Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge? (Part 2)
by Matthew Lees
Part 1 of this topic framed the question of whether internal/employee communities and external/customer communities can potentially converge, and be managed via one group of people using one (pretty darn robust) technology platform.
My “Idealistic Answer” to this question was “Yes.” In the ideal customer-centric organization, the walls separating inside and outside would be more permeable than rigid, with customers being involved (as appropriate and as warranted) with a great many aspects of what the organization is doing across business units.
We live, however, in the real world…
Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?
Pragmatic Answer: No
While the walls that separate inside from outside may be coming down, the internal walls are seemingly as strong as ever. It’s hard to get those silos to tilt, let alone fall.
The unfulfilled promise of CRM is a good analogy here. Remember when “the 360-degree view of the customer” was all the rage? In theory, it was a great idea…have everyone in your organization working off the same system and the same data. Companies will benefit from the streamlined technologies and centralized resources (sound familiar?), while customers will benefit from more relevant marketing communications and offers, and from better-informed support reps who can provide improved service. This isn’t how things panned out, of course, largely because of the way that organizations are structured and operate.
So, in addition to the similarities discussed in the previous post, there are vast differences between internal and external communities, including:
- Business Goals, Use Cases, and KPIs – While there is some overlap, the business goals are largely different (as are the Key Performance Indicators that measure them)…Employee communities are often looking to increase productivity, information sharing, knowledge retention (keep expertise within the organization), and employee satisfaction, while reducing, for example, the costs of system administration and training. Customer communities are often looking to positively impact the organization’s brand, increase customer loyalty and satisfaction, generate awareness, get more people in the sales pipeline (especially for B2B communities), increase direct and indirect sales (upsell and cross-sell), reduce costs through deflected service and support incidents, and leverage customer-led innovation throughout the organization. Whew.
- Business Units and Business Owners – The differences in business goals stem from the fact that different business owners head up these communities. Employee communities tend to fall within HR, IT, or Administration/Operations, while customer communities tend to fall within Service & Support, Marketing, or Product Development/R&D. As was the case with CRM, it’s rare that these business units are aligned in terms of needs, process, and technology.
- Social Dynamics – The social dynamics between employee communities and customer communities are more different than they are alike. Both types of communities do rely on a core set of enthusiasts/influencers who handle a lot of the heavy lifting, but the reasons and motivations for participating in each vary. People act and interact differently when they wear different hats; in an internal community you’re wearing an employee hat, with all the good stuff and all the baggage that goes with it. (Think organizational politics; how candid are you going to be if you know your boss – and HR – are listening.) You’re potentially more anonymous in an external community wearing a customer hat, where, for most of us, the stakes are lower.
So What?
In the upcoming Part 3 — yes, there’s a Part 3 — we’ll explore what this means for both technology vendors that provide social tools, and for those practitioners tasked with managing employee and/or customer communities.
Back to the blog
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Best Practices, Community Moderation, Social Media Industry, Social Media Trends. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
5 Responses to “Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge? (Part 2)”
[...] this is the strategic, tactical, and operational challenge of SCRM. It isn’t so much that employee communities and customer communities need to merge as much as it is that purposive, strategic dialogue must occur across each kind of [...]
[...] Part 2 – Pragmatism Rears its Ugly Head SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge? (Part [...]
[...] noted some important similarities between internally facing and externally facing communities. The second post discussed key differences between such [...]
[...] most out of a community apply to both internal and external communities…but many don’t. And, as Post 2 touched on, the business goals are very [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Community Roundtable and Matthew Lees, J.J. Lovett. J.J. Lovett said: RT @mlees: Interested in org. dynamics & social media? ->"Will Employee Communities & Customer Communities Converge?" – http://bit.ly/bIpwLt [...]