I am, however, not sure whether we should have different names for them — isn’t the purpose and reason for existence of the community (when well documented and explained to users) sufficient to indicate what it does and where it lives?

That is the issue I am still wondering….

I’ve been playingwith the idea of dynamics “Response Communities” for internal communities. This is where your idea of Enterprise Feedback Management comes in and adds the “what to do with it”-part of monitoring, data mining and analysis. It could be a Marketing Community that needs to set the record straight on unjustified competitor claims (cf. Salesforce this week), or other cross-functional communities to deal with product defects (cf exploding iPhones in France), in terms of doing something and making it known.

The reasoning behind implementing Response Communities is to have them focus on a purpose and smartsource the response through collaboration. They could also provide a mechanism to include PR Agencies, Partners and Suppliers where appropriate (EFM could be a tool to decide this). You could also image doing internal Social Profiling to determine the constitution of people that will be in the best prosition to formulate the appropriate response.
.-= Mark Tamis´s last blog ..The Paradigm Shift is in the People, Social CRM is a Response to it =-.

i think you and i agree on the main idea: each community should have a purpose and a reason, and that is it. you cannot mix what one community does: if it is support, it is not for sales, and so on. at least i think that is what i said and you said.

the point you disagree comes from a colleague of mine who focuses on sales and marketing. and it is a serious problem of the potential users getting communities confused as to what they can do. he said they should be given different labels so sales could see something other than a support community. i don’t think that is the case, but am open to more comments. from my perspective, a community is a community is a community and the purpose if what distinguishes them (actually, the users are – but they are attracted by the purpose– so it is kinda like a meta-distinguisher then…)

“He said that this clients are telling him that the term and the concept the have of communities is far different. Their sales people, for example, don’t want to use them because they don’t understand what a community can offer them. Their B2B clients are not interested because they see them as support only.”

The purpose for each community type, and the way user’s will expect to interact, are vastly different. Yes, it is true that upselling can occur in support situations and you could therefore argue that “sales are happening”, but it is not efficient and erodes, albeit slowly, the trust factor in the community.

Bob, I would love to hear specific examples of customers using SSC for non-support purposes, either with, or without, HelpStream. Could you share examples or point at any papers you might have in place?

SSC is one building block of what Social CRM could become. To my knowledge it is also the only building block that is gaining traction to date.

For readers that have not reviewed my related post, I wanted to point it out here:

http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/hypocritical-or-ignorant%E2%80%A6-you-be-the-judge/

I hope the “self-promotion” is okay given the post should add additional value to your readers.

John
http://twitter.com/JohnFMoore
.-= John Moore´s last blog ..Hypocritical or Ignorant…. You be the judge =-.

I was just having a similar conversation with a friend of mine in the industry who is trying to figure out how to distinguish internal and external and B2C and B2B communities and social networks.

My position is that you don’t label communities different because of where they sit or which market they serve, rather make sure that all people participating know and understand the purpose of the community and the reason for being there. In other words, you can call them Carlota or Mary or Service Support Community and if the people in it don’t care to participate it makes no difference. He said that this clients are telling him that the term and the concept the have of communities is far different. Their sales people, for example, don’t want to use them because they don’t understand what a community can offer them. Their B2B clients are not interested because they see them as support only.

Problem we have, I think, is not that we call them something different or not — rather than we don’t differentiate them and emphasize purpose or reason.

If we could focus on that – how to differentiate them and how to attract the people, then we have something interesting going. And I don’t think the name will make a difference (although I still want to give them long German names for fun).

Thanks
Esteban

A great many Helpstream customers are doing all sorts of marketing functions in their communities, for example. A healthy Social CRM community should be attracting a lot more than just customers, and delivering a lot more than just customer service.

Given that Social CRM is all about the audience being in control, that’s why I like the dimension defined by the audience better than the dimension defined by corporate function. Internal communities have one audience. Hosted communities a little bit different audience, but one still very identifiable. Completely independent external communities (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, et al) are still another kettle of fish.

Each one potentially has different audiences, functions, strategies, and tools. Just as interesting are the interfaces between each, and a well thought out Social CRM strategy will cover all of those bases.

Cheers,

BW
.-= Bob Warfield´s last blog ..The Experience Portfolio: Thinking about Customer Experience Strategy =-.

Do we need to differentiate between communities by extending different names to them? Me says no…

Anyone else?

BTW, it’s always awkward to know how to refer to those different types of community. I wonder when the #scrm community will get around to really hashing through that terminology?

Cheers,

BW
.-= Bob Warfield´s last blog ..The Experience Portfolio: Thinking about Customer Experience Strategy =-.