My son, Matthew, is a freshman in high school this year. Some things haven't changed much since I went to high school some 35 years ago. Teenagers are still, you know, teenagers. And it's still a challenging time for kids to grow up and take more responsibility for their lives, including getting a ton of homework done each week.
If you have a teenage kid, you quickly learn how to decode the mumbles and grunts that serve as answers to questions like, "How was school today?" It's difficult to stay in touch without being too involved, if you know what I mean.
One thing that's new at our high school, however, is School Loop [1], a collaborative system that helps teachers, parents and students share information without strain or pain. School Loop is the invention of Mark Gross, a former ninth grade teacher who had a "dream of knowing my students personally, of earning their trust, of basing my work on their individual needs, of providing immediate feedback and encouragement, of connecting with their families and of working with my peers to help them."
‘The private environment gives everyone greater peace of mind about posting candid comments online.’
Nice dream, but Gross says the reality of teaching life is 100-plus students for every teacher and days filled with "administrivia" and repetitive communications, leaving precious little time for teaching.
Stakeholders in the Loop
With School Loop, Gross could realize his dream. And parents and students could share in it, too, using the network to get on the same page for homework assignments and results. Together, they can identify and address problems before the "report card" shows up at the end of a semester. Students can get help from peers and teachers in School Loop discussion groups. Teachers get tools to help distribute assignments and reports to help them focus on students needing the most help.
While public social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are getting a lot of attention, I think School Loop represents an equally, if not more, important form of online networking: people with shared needs and interests communicating in a private, secure environment. Users must go through a registration and acceptance process and log in with their own account and password, using their real names.
Not everyone is a fan such a "transparent classroom." Needless to say, some kids might prefer to keep their parents in the dark. Some teachers, too, find it's uncomfortable to have their student information accessible by others. A few resist learning or using the new tools, but most appreciate the help, says Gross. All in all, this collaborative system seems to be working to make education a much more effective process for all concerned.
CRM vendors could learn a thing or two from School Loop—a great example of technology designed to help all the stakeholders, not just to "manage" relationships. It's easy to set up because it's a SaaS-based solution. And the cost is pretty reasonable, even for budget-challenged schools.
Social Customers Hosted by Social Enterprises
Schools aren't the only institutions using private networks to enhance relationships. Businesses are moving far beyond conventional discussion forums to host complete online communities focused on what customers really care about—like, for instance, their dogs.
Now, I'm a cat person, but I've heard that some people love their dogs as much as I love my cat. And I'm annoyed that there isn't a site like I Love My Dog [2] for me.
Oddly enough, it's a site that came from Del Monte. You know, the folks who put out canned fruit and vegetables and other food. Del Monte is a good solid brand, and I'm sure I've consumed my share of its products. But the people behind I Love My Dog understand that I may not want to form a relationship with StarKist® tuna. What I really care about are my relationships with family, friends, colleagues—and, yes, my pet. Instead of launching a site about Del Monte products, the Pet Products Division took a customer- ... er ... pet-centric approach and created a private, invitation-only community for dog owners, powered by Markettools [3].
Community members can do the sorts of things you find on public communities, like create personal profiles, view photos and videos and participate in such discussions as "What do You Do For Your Doggie's Birthday?" Except this one is private and secure. Del Monte personnel are not passive observers; they can launch discussions and participate, too.
The private environment gives everyone greater peace of mind about posting candid comments online. That's not something you'll find at Facebook, for example.
Del Monte gains a deeper understanding of the role that dogs play in their owners' lives, because the community is a kind of focus group on steroids ... or rather, on Kibbles 'n Bits®. In a Jan. 14, 2008, Wall Street Journal article, senior manager of consumer insights Gala Amoroso put it this way: "It is not just a focus group that you see for three hours; you are developing a relationship with these pet parents." The payoff for Del Monte, of course, will be developing new hit products that help dog owners show their love even more.
But hey, what about a site for my cat? Del Monte, I'm still waiting.
Collaborative Relationships are "Everyone-Centric"
These concepts are not new. In the 1990s, Jack Welch, GE's former chairman, had the vision of a "boundaryless" organization that would "knock down external walls, making suppliers and customers part of a single process," according to his book, Straight From the Gut (Warner Books, 2001). Cisco is well known for its efforts to create a "virtual enterprise" where the internal value chain is exposed to customers.
In 2002, while we were in the midst of the CRM 1.0 era, I wrote Collaboration: The Cure for What Ails CRM [4] and predicted that enterprise focus would shift from internal automation to "relationship networks." Although there were attempts to create collaborative e-business systems to improve how people work within and between companies, they didn't have a lot of impact.
Now social computing technology can be applied to private online communities, to help the enterprise go beyond customer-centricity to everyone-centricity. And that should lead to better relationships all around, don't you think?