Comments on: What Does It Cost to Embrace the Groundswell? http://christinethompson-blog.com/2009/05/05/what-does-it-cost-to-embrace-the-groundswell_210/ Christine Thompson> What's on my mind: life and work Tue, 15 May 2012 11:40:42 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Christine http://christinethompson-blog.com/2009/05/05/what-does-it-cost-to-embrace-the-groundswell_210/comment-page-1/#comment-200 Christine Thu, 14 May 2009 23:51:19 +0000 http://christinethompson-blog.com/2009/05/05/what-does-it-cost-to-embrace-the-groundswell_210/#comment-200 Blake, you raise some excellent points. They may be especially pertinent in consumer markets, where shared interests motivate people to congregate or comments on brands they love (or hate), rate movies, etc. I'm seeing less readiness to engage with customer communities on the part of my mid-market B2B clients; and often, their customers don't have "natural," pre-existing communities. So for them the investment is indeed more incremental than it might be for consumer brands. And at times, the B2B customer service people may be overly focused on break/fix or problem solving situations and hampered by regimented productivity measures -- not conducive to conversational approaches that can take more time. I'm not advocating that the status quo is good -- just saying that some businesses do face sizable incremental investments as well as culture change. Blake, you raise some excellent points. They may be especially pertinent in consumer markets, where shared interests motivate people to congregate or comments on brands they love (or hate), rate movies, etc. I’m seeing less readiness to engage with customer communities on the part of my mid-market B2B clients; and often, their customers don’t have “natural,” pre-existing communities. So for them the investment is indeed more incremental than it might be for consumer brands.

And at times, the B2B customer service people may be overly focused on break/fix or problem solving situations and hampered by regimented productivity measures — not conducive to conversational approaches that can take more time.

I’m not advocating that the status quo is good — just saying that some businesses do face sizable incremental investments as well as culture change.

]]> By: Blake Cahill http://christinethompson-blog.com/2009/05/05/what-does-it-cost-to-embrace-the-groundswell_210/comment-page-1/#comment-199 Blake Cahill Fri, 08 May 2009 23:35:05 +0000 http://christinethompson-blog.com/2009/05/05/what-does-it-cost-to-embrace-the-groundswell_210/#comment-199 Christine, Thank you for the mention of Visible Technologies in your post. You lay out a number of costs and variable for building the foundation and activation of on ongoing social strategy which is good. But I don't think these costs or investments are all up in many cases. Do you need to invest in a community platform or community if your customers are already aligned in another one? Do you need a community manager if you already have SME's, Cust. Service and Marketing folks involved in interacting with customers? Social is channel for customer interaction that needs to be integrated into the whole of organizations. It's less "incremental" when viewed through the lens that this where one consumers are. Blake Cahill Visible Technologies Christine,

Thank you for the mention of Visible Technologies in your post. You lay out a number of costs and variable for building the foundation and activation of on ongoing social strategy which is good. But I don’t think these costs or investments are all up in many cases. Do you need to invest in a community platform or community if your customers are already aligned in another one? Do you need a community manager if you already have SME’s, Cust. Service and Marketing folks involved in interacting with customers? Social is channel for customer interaction that needs to be integrated into the whole of organizations. It’s less “incremental” when viewed through the lens that this where one consumers are.

Blake Cahill
Visible Technologies

]]> By: Topics about People-search » What Does It Cost to “Embrace the Groundswell?” http://christinethompson-blog.com/2009/05/05/what-does-it-cost-to-embrace-the-groundswell_210/comment-page-1/#comment-198 Topics about People-search » What Does It Cost to “Embrace the Groundswell?” Wed, 06 May 2009 10:09:43 +0000 http://christinethompson-blog.com/2009/05/05/what-does-it-cost-to-embrace-the-groundswell_210/#comment-198 [...] Another fellow blogger created an interesting post today on What Does It Cost to â [...] […] Another fellow blogger created an interesting post today on What Does It Cost to â […]

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