How Leading Brands are Unleashing the Power of Social Media
Measuring Enterprise Social & O365 - DSMLF Article
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STAYSOCIAL
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 15.10.2015
ENHANCE YOUR
THINKING. TOGETHER
2 | DSMLF.INFO | SEPTEMBER 2015
3. DSMLF.INFO
ENHANCE YOUR THINKING.
Together
The purpose of the Digital & Social
Media Leadership Forum is to
encourage leading organisations
to meet with each other and share
insights and experiences to help
you better understand the risks
and opportunities you face.
We believe the ‘collective mind’
of the Digital & Social Media
Leadership Forum members
will help provide individual
organisations with smarter answers
more efficiently to help you
successfully tackle the challenges
you are facing.
The Digital & Social Media
Leadership Forum is based on the
model of ‘cooperative intelligence’
and sessions are hosted and
shaped by members. As a member
you can engage with thought
leaders, industry experts and
cutting edge start-ups to help you
foresee developments that are
coming and to help you lead your
organisation forward.
FOUNDER [JUSTIN HUNT]
3 | DSMLF.INFO | SEPTEMBER 2015
4. CONTRIBUTORS15.10.2015
STEVE CROMPTON
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
& ENTERPRISE SOCIAL SPECIALIST
PAGE 7
KATE FIELDS
VICE PRESIDENT
HEAD OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
PAGE 10
KIERAN KELLY
COLLABORATION PRACTICE LEAD
PAGE 14
MAX CARTON
SOCIAL BUSINESS, ADOPTION PRACTITIONER
PAGE 14
4 | DSMLF.INFO | SEPTEMBER 2015
5. AT A
GLANCEMEASURING ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING
STEVE CROMPTON
You could let enterprise social spread virally
throughout the organisation and act on that.
But I’d start from a strategic perspective before
going to the technology, and map it back to the
corporate objectives.
I’d start with qualitative measurement,
understanding what you’re trying to do. Then
you can move into the quantitative element of
analytics and data, using sentiment analysis.
You’re using metrics to respond to pressure from
executive sponsors to prove the value enterprise
social. If you’re able to measure what’s good and
what’s bad you’ll be able not just to leverage the
quick wins, but also to ask for more resources.
A Yammer tool I like is Stat Insight, which
instead of providing metrics or analytics gives
you insights into what’s happening. It finds the
most engaging conversations that are going on
so that you can comment on them or make them
more discoverable.
KATE FIELDS
There’s a fine balance between strong
governance controls and making people feel it’s
okay to share information across teams. Junior
employees in particular don’t want to say the
wrong thing on such topics as products and
markets. But they’re more likely to talk about
general subjects like diversity or mobility.
It’s been a leap of faith for senior management,
both to launch the platform and to publicly
support it. Employees need to see executives
leading by example, using it as their private
communications tool. That’s a way to connect
employees not only with their peers but also with
the executives.
It’s hard to measure engagement in terms of the
business outcome. It’s great if a lot of people are
connecting with colleagues, but no use if they’re
only talking about non-work related topics. So
identify cases where people are using it as a
working group, in order to be more efficient and
communicate better.
5 | DSMLF.INFO | SEPTEMBER 2015
6. MAX CARTON
The key takeaway is the need for a targeted
focus. Use cases around the business to provide
quantitative measuring that you can use as a
benchmark as the project progresses.
It’s not so much information overload we suffer
from as filter failure. We need to get people to
understand the concept of setting the filter, so
they focus on the things they need.
In Jive I can set up custom tags and places, and
perhaps custom people to follow in specific
filters. Then, when I open the inbox, I just flip
through the project to see how it’s going.
KIERAN KELLY
One agonises over what the metrics are going to
be on day one. But the important thing is to make
a start. Make sure the business case is clear, and
that you have two or three lighthouse use cases.
I haven’t seen a sentiment analysis tool that
works fully. We want to know not just how many
people are talking about a topic, but also what’s
on their minds.
A better approach might be to make the topic the
main theme for a week and gather feedback. You
then publish some of the best ideas that come
from that and demonstrate some follow-through
It’s fine to unfollow people and groups, but
you might also need to explore options for
tagging, so that you can see which feeds contain
new updates. You could educate users to use
hashtags, complementing that with a tool that
monitors which words are being used in the non-
hashtag context.
AT A
GLANCEMEASURING ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING
6 | DSMLF.INFO | SEPTEMBER 2015
7. JUSTIN HUNT: WHAT’S YOUR REACTION TO
THE USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN
ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING?
What IBM is doing in this space is really
interesting. We’re working with companies
that are going through a digital transformation
project. They’re talking about how they might
use the computing system Watson in their call
centres, providing automated answers to callers’
queries. It’s fascinating the way Watson has
taken on the Jeopardy champion in the US, and
that technology can only advance.
It’s also interesting what Microsoft are doing.
Soon you’ll be able to ask your device questions
such as how many users are on my network, or
what’s our current call time. Through PowerBI
and Cortana you’ll get powerful customised
answers based on your thousands of data points.
JH: WHAT’S YOUR LATEST THINKING ON WHAT
MAKES SUCCESSFUL ENTERPRISE SOCIAL
NETWORKING?
Purpose and people. We start by considering the
overall goal, what is the purpose of investing in it.
When implementing an enterprise social network
it’s about the people, not technology. So taking a
people change management approach is hugely
important, as opposed to general organisational
change. Focus on informing people why the
business has invested in enterprise social, and
then harness those that are your advocates.
JH: DO YOU CONSCIOUSLY DESIGN IT TO
SUPPORT BUSINESS GOALS?
It depends what approach the organisation
wants to take. You could let enterprise social
spread virally throughout the organisation, watch
what happens and then from there act on that.
Yammer has an ‘avalanche’ button that sends an
‘invite all’ message to everyone in your company.
In large organisations I can go to 100,000 people;
But I’d probably start from a strategic perspective
before going to the technology – map it back to
the corporate objectives.
CONTENT & CODE [STEVE CROMPTON]
Digital Transformation & Enterprise Social Specialist
it’saboutthe
people,not
technology.
7 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
9. JH: CAN YOU SHARE ANY EXAMPLES OF THE
DIFFERENCE A PLATFORM LIKE YAMMER
CAN MAKE TO HOW AN ORGANISATION
FUNCTIONS?
An airline I worked with in the Middle East had
purchased Yammer. It had about 50,000 people
around the world and wanted enterprise social
because no one was communicating. It started
with a clear vision: a platform to collaborate
globally from anywhere. Within two months,
people in the Philippines, the Middle East and the
UK were all connecting with each other. That was
something they’d never been able to do before.
JH: SO THE KEY VALUE IS CONNECTING PEOPLE
WHO DON’T USUALLY CONNECT, SAVING TIME?
To a degree, yes, but the value massively
depends on the type of company. The challenge
for large organisations is to find people all
around the world: it’s difficult to navigate
that kind of landscape. Having a social fabric
across the whole organisation enables that
serendipitous discovery of people.
PAUL LEVY: THERE’S OBVIOUSLY A CASE
FOR MEASURING THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE
CONNECTING FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.
BUT SHOULD ORGANISATIONS ALSO BE USING
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS – WHICH GOOGLE
DOES VERY CONTROVERSIALLY
AND ANONYMOUSLY – MEASURING
CONVERSATIONS IN GREATER DEPTH?
You’re using metrics to respond to pressure from
executive sponsors to prove the value enterprise
social. You might also be asked to provide
metrics to expose shortcomings in the platform.
Or you might be asked to produce a business
case. If you’re able to do that – measure and
monitor what’s good and what’s bad about the
network – you’ll be able not just to leverage the
quick wins, but also to ask for resources. There’s
no shame in telling executive sponsors that the
project is not going to plan and there’s a need to
mobilise more resources in particular areas.
JH: WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND TALKING TO
HEADS OF DEPARTMENT ABOUT?
I’d start with qualitative measurement,
understanding what you’re trying to do. Then
you can move into the quantitative element of
analytics and data, using sentiment analysis.
A tool I really like is Stat Insight, which plugs
into Yammer. Instead of providing metrics
or analytics, it gives you insights into what’s
happening, finding the most engaging
conversations that are going on so that you
can comment on them or make them more
discoverable.
JH: ANY EXAMPLES OF COMPANIES USING
THESE PLATFORMS IN INNOVATIVE WAYS?
We’re working with large media companies that
engage with celebrities. They use enterprise
social to connect people with all the cool
things going on in different cities, such as new
restaurants that are opening, so that they can
get their celebrities to carry out promotion there.
The most interesting use of enterprise social
that I’ve seen is for crisis communication. I
was involved in setting up the network for the
survivors of 7/7 to help them and their families
communicate with each other, and also with the
police and other organisations. They needed a
platform designed specifically for this purpose,
that was different from Facebook. It was a very
sensitive time. Many case studies have been
written about this.
9 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
10. Governance is a big issue for us, being a
highly regulated industry. That’s an ongoing
challenge that we need to overcome. We
need to encourage people to be active on the
platforms, but without feeling worried about
sharing information. The consequences of
data breaches and suchlike are serious.
So it’s a fine balance between strong
governance controls and making people
feel it’s okay to share information and talk
across teams.
JH: HAVE YOU NOTICED A GREATER
OPENNESS SINCE YOU STARTED TO SOCIALISE
YOUR INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS?
We’re a very conservative institutional bank
based in Boston. In terms of getting buy-in, it’s
been a big leap of faith for senior management
both to launch the platform and to publicly
support it. It’s been a challenge for the
company’s communications as a whole. We
launched the platform three years ago, and it’s
still in early stages in terms of adoption, but it’s
changing the way that people work.
We’re a big organisation, with four businesses
and thirty thousand people across twenty-
nine markets, so it’s very fragmented. Our
platform tries to help people work more
closely together and share information.
Project teams have up to sixty people based
in seven different countries, and we’re trying
to promote the platform as a way for them
to work more centrally. They can set up a
dedicated community to share documents
and ideas, and use that as the primary form
of communication, instead of setting up
conference calls and sending emails. It’s
happening slowly and there are some good
case studies of where it’s working well. But we
can be doing a better job of encouraging that,
and sharing best practice in the business.
STATE STREET [KATE FIELDS]
Vice President, Head of Internal Communications
10 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
11. it’safine
balance
between
strong
governance
controls
andmaking
peoplefeel
it’sokayto
share
information
andtalk
acrossteams.
[KATE FIELD]
JH: HOW DID YOU GET BUY-IN?
Our intranet was widely recognised as not
being remotely interesting or engaging. No one
was using it. There was certainly a demand for
something new, but no one knew what that
should look like. So one of our big challenges
has been to create a top-down focus: employees
need to see executives leading by example, using
it as their private communications tool. But it’s
predominantly a way to connect employees, not
only with their peers but also with the executives,
to make them feel they have access to top
management.
In terms of results, we’ve cut down emails by
about 20% a year over the last three years. Email
is now probably down to 3,000 globally in three
different regions. The CMO would like to see the
organisation become completely free of email. I
don’t know if that’s feasible, but it’s a key target.
PL: DOES ANYONE IN THE AUDIENCE THINK
EMAIL IS STILL A POSITIVE, AND FAR FROM
BEING GOT RID OF, NEEDS TO BE BUILT INTO
THE ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING
ECOSYSTEM?
Member Question: It doesn’t necessarily have to
be part of the ecosystem but it’s so embedded in
the way that people work, it’s difficult to select
the right channel for the content you want
to share. It’s more a formal communication
channel than a conversation. It’s brilliant that
State Street’s social enterprise tool is its intranet
– too many companies want to keep the two
separate. They need to be integrated to provide
that ecosystem. But you’re in an industry where
you can’t share information. What security do
you have in place at State Street?
KF: Robust corporate information security
teams monitor all the newsfeeds content on
the platform – a 24-hour job. We have lines
of defence in place to monitor the content.
Employees probably don’t realise how deep
the scrutiny is. They’re certainly aware that
whatever is posted to the platform is for State
Street consumption, but we’ve got very strong
governance controls because that’s the nature of
our industry.
11 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
12. We’re under such heavy scrutiny, we have to be
proactive about eliminating anything that can be
misinterpreted, or that’s even slightly ambiguous
Member Question: Could the level of
governance, and fact that people know
they’re being watched, be inhibiting your
adoption levels?
Definitely. We’ve got a strong culture of building
risk excellence in all communication forms, from
emails to conversations in public areas. We’ve
had some really big issues, particularly here in
London in our foreign exchange business, where
people don’t really understand enough about
what the platform does. One colleague asked me
whether, if they post something on the platform,
their client would see it. They didn’t understand
it was an intranet, so it’s only open to State Street
employees.
It can be overwhelming, particularly for more
junior employees. They don’t want to say
the wrong thing and have it seen by senior
executives and all of their peers. They don’t
want to say anything controversial in case it’s
a career limiting move, for whatever reason.
People are hesitant to post their own thoughts
out there with their name and photo attached,
that can easily pull up all your other information
– meaning there’s nowhere to hide. Whereas
really ambitious employees would see as an
opportunity to get their faces out there, and be
seen in a big organisation.
If it’s about something softer, for instance
diversity or mobility – those general kinds of
conversation – people are more likely to get
involved. But they’re definitely more reluctant
to be seen contributing to conversations about
products and markets.
Member Question: Do you measure the quality
of the content to understand how many people
can collaborate, or whether it’s saving money?
That’s a big undertaking. Measurement comes
in two parts. One is about general engagement.
But when you’re trying to measure anything like
engagement or culture it’s hard to link that to
the business outcome. If 2,000 people are talking
daily on the Cat Corner community, you could say
that’s great, because they’re using the tool and
they understand how to use the functionality.
They’re connecting with their colleagues from
across countries, businesses, levels, whatever.
But when you look at the business value of that,
they’re spending a lot of time not doing their
work. That’s the view we get from management:
how is this helping them do their job?
So it’s about trying to identify cases where
people are using it as a working group, to be
more efficient and communicate better.
Trying to articulate the bottom line benefit is
really difficult.
Member Question: But when people are talking
about non-work related topics you’re breaking
down the boundaries between layers of
management, connecting people who may not
have spoken before. They might find they’re
working on exactly the same things, which
means they stop duplicating effort. I’d love to
know if anyone’s measured that value.
Steve Crompton: A bank that I’m working with
did exactly that. We carried out user research to
identify personas within the bank, and a theme
that emerged was that people all wanted to have
an impact. However, the technology and process
didn’t allow them to be agile or demonstrate
the work that they were doing. There were a
great many disengaged employees at the bank.
Enterprise social networking was introduced
to improve engagement and give employees a
channel to demonstrate some of their good work.
Member Question: You do have to focus also on
those softer connections. In my agency, we have
370 people working around the world, mostly
from home. We had an intranet for people to
connect and work together, but when we started
using Yammer six years ago it was much more
around who you are: people set up...
12 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
13. ...subject areas around cooking and cats. By now
it’s viewed also as a working tool: we use it to
share research and information about clients,
while the more personal stuff has moved over
to connections on Facebook.
However, our annual staff happiness
measurement is currently at 92%, and we’ve
shown phenomenal growth in the last thirteen
years. So I’d argue that those connections are
really important to building a cohesive team,
and if they’re only having conversations about
work, that’s not a good thing.
KF: I agree with that: there’s obviously a time
and a place. If people feel better connected
and engaged, the follow-on effect is to improve
engagement levels, productivity and team
collaboration. It’s great that you’ve been able
to convert that. In my organisation that
conversion is not happening. People use the
platform in the way they want, and when you
try to suggest other uses that are more directly
linked with the business output, that’s a tougher
transition. Measuring levels of engagement is
great, but linking that to business outcomes is
tenuous at best.
13 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
14. Max Carton: When we talk about measurement
the key takeaway is the need for a very targeted
focus. If you spend time understanding the
use cases around the business you’ve got
quantitative measuring that you can use as a
benchmark as the project progresses. That’s one
of the most critical activities that we carry out on
any new deployment.
Kieran Kelly: Often when one meets clients, one
agonises over what the metrics are going to be
on day one. But the most important thing is to
make a start. Make sure the business case is
clear, and that you have two or three lighthouse
use cases. When you start measuring, things
start to emerge. You’re not going to be able
to measure everything and tie into return-on-
investment from day one, so it’s important to
know what you’re aiming for.
Member Question: Can you recommend a
sentiment analysis tool that translates what’s
going on in an enterprise social network, and
reveals key themes of conversations?
KK: I haven’t used sentiment analysis. It’s not
something I focus on; I haven’t seen anything that
works fully. I know there’s one called Bunchball
and others like Radium that you can use in your
environment. But there’s still a long way to go.
For instance, when we’re giving information to
colleagues about pension changes, we’d like to
know not just how many people are talking about
pensions, but also what’s on their minds.
I don’t think any one tool is going to gather that
sentiment for you. A better approach might be to
use the platform to hold a more focused event,
making pensions the main theme for the week.
You state the problem and get a senior executive
to contribute ideas and information before,
during and after. Then you ask for feedback
and gather the responses. You can publish some
of the best ideas that come out of that, and
demonstrate some follow-through after
the event.
Steve Crompton: When analysing sentiment
you have to be careful about things like double
negatives and sarcasm. Some tools out there do
SEI MANI [MAX CARTON & KEIRON KELLY]
Social Business Adoption Practitioner & Collaboration Practice Lead
14 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
15. onethingwe
alwayssay
is,‘don’tadd
unlessyou
takeaway’.
[STEVE CROMPTON]
take account of that. One is Stat Insight, which is
offered by Yammer and provides an insight into
conversations that are going on, in unique groups
as well. But I agree that the best way to approach
this would be to have a focused conversation
around a topic.
Member Question: That works when we know
the topic we want to look at. But we also
want to see what people are talking about
spontaneously.
KK: You could encourage a hashtag culture. I
work a lot with Chatter, which enables you to
see easily what people are talking about right
now by the hashtags they’re using. But if you’re
relying on people using hashtags, so you need to
educate them to do that, complementing it with
a tool that monitors which words are being used
in the non-hashtag context.
Member Question: There’s a lot of irrelevant
information on our timeline. If you have things
that you need to see, it adds much more value.
How can we filter out the noise?
MC: When new people come aboard we hold
training sessions to ensure they know how to
leverage filters. It’s not so much information
overload we suffer from as filter failure. So we
need to get people to understand the concept of
setting the filter to focus on the things you need
for your project, your team, your department.
This is supplied by our Jive platform, and it’s very
powerful. I can set up my custom tags and places,
and perhaps custom people that I like to follow in
specific filters. Then, when I open the inbox, I just
have to flip through the project to see how it’s
going, and what the most important things are
for me.
KK: Jive is the strongest tool with regard to filters;
others don’t offer the same level. It’s fine to
unfollow people and groups if you’re overloaded,
but even then you may still be exposed to a
firehose of information. So you might need to
explore options for tagging an individual or
group, so that you can see which feeds contain
new updates.
15 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
16. A product like Bunchball is expensive, and we
don’t normally recommend that as the way to
get sentiment. When a tool doesn’t do all you
need, we suggest tailoring something to the user
experience in order to increase adoption.
SC: With regard to the filter bubble issue, there’s a
lot of research around cognitive overload and the
limit to how much information people can absorb
daily. I’d definitely agree about the importance of
setting up filters appropriately.
When it comes to practical steps, if you’re using
an enterprise social network like Yammer, we
recommend new users follow five people, five
groups and five topics. That’s probably enough,
and should hopefully drive adoption. It should
also bring to the surface relevant information and
content and help them discover new things.
Member Question: In our business we’re
experiencing a lot of pressure, with
conversations happening on ten different
products. Everyone wants there to be just one
platform. Obviously we need to choose the
best-in-class, but we don’t want to destroy all
the energy and enthusiasm that we see in these
small, home-grown bright spots. Any tips about
how we meet in the middle?
KK: That should happen in the early days: getting
everyone around the same table and contributing
as much as possible to come up with solutions.
You can’t please everyone, and some people will
inevitably be disappointed. But one thing we
always say is, ‘don’t add unless you take away’.
Whatever choice you go with, make sure those
people are on board with you.
We’re currently working with an organisation
that’s made a unilateral decision to roll out
Yammer, overriding interests in other parts of the
world that prefer Chatter. That put noses out of
joint and obviously those people are not going
to be engaged right from day one. So I’d find the
stakeholders in each of those groups, get them
around the table and say, ‘this is the situation, we
need to do something more’, and get everyone
talking to each other.
SC: If you’ve got too many use cases, my
recommendation would be to prioritise those
that will have greater business impact or the
quickest time to adoption. I would use that same
thinking to prioritise which platform to use. What
will have the greatest impact on the business and
which will be adopted the quickest?
weneedtogetpeopleto
understandtheconceptof
settingthefiltertofocuson
thethingsyouneedfor
yourproject.
[MAX CARTON]
16 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
18. CARLOS, CAN YOU GIVE US AN IDEA OF YOUR
BACKGROUND?
I spent almost 23 years at Cisco, doing a variety
of jobs in sales and marketing. For the last eight
years I represented the chairman and CEO John
Chambers, as the company’s external voice
for technical and innovation matters. I made
around a hundred keynote speeches a year;
one year I spoke to about two million people.
My primary role was emphasising to senior
people the changes taking place in the world,
and how businesses need to adapt in order to
remain relevant. Through that process I started
looking at social media (we’re going back four
or five years ago), which I saw would be a very
disruptive force. Many in the C-suite thought it
was going to be a fad, something for their kids
and not for them. But lo and behold! it’s turned
everything upside down.
After twenty-two years at Cisco I decided to retire,
intending to take some time off. But then Ragy
Thomas, founder of Sprinklr and also a friend,
asked me to join him (I’d been on the board from
the very beginning). I joined Sprinklr in January
as President and COO. So my background has
been as a futurist, trying to spot trends and
educate the C-suite about things they should be
paying attention to.
WHAT INTERESTS YOU ABOUT SPRINKLR’S
APPROACH?
Some companies work in the individual or the
SME arena, but Sprinklr had ambitions from the
very beginning to build a company focused on
the large enterprise. The goal was to become the
de-facto tool for everything in this very difficult
new omni-channel world, whether inbound
or outbound, building a set of rules around
workflow and processing governance that allows
you to control it.
Social shifted power from very large enterprises
to individuals. Knowledge was democratised:
you can find anything about any company on
INTERVIEW
SPRINKLR [CARLOS DOMINGUEZ]
18 | DSMLF.INFO | SEPTEMBER 2015
19. the Internet. As people started contributing
ratings and reviews, it no longer mattered what
we as a large brand say about ourselves; what’s
important is what people are saying about us. I
often go to Amazon with the preconceived notion
of what I’m going to buy, then end up reading
reviews and buying a different product. People I
don’t know are influencing what I do.
Sprinklr tries to neutralise the field. It aims to
give large brands some of the power back, to
know what people are saying, to be able to
aggregate that and workflow it with automation
and intelligence. Also then to have meaningful
conversations with their users and clients in a
way that promotes and improves relationships,
helping them to sell more. What I really like about
Sprinklr is that it’s one of the few companies that
looks at that process from an omni-channel core
in a holistic way. It treats inbound, outbound
and governance all as a single platform, while
everybody else is just doing pieces.
SOCIAL CAN BE HARD FOR ORGANISATIONS TO
UNDERSTAND. HOW DO YOU HELP THEM GET
TO GRIPS WITH IT?
Typically we’re brought in by an individual
function, for instance the marketing department
wanting to do a better job of reaching customers
via social channels. Another way is crisis
management, where a company is having a
difficult experience with social media and needs
to know what’s going on. Or it might be from a
care perspective where someone has a complaint
and is trying to reach a large brand on a social
channel. We find we can enter in a variety of
different ways.
But what becomes obvious very quickly is that
every department is trying to work out how to
deal with the new world, and they’re all doing it
independently. The biggest shift is taking place
in the most innovative organisations, which are
looking at these new channels from an enterprise
level across the entire company. In many ways
they’re building a sort of universal engagement/
communications platform for their organisation,
with the data being shared across all the
different functions.
Sprinklr helps them find out what they need to
build this, providing advice in three areas. One
is about technology, which is quite simple: we
know how to do that very well. But businesses
also need to discover best practices around
process, how to workflow, assign and tag. And
last but not least – the most difficult one – is the
people side and change management. We’ve
worked very hard at these in a systematic way,
providing an approach on how to go about it,
and building partnerships with organisations
like Deloitte, EY and SAP, companies that can
help to accomplish integration or business
transformation on a much bigger scale than
we can.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND DIGITAL EXPERTS IN
LARGE ENTERPRISES OFTEN STRUGGLE TO GET
BUY-IN FOR CHANGE FROM SENIOR LEADERS.
DO YOU HAVE INSIGHTS ABOUT HOW THEY
CAN APPROACH THAT?
I remind them that senior executives aren’t
bad people! Although at 57 I’m not the typical
demographic of social media user, as an
innovator I saw it coming and had been using the
channels, which gave me incredible insight into
their power. But the majority of senior executives
running Fortune 1000 global companies are
probably in my age bracket, and likely to view
social as something their kids use, that’s not
relevant to them. They know it’s important but
don’t have what I’d call ‘native knowledge’ of the
platform and its power. They want to learn but
are embarrassed to admit what they don’t know.
At Cisco we found a bunch of Gen-Ys, a
demographic that has grown up with this
technology, and got them to do reverse
mentoring with the executives. So that’s one
thing I’d recommend; team up a young employee
with an executive to teach about social and how
to use it.
INTERVIEW
19 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
20. I work with digital teams in organisations
and, having an innovation reputation from
my previous world, they often bring me in as a
speaker. I try to push the executives to the edge
of the cliff by scaring them, then throw them
the rope. My message is that this isn’t a fad;
these are really the channels of the future. They
have to build some sort of infrastructure across
their company to make sure that they’re using
them both inbound and outbound, to govern
it and workflow it and all the other things. So
it’s important that senior executives get invited
to some of these forums, and spend some time
educating themselves.
DO YOU HAVE ANY EXAMPLES OF COMPANIES
YOU THINK ARE A MODEL TO EMULATE?
One large consumer brand I regard as the
most advanced in the world views social as
the foundation for all their communications
and engagement with clients, both inbound
and outbound. They have a multitude of CRM
and ERP data sources on their clients, along
with whatever they get via the website, and
use Sprinklr for any conversation across any
social channel. We’re enriching their back office
data with the front office information that were
gathering. From there, they’re doing specific
campaigns, targeting different people based on
profiles. Then it all gets loaded back into our
platform for us to do the content delivery, the
timing, the content and campaign management
– all the reporting, analytics, everything. They’re
doing it really well. Last year they handled over
200 million inbound messages, which would be
impossible if they didn’t know how to workflow
and lacked automation.
On the customer care side I could mention a
number of US carriers. One in particular took four
days to respond to a customer request on social.
Like most organisations they had a listening
platform, and whenever they got a question or
complaint, they’d cut and paste it into an email
and route it to someone else – job done. The
resolution time was unknown (because after
you send the message you never know what
happens). Now their service level agreement
guarantees a response time of under two minutes
and full resolution within two hours.
Again, you can’t do that unless you have a system
with workflow and automation, and a platform
that people collaborate on from different
functions. If I listen to a customer care message
and workflow it to care, whether it’s a call centre
or anywhere else, they’ll see it as an inbound
channel and say, ‘OK, I’ve got to address this’. We
move messages around and queue them up and
apply different rules to them depending on the
context. Without a messaging platform across
the entire enterprise that’s very difficult to do.
ANY TIPS THAT MIGHT HELP PEOPLE NAVIGATE
THE COMPLEX ISSUES RAISED BY CHANGING
DIGITAL AND SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES?
You have to start somewhere. In an ideal
world you’d build this platform with all of
the requirements across the entire company,
realising the full vision. But you can’t do
everything at once. So first I ask clients to think
about every function, and all the things they’d
ideally like the platform to do. On top of that,
think about the return on investment. Whether
it’s crisis management or selling more, or
responding more quickly and taking better care
of the clients, breaking down the barriers, it’s
important to envision the architecture of the
future design.
Then, having painted that picture, think about
the versions you will need to step through to get
to where you need to be. You come up with the
big vision, and then break it down into 90-120
day increments over an 18-24 month period.
It’s about thinking globally, thinking big, but
being smart enough to know that by the time two
years have passed, some of the requirements will
probably have shifted.
The other thing is to find a partner that has
longevity. I tell my customers a dozen more social
channels will probably evolve over the next 24
months, but they don’t have to worry about that.
We’re an omni-channel core, so we’ll just add
those channels to it. What they need to think
20 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
INTERVIEW
21. about is the content they want to publish and the
channels they want to make sure they’re listening
and contributing to. We’ll build all the interfaces
and the data.
One final thing: I often see people’s eyes glaze
from the pressure. Things are always changing:
Facebook’s rules, what you can and can’t do on
Twitter, how much you have to pay. It’s a full time
job trying to keep on top of that.
So I tell people, keep things in perspective. Yes,
the birth of the Internet, social and mobile have
turned everything upside down. But it’s inspiring
to realise that they’re leading the transformation
charge inside a company – a very privileged
position to be in, even if it causes feelings of
nervousness. At the same time, they should
remember their organisations won’t survive
unless they really push them to embrace the new
world that they’re in charge of.
It’saboutthinking
globally,thinking
big,butbeingsmart
enoughtoknowthat
bythetimetwoyears
havepassed,someof
therequirementswill
probablyhaveshifted.
[CARLOS DOMINGUEZ]
21 | DSMLF.INFO | OCOTBER 2015
INTERVIEW
24. If you know someone within a leading
organisation who would like to become
a member of the Digital & Social Media
Leadership Forum please contact:
01273 775669 | info@dsmlf.info
DSMLF 2015
WHAT’SCOMINGUP
dsmlf.info/whats-on
MORESESSIONSATAGLANCE
dsmlf.info/insights/sessions-at-a-glance
GETINVOLVED
dsmlf.info/get-involved
