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Contact UsThe term “social enterprise” is confusing for many in the corporate world. Traditionally, the term has referred to an organization with a social mission of philanthropy, charity or taking on a noble cause. However, in the past few years, Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com, has used the phrase to define organizations that are pioneering a new level of connectivity within the corporate world. Made possible through cloud computing, the social enterprise mirrors the metaphor of personal social networks like Facebook that leverage the social grid to share information and ideas. The new social enterprise extends this familiar model to the companies as a means of establishing a synergy between organizations, their employees, their customers, and their business partners.
The value of the social enterprise is simple. For consumers, it provides a means of getting closer to their favorite brands, offers them a voice when they have something to say (good or bad), and allows them to make better buying decisions. For companies, it magnifies the voice of the customer, allows them to identify macro trends, improves their ability to service customer, maximizes sales through new channels, and can even improve employee satisfaction.
The social enterprise is a strategy; it is not simply a single system or idea. It impacts the culture, business processes, systems, and the bottom line. Leveraging social networks, social media, and the other concepts that will be discussed here is new to many companies, but time is ticking for those that are not developing a social enterprise strategy. Chances are your competitors have a head start and the cost of NOT taking action could be high.
The social enterprise strategy is different for every company, so the topics covered here should not be viewed as an exhaustive list, nor do the all need to be covered in every organization. They are simply characteristics of the social enterprise that require consideration. The social enterprise is:
Characteristics of the Social Enterprise:
Internal and External
Connectivity within an organization between employees, departments, regions and divisions within an organization is key. Improved communication benefits every company, no matter what the size, and mastering it ensures that the company strategy is carried from the CEO all the way down to entry-level employees. Connectivity also aids in tactical communications related to business process, on-boarding new employees, and building a culture of teamwork.
Private, internal social networks like salesforce.com’s Chatter revolutionize internal communication and collaboration to be revolutionized by facilitating conversations and idea sharing, and by providing a forum for asking and answering questions. Unlike traditional collaboration solutions, Chatter conversations are contextual and integrated into every day work. Unlike email, questions and ideas can be posed to a broader, non-specific audience so that responses are invited from and available to an entire group. What’s more, Chatter allows customers to be selectively included in the conversation to facilitate collaboration on projects, share documents securely, or even conduct negotiations.
Chatter customers are reporting some astounding benefits including:
- 27% fewer meetings
- 30% reduction in email
- 36% increase in customer responsiveness
- 39% increase in collaboration
- 52% faster finding of information
Participation in external, public social networks is a requirement of the social enterprise. By establishing a public persona on public social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, a company can manage its brand where consumers are spending most of their time.
Person-to-person recommendations, which today often disseminate through the social grid created by social networks, are a major influencer in buying decisions among consumers. Just this holiday season 66% of social media users made a purchase on Black Friday as a direct result of a recommendation made on social media networks. With the Facebook user population over 750 million and growing, the social media channel is a difficult one to ignore.
Be careful not to dismiss these channels as only being for consumer brands either; YouTube marketing strategies for B2B customers often include customer testimonials, product demos, fun topics related to an industry, and “Viral video” contests.
Personal
The brand loyalty that customers of social enterprises demonstrate is partially attributed to the personal attention that they receive. Historically, market data established through sales metrics and customer surveys has been key to decision making and tracking of consumer trends. Sample groups were used to collect data and that data was extrapolated to extract customer sentiment. By the time this data was distilled down to actionable insight, the source was often months old making it nearly impossible for companies to react quickly.
In the age of the social enterprise, every consumer gets a voice and companies can address consumer issues proactively rather than reactively. Public social networks are filled with consumer comments, questions, issues, and opinions about the products they use. As companies tap into these networks, they can identify issues to resolve and turn potentially dissatisfied customers into advocates. Best of all, this can be done in real time.
Monitoring social networks may seem like a daunting task, but social monitoring tools like Radian6 are made to help. Radian6 continuously monitors public social profiles on thousands of social network sites and funnels invaluable information back to into companies that are savvy enough to proactively mine customer ideas that can enhance their products, services and messaging. The data captured builds a repository of individual issues, but also identifies macro trends in consumer sentiment, industry conditions and brand strength.
Awareness of your consumer’s opinions, expectations and issues is not enough. Successful incorporation of this knowledge into an organization’s operation requires a commitment to heeding the call to action, and that will require a strategy in itself. Here is an example of how Gatorade established a Mission Control to monitor social networks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InrOvEE2v38). As a result of this initiative, Gatorade has been able to: Track Media Performance; Monitor Sports Landscape; Track Sports Trends and Buzz; Track Brand Attributes; Monitor Online Discussion; and Perform Proactive Social Media Outreach.
Contextual
The personalization of the social enterprise, internally and externally, requires that consumers, partners and employees are able to converse on topics that are meaningful within the context of what they are doing. Customers looking for information to make an educated purchase or solve a problem need timely and relevant data. If they can’t find it, they may move on to your competitor to serve them.
Live chat has been used in the customer service world for years. It empowers the customer to ask a personal question through the medium that makes them the most comfortable. Live chat and instant messaging have helped companies open new communication channels with their customers while driving down the cost of support.
Online communities are another mechanism a social enterprise can use to provide customers contextual information, answer questions, field suggestions and further reduce costs because solutions can be crowd-sourced rather than pushed out from a central location. Forrester has credited social communities with being able to satisfy human social needs including the abilities to communicate, connect, contribute and create. To be effective, communities need to be updated, policed, and managed, but the effort required to govern them is far outweighed by their impact. Starbucks has done an excellent job building communities with their mystarbucksidea.com initiative (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/03/20/where-customers-submit-discuss-and-vote-your-ideas-for-starbucks-my-starbucks-ideas/).
Internal collaboration and solution identification can also be aided by contextual social tools. Like communities, internal collaboration tools like salesforce.com’s Chatter allows users to be fulfilled by their sense of inclusion in corporate communication and collaboration. It also provides private messaging, file sharing, groups, and even customer interaction in the context of existing business processes.
Contextual social interaction creates a sense of relevance for both employees and customers. When their voices are heard, a hand of assistance is offered, or they have an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge by helping someone else through a community, people are touched in a way that ensures them that they are important and valued. This message is one that resonates deeply and facilitates loyalty.
Predictive
The primary goal of information systems is to gather data, turn that data into information, and derive knowledge from the information. The next frontier is using the knowledge that we derive to predict outcomes. Social enterprises look for ways to leverage the data that they are collecting to anticipate the needs of their customers, business partners and employees. They are also tapping into a whole other category of data provider.
There are over 1 billion people on the Internet, but that number is quickly being eclipsed by the number of “things” on the Internet. Things being devices, sensors, gauges, etc that are all transmitting data. The data that they dispatch can be collected, aggregated, analyzed and used to make our lives easier by predicting future events (Internet of Things, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfEbMV295Kk).
Suppose, for example, that you have a company that makes pumps. Each pump is connected to your social enterprise and transmitting data about its performance. What if you could proactively contact a customer when you learned that the pump was going to malfunction and save your customer a disaster? Would it be a meaningful contribution to your customer to avoid a flood?
These types of technologies already exist today and are getting easier to use and more functional all the time. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-your-world-talk-to-the-internet?ref=live
Predictive analysis can be complex and will likely take time to perfect. However, social enterprises realize that it will be impossible without significant historical data to draw from. Therefore, the sooner you get started, the better positioned they are going to be.
Mobile
It is difficult to talk about the social enterprise without including mobility as a primary characteristic. Social interactions cannot be realistically limited to captive audiences sitting at desks. The prevalence of smart phones and tablet PCs has reached an all-time high, and that trend will continue. Social enterprises are embracing mobility and are establishing a strategy for mobile devices, but they are also revolutionizing the way we work with them.
Mobile applications are not simply PC-based applications that run on a mobile device or within a browser. Users interact with mobile applications much differently than traditional apps. A mobile application is often used for a specific, targeted purpose. It is intuitive and easy to use, and it takes advantage of capabilities and functions that are unique to mobile devices (e.g. geo-location, camera, gyroscope, push notifications, video, touch screen input, etc). This provides an experience that is context-aware, familiar and personal to the user.
With the dominance of mobility in the market place, it is tempting for many organizations to get anything into their consumers’ hands to provide them a mobile capability. Beware of this strategy. Mobile applications are an extension of your company’s brand and it is critical that quality and relevance are priorities.
As they incorporate the social enterprise principles, companies are embracing mobility, establishing device strategies, challenging the status quo, and arming their employees and customers with the power of information from virtually anywhere.
“Gamified”
When thinking of the terms “social” outside the context of social computing, social media or social CRM, for many the first thing that comes to mind is that “social” implies “fun,” like a social event or a social gathering. Gamification creates the connection between fun and the concepts of social enterprise.
Gamification is the process of using game thinking and mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O1gNVeaE4g, Gabe Zichermann). Game theory allows organizations to use game metaphors to connect with audiences (e.g. customers and employees) to gain their loyalty and encourage interactive behavior. This is a powerful science, that when used effectively, can transform a relationship between a company and a consumer.
Gamification incorporates points, badges, status, and virtual rewards to blur the lines between work and fun for participants. Incorporating these concepts can improve performance in customer support, sales and marketing efforts. For example, a customer service rep can earn points for every case he or she closes with a successful disposition. A collaborator on an internal social network can earn status based on the influence he or she has over others in the company through their contributions. How an organization allows employees to redeem their points or exercise their status is secondary to simply having the program because rewards systems like this resonate with a users’ personal sense of gratification.
The same concepts can be employed externally as well. Foursquare (www.foursquare.com) is a great example of a social enterprise that leverages gamification to encourage users to contribute comments/reviews of restaurants. By frequenting establishments and contributing feedback, patrons earn status that can be redeemed for discounts that have proven to be a strong incentive for participants. In turn, Foursquare is building a powerful social network of referrals and recommendations while the establishments serving Foursquare customers benefit from personal endorsements (assuming the customer has a good experience).
Consumers have high expectations for the products they use. It is no longer enough for systems and applications to be functional; they must also be intuitive, self-serving, and even fun to use…no matter what the task.
Benefits of the Social Enterprise:
In some respects, the characteristics of the social enterprise are absurdly simple in theory, but can be enormously complex in practice. The value of being a truly social enterprise is not found in a single dimension of the strategy, but in the synergies created by a balanced approach suited uniquely to your needs.
This diagram aligns common benefits realized by social organizations with a matrix of internal (within a company) and external (partners, customers, general public), micro (personal and small group benefits) and macro (large volume of data points) applications of the social enterprise.
What benefits exist for your company?
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