I had the pleasure of attending the 2010 Customer Reference Forum in Santa Clara last week with a variety of customer reference, marketing and sales, p.r. and other professionals sharing best practices, challenges and innovations in the world of customer relationship engagement.   Although the group is titled Customer Reference Forum, our focus and attention has evolved with industry trends and technology to encompass a much broader mandate and cross-functional approach.   If any one theme from this conference emerged, it was that attentiveness to the customer relationship (whether current or prospective) will be the driver of all organizational activities and KPI’s.  Although I raise an eyebrow at the notion that this hasn’t always been the case, suffice it to say that the dialogue at this event was geared to how all practices within our organizations can effectively join to communicate the corporate brand and mission and creatively engage a variety of internal and external voices in our dialogue.   For those of you who didn’t have the chance to attend, I submit some highlight themes for your consideration:

1. “One Size Does NOT Fit All”-  To noone’s surprise, B2B utilization of social media and networking applications in our customer and prospect outreach and engagement was a HUGE topic of conversation and debate.  This group is savvy enough to know that a business cannot just throw up a Facebook Fan page and call their social media strategy good, so the exchanges around the SMN question were lively and varied.   Every organization presenting or present, from Oracle to Microsoft is grappling with how exactly to write and implement the digital dialogue playbook.   As we at Cubed have been preaching, a cookie cutter approach is not the way to go.   You have to consider your audience, demographic, mission, sales and marketing objectives, etc. etc. and develop and integrated approach to social media; NOT pick the applications and retrofit them to your environment.

2. Customer Engagement Happens Everywhere- As I hinted in my opening, the idea that customer relationships are “owned” by any one discipline in your organization must be eradicated.   Julie Tung, VP Global Customer Programs at Oracle, reminded us that sales, customer support, account managers, etc. do NOT own the customer; our companies do!  If we have not done so already, we must begin to have a hub and spoke approach to customer engagement so that we are mining all contact with current and prospective clients and voices and remaining attentive to all information about our solutions and services and brand.    If we continue to operate out of silos, we are missing out on some key opportunities to deepen and broaden our relationships.

3. Metrics, Metrics, Metrics- As I predicted, how we measure the impact of digital dialogue on revenue continues to be a moving target.    Every presentation and conversation included a component around this challenge whether it was a discussion about corporate YouTube videos or how to calculate the impact of the use of collateral in reference programs.   We seem to be getting better at some of the mechanics…..Rhett Livengood of Intel reminds us to “Tag, Tag, Tag”, but we are still struggling with how we measure the overall effectivness of digital engagement.   What should be comforting to us all, is that the major players, Intel, RedHat, Oracle, etc. are effectively using free tools and applications to demonstrate the impact of their customer reference and social media strategies.   Sean White of RedHat shared their very innovative approach to presenting case studies in the form of our self-service blog and spoke to his use of Google Analytics and some other basic tools.   Laura Brooks of SatMetrix shared some new research into the notion of Networked Promoters, i.e., the quality not the quantity of our key relationships.

4. Digital Conversations must Emulate our Best F2F Practices- Nothing substitutes for the depth and breadth of information sharing afforded by a F2F conference, but we must learn to harness the energies and idea exchange of formal presentation like mechanisms AND hallway/lobby “drivebys” in our digital outreach.  As organizations, we must learn to be present and listening in all venues where our prospective and current clients may be.  Many of us continue to assume that the primary conversations are taking place within the conference rooms rather than at the virtual coffee break areas.  Many of the attendees have established thriving communities but we are all still seeking ways to join other conversations outside of our direct influence.   To really stretch the metaphor, it is no longer sufficient to sit at a roundtable behind our clearly marked name tents.  We must “walk” the hallways, “join” the outside events, and walk up to people; introduce ourselves; and LISTEN to what they have to say.

Thank you Bill Lee for gathering us together again!

Warmest regards,

Lisa

http://www.customerreferenceforum.com/event2010/program_presenters.php

Related articles by Zemanta

• Social Media =Organizational Change! (socialmediatoday.com)
• Avoiding the Social Media Pigeonhole (altitudebranding.com)
• Facebook Insights: Using Facebook fan pages, metrics, & ads to drive traffic (slideshare.net)
• Employees’ as an Overlooked Resource: 5 Ways to Equip Employees to Help with Marketing (mpdailyfix.com)
• Marketing On A Shoestring Budget 5 14 09 Final (slideshare.net)