Thanks and welcome back to the CRM Products and Technology blog from Consona CRM. My name is Tim Hines and I am the author, moderator, and caretaker of this blog. In my last post, I talked about the true definition of self-service, delving into why many view self-service as just being channel management, as opposed to customers actually solving their own problems. This week it's time to move on to the truly un-assisted model—zeroing in on customers helping themselves through peer-based support.

Have you ever gotten stuck on something and peeked over the cubical wall to ask a neighbor to help you out?  I do all the time, although I sit in my home office where there aren't any cubicles. I use MSN or Skype to conduct virtual, peer-based collaboration to fix my problems. This act of instant messaging a colleague for help is actually a form of traditional, peer-based help that has been around since the early dawn of commerce.  But recently, there has been an explosion of peers helping themselves through rather public forums and platforms. Over the past few years as social networking technologies have emerged, individuals can now communicate with one another and, as a result, allow anybody else to learn from their experience. Common social networks like Linked In and MySpace actually are places designed to help individuals make connections with their friends and family members. Social networks like Linked In exist to promote associations between professional colleagues and, often times, business groups. And others, like Twitter, seek to solve even the simplest form of “catching up” among acquaintances by asking the question, “What are you doing?” What all of these social networks have in common is the ability to connect individuals in new and more personal ways than traditionally accomplished via phone, e-mail or post. What they also show is that individuals want to contribute content to subjects, follow people to whom they are loyal, and ask questions that are plaguing them. The community nature of social forums prompts responses to inquiries through a sense of community and contribution.

Companies are struggling to even understand social networks—let alone how to participate or lead interactions that affect their brands. But before a company can consider being involved in a social community, we should first classify social communities beyond what I have cited as popular examples. We can classify social networks into three basic buckets: 1) those that are supported by companies, 2) those that are not supported by companies but are dedicated to a company’s products or services, and 3) those that are on the large public social networks, including like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, MySpace, and more. I argue that enterprises need to understand, participate and lead across all three types of social networks—and begin to incorporate this initiative into their daily operations.  

Why? Your customers or prospective customers are talking about your products and services and, ultimately, your brand with or without you. Each year companies spend millions on research, focus groups, surveys and other rather crafty marketing techniques to try and understand their customers.  In my opinion this is largely a waste of time and resources—especially when the information is readily available by listening to the social networks and buzz about your products or services. Social networks give an unparalleled power of insight and, for this reason, companies not only should embrace, but do everything they can to at least listen.  

But first, let's tackle the ‘understanding it’ part. There are many easy ways to begin to listen. Google has free social network watching programs. Twitter search is useful, as are Linked In, Facebook and most other social network searches. Go look for a Drupal community that has been established about your company. Chances are it likely has been started. Just spend some time monitoring, reading, and understanding how social networks actually function. Understand the social hierarchy that naturally establishes over time in that community. Notice how customers react when well-known issues abound and fester. Notice how customers either sing the praises or bash your products and direction. You can gain all of this insight and more by just observing and listening.

Next, begin to participate. Joining public social networks are mostly free (although it does seem that some are going to be charging for commercial purposes soon). Be clear about who you are and what you represent, begin to build a buzz, and if you can get some following. The next step is bringing the context of these social networks into your CRM system, so that you can begin to truly understand the status of a customer company or individual.

And finally, begin to lead. Establish your own set of online communities that are sponsored by you. Get your employees involved and make sure you answer questions that are not answered by peers in a timely fashion. Make sure that once an issue has been addressed, the knowledgebase / self-service search engine can actually provide this as an answer to other customers who are having similar problems. Ask your customers questions, and involve them in them in the research and development process by making the online community friendly to criticism and responsive to suggestion. Render a Drupal community unnecessary by being responsive and collaborative with your customers as you join and hopefully lead the conversation.

So, just a sneak peek on how to get started on tackling this new channel and communication paradigm. Next time, I will be talking about a technique that should be implemented for every company that absolutely can. It's called proactive support, and the underlying concept is that you fix the problem before the customer knows they have an issue. Please feel free to reply or to e-mail me directly with comments / questions.