“The days when you can control your brand through your website are long gone. Customers are getting information about your brand and products through a number of different channels and if you aren’t listening and engaging these channels, you won’t only miss new business opportunities, but will quickly see the competition pass you by.”
“While some form of social in any enterprise setting is now commonplace, just because you add a social feature to your application doesn’t mean that you have transformed into a social business and are succeeding in using social to improve the customer experience.”
“Doing social for social sake won’t get you anywhere. Organizations must move beyond a social checklist and truly understand how to connect, collaborate and improve customer experiences and then act.” By John Newton, (@johnnewton)
John’s article is more around the “what and why”. Starting from the top and working down towards the “how”, without getting into the details.
His thought process around how a B2B company may need to transform to revolve around the customer while using social tools seems dead on to my experience over the years.
Think about it this way. In the past, the “main voice” of the customer was gathered in round about ways and was always filtered, some way, some how. Instant insights into what customers liked or disliked around products, features and capabilities from their own words was slow to come to the table.
Now a person can listen in directly to customer and prospect dialogues around their company products and brand. Hearing directly from those who are active on social sites. (Which is never all of the customer base and may not be a majority today in many industries.)
Truely listening to the customer voice allows companies to begun the transition to a company who connects and collaborates with their customers in real time. Something which was more difficult to do in years past.
If your customers and prospects are active on social sites their insights, ideas and suggestions can help improve the overall customer experience for others.
See on news.google.com