The other debt organizations may die of : the trust one

November 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary : trust  is the fuel that will power new forms of work and management and make change possible. But trust can’t be mandated and has to we won over time. In fact, it’s being lost, day after day, for decades by actions that look anecdotical for organizations but are meaningful to employees who feel belittled and considered as poorly responsible, unworthy of trust and unable to understand the challenges at stake. The trust deficit is very actual and costs a lot to organizations every day, not mentioning it makes changes hard to drive. But they still can change their message and, so, their future.

Debt is very trendy topic these days. Most of times it’s about states, not businesses which have pretty good results. But, as states have refused to consider their financial debt for decades, businesses are exposed to a similar form of risk that is not related to money but another kind of matter.

It’s been said again and again : trust is key to business competitiveness. Because its impacts collaboration, collaboration and knowledge sharing. Because it supports the new forms of management that are needed in such contexts. Because no change program aiming at adopting new forms of work can be successfully undertaken without trust.

But that’s a fact : trust is more and more uncommon in the workplace. Weak between colleagues and nearly non-existent between businesses and employees. And this works in the two ways. It’s hard to tell who, businesses and employees, started the move that is leading the couple into this diabolical helix…But we can suppose that the management and operation models that were born at the beginning of the industrial revolution contributed a lot to the disappearing of trust, because of businesses. By putting trust into the system and not into people who act in the systems, businesses made the gap become wider and wider.

To such an extent that I recently wondered if businesses, abstract entities, did not have their own consciousness, independent from the one of people that are part of it. When you see how people who are deeply humane can consider and treat their fellow colleagues once they’re in a work context you can really wonder. At this moment they are not themselves anymore but a part of the system. A part that treats other parts, those they have authority over, like immature, irresponsible and unworthy of trust people.

I’m not talking about face to face relationships (even if…sometimes….) but systemic relationships. Where the ones make decision that apply to “other” people they don’t even know. Examples are numerous.

The cult of presenteism, which is pillar of the control and command system. People have to be here, no matter why. The myth of “work hours” that makes no sense for more and more occupations. Restrictions to internet access. Policy of use for communication and collaboration tools. I’m not saying that some barriers should not exist. I’m only questioning which ones are legitimate, how high they should be and what words should be used to explain them.

 

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Filed Under: Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Engaging is not delivering

November 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Summary : tomorrow’s enterprises will be conversational and will need engagement from employees and customers. But engagement useless if not turned into concrete actions, if customers are note made actionable as parts of new social processes. Building engagement and conversations logics out of processes allowing to make the most of what is nothing more than an intention will lead to nothing except flashes in the pan.

Engagement has become a very trendy word. Either employees or customers should be engaged. But why ? Without engagement, what makes people feeling more concerned by enterprise or brand-focused collective challenges and dynamics, beyond their own assignments and objectives, it’s hard to find the fuel sustaining value co-creation systems that are the founding of tomorrow’s organizations.

So, everything is done to engage and the social tools universe plays its part in the movement. In fact, the social world is pretty much ahead because he’s one of the reason why engagement came back on the front scene these last years. On the employees’ side, I’ve already shared what I thought about it : no one should think that the use of any social platform by employees will replace a voluntaristic HR policy. It can be a part of it but nothing more.

So, let’s talk about the customer. Today’s tools make some things much more easier than they were in the pas. It’s easy to track signals and conversations about the enterprise, become proactive, join and response. That’s true that there’s no conversation without engagement, but customers can be engaged even if the enterprise chose not to invest this field : exemplarity in behaviors and product quality make it possible…social only being a substitute.

A second myth is also around. The one according to which, once the message has ben tracked, the sentiment analyzed and the conversation engaged…the job is done. I can’t count how many offers rely on this assumption : listen to your communities, engage…and it’s done. That’s a fallacy for at least two reasons. The first is that it’s not about communities but individual cases (even if gathered in community spaces…the nature of the container does not change the nature of the content) but since I’ve already dealt with this issue in previous posts there’s no time to waste on that. The second reason relates to the belief everything can be solved this way.

First, engaging the customer in a conversation does not mean engaging the customer with the brand. Facing a lamentable level of quality, conversation can make things less painful but some situations can’t be saved. And there’s no reason to blame the community manager : “if your product sucks, social media can’t change anything about it. Second, even when engaged, what is rather about a state of mind, internauts are useless for the enterprise. I used the word internaut in purpose because :

- “community member ” seldom is the reality

-  customer ? nothing tells the people involved in the conversations are customers. Most of times they are not.

- prospect ? any internaut is a potential prospect but they can help the enterprise without becoming customers (crowdsourcing, social marketing).

The internaut has to be activated within a process of any kind (marketing, r&d, services, sales…) to make engagement drive value. Having conversation without solving a problem is useless. Having conversations without trying to guess for what purposes the internaut can be actioned is useless. Having conversations that don’t help to “score” the internaut and don’t come with social processes related to innovation, customer service, marketing et… is useless because it does not turn the social potential into tangible business value.

Some may retort that value is not all, that image and reputation matter, that it’s all about soft things. Ok. But give me only one reason to improve one’s image or reputation if not leverage it for more “concrete” purposes.

In the logic of moving from CRM to Social CRM, there’s a point that’s often overlooked : the concept of customer management that disappeared behind conversations while the latter come to complete it, not to replace it. Moreover, to do things well, it would be better to forget the concept of customer and talk about Social Stakeholder Management because in such “value chain 2.0″ approaches it’s possible to contribute to value creation without being a customer. In fact, it sounds reasonable to say that at least 50% that may jump in the wagon are not customers. What does not prevent them from being stakeholders.

So it’s essential to go back to basics and put conversations and engagement in the wider perspective of new value creation models, of value chain. If not the risk of endless chatting without value is real.

PS : I advise you to read  this post by Marc Fidelman on social CRM with similar conclusions.

 

 

Filed Under: Customer Relationship & Marketing, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to keep the humane side of moments of truth in online customer relationship

October 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary : even if social media are a good means to make the humane side of the company more visible in the customer relationship, online relationships still struggle at making the most of moments of truth that are key in the service economy. As a matter of fact the human factor plays a big role in such moments and has a big impact on the value felt by the customer. To make up for this lack, it’s important to “put employees on stage”, even occasionally, or to mix online and offline experiences in order to create the feeling that will impact what customers will feel and how they’ll subjectively value the service. But there are two requirements for this to work : an actual service that can be valued and the right culture to behave this way.

When a company uses social media as a channel to manage customer relationships, it could be for different reasons. Because they need to be where the customer, when he’s there. Because it increases responsiveness. Because they make it easy to track weak signals that are about the company but are not directly send to her. Because they make the relationship more humane and more engaging. Let’s focus on the last point.

Nothing is more impersonal than a company that tries to communicate. And things aren’t even better when a company tries to interact with her customers. At best you get  a cold message delivered through an anonymous voice. At worse you get a ticket number from the customer service department. In fact things can get even worse when the rules of traditional communications are applied to customer service, what often happens when the communication department starts to try to take care of customers for the only reason they own the social media channel. Using a channel they own to deliver things they don’t master often leads to catastrophes (remember….it’s all about multiplexing). Sometimes, some manage to cross the chasm and, behind the interaction, you don’t feel the cold corporate mechanism but someone who takes care of you. That’s what I call an online guardian angel. This kind of qualitative interaction that make customers feel that, behind the customer relationship/service job there are fully engaged and committed people is more likely to happen on social media than anywhere else. It’s impossible to have the same impact with a contact form. Some may say a phone call should be better at that…but most of time you’ll be answered by someone working at a call center who has nothing to do with the company in question, only following a script to try to answer you. Most of all, you’ll have to fight with the vocal server for a long time to manage to talk with a real human being.

Despite of that, even with the help of social media, online relationships are a true challenge for organizations. When you’re in front on someone, in real life, you can se her attitude, motivation, attentiveness to do something for you. During these moments of truth you can feel more than the corporate customer service policy : you can feel the personal committment of the whole staff. Or not. So, even if some companies ask their employees to sign with their initials the message they publish on the enterprise twitter account, there’s still something missing. Something to compete with these moments of truth when they happen in real life.

Hence the idea to “show” the employees from time to time. Of course it’s only a communication performance around customer relationship that can only be one-shot but they aim at showing this commitment on customer satisfaction. As a matter of fact there’s one thing to be kept in mind : in the world of service, the perceived value matters more than the objectively delivered value. Impressions are essential.

In some ways we can say that Lipdubs, that were very popular a couple of years ago, were a clumsy try in this direction. But they did not deliver any message, any value proposition. But, with time, we began to see more clever and relevant ways to create the “moment of truth” effect on an online interaction.

 

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Filed Under: Customer Relationship & Marketing, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Employees engagement through social media : is it an illusion ?

January 20, 2011 By 3 Comments

Summary : Employees engagement is a very trendy topic ans, as usual, social networking dynamics are seens as the miraculous solution to make it happen. The problem is, in fact, deeper : between in-trompe-l’oeil projects (implementing a social network to avoid looking into real issues), mistrust cultural reflexes towards organizations and people who can be more or less extrovert, tools are not a magic wand. Enterprises need to focus on employees’ expectations (most of all in terms of HR), find a way to address people who have a rational approach of their professional engagement and, most of all, should keep in mind that the activity of their social platform is not the only barometer of employees engagement.

The concept of engagement is central in lots of thoughts and arguments about enterprise 2.0 or enterprise social networks. The reason is easy to understand : engaged employees are more concerned, less willing to leave the job and are more likely to give their best to help their employer and colleagues to be successful. Of course, everything that can bring employees closer to their enterprise and build stronger ties among them is good…hence the irruption of social media and social networks in the debate.

Really ?

It sounds like one more magic wand trick. “Engage your employees by using social media”. Of course, they had no visibility on their future, are asked to accept lower salaries that what they could expect (yes sir…you know…that’s the crisis), are asked to do always more for less, not to expect any raise in reward because the reward is to keep their job, are prevented to use most of networking sites, were hired because of their ability to propos, innovate, lead and, on their first day at work, were told to shut up and follow the party line, are afraid that their employer does not care about their future employability in a fast changing world….and a Facebook-like will change everything. Being able to connect the one with another will make them forget everything,  help them to sleep better at night and not fear the future. Being (potentially) connected will increase their motivation.

Seriously. Do you think that any social tool will change anything ? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , ,

Organizations between sense of belonging and need to own

January 6, 2011 By 1 Comment

Summary : strengthening employees’ sense of belonging as a major matter for most organizations. That’s a concept that’s understood by everyone but hard to put into action : belonging (…is a a relevant word ?) is the result of a shared support of a big picture while organizations, trying to leave as few room as possible for chance, often try to own their employees. What have consequences that are the opposite of those were pursued. Should we use the words belonging, engagement or anything else, any HR 2.0 policy should focus on reconciliation rather that on isolation, lock-up and ownership. Not obvious.

It’s said that many employees have lost their marks in both their professional and personal lifes…and in how to articulate both as well. They’re looking for things that make sense, things to grab hold of. It’s often “sense of belonging”. Belonging to a group, to a project, to a group involved in a project. For any organization, strengthening their employees’ sense of belonging is a very complex issue.

Talking about belonging is one thing. Knowing to what it applies is another one.

Belonging to the enterprise ? Why not, but is some cultures where mistrust toward employers is the rule, it won’t work.

Belonging to a group ? May be a good thing but it must not mean that one’s private life will be swallowed by professional life, that the difference between a colleague and a friend will blur…even if they have to achieve things together.

Is Mintzberg’s community-ship the answer . Why not because it takes care of each one’s expectations and attitude toward engagement. What makes people get involved into a dynamic is their support of a project, of a corporate vision and that’s what makes employees engage with both the organization that carries the vision and the people who make it a reality. So, what is the base of anything is a project and the related values and not a direct link between people and organizations or other people.

As for them, enterprises have to find new levers for motivation and employees engagement. Improving sense of belonging ? Yes, at least tom some extent. Beyond fashion and buzzwords, all the 2.0 paradigm that aims at considering employees (and even customers) as stakeholders for more co-creation, exchanges and new relationships between the “corporte entity” and each of its members belongs to this logic.

But there will always be a limit : it’s not an exact science but a proposition. Organizations propose, ideally after a listening phase, and employees accept (or not) and choose how this acceptation will be turned into action and its intensity. Organizations don’t create either communty-ship or communities : they capitalize on existing values, desires and expectations.

That’s were a bias appears. Organizations respond to need for belonging with a desire to own. At first sight both are complementary…but in fact they aren’t. According to the above lines, the word “belonging” may even be unfortunate to describe what employees need. Since organizations aren’t sure 100% of their employees will buy their offer, they try to catch and lock in.

  • Employees have to give all their time to their employer because the latter own it. Hence the temptation of eliminating everything that may divert people from giving everything to their work or make them think of a non work-related thing while at work.
  • Employees don’t exist outside of the organization. They are not allowed to mention hobbies or even past experiences on their rich profile on the enterprise’s intranet. People are born the day they sign and will die the day they resign. Meanwhile, they’re not supposed neither to have lived before they sign nor to have a non-professional existence during the time they work for the company.
  • Employees don’t have the right to exist, even personally, on any media or social network. Having employees who are fans of fishing or of the old cartoon they loved when they were teenagers is not good for the company that does not even care of the impact of their own actions on employee’s reputation morale.

What has exactly the opposite result as what was pursued.

By the way…what’s the purpose of all these thoughts ?

I was recently asked some questions on HR 2.0, most of all from a values point of view. Don’t get ourselves wrong : I’m very far away the “care bears” sympathies : employees are here because they are needed to contribute to production activities and not because it’s nice to gather people in the workplace. What means that many things depend on the cost/added value ratio of anyone. Once that said, organizations have to find how to make everyone give their best while blooming, what is the best way to make sure they’ll all contribute to what is the goal of any business : making money today and tomorrow (in fact too many people forget the “tomorrow”). In this approach, anything that looks like an attemps to lock people in is counter productive.

Since I’m not always comfortable with words like engagement that are often used wildly, I’d rather say that the core values of HR 2.0 are rather about reconciliating (vision, people, project) than locking in. And, most of all, organizations should keep in mind that ownership is not the response to “belonging needs”.

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Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Trying to solve a business problem ? Don’t start with a social media plan !

November 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Résumé : even if maturity on social media is increasing, we still hear to many incantations like “if you dont’ use social media you’re gonna die”. Not only the systematic nature of the discourse, applied to any subject is irritating decising makers and is not a good thing for credibility, but it’s also misleading. Saying that social media are the only way to do anythigs leads to tool-centric strategies instead of problem-solving driven strategies.  No tool will help to execute a plan that does not exist.

Clear-sighted as usual, Luis Suarez rencently wrote :”Dont’ start with the tools, they’re not your final destination”. I am sure that, unlike two years ago, everybody now understands this point of view and that even vendors, for whom it’s a very counter-natural and cultural point of view, now agree that their product is only a part of a global approach.

Yes but…

The small world of people convinced by social media still over-proselyte. The point is not about knowing whether they’re right or not but the manichean and systematic nature of the discourse. Consider any business issue. As soon as it becomes a little bit trendy, we can hear the “if you don’ use social media to….your enterprise will….”. What can be adapted to anything. “If you don’t use social media to innovare /engage / share / communicate, your enterprise will die / become obsolete / lose its customers…”. Maybe one day we’ll be advised to use social media to paint the office’s walls.

A discourse that raises questions in terms of credibility…and is even misleading because partly wrong.

A credibility issue first. Decision makers have been hearing this discourse for years, applied to any possible subject and its systematic nature is irritating them, and slowing losing its credibility. So, there’s no surprise they don’t listen anymore because they know what they’ll be told even before the gurus speak and the social media world is more and more looking like a sect where believers talk to believers.

Remember our childhood. And what our parents used to day to make us eat things we did notlike. “You should eat…. to grow up / not to fall ill / be good at school / not be feel tired”. Every time we felt a little ill or did not feel very weel, we could guess the answser prior to say anything. And, logically, it made use smile..but never changed anything.

Even worse : the discourse is wrong. Let’s repeat it again : Saying that if an enterprise does not use social media to innovate, engage or anything else it will face big problems is an intellectual swindle. You have an innovation / engagement issue, so install the right platform and wait… You may wait for a long time without seeing any change.

There organizations where everything is fine and employees are engaged, other that are innovative, other that are loved by their customers….and that don’t use social media. What does it mean ? It means that, before using social media to do anything, organizations have to decide to do this anythings, build a strategy and plan its execution. In many situations, social media will be a part of the system…but only a part. Organizations that are successful without social media today will come to it one day…but they have time because they already have actual strategies to address these issues and are not waiting for a magic tool to execute plans that have never been built for various reasons (that are not all respectable).

Social media will never help anyone to execute a plan that does not exist to serve a strategy that does not exist to reach a goal that is nothings more than a word that was expected to be self-achieving.

If you want to innovate, engage your employees, harness and capitalize on your knowlede….start by deciding to do so and build a real plan. Then choose the tools to support the plan. In some case you won’t need social media, in some others it will help you to deal with some barrieres and in some case it will help you to do much better. But if you start with the idea that you need social media to be successful, you’ll build a tool centric strategy instead of one that will help you to achieve your business goals because you’ll focus on how to make people use the tool instead of making the tool serve people that serve your strategy.

General Electric, for instance, had a problem solving system that have been working well for a long time “in real life”. Their internal platform only helped them to increase the bandwith of their system. They used social media to serve  real plan. Their system gives sense to the tool that improves the way the system was working. But without the pre-existing problem solving approach, the tool is nothing.

Social media are catalysts, accelerators, tools that can makes things incredibly more efficent and simple. But they won’t support a plan that does not exist. Their use will never solve any issue by itself and won’t prevent businesses to face their actual problems.

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Social is a substitute for quality and customers don’t care about you

September 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Summary : Lots of things are being said about the revival of the customer relationship made possible by social media and that’s a good thing, a more human way of doing things, less mechanized, aiming a building a richer and fruitful relationship for everybody. But businesses should be careful of too easy things and smoke and mirrors. We hear lots of things about “fans”, “passionate”, “engagement”, suggesting that if a business shows as much interest to its customers as they show to the brand, a positive impression is generated, the company improves its image and sells more. But thinking that it’s all about communication and good feelings is a dead end. Most of customers are not passionate nor fans but…simple customers. In the same way, internauts who try to pick brands up on the web are not always potential customers but only people in search of recognition and favors. In short, customers expect businesses to keep their promise and use the web as a channel to remind it to them. Keeping communication and service separated, thinking that there’s no link between communication and quality programs is a big mistake. The lower quality is the more the web is stragic to gather feebacks in order to improve quality.

Bringing good feelings and more intensity in a relationship is good but should not make overlook what matters : the product, its quality and its appropriateness to the demand.


It’s mpre and more said that customers have to be considered as partners, stakeholders, and have to be involved in co-building and co-decision programs what aim at maximizing what all parts take from the relation. Customers love brands and want a strong relationship with them…and brands should give them as much love in return because their purpose is to make customers happy. So everything seems to be perfect in a world where love and respect are getting the upper hand on basely material and financial concerns.

Ok. Now let’s top kidding. Even if the final result will be the same, we should not mistake ourselves about the mechanisms at stake.

1°) Customers are a business partners that have an impressive nuisance potential…

Collaboration between customers and suppliers is nothing new? What is new is that, now, it can apply to small individual customers, not only to B2B relationships. Why did the customer become that worthy of attention ? Because he can spend more money than before ? Not at all. Only because he’s now able to shout louder that before its love or hate…and even to gather with others to make even more noise .

Is business becoming more human ? No. It’s just about a more balanced relationship. And those who can harm always deserve more consideration.

2°) Some customers are true lovers…

Some brands have real fans, people they must capitalize on. Their paradox is that they seldom expect anything in return : they never complain and ask for few interactions. A simple “thank you” is enough and they feel as is they were vested with a mission. They talk a lot around them and spread the word.

3°) But the wide majority only expects you to keep your promises [Read more...]

Filed Under: Customer Relationship & Marketing, Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Are you piloting or experimenting ?

May 6, 2010 By 3 Comments

When an organization tries to embrace something new, the first steps are made in a very cautious way and that’s logical. Even when there’s a clear idea of what is being done, things have to be tried on a small scale to validate some things, compare the plan and the reality. I don’t even mention cases when something is tried without having any idea of the purpose and of the possible benefits that can be expected.

This applies to many things and enterprise 2.0 is not an exception. So, even if this post will be more about this topic, many things can be generalized to other fields.

I won’t rewrite the debate that took place last summer about knowing if this preliminary steps made sense or not. As a matter of fact, when a critical mass is needed, a smaller scale may made this steps more or less relevant. In concrete words, the question is about :

1°) Knowing what is being done

2°) How it’s called and explained.

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Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Enterprise 2.0, collaboration and personal constraints

February 2, 2010 By 1 Comment

Like it or not, the smallest unit of work is the individual task. People’s workday is made of achieving tasks, and even in the context of group or collaborative work. A group only delivers the sum of the tasks achieved by its members. That’s why coordination matters. We can even say that, how ironic, knowledge work makes individual tasks even more important : if it’s possible to achieve a physical task through a joint effort, thinking jointly is impssible. We think individually and group work implies increased interactions to stay coordinated and consistent. Ten people can push a car together but they can’t think as one to solve a problem : that’s why it’s important to exchange to share task statuses, update, get coordinated.

Now, let’s guess how an individual does when they have a task to achieve.

If he can do it by himself, it’s alright. And what if he can’t ? He reports to his team to ask for help and sometimes the problem solving is assigned to the group. What implies a new individual task for members even if the numerous interactions makes it look like a collectivce task. By group I mean a formalized set of people that have been assigned an objective, would it be a department or a project team. This situation looks very usual but some “2.0″ practices may improve things as it may help to deal with a lot of informal signals aiming at making everyone’s work status more visible, avoiding an heavy,time consuming and poorly responsive coordination. But what happens when the group reaches a dead-end ?

In a traditional system, the group would be in big trouble : the solution to avoid being block would be to throw a bottle into the sea. But how to find the right people out the human structure one is used to work into ? At this point, a 2.0 approach becomes very valuable : people rely on their network, on communities where discussions on this specific topic take place. If a similar problem has already been solved, it’s ok. If not, it’s possible to find the right people/communities and submit the problem. People are easy to find because their social activity enrich their profile…

A first conclusion has to be made at this point : people start from themselves, then go to formal groups they’re part of and to networks and communities. They start with an individual work, then a coordinated work in a defined geoup and, at the end, unstructed  interactions within fuzzy-boundaries groups. Things happen in this order and in not other. That’s nothing but logic : from the nearer to the most distant, from the known to the unknown, from the certain to the uncertain.

This is a very “in the zflow” approach. Here, the 2.0 dimension favors visibility, micro-coordination and quick problem solving. In the other hand, people don’t have to expose themselves, to do more than their jon, to engage more. The group efficiency is improved and people can even go and find answers out of it. This is an organization oriented approach : social practices are built around a process or a workflow to increase their bandwith.

But it also need another factor : to push the logic to its end, vibrant and relevant communities are needed, making it possible for people to swith in a network mode when the group reaches its limits. This is a more “social” approach. This communities are made of people who naturally share their experiences, their thoughts on a given subject, to go one step beyond their job description and their assignments, to put a little bit of their soul into their work. In this casen people expose themselves more because they share more than knowledge : they give opinions, propose things. This is clearly about “over the flow” activities, with a participation depending on people goodwill. This is what we can call pure 2.0 : conversations, communities that form and die, soft collaboration, informal, unstructured, unpredictable, with a hudge human component because it relies on people’s will to share, learn, connect to people they would never have met otherwise. This is nearly often what people think about when thinking about enterprise 2.0.

This brings things back to the distinction I already made a few months ago.

Now it’s time to go to the point.

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Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0 & Social Business, Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

So you love your customers…and you let others take care of them

November 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Saying that customers are businesses’ most important assets is now a common view. First because their money make the business live, second because they are its best ambassadors when they’re happy with the delivered service.

Of course, an happy customer is a customer who’s delivered a service that meets his expectations. He also gives value to the quality of the quality of the customer relationship. To some extent, some would value more an average service with a good relationship than a perfect service with poor relationship quality because they like to be listened to, to see people do their best to give them satisfaction.

Note that’s the same with prospects, either in a B2B or B2C context : the promise that are made matter, but the relationship a business can foster with its prospects matters a lot. Ditto with employees.

That’s one of the impacts of social business in the relationships between a company and its ecosystem. Either it’s about marketing, sales, support, innovation, both companies, partners, customers, employees are looking for a new form of engagements. This engagement has first to be build then harnessed.

And, of course, many are outsourcinf their customer support, their recruitment, and sometimes a part of their marketing. I’d like to know how to build a strong relationship between a business, a brand, and its ecosystem, by letting a third party act and talk on the company’s behalf.

Outsourcing sometimes mean more control on costs, get access to competences that don’t exist internally. But it also mean the loss of any chance to build something with the other. Through the marketing relationship, through customer support, people want to interact with YOU. They want to discovert who YOU are. A good relationship is a two people game, without any go between. That what helps to save a deal when things go wrong. So you’d like to let someone else initiate and manage this relationship ? Someone who’s not you, who has not your culture, for whom you’re only a customer among others ?

Community management is something serious one has to manage himself. Not an undercontracted job, or a task assigned to an intern with too much idle.

Value is created and survives through relationships. Saying so is good. But that’s not enough if behaviors go the opposite way.

You’re wondering what a customer community can be used for, what your facebook fans are worth ? No you now. Now it’s time to initiate things yourself instead of outsouring, then rely on the group to leverage

PS : Whenever you can’t understand what’s at stake, ask yourselves what would have happened you you asked a friend to replace you at your first date with your future husband/wife. Get it ?

Filed Under: Management & HR Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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