Social business is the permeation of social culture and technologies throughout the corporate enterprise that lead to an open, intuitive and integrated means of conducting and transacting business in the marketplace. It is in this unique environment that we experience the core aspects of a company: the brand, the products/services, the customer service and the loyalty in an entirely new way.
Brand 2.0: Rather than flat, 2-dimensional transmissions of messaging, brand experiences become 3-dimensional, real-time exchanges amongst employees, brand advocates, consumers and partners. The brand emerges as a tribal identity that is lived out and shared with others. Community feedback and ideas are the norm, not the exception. A great example of this shift in thinking is Ford Motor Company’s Brand 2.0 approach to introducing the new Ford Fiesta to the
Product 2.0: Consumers are seeking products and services that are tailored to fit their personal needs. The social web offers tremendous opportunities for sourcing product/service ideas directly from customers. Several brands have started to realize the benefits of this Product 2.0 approach such as Starbucks My Idea community, which attracted 70,000 submissions from consumers in its first year of inception and Virgin America’s Twitter call for suggestions on how to best stock their in flight bar. Going further, brands will have tremendous opportunities to leverage contextuality of the marketplace to deliver adaptive product and service offerings that satisfy real-time need states and desires. More on this in upcoming blog posts.
Customer Service 2.0: It goes without saying that customer service is the brand. However, the adage it takes a “village to raise a child” can now be applied to the world of Customer Service 2.0. Call centers, public relations, sales, marketing along with a corporation’s key strategic partners should all be wearing the customer service jersey through social channels. Brands such as Best Buy’s Twelpforce, ComcastCares, UPS, JetBlue and many others have successfully demonstrated the value in taking an integrated team approach to capturing, acknowledging and responding to customer inquiries on Twitter. But the employees alone are not enough – consumers now are active, rather than passive participants in customer service. In the coming Social Business age, consumers will continue to help one another and collaborate with brands to pass on critical alerts and resolve breaking service issues.
Loyalty 2.0: Loyalty in the Social Business world will be rewarded more on overall contribution to the brand ecosystem, than just product usage. In the travel industry, traditionally loyalty programs have been based on the number of miles/segments or stays a traveler makes. But what about the consumer who stays “off the road”, but still shares valuable information with his/her fellow members and provides insightful, constructive feedback to help employees and staff? In the Loyalty 2.0 world, an individual’s status would also be influenced by the community’s perception of the value that individual contributes. I think there is a huge opportunity to activate this through location-based networks and applications. It will be interesting to see which brands begin to make moves in this area.
