There is Enterprise 2.0, and Web 2.0. Both are, in part, about user-generated content, and increasing participation in key conversations. It is also about making all of this participation more accessible to bring more voices to enterprise decision making. Here is a company that is taking a different, and so far somewhat unique, approach to these goals.
Working in what might be called Extranet 2.0, Communispace builds, manages, and facilitates private, online customer communities allowing for ongoing customer conversations. It is a three way dialog with the company, the customers, and the Communispace facilitators.
An online customer community typically involves 300-500 invited prospects and customers who regularly spend time brainstorming ideas, sharing emotions and experiences, discussing trends, and helping a company figure out marketing and business issues. Unlike public customer forums, the private online communities are facilitated by Communispace with the goal of providing greater focus to the conversations and driving deeper insight.
I recently spoke with Debi Kleiman, Director of Product Marketing at Communispace who said, "we are one part private social network of brand advisors, one part insight engine - literally hardwiring the voice of the customer into their business. We find that those companies who get the most out of their communities, and make it a valuable asset to the enterprise, are those that use their communities strategically. In other words, they leverage it cross-functionally in their organization, involving many departments and disciplines, allowing first-hand access to the unfiltered voice of the customer to those who can really use it. And they use the community as a "hub" for their initiatives - whether with their agency partners or other working partners - it becomes the central point of thinking when framing and developing key marketing initiatives."
The concept began in the spirit of co-creation as one of their customers suggested that they set up one of their online communities with their customers. The first community was successful and now there are over 275 communities with a 96% renewal rate, a nice validation of the co-creation concept.
One example is the HP IPG PhotoSpace community which provides access to an advisory board of target consumers who shared their opinions, wants, reactions, and ideas within this private group, allowing for greater candor. The HP group participants can also observe customer member interactions for insight into unmet needs. Using the online community makes it possible to generate user information and continuously test the HP customer experience. It also built customer interest and loyalty because of the sense of participation in sharing ideas but also in influencing product decisions. I also found this user involvement was always key to any enterprise initiative. It is nice to see it facilitated through these communities. As a result of the sense of co-creation, satisfaction ranked high in the HP community. The community won an HP internal competition for Best in Category for Innovative Customer Marketing Research.
In another example, the CDW community recently received an award from the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA). Calvin Vass, Senior Manager, Market Research at CDW said, "Through our online communities, CDW receives continuous customer feedback from IT decision makers that allows us to include the voice of the customer in our day-to-day business decisions. We are able to act quickly on what customers are telling us and this allows us to develop stronger relationships."
This is a nice business application of the James Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds concept. These online communities offer another proof point for his well-known thesis that the aggregation of information in groups results in decisions that are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The collective conversation of a large group of customers certainly adds content well beyond what the marketing people, the product development people, the sales people, and the customer service people could do on their own. It is nice to see that the process of collecting these online customer conversations also helps bring together these individual groups within the enterprise. I think this approach demonstrates some of the diversity possible under the Enterprise 2.0 umbrella. It is a way of doing business more that a particular technology.
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