In the world of social computing, just like in the real world, you really have only two options. You can either host the party by providing your customers a place to gather, discuss, rant, brag, or just people watch. Or you can attend someone else’s party to eat their food, gather, gossip, and answer questions.
But, like in the real world, you actually need to do both of these things in order to have a good social life. Organizations need to provide communities for their customers AND organizations need to participate in the communities that are outside of their control, but related to their relationships with their customers.
For the past year RightNow has been working with our clients on both of these social approaches and providing them with solutions and best practices in how to host the party and be a good guest.
Here are a couple of real life examples of clients hosting the party:
MySpace, the ultimate party host and social networking site, gives its customers a place to creatively express themselves and interact with other individuals with similar, or extremely opposite, interests. MySpace’s community forums, powered by RightNow, will give customers another area to communicate their opinions for MySpace to capture and learn from.
Environmental Data Resources (EDR) provides customers with a place to join the innovation process. Beyond the 93% customer satisfaction rate that EDR maintains, their RightNow based hosted community gives customers an outlet to provide ideas, guide the product roadmap and possibly create EDR’s next breakthrough idea.
Here is a real life example of RightNow enabling a client to participate in other parties:
CBS Interactive is currently gearing up for the PGA Masters Tournament. They have live video feeds in their “Amen Corner” where they allow customers to enjoy video highlights of the tournament. CBS Interactive is using the RightNow Cloud Monitor to track conversations occurring on Twitter about these live video feeds, allowing them to listen to customer feedback to continuously improve services.
