Just kidding… I agree with both you and him on the SOC, and I guess I am adopting the term going forward… but the concept is the same as my impromptu communities — even a little further on my side as I am not relying on the community being created by anyone in particular – or for any purpose. To me something like the Coca Cola Fan Page in FB would also be a SCO or impromptu — a fan made it, got the people, supported and maintained it. Never expected Coke to come in a endorse it, nor did they expect to get anything out of it. Coke just asked them to continue with it, gave them support with products and resources, and never expected anything in return. True that FB is not run by Coke (so it may not technically qualify for my impromptu semi-definition) but the concept is close to what you two are talking about — and what is the beginning of an impromptu community. Not being official to Coke leads the members to feel freer to comment and provide ideas and feedback without fear of retribution, being blocked, or mocked.

I would hope Coke were to take advantage of that and listen in and do something with the feedback – that would nicely complete the look without being intrusive.

I am not sure of the second question, if you could give me some more details – be happy to take on it. (I am probably being a little too obtuse about it)

UPDATED: Merlyn, I posted my thoughts on connectors in Wim Rampen’s posterous. In the interest of creating some more connections (yes, bad pun intended), here is the link to my thoughts on connectors…
http://wimrampen.posterous.com/connecting-the-dots-10

Thanks
Esteban

I was not trying to correct you, just making the point that NPS cannot be truly trusted as a metric. I totally agree with your point though – putting band-aids to a problem does not create a solution. The problem is when companies use NPS as a way to report on the problem (or any other single metric, for that matter) without really thinking about the relationship that specific metric has to the way the business is or should be run.

You made a great point though….

Thanks
Esteban

Great post, I like how you’ve structured the content to flow from Purpose > Model > Type.

Couple of comments:

1)Like @MarkTamis, I was also struck by the absence of “Social Object Communities” in your descriptions (“a place for people to hang out in and socialize around ‘Objects’”). I believe the facebook community for Nutella was likely formed through an impromptu event, but I suspect the community will be around for a while, operating without a specific objective (i.e. product support). Perhaps I’m splitting hairs, so you’re earlier response that SOCs fit somewhere between Impromptu and Ideation would make sense.
2)I definitely see your point regarding individuals and communities (“show me a [social] customer that functions without a community”), but I was curious about your thoughts regarding individual “connectors” (Rosabeth Ross Kanter’s post today on Harvard Business Review is an interesting read). At what point is the high cost of individual engagement justified?

Thank you for the opportunity to comment. I’m working my way through the rest of your chapters again – good stuff.

~Merlyn

I was attempting to point out the need for differentiating priortizations based on customers perception of the organization. For example, Best Buy’s twelpforce gets a lost of accolades, but the company is aware that, despite their vision to differentiate on service (to justify price differential with WalMart, etc), their service is less than stellar in-store. Launching twelpforce without addressing the underlying reason is not a good strategy, and certainly launching twelpforce without an awareness of the underlying reason (ie; in-store service) is disasterous.

Thanks for putting me straight.

Thanks for your comment.

I did not leave the knowledgebase out of the community models, actually I did mention it several times and even emphasize that the community is about power and knowledge at the beginning of the post.

I don’t want to integrate it all together because it would turn some people away. If they already have a KB deployed, I want them to think that the power of the community will make their KB stronger (as you well point out and know), but not for them to think that the KB must be a part of the community.

I want to keep the model as open and flexible as possible to attract as many people into this evolution (not revolution, not forklift deployment) as possible.

Thanks for helping me clarify that
Esteban

Thanks for a very thoughtful comment.

Implementation steps is something that is coming in the future. If you follow my convoluted reasoning, first comes definitions, then the strategy, then the implementation. I am not sure I want to tackle that as a series, but I probably will do something similar… if you go back in time, I did a series on a methodology for experience management, so it may just be something akin to updating that to incorporate some of these new concepts. Alas, not much changes from CRM to CEM to SCRM…

I agree with your comments on individuals and their power, but am not sure I missed the social object communities. We may not call it the same, but somewhere in between an impromptu community and an ideation community is covered. Although, I will give you this, I think it is a cool idea and a good way for a company to earn trust from customers – allow them to create communities (my impromptu style, your SOC) and interact with them that way.

There was a time – oh, like 3-4 months ago – when I would have even made the case that those were the only community interactions an organization needed to worry about… I am beginning to see two layers or two types of interactions to worry about: individual and community. more on that coming up soon.

I appreciate your 2 cents and will certainly continue to think of the SOC you mention, may just bring it into the fold in future installments.

Thanks for the read!

Thanks for your comment. I would agree with you that feedback should be the first step for most companies. I agree with focusing on the current or larger pain, but I am going to have to disagree a little bit here.

Just because you have a high NPS score does not mean you have no problems. NPS does not measure satisfaction or lack of problems, it measures propensity to recommend. That is a very complicated measurement that involves product quality, loyalty, satisfaction, experiences, and influence in your networks (yes, even influence from my perspective — else, why recommend if the people who listen to you won’t act on it). It does not show whether or no there are delivery of processing problems. That is better done in a different model for feedback (I did cover this way early in the year in my blog, am getting ready to launch it as an ebook).

I agree with your statements, I just don’t want to see NPS as something that is not – and want to make sure that organizations understand the limitations of NPS and how to act outside of it to improve their customers’ experiences.

Thanks for the read!

Thanks for putting together this informative and insightful series of articles.

I was wondering why you left Knowledge Bases off your breakdown of community models?

We believe that knowledge bases can serve a vital role in customer support and internal operations, but they can only realistically provide sustainable value if they are continually evolved using community insights. More here: http://bit.ly/3aC5aj. The community has to be placed IN the KB, if you will.

My recent post on John Moore’s blog around this topic may also be some interest: http://bit.ly/8qVvj

Chuck Van Court
Founder of Fuze Digital Solutions

Good ending to your series – good guidelines, but I am still wondering about the implementation steps.

Whilst the idea of Social Customer has made its inroad into accepted thinking around scrm and smm, I believe it also leads to a certain myopia concerning the necessity to meet the ‘objectives’ of the community as a whole, such as acknowledgement that members demand from the organisation (that they should be respected as a group).

Whilst it was easy to diss or even ignore individuals, with intra-communal communication, its members have now got more power to flame such bad behaviour. I think we can actually move to communities that organise themselves in a similar manner in what we see in politics (but on a smaller scale..?), with socio-demographic groups putting ‘pressure’ on the organisation to meet their needs, lobbying and the likes. Politics may give us an idea where communities will take us.

One other type of community, namely ‘Social Object Communities’ seems to be missing in my opinion when I read through your descriptions. Hosting a place for people to hang out in and socialize around ‘Objects’ can be a great way to create positive Word-of-Mouth and may even lead to higher average spend and generate sales. Stoking the fire by engaging and providing adequate content and inputs should be part of an SCRM Strategy as well (and furthermore can give you a unique opportunity what make a community passionate enough about what you provide to actually start one).

My 2 cents (Euro cents, the exchange rate is better:)

Mark
.-= Mark Tamis´s last blog ..On Social CRM Options =-.

I totally concur with your statement that there are three purposes of communities as part of a SCRM strategy – ideation and innovation, service and support, and feedback. I, too, see these as the real purpose and power of SCRM.

I view feedback as the crawling before walking phase – just getting your feet wet. I also think the difference, from a strategic need/priorization standpoint, between ideation/innovation and service/support, is dependent upon the organizations current health, in terms of customer centricity. Although I dislike NPS (as being overly simplistic), I will use it to illustrate my point. If you are like Apple or Costco, and have an incredibly high NPS number, then chances are, from listening to feedback, that service / support of current customers are not a big issue. In that case, focuing more on indeation/innovation as a strategy is appropriate (while still pursuing service/support). If, however, service/support/customer experience are current issues, then, chances are the rise in social networking and customer engaging with other customers, has only exacerbated that. In that instance, service/support, as a strategy, should be priority one – mission critical, (not that the organization cannot and should not necessarily pursue a strategy of ideation/innovation to cement a future), but fixing current issues should be paramount for survival.

I think it’s critical for an organziation to understand their customers, to listen and be openly honest to itself about the which strategies are in the best interest of the customer (and the organization) before jumping in.

Love the series!

Scott