Social Business describes an end game we are yet to reach. Social, Mobile, Cloud, Big Data are the big trends reshaping organisations to that end

The vision of Social Business embraces a new relationship between customers, organisations and their supporting partners. Fundamentally it’s a people, culture, change challenge. Common elements in that challenge include the following.

Social CRM enables its day to day workflow. Big Data and next generation analytics fuel insight and real time responsiveness. Customer Listening, Customer Collaboration and Customer Engagement become core outward facing competencies. These are mirrored in equivalent cultural themes such as Employee Collaboration and Employee Engagement.

This series of articles explores the real world progress towards this vision.

Social Media & Financial Service Brands

February 3, 2012
financial services and social media

Social Media and Financial Services are getting to know each other pretty well. There are some obvious opportunities to be grabbed. For decades B2C verticals such as banking and insurance brands have littered doormats and TV screens with broadcast style messaging. Yet even the most inventive direct marketing only provided one way response mechanisms as [...]

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Why Transparency Transforms Or Destroys

October 19, 2011
Why Transparency Transforms Or Destroys

In another time and another place I used to spend many an evening sharing personal insights in the company of others. (You can DM me if you really want to know why). When one person was done, someone else would pick up the communication baton. It was sometimes cathartic. Often dull. Occasionally so funny it [...]

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Marketing & Customer Service: Marriage Partners Or Holiday Romance?

July 19, 2011
Marketing & Customer Service: Marriage Partners Or Holiday Romance?

Social Marketeers are confused. Their vision of the world is an integrated one in which Customer Engagement speaks louder than siloed boundaries. Sometimes they wonder if this means running Customer Services in the way they think it ought to be! Rightly so, they sniff at the way industrialised Customer Service operations view customers. In particular, [...]

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Will Customers Use Social Media Strategically?

January 27, 2011
Thumbnail image for Will Customers Use Social Media Strategically?

We all know about social media as a new channel for customer service. It’s been a well explored theme during 2010. What interests me is how this might evolve. Responding to customers via Twitter has been novel, newsworthy and refreshingly different. That said, why brands want to bait their customers with this personalised form of intervention [...]

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Social Media & Debt Management

November 27, 2010
Debt Management Turns Social

Debt Management is on the cusp of being reinvented by Social Media. That was the conclusion I walked out with having presented to a conference group of industry experts last week. The session brief was ‘Do something different to make the annual conference zing and provide reason for dinner talk later on’. Unsurprisingly it’s been [...]

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Social Media Is The New Customer Service?

October 15, 2010
Social Media Takes Over?

“Social Media Is The New Customer Service” has become the must have mantra doing the rounds in blogs, forums and Twitter feeds. It’s snappy, sounds great and feels progressive. But is a load of old bull nonetheless. I’m sure if you are a customer service professional you will need no introduction to the complexities of [...]

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