Enterprise Customers as Consumers
Last week I was talking with someone at a Fortune 50 company about Social Media. As is obvious to most people - marketing people, consumers, social media marketing experts (see my previous post/link from Holy Kaw), big companies are not making the most of social media. There are a number of reasons for this – but here’s what I see as the main ones:
- They don’t have time: When it became apparent that we needed to moderate the online user forums for my products, no manager was willing to provide resources to do it. So unhappy, verbal, know-it-all users (customers) filled in and began answering questions for other users. We didn’t have time or resources to correct statements or police bad-mouthing. This led to the jobs of the sales people, pre-sales consultants, and marketing people being that much harder.
- They don’t have ‘approval’. Most large companies closely guard their brand and corporate voice. The process of getting customer facing blogs approved is generally arduous and arbitrary (hmm…that sounds like the title of a future post). In my situation, we continued to rely on the old methods of reaching customers – through sales teams. Sales teams that were overwhelmed, under-trained, and apathetic.
- They don’t see enterprise customers as consumers of social media. This, I believe is a huge misconception. As products became more complex and companies outsourced tech support to developing countries, enterprise customers have had no choice but to surf the web for solutions to their problems. They are using blogs and forums primarily, but are also drifting into Twitter.
Enterprise customers, while complex and labyrinthine, are still a group of people acting individually. Technology and service marketers and customer service teams need to create a strong social media presence for a variety of audiences and purposes in order to be taken seriously.
