Social Support Communities, SSC, are real and they are here today. As you plan your budgets for 2010 consider how SSC fits into your overall Social Business Strategy. Your customers may not be asking for this today but they will be and you need to be ready before your competitors. The richness of the experience and the cost savings that companies see with SSC will ensure that the companies that deploy SSCs first have a clear competitive advantage.
Sounds great, right? Now, add a little perspective to the conversation.
- I coined the Social Support Community term and I believe in the power of these communities.
- Swimfish, the company I work for, does not have SSC deployed. We will in the future but SSC is a tool that is part of an overall Social Business Strategy. We need to determine how SSC fits into our strategy before we deploy.
- I will write about how you approach this strategy in the near future, just not tonight.
- It is still unclear to me who will be the top one or two players in this space. Stay tuned, I’ll share my thoughts with you as I, and others that I know, learn and share. This is a community-drive learning experience, not the work of one or two people. We will all play a part.
- The price points for today’s SSCs may put them out of reach for most SMBs. As I learn more on pricing for companies like RightNow, Lithium, HelpStream, and others, I’ll will share.
Why should you consider using SSC as part of your Social Business Strategy? Based upon research from companies like Forrester, and real results seen from companies like HP, it is clear that customer engagement in Social Support Communities results in reduced support costs. Customers self-educate, self-support, and require less direct support from your company. The money you save here will enable you to invest in other initiatives.
Ignore the hype that vendors will throw your way about the use of SSC (or SCRM as most vendors still refer to their tools) to generate revenue. While you may seem some revenue gains they will not be impressive for some time and you should not invest in these solutions expecting increased sales. Take a close look at the $2 million in sales Dell reported having earned from Twitter (not SSC but a social channel to compare against). As my friend Prem Kumar noted, this represents 0.0025% of it’s revenue for that time period. While $2 million is impressive, 0.0025% of revenue in a 2 year period is not a large increase for most companies.
I was chatting with my Forrester friend Dr. Natalie Petouhoff today. Here is what she said to me, via Twitter:
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RT @JohnFMoore: RT @prem_k: @CRMStrategies ALL case studies show ROI is from #ssc which fuels inc in marketing conversion rates & inc sales
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Dr. Petouhoff notes that SSC is the starting point, we agree.
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@JohnFMoore new doc coming- want #socialmedia ROI? start w/ #ssc – leads 2 #SCRM -inc marketing conver, inc sales -lower operating costs…
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Dr. Petouhoff reinforced that lower operating costs will be seen, will lead to higher marketing conversions and increased sales. They will come in time. The only thing we disagree about is the use of Social CRM vs. Social Business Strategy. However, give me three months and I’m sure we’ll sort that out too.
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Also, check out some thoughts from Dr. Petouhoff from May of 2009, she does a nice job discussing in more detail what you should expect in terms of ROI from these solutions.
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What do you think? Will you consider SSC in your future?
John
October 6, 2009 at 12:35 am
Hi John,
I like what you’ve described but I think you’ve limited the scope of how communities could be used by a business – Swimfish for example.
When I think of communities I don’t categorise them as being support or R&D. I view a social community is an online space where users can engage with each other and the company around ideas, problems, thought leadership, product development etc. What underpins the community are the tools that facilitate interaction – blogs, forums, Wiki’s, multi-media sharing, social networks and so on.
Your community may start out as an employee or customer community – with a future goal being to allow the broader public to participate. I guess customer support is a logical place to start, but I’d still be looking at the bigger picture as to how a social community will assist in employee engagement, thought leadership, sales, and partner development.
One of the ideas that I’ve seen out there that I like is from Mike Lewis at Awareness Networks (he’s based in Boston also) – Social Communities comprise neighbourhoods and categories – so social support might be a neighbourhood within the community and support for Microsoft SharePoint might be a category under this. See the twitpic I created to illustrate this – http://www.twitpic.com/kfevn
cheers
Mark
October 6, 2009 at 12:40 am
Great feedback Mark, thank you. I agree that Social Support Communities, as a solution, is but a starting point and feel you’ve nailed it in your description of how this should/could evolve.
Simply awesome feedback! As a sales-focused person, what’s your feedback on the term CRM? Is it a positive, negative, or neutral word in the market?
John
October 6, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Hi John,
Thanks also for the feedback.
In relation to CRM; my perspective of it in the ANZ market is neutral. Most of the companies I talk to see it as a necessary evil. I think that is because companies are finally starting to see through the vendor hype.
We’ve changed our perspective such that we view CRM as a platform. It will do the basics really well but you want to be able to build more sophisticated requirements around the core. This is why I find the whole ‘Social CRM is a product’ debate quite bizarre…I’ve been arguing that we need to view this as an eco-system. I’ve almost finished some diagrams that go into this idea that I’d be happy to share.
cheers Mark
October 3, 2009 at 1:06 am
[...] Wave playback feature. There are some very interesting possibilities for this to provide value for SSCs. With Wave playback you can playback the wave/conversation as it happened, evaluating actual [...]
October 1, 2009 at 8:18 pm
[...] Social Support Communities, a path to real success with your Social Business Strategy « Random Thou… johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/social-support-communities-a-path-to-real-success-with-your-social-business-strategy – view page – cached Social Support Communities, a path to real success with your Social Business Strategy — From the page [...]
October 1, 2009 at 9:23 am
“Your customers may not be asking for this today”
I think you glanced over this point a little too quickly. 2 points, certain industries may never warrant SSC. Secondly, if there’s insufficient demand for a SSC now, sure plan for it, but don’t waste precious time looking to offer support where people aren’t looking for it. Go where they are looking.
October 1, 2009 at 10:08 am
Thanks Mike. The demand for SSC will be, in my opinion, vary from industry to industry, from market to market. If you are a competitor of HPs, your customers are going to be looking at what HP customers have via SSC and want it now.
With that said, SSC is something that you should have an answer for in 2010. The answer may be “Coming in 2011…” or the answer may be “Yes, we’re doing tht in 2010…”. Again, the timing will vary. Start discussing and planning now, though, as social moves fast.
John
October 1, 2009 at 2:37 am
Yes, I think SSC is a big deal. Problem is that companies pay lip service to it and are not really willing to invest in it. ROI is more easily measured in monetry terms, but I think the real hidden value from SSC is more subtle. Customer loyalty is a big deal, but how do you measure it? Support dept staff are already overwhelmed and don’t respond well to another communication channel – even though in the end it might help them. Educate, evangelize and promote!!!
October 1, 2009 at 10:08 am
Thanks Fiona. -John