Posts Tagged: ‘communities’

[EN] An Effective Social Marketing Strategy builds on Content and Community – Forbes

7. Oktober 2013 Posted by StefanP.

Great article by Greg Satell on Forbes:

Create A Community (Not An Audience)

… without compelling content that informs, excites and inspires, social marketing doesn’t have a chance. It simply will not be effective. However, the mark of a great social marketing program is that it builds more than an audience—it builds a community.This is where things often go wildly, wildly wrong because social marketers mistakenly equate the strength of their community with the size of their following. They establish fans on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks as a key performance indicator and then blast them with brand messages.

This is where things often go wildly, wildly wrong because social marketers mistakenly equate the strength of their community with the size of their following.  They establish fans on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks as a key performance indicator and then blast them with brand messages. …

The bottom line is that we are now in a post-promotional age where brand messages are only half the battle.  To build a great brand today you need to build great brand experiences and the best way to do that is to build a community around shared values with content that holds attention.

via How To Build An Effective Social Marketing Strategy – Forbes.


Filed under: English Tagged: Communities, Marketing, SocBiz

[EN] IDC: 2013 – The Year of Customer, Employee, Partners and Supplier Online Communities – and integration

26. März 2013 Posted by StefanP.

And in 2013, IDC found that online communities – be that customer, employee, partners and suppliers – has claimed the top spot. IDC analyst Michael Fauscette told MyCustomer.com that he wasn’t surprised by the survey findings: “A lot of companies we talk to are in the process of looking at it and doing something with communities.

“There’s a lot of value in the use of communities, particularly on the side with customer interaction,” he explains. “The idea that companies can build customer communities that can then be used for peer-to-peer support, which is of high value for the customer. It gets them really engaged with the company and helps the company either because it reduces the call volume into their customer support organisations or it changes the tenure of that so their customer agents can focus on more difficult problems.”

So moving forward, integrating these siloed networks into company culture and then integrating these employee network tools into customer communities will be the main trend this year.

via Online communities: Consolidate to avoid the social network sprawl.

Check out the whole interview with Michael Fauscette. Very interesting on the sprawl of internal (Enterprise) and external Social Networks.


Filed under: English Tagged: Communities, SocBiz

[EN] How the customer experience sets you apart in the age of social business: Part 2 — The value of community | SmartBlogs

6. Februar 2013 Posted by StefanP.

Part 2 of my posting on outstanding Customer Experience has been published on SmartBlog for Social Media. Check it out. Here is my closing of the posting:

In the age of social business, a good customer experience is personal, personalized, comprehensive, sustainable and transparent. It supports multiple channels and is coherent, communicative, and active on social networks. How’s that for a list? And I bet I still forgot something.

What do you think I should add? Where do you agree with me, and where do you disagree?

via How the customer experience sets you apart in the age of social business: Part 2 — The value of community | SmartBlogs.


[EN] Post the Document on-line before Emailing it | Collaborative Planning & Social Business

16. Januar 2013 Posted by StefanP.

If you are sending information to a group of people, you should FIRST post that information on-line, and THEN you should email everyone about it.

via Post the Document on-line before Emailing it | Collaborative Planning & Social Business.

In my opinion really a best practise. Before I am sending my weekly to the European IBM Social Business Community (Notice: Only the people, who have explicitly opted in, some are relying on following our Community, RSS and the Activity Stream), I am posting it in the Community Blog … Works perfect. And makes sure, that a Newsflash is not lot lost in individual Email silos, but stays accessible and retrievable.


"Der Kunde nervt wie Sau" oder Sascha Lobo zu Callcentern auf SPIEGEL ONLINE

9. Januar 2013 Posted by Stefan Pfeiffer

Ein sehr lesenswerter Beitrag von Sascha Lobo. Es geht um Call Center, Kundendienst, Dienst am Kunden, zufriedene Kunden. Die Bestandsaufnahme ist in der Regel ernüchternd:

Die durchschnittliche Service-Hotline zum Beispiel ist besetzt mit einer Person, die fast nichts entscheiden kann, nur wenig mehr weiß - aber dafür umfangreiche Sprachregelungen vorliegen hat. Dieses Prinzip funktioniert, solange man ein gewöhnliches Problem hat. Anderthalb Millimeter außerhalb der Standardvorgänge fängt ein Niemandsland der Kommunikation an. Dort hilft nur noch Glück. Zum Beispiel in Form eines überdurchschnittlich engagierten Mitarbeiters.

via Sascha Lobos Kolumne: Callcenter, Warteschleifen und nervende Kunden - SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Fast jeder hat solche Erfahrungen mit Call Centern machen können. Auch habe ja hier und im privaten "Block" entsprechende Erlebnisse dokumentiert. Guter Service kostet Zeit, die Zur-Verfügung-Stellung kompetenter Ressourcen und damit vor allem Geld. Unbenommen. In Zeiten laufender Einsparungen, "Kostenoptimierungen" und unter dem Druck, jedes Quartal an der Börse Superergebnisse abzuliefern, wird im Zweifelsfall lieber gespart. Früher, vor dem Netz, sind die unzufriedenen Kunden nicht so aufgefallen. Heute tun sie es und sie richten "Schaden" an. Soziale Kanäle sind unterdessen sehr oft der Kanal, auf dem die Kunden ihren Unmut äussern und Sascha Lobo führt auch einige Beispiele auf. Und da sind wir auch bei einem weiteren Teil des Problems jenseits der Kosteneinsparungsfrage: Viele Unternehmen fürchten das Netz, den berühmten "Shitstorm" und haben noch immer nicht erkannt, dass sie sich gegen die Öffentlichkeit im Netz heutzutage nicht mehr wehren können. Und nebenbei bemerkt: Das Netz besteht nicht nur aus Shitstorms.

Heute ist konstruktiver Umgang mit dem Netz, dessen Chancen nutzen und nicht eine platte Abwehrhaltung gefragt. Dafür müssen Unternehmen aber jenseits purer Lippenbekenntnisse den Kunden wirklich in den Mittelpunkt stellen und sich um dessen Wohl kümmern wollen. Das Netz, soziale Kanäle sind nicht nur eine Gefahr, sondern auch eine Chance, auch eine Chance Kosten zu sparen ... Ich habe mich ja desöfteren über die Möglichkeiten und den Mehrwert von "Self Service Communities" geäussert. Klar werden dort auch Probleme transparent. Das werden sie heute aber sowieso. Also ist es nur clever, dass ein Unternehmen diese Probleme aufnimmt, kanalisiert, den Kunden eine Plattform gibt, wo sie sich selbst helfen, wo man ihnen hilft, statt dass sie ihren Unmut auf Facebook oder auf anderen Kanälen per Shitstorm kund tun. Zum Thema Communities unbedingt lesenswert ist dieser Beitrag von Prof. heike Simmet Communities als Servicekanal!

Die klassische Kommunikationsstruktur von Unternehmen ist noch immer auf Appeasement und Abschirmung vom Kunden ausgerichtet und nur selten auf Problemlösung. Dabei entstanden diese Hilfsstrukturen Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts nur aus Mangel an Internet. ...

Die Instrumente der digitalen Vernetzung bestehen längst, gewissermaßen die sozialen, digitalen, öffentlich einsehbaren Callcenter-Nachfahren des 21. Jahrhunderts, der direkte, funktionierende Draht in die Schaltzentralen samt brauchbarer Dokumentation aller verfügbaren Vorgänge und Informationen. Nur setzt dieser Ansatz voraus, dass sich Haltung und Kommunikationskultur in den Unternehmen ändern und den technischen Möglichkeiten annähern, was Transparenz und Nachvollziehbarkeit angeht. Damit der Kunde nicht mehr als einzulullender Störfaktor behandelt wird.

via Sascha Lobos Kolumne: Callcenter, Warteschleifen und nervende Kunden - SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Klar sind viele Support- und Servicediskussionen nervig, noch nerviger als bisher, weil sie durch das Netz eben transparent werden. Sascha Lobo schließt mit: "Der Kunde an sich nervt wie Sau." Ich würde sagen. Mag stimmen, aber es gibt  auch keine bessere Werbung als einen nachgewiesenermaßen zufriedenen Kunden. Der nervt dann auch nicht. Im Gegenteil. Vielleicht empfiehlt er einen sogar weiter oder kauft andere Sachen. Da soll es ja entsprechende Studien und Statistiken geben.

Zum nervenden Kunden bin ich dieser Tage über diese Infografik gestossen. Aber, liebe Unternehmen, bitte die Kundentypen nicht als Grund und Entschuldigung nehmen, keinen guten Kundendienst anzubieten.

[DE] “Der Kunde nervt wie Sau” oder Sascha Lobo zu Callcentern auf SPIEGEL ONLINE

9. Januar 2013 Posted by StefanP.

Ein sehr lesenswerter Beitrag von Sascha Lobo. Es geht um Call Center, Kundendienst, Dienst am Kunden, zufriedene Kunden. Die Bestandsaufnahme ist in der Regel ernüchternd:

Die durchschnittliche Service-Hotline zum Beispiel ist besetzt mit einer Person, die fast nichts entscheiden kann, nur wenig mehr weiß – aber dafür umfangreiche Sprachregelungen vorliegen hat. Dieses Prinzip funktioniert, solange man ein gewöhnliches Problem hat. Anderthalb Millimeter außerhalb der Standardvorgänge fängt ein Niemandsland der Kommunikation an. Dort hilft nur noch Glück. Zum Beispiel in Form eines überdurchschnittlich engagierten Mitarbeiters.

via Sascha Lobos Kolumne: Callcenter, Warteschleifen und nervende Kunden – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Fast jeder hat solche Erfahrungen mit Call Centern machen können. Auch habe ja hier und im privaten “Block” entsprechende Erlebnisse dokumentiert. Guter Service kostet Zeit, die Zur-Verfügung-Stellung kompetenter Ressourcen und damit vor allem Geld. Unbenommen. In Zeiten laufender Einsparungen, “Kostenoptimierungen” und unter dem Druck, jedes Quartal an der Börse Superergebnisse abzuliefern, wird im Zweifelsfall lieber gespart. Früher, vor dem Netz, sind die unzufriedenen Kunden nicht so aufgefallen. Heute tun sie es und sie richten “Schaden” an. Soziale Kanäle sind unterdessen sehr oft der Kanal, auf dem die Kunden ihren Unmut äussern und Sascha Lobo führt auch einige Beispiele auf. Und da sind wir auch bei einem weiteren Teil des Problems jenseits der Kosteneinsparungsfrage: Viele Unternehmen fürchten das Netz, den berühmten “Shitstorm” und haben noch immer nicht erkannt, dass sie sich gegen die Öffentlichkeit im Netz heutzutage nicht mehr wehren können. Und nebenbei bemerkt: Das Netz besteht nicht nur aus Shitstorms.

Heute ist konstruktiver Umgang mit dem Netz, dessen Chancen nutzen und nicht eine platte Abwehrhaltung gefragt. Dafür müssen Unternehmen aber jenseits purer Lippenbekenntnisse den Kunden wirklich in den Mittelpunkt stellen und sich um dessen Wohl kümmern wollen. Das Netz, soziale Kanäle sind nicht nur eine Gefahr, sondern auch eine Chance, auch eine Chance Kosten zu sparen … Ich habe mich ja desöfteren über die Möglichkeiten und den Mehrwert von “Self Service Communities” geäussert. Klar werden dort auch Probleme transparent. Das werden sie heute aber sowieso. Also ist es nur clever, dass ein Unternehmen diese Probleme aufnimmt, kanalisiert, den Kunden eine Plattform gibt, wo sie sich selbst helfen, wo man ihnen hilft, statt dass sie ihren Unmut auf Facebook oder auf anderen Kanälen per Shitstorm kund tun. Zum Thema Communities unbedingt lesenswert ist dieser Beitrag von Prof. heike Simmet Communities als Servicekanal!

Die klassische Kommunikationsstruktur von Unternehmen ist noch immer auf Appeasement und Abschirmung vom Kunden ausgerichtet und nur selten auf Problemlösung. Dabei entstanden diese Hilfsstrukturen Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts nur aus Mangel an Internet. …

Die Instrumente der digitalen Vernetzung bestehen längst, gewissermaßen die sozialen, digitalen, öffentlich einsehbaren Callcenter-Nachfahren des 21. Jahrhunderts, der direkte, funktionierende Draht in die Schaltzentralen samt brauchbarer Dokumentation aller verfügbaren Vorgänge und Informationen. Nur setzt dieser Ansatz voraus, dass sich Haltung und Kommunikationskultur in den Unternehmen ändern und den technischen Möglichkeiten annähern, was Transparenz und Nachvollziehbarkeit angeht. Damit der Kunde nicht mehr als einzulullender Störfaktor behandelt wird.

via Sascha Lobos Kolumne: Callcenter, Warteschleifen und nervende Kunden – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Klar sind viele Support- und Servicediskussionen nervig, noch nerviger als bisher, weil sie durch das Netz eben transparent werden. Sascha Lobo schließt mit: “Der Kunde an sich nervt wie Sau.” Ich würde sagen. Mag stimmen, aber es gibt  auch keine bessere Werbung als einen nachgewiesenermaßen zufriedenen Kunden. Der nervt dann auch nicht. Im Gegenteil. Vielleicht empfiehlt er einen sogar weiter oder kauft andere Sachen. Da soll es ja entsprechende Studien und Statistiken geben.

Zum nervenden Kunden bin ich dieser Tage über diese Infografik gestossen. Aber, liebe Unternehmen, bitte die Kundentypen nicht als Grund und Entschuldigung nehmen, keinen guten Kundendienst anzubieten.


Turn Customer Care into "Social Care" to Break Away from the Competition – Gadi Benmark and Dan Singer – Harvard Business Review

20. Dezember 2012 Posted by Stefan Pfeiffer

Social media has conditioned consumers to getting immediate feedback. In fact, a lot of customer service these days is happening via social media, and customers expect you to respond as though you were one of their Twitter followers. More than 50% of Twitter users expect a response in less than two hours, a lot shorter than most companies' response windows.

Enter social care, a system for companies to regularly provide customer service through social-media platforms. Social care can save money. It costs less than $1 per interaction, whereas telephone care is typically at least $6 per call. Even e-mail care costs $2.50 to $5 per interaction. But the real benefit is to the customer experience. Almost 30% of social-media users prefer social care to phoning customer service (and it's not just the young set; even over-65s use social care, with 17% preferring it to the telephone). Consumers with positive social-care experiences are also three times more likely to recommend the brand to others.

via Turn Customer Care into "Social Care" to Break Away from the Competition - Gadi Benmark and Dan Singer - Harvard Business Review.

Great posting. I would add Customer Self Service Communities as another pillar of Social Care. Case Studies from IBM developerworks or Cisco are two examples, how you can unleash the power of Communities, provide better service and save money!

[EN] Turn Customer Care into “Social Care” – Gadi Benmark and Dan Singer – Harvard Business Review

20. Dezember 2012 Posted by StefanP.

Social media has conditioned consumers to getting immediate feedback. In fact, a lot of customer service these days is happening via social media, and customers expect you to respond as though you were one of their Twitter followers. More than 50% of Twitter users expect a response in less than two hours, a lot shorter than most companies’ response windows.

Enter social care, a system for companies to regularly provide customer service through social-media platforms. Social care can save money. It costs less than $1 per interaction, whereas telephone care is typically at least $6 per call. Even e-mail care costs $2.50 to $5 per interaction. But the real benefit is to the customer experience. Almost 30% of social-media users prefer social care to phoning customer service (and it’s not just the young set; even over-65s use social care, with 17% preferring it to the telephone). Consumers with positive social-care experiences are also three times more likely to recommend the brand to others.

via Turn Customer Care into “Social Care” to Break Away from the Competition – Gadi Benmark and Dan Singer – Harvard Business Review.

Great posting. I would add Customer Self Service Communities as another pillar of Social Care. Case Studies from IBM developerworks or Cisco are two examples, how you can unleash the power of Communities, provide better service and save money!


[EN] IBM developerWorks: Empower your Customers to help themselves

12. November 2012 Posted by StefanP.

Believe it or not: People like to help each other. People like to show their expertise. Give them the environment to do so and it can save you time and money. Take IBM developerWorks as an example of a vital network, of an outstanding Customer Self Service community powered by social – and the people:

IBM developerWorks is the premier web-based resource and social network for millions of developers and IT professionals worldwide. …
Challenge

In the late 1990s, IBM realized that it had a problem: Because technology changes so quickly, it was not always easy for software developers to stay up to speed and communicate with each other on the most current technologies, techniques, and standards. Since the IBM software product line is built on open standards, there was a concern that the community skilled on these standards would gradually erode and IBM software products would suffer as developers had a hard time solving problems on their own without in depth information or a community where they could ask questions. At the same time, with high costs for the average support call, the IBM software support team needed a way to cut spending as much as possible. …
Solution

In September 1999, IBM connected open standards developers through an online community, to make sure that developers had a central location to visit to build a professional network .. , and a thriving new online community around this content, launched in April 2009. …
Results

Since its inception, developerWorks has become the destination on the web for developers and IT professionals to stay abreast of open standards, develop skills, solve problems, and collaborate with peers. Our results demonstrate that through our forums and online community efforts, developerWorks has both encouraged the growth of the open standards development community while driving down IBM support costs. The net result of the following activities is over $100M in annual support savings …:

via IBM developerWorks : IBM developerWorks.


[DE] Infografik: B2B Online-Marketing und Social-Media

10. Oktober 2012 Posted by StefanP.

Zu den wichtigsten Kanälen im B2B Social-Media-Marketing gehören u.a. Social-Communities.

Trends 2012/2013 im B2B Online-Marketing und Social-Media-Marketing (Infografik)

Trends 2012/2013 im B2B Online-Marketing und Social-Media-Marketing (Infografik)

via Infografik: B2B Online-Marketing und Social-Media ›› B2B Online-Marketing Blog.


On the Power of Communities to connect Employees, Customers, and Partners

23. August 2012 Posted by Stefan Pfeiffer

Building out an enterprise social network (ESN) goes beyond just connecting employees to each other. Talking about a company’s ESN one might picture a single network, but in reality many companies will operate with several / many interconnected communities and networks. That’s one of the reasons that community platforms, ESN platforms and private social networks need to be built on open standards. Disconnected communities and networks perpetuate silos. Integration is really critical.

Customer communities are used by companies for many different activities, support and service, marketing, and sales. As customers interact in the community a great deal of valuable content is developed. The value of that content is greatly increased by providing a method for sharing. Beyond the content the interactions in the community provides useful insight into the members behavior. Using analytics to examine the data, a great deal can be added to a prospect’s / customer’s profile. The information can be used to provide a much richer customer experience. The problem though, is getting that information into the right hands inside a company. Most communities are disconnected from the internal systems and thus, create data silos.

A great description, why Communities make sense in communicating with customers and Business Partners. This is why the idea of a Social Portal hosting not only the company web site but social functions including communities is so powerful. Talking about my own work I am extensively using Communities to get my job done:

  • The EULUC-platform to communicate with the German users and User Group DNUG - and now you guys out there.
  • User Communities are today an extremely important instrument to have a two-way-communication and discussion with your customers. In my previous role as Marketing Lead for IBM Collaboration Solutions in Germany I was (and I still am) leveraging the EULUC-community. This is the platform of the German IBM Collaboration Solutions User Group running on the newest release of IBM Connections. It is being hosted by Softwerk and holistic.net, two German Business Partners. The discussions on EULUC and the two blogs, which Stefan Krueger and myself have been cultivating, became an indispensable part of our communication an Marketing mix. Our German customers know in between that they will always find the newest information in this community. And of course the blogs offer the opportunity to post different kind of information's from press and blog clippings up to personal comments (which are made visible as personal statements). The click rates are impressive: the IBM Collaboration Solutions Germany reached 3.650.707 clicks as of today (May 28, 2012). Of course EULUC is not a one-way-communication vehicle for marketers. It is much more. It is a real community, where we as a vendor get and want feedback and where lively and of course sometimes controversial discussions. And I know that even our competitors are very active readers of the Community … It is a place, where you can meet the experts, not only the IBM experts but the experts from our customers and partners. Not a surprise that the Meet the Expert-blog and community is highly used.

  • IBM SmartCloud for Social Business to work with my suppliers.
  • One of the most appealing use cases for me is working with my supply chain and my partners. As a marketer I am obviously organizing campaigns and events. External suppliers are always involved in these projects, e.g. our PR Agency Text100, our event agency, my partner in crime CPP, Freelancers, Speakers etc. What are you doing in these projects? You define Milestones, you are assigning and hopefully tracking tasks, you are sharing and collaborating on files, you write meeting minutes and much more. Of course you need to share and track all this information. So typically files and info's are send by Email, tasks are managed in extensive spreadsheets, which are again being distributed by Email. And we all experience the disadvantages of Email for sharing and tracking projects, information and files.  A few years ago I changed the way how I manage projects and in particular events away from the Email centric approach to I would call the the „Social Business“ way. I am using with my suppliers IBM's Smart Cloud for Social Business. I am setting up a project community and activity in the cloud, invite the internal IBMers to the project, include my external suppliers and manage the whole project collaboratively in this community.

  • Communities on ibm.com to collaborate and innovate on different topics.

  • The German IBM Web team around Petra Baeuerle did set up the IBM BlueBlog, a group blog, where IBM'ers like myself are posting their views in German language. The Community, Blog and other functions of IBM Connections are available on ibm.com to be leveraged by IBM'ers, customers and partners for their special interests and topics. I used to run some communities on ibm.com, e.g. around our two IBM Social JamCamps, which took place 2011 and 2010. This power of Social is unbelievable important to energize your web site and it is the reason, why we have most recently extended functionality and integration of the IBM Exceptional Web Experience Suite to provide an even deeper and smoother integration between the traditional Portal and WCM with the social functions of IBM Connections.

These are only a few examples out of my life, where I leverage communities. There are many more beyond Marketing in Product Development, HR, Sales and many more functions. I strongly believe that we will see more and more Communities leveraged. They will be a Communication and Dailogue Hub between the Enterprise and its external eco system, crucial for running the business successfully. I am looking forward to the next release of Connections which will even extend the capaibilities of linking internal and external communities together, And to finish this posting, I would like to reference again to this great graphic from Dion Hinchcliffe visualizing the importance of communities for the Next Generation Enterprise:

 image

New White Paper: Synchronize the Value Chain: Collaborate with your Business Community

8. August 2012 Posted by Stefan Pfeiffer

Customers are now more demanding than integrated with their business community ever before, with increased access to technology - and therefore information - this undoubtedly puts a strain on enterprises.

Because of customers’ unlimited acess to information, enterprises need to find a way of serving these customers flawlessly, while keeping up with their changing demands. The most effective way for organizations to do so, is to increase the levels of integration and collaboration with their supply chain.

It has been well established that enterprise organizations view the process of integrating their value chain as a complicated and difficult exercise.

However, one thing that all enterprises will need additional assistance with, particularly in the current economic climate, is their ability to serve and retain customers - and by default - improve their financial performance. Therefore, these enterprises need additional clarity around how effective value chain synchronization can increase that performance. Integration is no longer enough.

In order for an enterprise to reach its full potential, it must understand the importance of the business community, be able to collaborate with everyone involved, and most crucially, ‘synchronize’ the value chain.

In March 2012 IBM appointed specialist technology market research house Vanson Bourne, to interview 700 IT decision makers across the globe. This White Paper is the result of the survey demonstrating the need of integrating, synchronizing and collaborating the value chain and build an open and collaborative business community. We at IBM call it becoming a Social Business ...

The White Paper is available here for download.