Guest Post: Esteban Kolsky on Social Business Applications
Today, we're excited to have a guest post from Helpstream friend, Esteban Kolsky. Esteban has decades of experience in customer service, market research, and technology. He is currently working as an independent consultant, using his vast knowledge of the CRM and customer service industries to help vendors create market strategies that engage end-users and retain loyal customers, a cause those of us Helpstream deeply support. Esteban is also making his mark in social media helping clients adapt strategies and prepare their organizations for social networking and implementing social business applications.
This post is in response to my three-part series on The Rise of the Social Business Applications. Please read on and join the discussion in the comments below. -- Thanks, Tony
I read with interest the three-part series that Tony (Helpstream CEO) wrote here on the Helpstream blog (read it here, here, and here).
I must confess, I was very curious as to what Geoff Moore would say about this nascent field of social media. His work on Crossing the Chasm was the cause for most of the innovation in the years since the book came out. I think that the view of creating new markets instead of technologies was one of the main reasons for the speed at which we have progressed in this new Internet world.
I reached out to Tony to get a better idea of what he had said, and what his opinion was of the social “revolution.” Tony told me that Mr. Moore emphasized the lack of information available to the middle manager in the organization to make good decisions, and how social business applications are the first technologies to come around in a long time that may help them. He also added that the terms Social CRM, CRM 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and similar that we are using are not used to define markets, rather technologies, and that the real market to be created is by helping middle managers get access to better information to make better decisions.
I agree with Mr. Moore’s position on what the market is – totally. Very often we create “markets” around technologies to satisfy our marketing needs at the present, without consideration on how to evolve a technology into a market.
I agree with the idea of a social business application, and I think that Tony did a good job of describing what Helpstream and others in the field have done to deliver such an app.
However, I must say that I am a little disappointed in the way that the vendors are delivering on the vision of a “social enterprise.”
The approach indicates that social business applications are a continuation of what we have been doing until now, but with an added community flavor. Almost as if the community has merely been added to the organization and social media is merely there to support the addition.
This is where I think they are missing a big, big thing. This wave of social media may just be exactly that, and some vendors are correct in what they are delivering, but they are missing the bigger picture.
What has changed for the organization is not the relationship with the customer – the customer itself has changed.
We went from a customer-as-a-lamb model – where the customer had limited knowledge and power with the organization and was at the mercy of the corporate will – to a much improved model where the customer is truly in power and the relationship has changed from a one-way seller-to-buyer one to a collaborative relationship where customer and organization must partner and both will benefit.
This new customer is, thanks to the Internet, knowledgeable, connected, and loud; they want to be heard. They think nothing of the digital world – they actually embrace it and prefer it. They are the first generation of what is called a “digital native” – people who were born and used technology all their lives. They relish communities; they don’t know any other way to work. They were educated and brought out in teams. They are a collective looking for power – and they are finding it as customers.
I don’t agree that continuing to do business as usual with these new customers will work. And that is where Tony’s definition, and Geoff Moore’s by extension, of a social business application should have gone further. Sure, today it is about providing the hybrid customer base (old customers and new digital natives) a way to connect and reach into the enterprise.
Alas, the power of these applications can only be summoned by looking at how this new customer – the digital natives – will use the tools to interact with the organization. I want to see social business applications embrace new ways for organizations to work, new ways for customers to aggregate, and new power being added to both.
Then we will have the best social business applications.
Anthony Nemelka
in CRM, Digital Natives, Enterprise 2.0, Esteban Kolsky, Geoffrey Moore, Social Business Applications, Social CRM, Social Web, Web 2.0
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Reader Comments (2)
Esteban, I enjoyed your thoughts, as always, and feel you are mostly right (when do I say anything other than that?)...
The digital natives are different in their expectations and behaviors than the previous generation. However, they are still lower on the organizational rung and their ability to drive wholesale changes, even en masse as consumers, is not as strong now as it will be in another five years. Even if we could release products that deliver on the promise of the new world we would risk alienating the decision makers that manage the majority of the budgets in today's Enterprise.
Now, with that said, I completely agree that we must clearly define the expectations and requirements for this new generation of applications and deliver pieces in an iterative fashion. By doing so we will enable the digital natives to soar while keeping the purse strings open to fund the next set of apps.
You would be correct in stating that this iterative approach could result in bolted on solutions that fail to deliver upon the ultimate goal. We must run this risk, for now, or risk neve delivering any solutions. If a company can maintain a clear vision of the future they will be able to maintain this balance between today and tomorrow. The question, in practice, will be which company will meet this goal.
John Moore
http://twitter.com/JohnFMoore
John,
Thanks for stopping by and reading. I was not expecting you to agree wholeheartedly with it - I enjoy and welcome comments to this model!
First, I am always looking 5 year ahead. It is what I do as a strategist. I wrote about collaborative customer service five years ago, about social networking six years ago, and about secret customer service (wait until next year, maybe two given the current economic conditions) four years ago. I am focused on what comes out of all this, what is going to happen at the end.
I agree that digital citizens are not at the level of power to make the change happen... but what if? What if this revolution is truly social and will change everything? I think it will, so does Brian Solis (http://www.briansolis.com/2009/06/unveiling-the-new-influencers/) -- actually, can I saw how cool it feels to say that he agrees with what I see ???
If this revolution truly will change things, then five years from now you will be sitting outside looking in. The time to act is now - at least to understand the changes you will need to make, and find the applications to support that change. The new economy, whenever we get it, will be as different from this one as the service economy was from the industrial one (you do remember the change, early 80s -- oh, wait... about the time this whole mess started -- right?).
Moving from a manufacturing economy to a service economy changed everything. And it took us some time to do that, and to adapt, and many organizations suffered. Why go through the same? Why not try to work on these changes now and see if you can get ahead? This time will be faster (actually, already is. took 100 or so years to go from industrial to manufactuing, about 80 to go from manufacturing to service, and seems that about 30 to go from service to a social economy).
I will quit rambling, although I do that better than i look at the future, and I will say this.
It is time to realize that this "cute" Twitter/Facebook/Communities thingy is not going away, and to start working towards incorporating those new social customers into the fray before we are left behind.
Thanks for reading, and for a great comment!