The Social CXO Challenge
While clean, systematic internal processes provide the control CXO’s need to manage efficiently, they are not the real world. The real world outside the corporate firewall where customers, partners and investors live is a messy, personal one. Harnessing the chaotic power of the organic conversations and processes that criss-cross the company social network and directing it toward a relevant business goal is the fundamental Social CXO challenge. Social CXO’s uncover insights in social conversations to inform business strategy. They demonstrate industry leadership through social media and build business relationships through social networking. Social CXO’s cultivate social communities that connect employees, customers, partners and investors to reengineer business processes across the corporate firewall for dramatic service and productivity improvements.
The Social CXO Has A High Online IQ
CXO’s love data. Most CXO’s are surrounded by more data than they can possibly digest. However, the vast majority of that data consists of internal metrics: revenue and costs, leads and conversions, cycle times and defects. A few valuable internal metrics monitor key touch points where internal processes intersect with external ones, such as revenue, leads and support issues. However, all these metrics suffer from internal biases, because they are defined internally. Moreover, the external processes they sample are not nearly as structured as their internal counterparts. For example, every CMO knows that lead conversions and sales funnels are extremely loose approximations of a customer’s true random walk to purchase.
Online data may not have the cleanliness or certainty of internal data, but it does have objectivity. Unlike internal measures that shadow reality, online intelligence provides direct access to real customer opinions, real industry commentary, and real competitor news.
Social CXO’s validate important strategic assumptions with objective, external information that they can’t get from their direct reports or ERP systems. They listen to what their customers are saying online to improve products and services. They tap into the creativity of millions to discover unmet market needs and new product ideas. Social CXO's leverage the expanding ocean of online intelligence to make more informed decisions. Social CXO’s have high online IQs.
The Social CXO Thinks outside the Firewall
Escaping the isolation of internal information is only a means to an end for the Social CXO. The Social CXO thinks outside the box to reengineer core business processes that connect employees, customers, partners and investors across organizational boundaries. Over the last thirty years, CXO’s have spent billions of dollars on ERP, CRM, BI and countless other software acronyms to automate every last internal business process. Inside the firewall, there is very little left to do. Social CXO’s think outside the firewall to find order-of-magnitude improvements in products, services and productivity. They turn likes into leads, recommendations into revenue, and flames into fans
For example, Social Chief Sales Officers improve the quality of sales calls by arming sales reps with online intelligence and upgrading their CRM systems with Twitter handles, LinkedIn profiles, blog URLs and Facebook pages. Understanding the social footprint of a prospect prior to a sales call leads to a more consultative sales approach. Connecting with prospects through social networks creates opportunities to share information and referrals, fostering constructive business relationships long before prospects enter an active buy cycle and ahead of the competition.
Social CXO's gain influence over external business processes
through a combination of online intelligence and social network integration
that enables repeat-ability and continuous improvement.
Gaining influence over external business processes requires a combination of online intelligence and integration of enterprise systems to social networks. Online intelligence provides insight required for strategy and planning, while integration to social networks creates a seamless engagement platform that links people and processes across the firewall. Together, they enable the familiar feedback loop that all CXO’s recognize as essential to operational control and continuous improvement. Social CXO's invest in the online intelligence and engagement systems that enable this feedback cycle to harness the power of social chaos and steer it toward their business goals.
The Social CXO is the Genuine Article
Social CXO’s aren’t content to let everyone else have all the fun. They personally engage in social business. Social CXO’s provide industry thought leadership through personal blogs. They reach out to unhappy customers on social networks to defuse public crises that threaten their brands. They actively seek new business opportunities on social networks and strengthen company relationships by giving online referrals. Social CXO’s lead their organizations and their industries by example.
Blogging is one of the most powerful Social CXO tools. The larger the company, the more it means to get a personal note from the top. As a techie, one of my favorite examples of a social CXO blog is Werner Vogels’s All Things Distributed. Here’s the CTO of a Fortune 100 company with a 100B market cap who still makes time to blog. In fact, his blog has helped shape the cloud computing industry and is an integral part of the Amazon Web Services brand. President Obama has been praised for his use of social media. He also has a blog, but posts to the President’s blog are largely done by staffers. A Werner blog post is the genuine article.
Whether you are a CXO at a large public company or at a bootstrapped startup, you have a responsibility to realize the potential of social business for your company. Social CXO’s use online intelligence to develop better business strategies. They energize their company social networks and reach out across the corporate firewall to drive revenue, lower costs and improve service. The complex, chaotic nature of social business does not intimidate the Social CXO into isolation; quite the reverse. Social CXO’s rise to the social business challenge and see opportunity where traditional CXO’s see only uncertainty.
