Esteban, I think that you raise a great point — one of the questions I wish I could have addressed in more detail with my June feature on social media was whether or not we were putting the cart before the horse. My May feature on multichannel contact centers addressed the fact that many contact centers are still searching for the best ways to properly integrate commonly used channels like phone, Web, email, and chat — before even considering social media. I think it will be something we’ll have to monitor as we move forward.

Bruce, thank you as well for your definition and the reference point. While you have a very clear definition of what customer experience is, I believe that many companies are still grappling with it. It’s something I’m definitely going to address in my December feature on customer experience management, which I’ll begin working on in early August.

http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/what-the-heck-is-customer-experience/

In regards to your comment about using text and speech analytics on social network, — please.

Seriously, we still have not mastered it at the basic, go-through-our-data-and-get-something-useful level, and we are now introducing it into social media. speaks more to the problem EVERYONE is having with scaling social media, and that most people are just starting to think about. speech or text analytics is not going to solve the problem or not knowing how to listen to customers – it is going to amplify it. you know the old saying, right? take an old, outdated, bad process and simply throw fast technology at it. now you have a fast, bad, outdated process that shows your weak spots 10x faster.

this is what is happening with social media now. everyone rushes into it, not knowing why or how, and then they stall somewhere down the line when they get results and don’t know what to do with them.

where is the alignment with their feedback management strategy (which probably does not exist in the first place)? or the alignment of objectives for the corporation (I know companies that are determine to grow revenues, instead spend hours and money trying to save on customer service via SocMed — sure, there are results, but not what the company is trying to do).

making matters worse, most of the so-called “experts” and “gurus” for social media are neither, nor have they ever spent a single day doing strategic thinking for organizations. it is all about rushing into new channels without forethought or “you will be left out” or “your customers are talking about you, do you not want to listen”.

did we not learn our lessons from the rush to email, chat, sms and the other channels in customer service/marketing/sales?

sorry, this is another example of companies and people rushing to something they don’t understand, and handicapping a new channel or media before it even takes off. the adoption levels for the previous channels we rushed to and left on the side of the road is barely topping 15-20% now, after peaking around 60-65% at the hype.

we should look back before leaping forward.

thanks for a nicely laid out post. as you can see, it generated at least one reaction :)

esteban