The Social Customer Manifesto

Sell This Man A Car!

David Cushman is doing a little experiment in being a connected, active customer.  Here's the skinny.  David:

"There's a prize at stake, of sorts. The winner gets to sell me a car.

I want to buy a Toyota Yaris - and I'm going to blog about this fact (and twitter a bit) to see if this simple piece of disaggregated content gets picked up by someone savvy enough to sell me one.

It's also a test of word of mouth because it's possible that the dealer (owner?) with the car I want isn't clued up... but he might know a friend, or a friend-of-a-friend who is.

So let's begin.

I'm in the UK.

I want a low mileage Toyota Yaris in either T3 or TR spec, registered late 2006 onwards (new shape one). Must have aircon of some form. Ideally 1.3 petrol but will consider 1.0. Probably go for the five door. My wife prefers silver (and it will be her car). Ex-demo would be ideal."

Now, again, there are some basic channels through with customers and vendors typically interact.  From the customer's perspective they are:

• Search - Research and look for a solution
• Shop - Engage in commerce
• Help - Fix something you already have

Here's the vendor view of these three items:

• Market (as a verb, the converse of Search)
• Sell (the converse of Shop)
• Support (the converse of Help)

Key point: I feel the friction in this process is a result of the transactional mindset that most vendors are in today.  For if vendors were truly engaging in "customer relationship management," David would already be connected to them.  Instead, we're trying to mesh the customer and vendor gears, each of which is spinning at a different speed, and rotating in a slightly different plane.

So, going back to the model...David has already nailed the "Search" part of his process, and is moving into Shop.  So, is there a vendor out there who is either (a) actively listening or (b) is connected through a reasonable number of hops to someone who is?  Let's find out...

Haystack Networking Now Supports OpenID

Big news today: As of this morning Haystack Networking now supports OpenID! We are entering an age where the users and customers (that's us) are increasingly in control of our own information, at least when interacting with vendors who respect us. That means we're moving away from the silo-oriented model of the industrial age (where the vendors have all the power, and we have none), and moving into a time where we are afforded increasing power and commensurate responsibility. The emergence of disciplines like VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) and CRM2.0 are the bellwethers that are pointing the way, and OpenID is one of the tools that will enable us to get further down the path toward that goal. We've been working on this for a while, and it's important stuff.

What it means: Cerado's support for OpenID means that professionals who use Haystack Networking are fully in control of their own online identity, and are able to better manage their online representation of their professional reputation. OpenID support also means that customers can now take advantage of "single sign-on" capabilities across a variety of complementary services that also support OpenID, including blogs, wikis and social bookmarking sites. This enables a single username and password to be used across a wide variety of sites that support the standard.

Why we did this: Cerado has a commitment to empowering customers of its Haystack business social networking service to control their own information and online identity.

Who else supports OpenID: In addition to Cerado, other industry leaders such as Microsoft, Verisign, AOL and Symantec have also announced support of the OpenID standard for online digital identity management.

Haystack Networking home page: http://haystack.cerado.com

Related capabilities: Cerado's Haystack networking supports this philosophy of open-ness in a number of ways. These ways include:

* Export capabilities
* Import capabilities
* The Haystack social networking widget
* An open API

Export: You, at any time, can export your profile data. That means no lock-in. You're free to take your information with you anywhere, anytime. Your profile information is exportable in both CSV (Excel comma separated value) and XML formats.

Import: Additionally, Haystack administrators can import CSV and Excel files to easily set up new Haystacks with a minimum of hassle.

The Haystack social networking widget: Organizations can create Haystack networks on their own websites or blogs using our widget (http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/haystack)

The Haystack open API: Cerado partners like SwapThing (http://www.swapthing.com) are using the Haystack networking API to integrate Haystack capabilities into their own offerings. Much, much more on the API here (http://haystack.cerado.com/html/sdk.php).

Related links: Much more background on the history of Cerado's Haystack social networking system for businesses and associations can be found at: http://del.icio.us/Cerado.Haystack

2007 Social Media & CRM 2.0 Professional Certification Seminar

Drumroll, please...announcing:

What: 2007 Social Media & CRM 2.0 Professional Certification Seminar
Where: San Francisco, CA
When: March 27-28, 2007
Learn more: http://www.bptpartners.com/socialmedia_agenda.aspx

On March 27th and March 28th, I'll be co-hosting a two-day professional seminar, "Social Media & CRM 2.0" along with Paul Greenberg (Author, "CRM at the Speed of Light" and principal at BPT Partners). This event will be held at the offices of our friends Fleishman-Hillard here in San Francisco. (Thanks, Fleishman!)

The 2007 Social Media & CRM 2.0 Professional Certification Seminar is endorsed by Rutgers University Center for CRM Research, CRMGuru.com, the National CRM Association, Greater China CRM and CRMA Japan.

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Topics include:

Why the new social media: Communications and the era of the social customer -- Traditional means of doing this through messaging marketing campaigns are no longer adequate. The new social media, blogging, user communities, podcasting and social networking are increasingly become tools of choice for businesses. Learn the why's, where's, and what's in the segment on the strategic framework.

The Business Blog Field Guide -- Every publication from Business Week, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal to online white papers warn businesses the blogging is not an optional endeavour. Those that don't will not survive, so we are going to give you what you need to not just survive the on rush but prosper. This module will explain how to produce a blog, what the benefits are, and what conditions you need to make it a success.

Components of Blogging -- You have the framework with the first 2 modules, now we're going to get down. You've created the environment, time for you to get what you need to know to actually write the business blog in a consistent and timely way.

Customer Communities and Social Network Analysis -- In this session, you will learn about the value of social networks, customer communities and the tools and practices to facilitate their creation and maintenance. If you do it right, your customers will be the advocates you desire and the business lifeblood you need for sustaining the kind of growth you've dreamed about - in collaboration with those customers you know to be important to your present and future.

The Theory and Practice of Podcasting -- This module will not only explain what a podcast is, why it's important to you as a business person, but how to actually produce a podcast. It will also bust some of the myths of podcasting that have already grown up around its young, explosive life. There is no form of social media that promises to meet the needs of the new generations of customers as well as this one - especially for those on the move. Imagine, having a good time creating something that can benefit your business - anytime, anywhere, any way you like? This module will give you the tools to do that.

Defining Your High Value Opportunities Using Social Media -- Now, we get down and well, sorta dirty. How does this directly apply to your business? What industry you're in, who your target markets are, will make a genuine difference in the approaches and applications of the social media tools. If you're a B2B business v. a B2C business, there will be differences in approach. If you want to use the tools for co-creation of value with your customers or for feedback retrieval and customer conversations it will make a difference. The final module will examine what those specific applications can be for specific business situations and models.

Learn more: http://www.bptpartners.com/socialmedia_agenda.aspx

VRM Scenarios

(Note: More background on VRM here.)

Been doing a lot of thinking about VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) in anticipation of this week's developer's meeting. It's a potentially expansive, and extremely undefined, area.

One particular tactic I've found useful when dealing with uncertainty is scenario planning. There are many different implementations of scenario planning; the one I use is a modified version of the one described here and originally pioneered by Peter Schwartz at GBN.

So, the two big questions:

• Q1: Who controls the interactions between vendor and customer?
• Q2: Are the interactions focused on transactions or relationships?

This gives us a universe as follows:

It's important to note that the object of this exercise is most emphatically NOT to "predict" which of these four areas will "win." Instead, it's to draw a vivid caricature of each world, and determine its key traits. Doing this allows us to better plan for, and recognize, instances of that particular scenario when we run across it in the future.

"Minority Report"
Vendors bring every resource to bear to extract the last bit of margin out of every customer. Targeted ads, served relentlessly and based on our past purchasing behavior, attempt to entice us to consume the next new thing. Friedman's "Flat World" observation plays out to its logical conclusion, with manufacturing and marketing, sales and service taking place at whatever patch on the globe can deliver the product most cost-effectively. Since vendors use data mining of petabytes of customer data in order to predict the next hot trend, post-sale service becomes increasingly unimportant, since product lifecycles are measured in weeks. Customer data becomes a pure commodity, created, owned and traded by vendors in the way that carbon credits and pork bellies are traded today. Vendors with economies of scale rule the day. Customers get low prices, and limited choice.

"Me-Ville"
Cryptography, identity management and business processes have all converged, enabling customers to shop securely both online and off. Customers issue anonymous "personal requests" for goods and services, and vendors battle each other relentlessly in order to be selected. Prices are driven to just above cost for commodity items, and a cadre of flexible, "long tail" suppliers emerge to meet the non-commodity requests. eBay stumbles, and then launches a service that is the converse of its current offering. Reputation systems abound for both customers and vendors, leading to the creation of RepTorrent, an anonymous network for the trading of gray-market reputation identities.

"The Global Village"
The customer owns her own information, and does with it what she pleases. In some cases, anonymous transactions are conducted, but most interactions happen with trusted vendors with whom the customer has dealt over time. The customer chooses vendors based on interpersonal empathy and affinity, as well as technical capability. Relationships grow over time, and vendors evolve beyond being simple suppliers of goods and services and into confidants (and sometimes friends). Customers pay somewhat higher prices, but look at interactions with vendors holistically, feeling that price is only one aspect of the true cost of a good or service. Customers and vendors work together to come up with new products and services. Competent and personable vendors succeed, scam artists are quickly outed and ostracized. The same is true for customers, as both vendors and customers belong to interconnected offline and online communities.

"The Matrix (Blue Pill)"
Vendors control production, allocation and distribution, and at the same time understand that a connected customer is a lifetime customer. Supply chain models such as vendor managed inventory and consignments are used. The vendor controls what purchase options are given to the customer, and realizes that he must be equitable, or the customer will terminate the relationship. The vendor has perfect information on the behavior of his customers, including purchase history. Vendors use this information to continually refine and model the selection and quantity of goods and services made available to each customer not only to maximize profits, but also to ensure continued access to that customer. Customers select their vendors based on the belief that they will have an ongoing relationship with the vendors they choose, and give them feedback as to what they'd like to see.

So. These are just first thoughts. Would love to work on this together, both here in the comments and here on the wiki.

marrakech market: malyousif