Everyday in the Social Media world we talk about how some businesses still don’t get Social Media and how many businesses aren’t doing it quite right. The main problem I’ve identified for this is that the usual organizational values and processes haven’t changed at all with them entering social media. Getting into social media is a change of game for businesses. While their interactions with their customers were mainly one way, before the social enabled web permitted users to massively interact with each other, now they are in a social level. 
People are having conversations online and businesses are getting in the middle of them. It’s like if you get a sales pitch in the middle of a meeting with your closes friends. It just doesn’t feel right, so you’ll probably pass. The main reason for this is the disparity in values. A organization is usually built to make money and be efficient, which is totally ok while you’re not getting in your users social space. The values organizations propose are fine, a business without profit won’t be any good, but a business that puts rules and regulations before human compassion is very robotized (I took this from Tara Hunt and you should read her blog because she’s super smart).
The main issue here is that when a single business entered the social space of users, the expectations changed automatically for all the other businesses users interact with. Users want a more authentic and personalized service, more like something a friend gives you. When you make a new friend it’s usually because you’re attracted to their personality and how human they are. When a company comes in a social space it needs to cease to be a “ghost persona” and start to interact as a real human being. How do you achieve this? Simply by putting people representing the company there being themselves rather than making a made up sales pitch to you.
But it doesn’t end there. People also expect a change in customer service and in their overall experience with your product. Processes need to be quicker and more personalized, customer service staff needs to understand and have empathy with the user, your web site needs to focus on giving concrete information, every employee needs to focus on loving your users and making them happy. To make a long story short, your values need to change. I repeat: YOUR VALUES NEED TO CHANGE.
Remember those long sessions at a private hotel ball room for about 100 people where a high payed coach helped to coin your mission statement? Remember when after that he helped you coin some values? Remember all of you were happy because you finally got the key to becoming rich, getting that promotion and maybe getting a better job? Well you need to change what you did there and do it correctly (Unless you don’t suck at all and your values are well aligned with what I’ve stated in the previous paragraph). The new values need to reflect you care about your customer, that you’ll make your best effort to listen to them and integrate their feedback and that you’ll live for them to be happy. Yes you heard it right, profitability and efficiency won’t be your core values, this will come along if you make your customers happy.
Once your values and strategy have changed this will bring some organizational changes with it. The structure aligns with the strategy so don’t try and rush any big process and structure changes. You can make minor tweak in order to get incremental improvements, but the big change will come from this. The organizational structure will change and be flatter than before and more light in order for it to be able to incorporate feedback quickly. Also make sure that the correct communication channels are enabled so that the responsible teams for any potential problem can act on it quickly. Finally company values and life will have to change slightly,because now the firm is focused on the customer.
Change here has to be supported by the upper management and while metrics still need to be taken care off we need to focus on customer satisfaction and measure how an increase in that helps our profits, revenues, ROIs, ROE and all the other financial indicators we use.
So if you’re having trouble entering the social space, think well. Maybe it’s because you need to be willing to change from the core of your business to the outside. Social Media is not just another media you can throw messages at, you’re entering the social space. And while Social Media tools can go away at anytime, the new structure that cares about human beings will be correct for many many many more years.
