In these days of gender equality, we can rephrase this quote as “The consumer isn’t a moron; he/she is your spouse”, but the fact remains that a customer is the most important person for any business, more so in a competitive economy where customers have many choices. You may ask what that has got to do with Social CRM? Let me explain:

The sole reason any business, be a mom and pop store serving a small community or a multi-national corporation (MNC) having tens of thousands of employees across several countries with thousands of products and millions of customers, exists is to serve its customers. All business decisions and actions undertaken by every employee are aimed at satisfying needs and wants of customers, starting right from understanding customers’ needs/wants, designing a product, manufacturing the product, distributing and marketing the product and post sales support. Any action not aimed at making customers happy is fruitless or is counter-productive.

Heavy up-front investments are made (fixed costs incurred) in the process of creation and delivery of a product or a service with the assumption that the customer will like what is being offered and will purchase the product. Any active customer involvement in product design, manufacture and delivery process is ‘minimal’ at the best through market research. This results not only in costly product failures/increased risk for the business but also higher sales and support costs.

In ‘Social Age’, it is not only possible, but incredibly easy and inexpensive for business to collaborate with customers and work together irrespective of physical location and other barriers. Thanks to social networking technology, business has an opportunity to engage customer and prospects in ‘real-time’ at every stage of product design, manufacture and delivery process in order to minimize risks and maximize value delivered to customers.

Question is not how business can afford to engage customer on social media, it is how business cannot afford NOT to engage customers on Social Media channels. Social CRM, which has been defined as the business strategy of engaging customers through Social Media with goal of building trust and brand loyalty is the way to go for business (for more, see this).

To quote David Ogilvy again, “the consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife”. Wouldn’t you want to engage your spouse or significant other (customers in this case) on an ongoing basis? And we all know the costs if we don’t engage significant people in our life, don’t we?

In a study titled The New Sharing Economy by Latitude Research and Shareable Magazine, it was found that:

(For more, see this excellent article titled The New Sharing Economy by Neal Gorenflo and pdf version of full report is available here).

Rachel Botsman, co-author of the book What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, spoke on the subject recently at TEDxSydney (please see following video):

Social Media is ‘enabling’ trust between strangers and this helps remove middle-man in exchange process. As a result, Collaborative Consumption will disrupt traditional business models.

To thrive in this brave new world, companies will have to reinvent themselves leveraging collaborative technology to connect with their customers and giving them “access” to products or services, rather than “selling” them products or services. This will radically change the way products (or services) are created, distributed, priced, accessed (not owned) and consumed. We live in exciting time indeed!

What do you think? Please do share your thoughts on the subject:

As I discussed in this post, we witnessed growing acceptance of Social Media tools and technology by business, large and small, for customer engagement during the year and thanks to this, we are a step closer (or should I say several steps closer) to achieving the goals of Enterprise 2.0.

So what better subject than Enterprise 2.0 for my last blog post of 2010. Here’s compilation of 10 great SlideShare presentations on Enterprise 2.0. Collectively they offer great insights into what Enterprise 2.0 is and its potential. Learn from this great presos and Enjoy.

Before I end this post, I want to thank you, my dear readers, very much for your support during 2010 and wish you and your loved ones prosperous new year. May all your dreams come true. Happy 2011!

You may say that this is a pipe dream and cannot be reality any time soon unless we have futuristic gadgets similar to what were featured in popular TV series Star Trek.

Well, I say think again. We have Social Media tools and technology that can be used over enterprise intranet (as opposed to internet) to make this a reality. To know more, take a look at this excellent preso by Oscar Berg on the subject. My favorite is slide no. 91 (Know thyself).

Enjoy and please do share your comments and thoughts:

• Business Applications that drive industry
• On-Demand/Cloud computing
• In-memory technology
• Analytics, and
• Mobile

This is a great growth strategy, but it is equally important for large Enterprise Applications firms such as SAP and Oracle to incorporate in their offering technological tools that foster collaboration, not only within the enterprise (among employees), but outside the enterprise too (between employees and customers/suppliers).

Benefits of effective collaboration in driving down costs, improving productivity and employee engagement/morale cannot be emphasized enough. And in current economic climate where sales growth is hard to come by, higher productivity is the magic mantra. Collaboration among employees, customers and suppliers is the key that can deliver higher productivity organizations have been aiming for.

What do you think about SAP’s Growth Strategy? Shouldn’t Enterprise Applications firms such as SAPand Oracle incorporate in their offering technological tools that foster collaboration? Please do share your thoughts:

Any organization that is in the process of developing a new product or improving an existing one should consider leveraging Social Media for this. Please watch this video and leave your comment on what you think:

As planned, this contest was held on December 5, 2009. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology won $40,000 “high-tech scavenger hunt” by discovering the location of 10 red weather balloons first.

Team from MIT “Crowdsourced” solution to this puzzle by inviting people to sign up to help find DARPA’s red balloons (see MIT RED Balloon Challenge Team’s website for more info). MIT team plans to give away $2000 to the first person to identify location of each Red balloon, and also $1000 to the person who invited that person to join this contest, and $500 to whoever invited the inviter, and $250 to whoever invited them, and so on … (see how it works). Fascinating stuff isn’t it! MIT team not only planned their strategy well but also executed it brilliantly. And it’s no surprise that they won DARPA’s Red balloon challenge.

So what can DARPA’s Red balloon contest teach Social Media Pros? Several things in my opinion:

• First of all, DARPA held this contest to identify ways social networking can help accomplish a large-scale, time-critical task. DARPA could have engaged Social Media consultants to help them figure this out and they could have spent endless hours debating and discussing about how Social Networking can accomplish a large-scale task. Instead, they chose to conduct a simple experiment through Social Media. Lesson for Social Media Pros is that rather than having a long debate on how Social Media works and how it can be leveraged, it is better to design a simple, low cost experiment and start using Social Media to understand how it works. Outcome of such small and inexpensive experiments are more valuable than having endless discussions on the subject. They are also far more cost-effective compared to time and travel cost of personnel involved in figuring this out.
  

• Secondly, MIT Crowdsourced solution to this contest by inviting people to sign up to help find DARPA’s red balloons and also encouraged them to invite their friends to sign up. MIT team provided monetary incentive even if some one’s friend (or one of their friends (or one of their friends…and so on…)) found a balloon. Lesson for Social Media Pros is leverage reach of Social Media and have trust in wisdom of crowd. It is important to reward not only individual member for their winning contribution, but also those who brought them to the network thereby extending reach of network and making Crowdsourcing a reality.

MIT’s winning approach to solving DARPA’s Red balloon contest can be applied in business and government for finding innovative solution to complex problem cost-effectively and quickly. Added benefit is the buzz it can generate, both in “traditional” and “New” media resulting in free publicity and media coverage. For that reason alone, it is worth the money spent!

What do you think? What other lessons Social Media Pros can learn from DARPA’s Red balloon contest? Looking forward to your comments: