities, Communispace has created more than 350 customer communities for industry leaders such as Kraft, Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab, Hallmark, Best Buy, Microsoft, MTV, GlaxoSmithKline, and Hilton Hotels Corporation.
“Clients usually ask us how they can drill that hole in the wall. As consultants we are obsessed with finding the best drill that does it in the fastest and most cost-effective way. Sadly, we often forget to ask the client why he or she needs that hole in the first place.” (coaching advice from a VP in my previous company)
Several shark species need to keep on swimming, otherwise they die. Does this hold true for companies as well? If you “stop swimming” will it cause the death of a company, as it will do for a shark?
Last night I attended one of the Social Media Week events, Show Me the Money: Where’s the ROI in Social Media?, a panel discussion organised by Chinwag and hosted by Sun. The discussion, chaired by Andrew Gerrard, included Robin Grant from We Are Social, Luke Brynley-Jones of Our Social Times, Marshal Manson from Edelman, and Mark Rogers of Market Sentinel.
To what extent is an external customer community different from an internal employee community? If you think about it, they serve similar goals.
From a holistic perspective, we talk about the need for organizations to become more socially calibrated—able to adapt and respond to changes both externally and internally. The three areas where emergent outcomes can manifest are, participation with your customers, collaboration between your employees and optimization in the interactions/transactions between your business and its partners. Digging into customer participation, it’s clear that in a networked economy customers demand engagement, information, support and ultimately, value and ecosystems such as Twitter are beginning to deliver here.