Power of Communities: Tribes not Cults

Denis Pombriant, a respected voice in CRM, feels Wisdom of Crowd is over hyped. Crowd wisdom is only as good as the crowd & can only tell what is known, not tell us something new. New information still requires research - experimentation, collecting data & analysing it. Don't miss watching this funny yet poignant Monty Python video clipping on YouTube as pointed by Denis in his blog post.



I agree with him of course. And that is why I ensure that never give up on research and also surround myself with people who are in research or are interested in them. Thats usually my Crowd - a collection of people.

The Crowd when it shares a common interest & communicates forms a Community. And the Community that has at least one passionate person leading it is a Tribe, says Seth Godin, the respected permission marketing guru.

Why the need for a Leader? Godin states that the Leader can help increase the effectiveness of the Tribe and its members by:

1. transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal & desire for change;
2. providing tools to allow members to tighten their communications; and
3. leveraging the Tribe to allow it to grow & gain new members.

Seth Godin further says that a Tribe communicates four ways:

1. Leader to Tribe
2. Tribe to Leader
3. Tribe member to tribe member
4. Tribe member to outsider

One point to ponder is that the 4th type of communication in the Tribe - to the outsider - if absent, it leads to Groupthink, wherein everybody discusses only agreeable stuff that conform to the existing notions of the community, with no differing points of view or debates. The extreme case of such a Community, relying heavily on groupthink, is a Cult.

How do you prevent your Tribe from becoming a Cult or yourself from getting stymied by groupthink?

• Join groups/communities/tribes that are completely different/opposite from what you believe. No need to agree, just understand their PoV.
• Include people in your groups/friends/following list who think differently & will not readily accept your views. The more diverse the people in your network are, the better off you are.
• Get into disagreements & friendly debates by posting opposing views in comments to blogs or responses to tweets. But be sure to remember & practice self-restraint*.

Hope I have been successful in alerting you to the difference between a Tribe & a Cult and you will ensure that your Community & yourself will not fall into the trap of groupthink?

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* The self-restraint manifesto I had written for our organization's internal blogs network (ch1blogs):

This is your blog & I will certainly comply to your requests if I intend to participate in the discussions out here.

If I feel they are not sensible or if I will not be able to comply to your request, I will ofcourse not get involved. And I do understand that if I do get involved & go against the grain, you still have the right to delete the comments, and will not make a hue & cry about your deleting them or hold a grudge against you.

I do not intend to follow / not follow because I see them as a diktat, but because as a civilized netizzen I see the importance of respecting your sensibilities & all the other nettizens.

This is what I try to follow & expect others to give me the same treatment too.

P.S.: The points about Tribes are from the book of the same name by Seth Godin.

Don't call it Social CRM or #scrm the first time

Social Media & Social Networks provide a means to the customers to take hold of the loud speaker that hetherto had been the privilege of the businesses. And not only that, the customers know how to wield this new kind of loud speaker far better than the businesses.

Lots has been talked about the implications of Social Media & Social Networks on the businesses & why they are imperative, et al.

It is a no brainer to figure out that since the businesses have to use social applications (social media + social networks) because of the customers & for the customers, CRM inevitably has to integrate with it too.

And there is a lot of discussion around the implications of social media on CRM or the integration of social media with CRM or leveraging the social networks for CRM, etc.

Look no further than the #scrm hashtag channel on twitter.com

The who's who of the CRM world espousing Social Media & Social Networks from a customer relationship perspective are available on this hashtag. Including yours truly as @scorpfromhell & @prem_k. I am guessing I am the junior most in this bunch & the most vociferous too. Please excuse my "immaturity" if you will. ;)

Today @JohnFMoore, CTO of Swimfish, Inc. asked

Can people give me three short, concise, points to get people excited about #scrm ?

The guys on #scrm are ever helping & such leading questions help us define, redefine & refine our thoughts around the integration of social media & social networks with customer relationship management systems as well as strategy.

I responded & so did @ekolsky (Esteban Kolsky) and then we kept prancing & prodding each other. ;) The crux of the whole "altercation", as I understand it, is given below. Esteban, please correct me if I am wrong anywhere. :)

Esteban isn't impressed with the term Social CRM and I use it quite often & its even shorter term even more profusely - #scrm.

Esteban's contention, as I understand, is that Social CRM is nothing new or wholely different from traditional CRM. It is mere social media integrated with CRM. His stance, if I get correct, is that social media should be talked of only as an additional channel in CRM. Like the "e" channels were added to CRM some years back. He also vehemently claims that there is no new thing called Social CRM. Another point that he raises is that when email & IM/chat were integrated they were not called anything new, so why when social media is being integrated.

I agree with Esteban upto the point where he says that social media is just another channel in CRM & should be integrated with the CRM systems (as should social networks too).

I deviate where it comes to the naming. I use Social CRM as a second mention & #scrm as all subsequent mentions. First mention is usually one of the following:

1. Social Media &/or Social Networks integrated with CRM
2. Implications of Social Media &/or Social Networks on CRM
3. Leveraging Social Media &/or Social Networks for building & maintaining Customer Relationships

To understand about "mentions" & names, please consider reading this post on the naming guidelines for Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007.

Twitter of course doesn't allow me to use the first mention or sometimes even the second mention. The 140 character limit on the messages, the "@" mentions & the #scrm hashtag eat up too many characters as is. Hence, I end up using #scrm when I want to refer to any one of the above points. Most others too end up using similarly, for the most part. Additionally, #scrm helps in all the wonderful ways hashtags help on twitter.

Now, why use the new name Social CRM when we did not stick with e-CRM for long? Because I believe that the integration of the "s" channel differs from the "e" channel in certain aspects.

When email & IM/chat - the "e" channels - were added they still kept the interactions between the business & the customer private. It was one-to-one and nobody else was privy to the conversations or rather the dialogs. Promises made by the businesses when broken were not brought to light and the stress on the businesses to be accountable & fulfill their brand promise was not heavy.

Where as, with Social Media, the conversation between the customer & the business is open to scrutiny from all quarters & puts some pressure on the business to be accountable as well as keep their promises too.

Esteban cotends this stating that business will still be missing on the promises, explain & move on. I have no heart to deny that. Errant businesses will try to do that same routine, rinse & repeat. But my point was that it will be noticed more by the customers than with the "e" channels.

And then we agreed that even if customers notice more, business will change only if theres an impact on its culture & not merely technology.

Estaban was vehement that this was exactly what was stated when CRM was first introduced - culture, training, integration.

However whats different now, IMHO, is that the same platform (social applications) is now available to the customers to weild it against the business and VRM is a step in that direction too. I reiterated what I had said before on twitter, Social CRM is the peace pipe offered by the businesses to the customers armed with social media & VRM.

My view on the "s" vis-a-vis "e" channel integrations: CRM & the "e" channels came from the businesses, more or less, to control the customer relationships. The "s" channel is being forced upon the businesses by the empowered customers hell bent on weilding their new found powers upon the businesses. (Some would say that CRM & the "e" channels were forced upon the businesses too, by the sales people of the CRM vendors!)

Looking forward to listening from you all regarding this. :) Pointedly, do you agree that we need a new name for this integration of social media & social networks with customer relationship management systems or not?

Art from abandoned refuse.

A beautiful work of art made out of used paper cups set up in The Forum mall, Koramangala, Bangalore.