Helpstream Blog

Guest Post: Esteban Kolsky on Social Business Applications

2009-06-30T14:00:47Z

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.

A Rose by Any Other Name Is Just as Sweet

2009-06-25T15:35:07Z

Excuse me for the Romeo and Juliet reference, but I do think there might be an undercurrent of unbridled passion for any term we might offer up to describe the integration of social networking to any enterprise application. There is most certainly a divide (perhaps unconscious) between two camps of very ardent supporters of their preferred terminology and nomenclature. On one hand we have the Enterprise 2.0 or E2.0 enthusiasts. One the other we have the CRM2.0/Social CRM/SCRM camp, arguably a sibling of the former or a distant cousin perhaps – related for sure but in some people’s view not as worldly or well rounded. The E2.0 camp might say “we are a platform, we have broad applicability and can enable a number of critical applications." The SCRM camp might say, “we solve a specific business problem and help companies engage customers in a more productive way which is THE most critical application of all.”

I have been tracking with great interest the Twitter threads coming out of the E2.0 conference this week in Boston, with posts by folks such as Rachel Happe, Dion Hinchcliffe, Gil Yehuda, Sameer Patel and others. I have been tracking the #SCRM thread for some time, where you will find Paul Greenberg, Brent Leary, Esteban Kolsky, Natalie Petouhoff and others. It has been fascinating to see how these two threads paralleled each other all week, with so much in common yet so very far apart. I even asked a simple question of each thread – “who on this thread is also tracking the other?" I got one response. The themes are so consistent: How do we drive adoption? Where is the ROI? This is not about data it’s about people. Here is another great case study. Interesting to witness for sure.

Paul Greenberg, penned a superb blog post today on his experience at the E2.0 conference. I think it’s fair to say Paul was more than a little excited about the conference, essentially calling it one of the most vital events for anyone interested in the social enterprise. Yet he also noticed the same divide and was a bit surprised that there was a dirth of content on SCRM. Curious given the strategic importance of customer oriented initiatives these days. Has this omission of SCRM from the E2.0 event dissuaded Paul from carrying the social enterprise flag? Far from it. In his words as he looked forward to the Rockstars of Social CRM panel for which he was a speaker (more than 500 attendees expected at last count) – “Rock On, Social CRM."

Tony Nemelka has visited with folks in both the E2.0 and SCRM camps over the last several weeks. He too noticed the divide. After several exchanges on which terminology to use, his final comment was simply “neither." Neither really does much to help the ultimate consumer understand what we are all about in the end. Tony finds the term Social Business Applications inclusive of both camps and perhaps more appealing to customers who have been inundated with ___ 2.0 this and ___CRM that for so long they have become virtually meaningless. And Geoff Moore most certainly would agree we would all be better off if we would get together and collectively help companies understand what we offer and make all of this safe to embrace.

The Rise of Social Business Applications (Part 3 of 3)

2009-06-17T14:00:16Z

(This is part three of a three-part blog series on the Rise of Social Business Applications based on a meeting with Geoffrey Moore, world-renowned business consultant and author, Dave Hersh, CEO of Jive Software, and Eugene Lee, CEO of Socialtext.)

A Customer is a Terrible Thing to Waste

In my two previous posts, I mentioned the need to include customers in your social computing strategy, so let’s dig into this topic a bit more.

Simply stated, customers are the most neglected asset in companies today. Despite the fact that huge investments have been made in systems theoretically designed to manage customer relationships, these systems were actually designed primarily to keep customers at arms length. Deflecting customers and reducing the costs of resolving customer problems has been the primary design criteria for the vast majority of so-called customer service systems in use by most companies. This is the sad but true reality, and we’ve all been victims of it for a very long time.

In essence, companies have done to customers the same thing they did to middle managers. Though companies rely on customers more than ever, they’ve isolated customers and deprived them of the tools they need to positively impact the business. In a world where lower levels of the organization are being asked to do so much, companies haven’t provided a way for their people to truly engage with customers and solicit their help and participation.

Customers who have already spent money with you are very likely to spend more money with you. Customers have experience using your product and they know what works, what doesn’t, what needs to be improved. Customers are a tremendous source of ideas for new products and innovations you might not uncover otherwise. Customers will refer you to other customers if they are happy with you. Social business applications are the critical component for unlocking this value.

Helpstream’s mission is to lead a new wave in customer service, one that is focused on engaging and leveraging customers. Helpstream provides social, community-aware business solutions that turn customer service into the most strategic activity in the company. We believe the next-generation of customer service professionals, particularly those in middle management, will be focused on helping companies leverage their customers to build community, solve problems and increase the value customers receive from the company’s products and services. Our job is to provide the technology platform to make that task easy and rewarding for everyone involved.

The Rise of Social Business Applications (Part 2 of 3)

2009-06-16T14:00:07Z

(This is part two of a three-part blog series on the Rise of Social Business Applications based on a meeting with Geoffrey Moore, world-renowned business consultant and author, Dave Hersh, CEO of Jive Software, and Eugene Lee, CEO of Socialtext.)

What To Look For In A Great Social Business Application

A well-designed social business application should provide several avenues for driving more informed decisions. Management should be able to leverage the wisdom of crowds, identify and communicate with experts, and aggregate and analyze input in real-time to quickly eliminate bad choices from consideration. But with so many vendors jumping into the “social” fray, what should a company look for to make sure it doesn’t choose the wrong solution? There’s an awful lot of “social” makeup being applied to some truly ugly “process” pigs, so I’ve compiled my top 10 list of things required in a true social business application:

1. The application should be organized around people, not transactional data. Business transactional data should be secondary to the primary task of connecting people to people and people to information, leveraging expertise through the entire collaborative process.

2. ROI should be driven by unlocking the productivity of people, including customers. Real-time ROI metrics should be continuously available to help guide best practices and ensure delivery of real ROI.

3. The application should be deployed with a specific business focus, but with the potential for broader applicability.

4. The application must be effective across departmental silos.

5. The application should be designed to inform the middle manager’s point of view. Metrics, reporting and real-time analytics for middle management are essential, as are powerful search and other exploratory capabilities.

6. The application should enable “collaboration in the moment,” providing for rapid, mass collaboration to resolve issues and get to answers quickly.

7. The application must be social-channel rich. It should leverage the heck out of popular social media and emulate their best features.

8. The application must include robust permissions and access controls around both people and information. Companies must have control over what people can do and the information they create and access.

9. The system should provide plug-and-play connectivity to both existing business systems and to communities in the cloud.

10. The total solution must be incredibly easy to deploy and require very little training. SaaS and application appliances are great for this, as is a consumer Web app look and feel.

If you have a corporate strategy to push decisions down in the organization while leveraging social media and customer relationships, but you don’t have a system that meets these social application requirements, then you will fail. Period.

The Rise of Social Business Applications (Part 1 of 3)

2009-06-15T14:00:39Z

Last week, I was privileged to meet with Geoffrey Moore, world-renowned business consultant and author, to discuss the future of social business software and applications. I was joined by Dave Hersh, CEO of Jive Software, and Eugene Lee, CEO of Socialtext – comrades in the war against process-driven enterprise irrationality ☺. Much of what follows came out of this very insightful meeting.

In the grand scheme of things, the 1990s were the golden era of enterprise IT. Fueled by an insatiable desire to drive efficiencies by leveraging powerful, low cost computing systems — and accelerated by fears of a Y2K-driven collapse of existing systems — companies automated and re-engineered their business processes like never before or since. For the enterprise IT industry, it was an era of unprecedented growth. Since that time, consumer IT has emerged as the dominant sector in the IT industry as nearly every human on the planet has plugged into the cloud and become part of the technology infrastructure.

As information technology has transformed both enterprises and the customers they serve, companies have greatly reduced resources by eliminating layer upon later of middle management. The middle managers who remain are under tremendous pressure. They face the daily task of making quick judgment calls and course corrections, yet they rarely have the time or resources required to make sure they are making the right decisions. This problem has only grown worse as executive management has continued to push decision making lower in the organization, right onto the virtual desks of middle management.

Social Business Applications to the Rescue

Addressing this urgent need in organizations — helping middle management make sound judgments faster — is where social business applications really shine. When developed and deployed with specific business requirements in mind, these applications can greatly improve the speed and agility of people performing a wide variety of decision making tasks, especially those decisions benefiting from the collaboration of a lot of people, particularly customers.

Social & Process: Like Love & Marriage, Don’t Have One Without the Other

2009-06-11T14:00:58Z

Here at Helpstream, we talk a lot about the important intersection of customer community and existing business processes. Dion Hinchcliffe had a great post this week called “Reconciling social computing with the enterprise” that addressed this very topic. Hinchcliffe discusses the gap between what happens in the business world and what happens everywhere else, and the disconnect that cuts companies off from their most important asset, their people. He summarizes the issue very well when he says:

The key point here is the broader changes we are experiencing today: The pervasive presence of social software and today’s highly open, interactive, and remixable Web embedded deeply into our personal lives is increasingly allowing us to experience a new way of living. And it’s one that bears less and less resemblance to the workplace all the time, with significantly differing behaviors, skills, tools, and expectations.

Today’s businesses face a big challenge, but it’s one they must meet – transforming their current business processes for social technologies. We believe an entirely new and important value can be created from the right blend of existing process with social applications and specifically, customer community.

“Why do we need to redesign our processes?” From our perspective, there are a few reasons.

First, there’s a very good chance that your competitors are moving towards incorporating social applications and you don’t want to be left behind. Some of today’s most talked about companies exemplify the success that can be had from embracing social technology without throwing business process out the window. Think Zappos, Comcast, and Travelocity.

Second, your customers are already talking about you on the Web. Wouldn’t you like to enable them to do it on your turf so that you can learn from the conversation, improve your business and strengthen your customer relationships?

Third, as we’ve previously discussed, there’s a strong financial case to be made for engaging customers through social applications. You can see the ROI we proved from customer community in our white paper here.

Helpstream’s platform was built from the ground up with a full, integrated view into people, process and technology because we believe the best service can be achieved from combining the best social elements and business processes. That’s why our technology fits into whatever business processes or CRM systems you use every day. We also just announced the first true enterprise application mashup that seamlessly embeds Helpstream communities with Salesforce and Oracle CRM solutions.

We don’t believe companies should have to choose between what Hinchcliffe dubs “process vs. product.” Process integrated into the community setting will create the very best service and outcome for your business.

HelpExchange: Best Practices for Community-Based Customer Service

2009-06-09T12:00:12Z

“A Best practice is the belief that there is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. The idea is that with proper processes, checks, and testing, a desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and unforeseen complications. Best practices can also be defined as the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time for large numbers of people.” -- Wikipedia

It’s no mere belief. Best Practices work. I’ve often said that it doesn’t matter how smart you are, if the other guy already knows the answer and you have to think of it, he’s likely to win. So do your homework, quit reinventing the wheel and grab all the Best Practices you can get your hands on.

Today, we’re announcing the HelpExchange Community. Anyone can join—you don’t have to be a Helpstream customer. You can request your own account on this page.

We created HelpExchange to deliver Best Practices for community-based customer service. It’s a relatively new area. There’s a tremendous amount of discussion about it in the blogosphere, but the availability of Best Practices around it has been limited, so we thought we’d create a resource for the industry.

The HelpExchange consists of a few different parts.

First, there are the Best Practices themselves. Each one is written up according to a standard template to make them immediately accessible and quick to browse through.
The Best Practices are organized by purpose into a collection of categories. There are categories to help you build your community by attracting new participants and evangelizing. There are categories aimed at making the best use of traditional customer service tools, such as case management and knowledge base. There are still yet categories to help in the planning and management of your community.
Each of these Best Practices is delivered to you after being tested by Helpstream, our customers or other experts in the field. Each one includes full information on applicability to your problem, potential challenges you’ll face implementing the practice, as well as details on what you can expect to get from doing so. In addition, they’re all released under Creative Commons license. We’re doing the equivalent of open-sourcing our Best Practices so everyone can benefit. You’re welcome to use them in any way you need to so long as you give us proper attribution for them.

In addition to the Best Practices themselves, there are a couple of other areas we think you’ll find helpful. We’ve included a category called “Wisdom of the Web.” Wisdom is where we’ll share with you some of the great articles we’ve found elsewhere on the Web. Think of it as a sort of “Reader’s Digest” of other great Web content around Best Practices. If you come across interesting content you’d like to see added to Wisdom, by all means drop us a note.

Last, but definitely not least, we’ve created a category where you can submit your own ideas for Best Practices and the community can vote on them. Assuming the community likes and agrees with the idea, we’ll write it up as another Best Practice.

That’s the scoop on HelpExchange. We're constantly cooking up new ideas to make it more vibrant and useful for you - we'll roll out new stuff over the next few weeks and months. HelpExchange is by no means “done," and it never will be. Please let us know what you think of it and how we can make it better!

Spring release: Experts in Stream

2009-06-09T12:00:12Z

Social service, an area Tony blogged about last week, is becoming increasingly important, as the changing world of social media continues to touch, transform and influence the (often archaic) customer service zone. Social business applications are built to confront this emerging area. We at Helpstream want to create products that support this.

Today we unveil our latest social business application - the spring product release of our social CRM platform. One of the highlights is Activity Stream. It's a Twitter- and Facebook-like feature that allows you to subscribe to or "follow" your favorite experts in the community to see what folks are working on, as well as their areas of expertise. Individual insights are gleaned together for the common purpose of true, holistic enterprise collaboration.

The ability to see people and not just particular conversation threads is probably the seminal contribution of the new era of social media that products like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others ushered in. It’s an incredibly natural way to go about finding the right information. We all know from our daily, personal lives that knowing who the experts are is critical to finding the answers, but how often has software really helped us to do that? Helpstream’s spring release brings that possibility to life like never before for customer service. If our pre-briefings are any indication of how popular this capability is going to be, you really can’t wait to try it out.

The spring release also introduces a classic example of a true enterprise mashup at work by seamlessly integrating Helpstream with Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM. You can stay connected to what you're working on in your CRM domain. And, instead of tossing your existing business processes out the door, you can incorporate a social, community element that produces crisper results (and makes "doing business" a whole lot easier!) all as part of the same experience. Agents go right on using the CRM platforms and suites they’re used to.

You aren't "losing" anything by adopting a social business app. In fact, you're gaining a clear competitive advantage on companies that practice one - or the other. Results from authentically aligning the social Web/community with the enterprise are astonishing and can not only lead to impactful ROI - but intangibles...spikes in communication, happier customers. And that can be real community with a purpose.

There’s a lot more exciting functionality in our Spring release, such as our new Best Practices Community, HelpExchange (more on that in my other post). Rather than have me drone on about it, sign up for one of our free workspaces to see firsthand, or if you already have an account, check out this article on our own Support Community for more details.

Social Service: Don’t Manage Your Customers, Serve Your Customers

2009-06-05T17:31:51Z

Thanks largely to the Web, all businesses have to deal with what it means to be “social.” Social business applications are no longer experimental, these are a vital part of companywide communication, company-to-customer communication, customer-to-customer communication. No stranger to this is the CRM Magazine team, which put out an entire issue this month centered on the “social customer” and why social media is giving birth to a fresh era in customer service. One of the major articles, "Who owns the social customer," points to why companies need to understand what customer service communities and related channels can do for them in terms of increasing customer loyalty and engagement.

Calling it “social service,” CRM Magazine talks to companies about why the finding and “connecting” to information in the right medium is of the utmost importance for an increasingly versatile set of consumers who would rather talk to one another in a forum vs. a tired agent in a call center when they’ve got an issue. I discussed this at length with editor Chris Musico while he was putting together this story; here at Helpstream, we believe it’s not about managing customers, it’s about serving them. That’s such a simple concept, but folks forget it easily. They depend on outdated processes, traditional enterprise tools as a replacement for clear, constant and authentic communication. Communities and social CRM can provide this sort of social service communication.

People assume it’s a big deal – but it’s not. It’s the small things that count. Communities and social business applications are about communication, much like your Facebook wall. People update you, you ping people, that’s it, the communication is established. The same can be true for customer service communities. Here, the focus is on customers (not the company!), and we can serve by speaking directly to customers who might need help on an issue, or jump into customer-to-customer communication with a link to a Knowledge Base article or interesting Web site.

The real value for enterprises is that this “social” element of community can work with (not against) what you’re already doing in-house, be it your CRM or particular enterprise tool of choice, to create a fully optimized suite. It’s remarkable. Harnessing communities and social channels can unleash a boost in engagement, customer loyalty, as well as a total increase in page views. You can measure these elements, and that shouldn’t be a detriment preventing your company from taking advantage of a tool that essentially runs on autopilot – well, with the help of a new emerging class of leaders out there, community managers. This is a powerful and important role. Essentially, they’re the true guardians of customer service, helping to build and refine a customer service community that pulls from people and every inch of relevant information.

For me, the integration of social elements and social mentalities in the enterprise is a natural extension of what we all engage in everyday on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even in the workplace – open communication and engagement. Even when we’re trying to find information to help us fix something on our family Web site or check out a restaurant recommendation, we reach out to people and forums online, which has proven to be easy and effective. Our customers are thinking in this same manner; it’s about time we start talking to them in their language.

More Value and Collaboration From Social Groups

2009-06-04T16:03:17Z

I came across this great "How to" post from Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb, "How to Create Sub-Groups to Maximize Your Online Effectiveness." In it, Marshall argues that the current news feed model of conversation dominant on so many popular social networking sites doesn't serve us as well as it should. In order to have more meaningful and effective online relationships, we need more groups within our groups.

I couldn't agree with this point more. While it's great to be connected to hundreds or thousands (even millions if you're Ashton Kutcher) of people online, we could be limiting the value we derive from these networks by not prioritizing our interactions. Let's face it, you're not interested in all the same things as your friends on Facebook and there are those friends that more often post items of interest to you, and therefore you're interaction with and connectivity to those people should be easier and more immediate than some others.

Marshall points out that the value of these groups is in prioritization (high-priority sources in high-priority places), context (messages strike a more meaningful tone when read in the appropriate context) and intimacy (more contact with the right people). These are all great points. Not to mention, groups can just save you time! And allow you to get more value from your social experience, making you want to use it more often.

He concludes by pointing out that while groups have value, you still need to keep the full community of connections for exposure to knew ideas. There will be times when you want to communicate your own messages to a larger group, or have additional resources when something new comes up. In those cases, we'll want a larger community to interact with.

These are all great lessons for community users. Certain experts have knowledge that we need, and we should have easy access to those experts. Groups are a great way to increase collaboration with those who have that knowledge, and share the same interests and activities. We don't like to admit it, but we all have our favorites.