Monday, July 06, 2009

Social Media based Customer Experience Strategy

The real underlying power in Social Media is a new customer experience model. Too many hip "social media campaigns" failed because it was just old ideas blasted into a new world. Too much money was invested in fan pages or online community that became dormant after just 3 or 6 month - or worst - was never adopted.

"Anybody experience with..."
Social media is about the most often asked question: "Anybody experience with...". Customers asking for help from real users, real customers - names they would never get from the respective business. Over 160,000 Toyota driver, 65,000 John Deere customers, 50,000 IBM customer, 25,000 SAP customers, 10,000 Dow Chemical customers... customers in all industries for all types of products asked those questions and most found answers. You are right - this is not 100% of their respective customer base - but these are the most vocal and therefor most influential people. Neither business processes automation, nor the next generation CRM, or a marketing campaign or yet another survey can help. If you and your team are not part of the conversation - your influence is ZERO.

"The new customer experience model"
Social Media in a business world is NOT having a LinkedIn profile, is NOT listening to tweets of somebody walking their dog and is NOT browsing through facebook pages. Social media in business is first and foremost "The New Customer Experience Model". Based on a thorough social media assessment of your ecosystem you create a good old SWOT analysis and create a strategy that leverages your team, your partners, your customers, vendors and others to become part of the conversation - not the old "message blasting one way street" - no - a meaningful and mutually beneficial conversation with your customers, your prospects and the rest of the market.

The Social Media Academy is running a complementary webinar this week July 10th. This Link which is all about the new customer experience model, case studies, methods, frameworks, reporting tools and ways to make it happen.

2 comments:

lousagar said...

I completely agree. "The New Customer Experience Model" is in the field..working in the trenches, on the front lines..The staff are the first customers. The new eco-system leveraging social media must focus internally..put social networking into place between teams, departments, and then outward to a community of parters, suppliers, and customers...Axel Schultze is feeling the flow...Great post.

Linda Ireland said...

What well-reasoned thinking here! Every customer experience begins with a person who has a need or desire they would trade something of value to have solved. So if we can use social media to get a person further or faster to a need solved, it improves the customer experience. If not...it won't. Your new model w/interal actions in concert toward a target experience is spot on. You may also be interested in this thinkig: http://tinyurl.com/nkqsq6 Again - thanks for a great post.

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