Mark Tamis

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Mark Tamis

Mark Tamis

Net-7
Parisian Dutchman with Enterprise 2. and BPM background. Management Facilitator. Excited by potential of Social CRM as an organisational change agent!
  • 0 comments 1,437 reads
    Posted on 2011-11-22

    Forget all this talk about “Social Business”, “Social Enterprise”, “Social Organization”, “Social XYZ” – your business already is “Social” because by its very nature it consists of people interacting with each to get work done. Collaboration is already happening within your ecosystem – between employees, different departments, suppliers, channels, buyers, customers without the need to add the “Social” prefix. Adding the word by itself does bring attention to the idea that we need to change, but it is overly used (and has been hijacked) by certain vendors to mean the toolset rather than the mindset and thus risks diluting the message.

    Being Social is human nature, even though decades of Taylorism and Business...

  • 0 comments 888 reads
    Posted on 2011-07-19

    When it comes to providing customer support, service is in general provided at the lowest common denominator level regardless of whether the customer is a Rocket Scientist or a Poodle Walker. Segmentation and service differentiation based on customer capabilities could potentially help your organisation reach resolution faster and improve the customer experience at the same time.

    During the last weekend of June, about four weeks ago, my home ADSL modem started dropping the connection intermittently. The following day I called into my ISP’s (Free Telecom) Customer Support, some basic questions were asked and an appointment was...

  • 0 comments 590 reads
    Posted on 2011-06-30

    During his keynote at the Social Business Forum Milan where I participated in a panel, Keith Swenson made the following very interesting observation: in business, the paradigm is moving from a Newtonian model (external observability, smoothness, simple rules, predictability) towards a Quantum model (limited precision, turbulence, relationship-based, unpredictability).

  • 0 comments 1,099 reads
    Posted on 2011-05-10

    It’s been a month since I attended Cloudforce in Paris, followed bythe Radian6 User Conference in Boston – so I thought it would be about time to gather my ideas and impressions and ‘commit them to paper’, so to speak. Especially in the light of the acquisition of the latter by the former just before the events. Salesforce clients in particular will stand to gain through the connection of social customer insights to the Sales and Service Clouds, by identifying new opportunities to engage with customers and to explore the customer’s context in order to facilitate service interactions.

  • 0 comments 1,825 reads
    Posted on 2011-03-01

    The Edelman Trust Barometer indicated that we trust CEOs and experts more than last year, and that trust in “people like me” slipped down the list. But, when it comes down to it, who do you turn to when you want to know how a dress looks on you – your friends, or the brand’s CEO?

    Thomas Wieberneit wrote a post last week with a similar title, and we started a good old-fashioned discussion through email to see how Social CRM thinking could enhance the customer experience. One of the key thoughts is that people will turn to their strong ties for advice and discuss options, and their ‘hire’ the brand (which is basically a weak tie) for service delivery in the for of goods, services,and knowledge. Furthermore, rather than “consuming passively”, people are now participating activily in meeting their own desired outcomes,...

  • 0 comments 881 reads
    Posted on 2011-02-14

    The adage concerning online customer communities has it that you should not give monetary rewards or gifts to members, as this is an impediment to to the ‘health’ of the community and keeping it vibrant. Participants would be motivated only by their gains, and this can discourage members who are there for the ‘social’ aspect of exchanging with likeminded individual, social recognition, and finding peer support.

    We stand incredulous before the so-called ‘super-users’ who are the backbone of these communities. They selflessly spend countless hours helping their peers and keep the momentum going. For example, KachiWachi, Distinguished Logi Legend and Webcam Guru on Logitech’s Support Forums has posted nearly 45,000 messages in almost five...

  • 1 comments 2,240 reads
    Posted on 2010-12-14

    It’s that time of the year again, when we look back to the past and try to project what will happen in the future. Although I do not consider myself to be an analyst, I do have some ideas I’d like to share concerning my areas of interest.

    Clouds above San Francisco

    The year 2010 has seen a rapid adoption of the idea that companies should listen more closely what customers are saying in order to understand their job-to-be-done and work towards meeting their desired outcomes. These outcome can be an ideal customer experience, or adapting a service offering so that it better meets needs and expectations. Customer experience now increasingly includes using social media to find and exchange with like-minded individuals, creating de facto online communities. Customer Engagement strategies which integrate these channels is increasingly being accepted by...

  • 0 comments 1,144 reads
    Posted on 2010-10-27

    Who hasn’t been there? After waiting 20 minutes on hold with Customer Service, then 15 mins for explaining your problem, the Contact Center Agent says she is really sorry, but can’t do anything about resolving  it because something first has to be done by some other department, or it the system won’t let her do what needs to be done as this isn’t in the process, even though it should be simple and straightforward to do.

    The customer is frustrated because she need to call some other number and explain everything all over again, and the agent is becomes frustrated and may take it out on collegues, or worse – the next client in the caller cue! The example above is an issue of empowerment and system inflexibility, but also of process rigidity. The rigidity of the process has just killed the positive customer experience.

    ...
  • 2 comments 3,771 reads
    Posted on 2010-10-20

    Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 are a natural fit. In an endorsement for the Enterprise 2.0 book, Leo Apotheker (now heading HP) said that “McAfee clearly understands the role of IT in creating superior customer value…”, and indeed, I very much agree with this statement. However, where I believe software vendors have put too much emphasis in their interpretation of what needs to be done, is that they have focused too much on the pure IT side of the equation. This is where the social CRM approach can bring balance to the discussion by looking at how innovative customer engagement strategies – enabled through employee participation and collaboration...

  • 0 comments 1,237 reads
    Posted on 2010-08-09

    Enterprise Software Vendors have always focused on their enterprise clients’ needs when concocting their products. SFA, SCM, CRM, ERM, [insert your TLA] were all developed with the objective of optimising business from the inside-out, formalising and streamlining processes and connecting systems, and now with Social Software in the Workplace connecting people again. In parallel to that, we have seen companies build platforms that help people connect such as the now-ubiquitous Facebook, Twitter and consorts, bridging time and space to help people interact and reinforce ties with others like them.


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