Mark Tamis

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...

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).

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,...

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...