By Mitch Lieberman, vice president, strategic solutions, SugarCRM

Monday, February 15, 2010

People are the fuel that makes “the social engine” run

“The social engine” is my own metaphor for what drives social business. My objective is not to cram the word “social” into the first paragraph as many times as possible — it just looks that way. The reality is that social is top-of-mind, and many people are simply trying to put it all together. So how about this: I have my networks and my media, I talk about CRM, and I do business with people (left that overused word out). Whether you’re talking about Collaboration, Relationships, Knowledge Flows, Engagement, Expectations…. It all comes down to people. At the core, social simply means sharing with other people. In the digital sense, that sharing is done in the open.

“People are the platform”

I wish I could take credit for that statement. Proper attribution goes to Michael Fauscette (@mfauscette on Twitter) from IDC. We both attended the #SCRMsummit last week in Washington. The statement is not some esoteric, bigger than life hyperbole. It is quite simple really. You cannot have any of these things without people. A social business employs people, just as a social customer is reliant upon people. A social business is one that recognizes the amplification effect – the amplification of value by continuously meeting (or exceeding)  the dynamic expectations of the social customer. If you do a good job, other people will hear it. As we are all well aware the converse is certainly true as well.
[Editors' Note: Mike Fauscette's #SCRMsummit blogpost can be found here.]

Co-creation takes people

Co-creation is another one of those terms which seems overly complex, people throw it around, seem to be scared by it. Paul Greenberg reminded everyone that is does not have to be complicated. Wim Rampen writes about it often. I’ll be honest: It’s a term that scares me a bit. I will give a simplistic example, surely to be corrected (but write and learn right?): Say you’re at the local pizza joint and you select a few cool toppings from the “make-your-own” section. But you also want a topping not on the list — say, pineapple. The restaurant doesn’t have pineapple, but makes note of your request. As it turns out, when talking to other patrons, pineapple is an ingredient that’s more popular than the owners had realized. Within a week, the restaurant not only adds the ingredient to the “make-your-own” selections, but adds a pineapple-topped pizza to the standard menu at a special rate.

[Continues after the jump.]

Relationships with people generate value

Wim Rampen wrote a great post on this topic a few weeks ago, along with some great dialog and conversation after the post. My favorite theme is that customers (people) do not value a relationship with a company, rather the outcomes that can be generated by such a relationship. The one addition I make here is that it may be not only customers, but potential customers, influencers, partners and communities (groups of people). Strong, value driven relationships are crucial components for the fuel that drives a social business.

Communities are a critical component

So, if I say that people are the fuel, then communities are raising the octane content. This is very well stated by Michael Krigsman, in his post Social CRM and enterprise business: “Social CRM recognizes that current technologies enable customers spontaneously to form large, ad hoc interest groups at remarkable, sometimes even viral, speed.” Esteban Kolsky commented here that these “impromptu communities” are going to help “advance social CRM faster by not  worrying about the channels (Facebook, Twitter, forums) and focus on the behaviors and data.” I will extend Esteban’s comments and say this is beyond Social CRM, but will help fuel the value derived by all members of the ecosystem for any particular social business.

People have experiences, and they matter

There are many factors which drive experience. I’m not going to call it customer experience, as the social business it needs to go beyond the customer. Customer Experience Management is nearly an entire discipline, one that I try to be well read, but tepid to weigh in strongly on. I will speak more from a logical viewpoint, people enjoy (or not) an experience on a relative scale. The scale is based upon their expectations. Esteban recently wrote a post, where we did not comment enough, so we did not meet his expectations. I am not a customer of Esteban, but we work in the same ecosystem. I am using this to simply illustrate the point that experience within a Social Business happens many many ways, beyond just product and service. By the way, he wrote a second post, just about expectations (I took the bait there).  ‘Meeting’ or ‘Exceeding’ is an interesting conversation, for my purposes here, there is a bar, you need to get over it. Where the bar is placed changes, and ‘it depends’.

Are people a new kind of fuel?

No, of course not, just one we have not been leveraging very well. Why, because people are passionate, if they are not, they want to be, and we want them to be passionate. John Hagel wrote a nice post “Shifting Identities – From Consumer to Network Creator.” It’s definitely a post worth reading. Again, the title sounds a bit complex, but it’s not really. The post talks about many things, but the last portion focuses on the mounting pressures at work. Unfortunately, not many employees are passionate — and this will become a problem for social businesses. As a business, you’ll need to encourage employees to find passion, otherwise people will struggle to cope with the pressures. The integration of personal and professional lives will enable people to become passionate — and passion shines through.

We are social — that is, we are people — and as soon as we all truly recognize that, we’ll be able to realize a social business.

Is this a change in business culture? Probably…

But what are your thoughts?

[Editors' Note: This blogpost first appeared on Mitch Lieberman's own blog. The editors appreciate his generosity in allowing us to mirror it here. Lieberman can be found on Twitter as @mjayliebs.]