Customer Reference Programs to adopt Social Media

Categories: Conference, Social MediaPosted on April 25th, 2007

I’m having a fantastic time at the Customer Reference Forum, at the gorgeous Claremont hotel in Berkeley. Bill Lee (who has an engaging blog) has done a tremendous job as a conference organizer, he really wants to bring a high value conference. He’s carefully screened and selected presenters, as well as issued a survey to all attendees asking them about topics.

What’s a Customer Reference Program? Many corporations are realizing that word of mouth from a customer to a prospect is important. As a reaction, they create collateral that records positive customer opinions, and then they distribute to sales teams. In my Powerpoint presentation PPT, (which I’m making public) I said all that was going to evolve, now as customers use social media to share both positive and negative experiences. I wrote a blog post a few months ago that started it all, the preso is a rough cut of it.

There were a lot of great companies here like: EMC, NetApp, Dell, Microsoft, Riverbed, Insight, IBM, Oracle, RIM, ProjectLine, HP, Navajo, Point of Reference, Metia, Phelon Group, Siemans, SAP, and other great companies.

One of the topics I was hearing from presenters is how they’re incorporating podcasts, video, webcasts. Very few of them are reading blogs (organize customer references). In summary, I believe that the good customer reference folks will evolve, start to work with the community manager, and will have to figure out how to use customer opinions (both good and bad) into their programs.

Steve Ellis of Metia is doing reviews of presentations, (he just posted his review of my session, excellent) I hope he provides an honest review for me. Fun times ahead as every group in Marketing is impacted by Social Media.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Conference, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

thanks for posting the presentation. I have the same question Mario had on the Archive of these sessions- i couldn’t make it today (but sent it off to some internal folks so hopefully they did). Or is live streaming the only way to see?

Posted by daniela barbosa on April 25th, 2007 at 4:48 pm

Hi Jeremiah
I posted up some thoughts on your session and its implications on the blog at http://www.thenewmarketing.com (all good, I hope). I’ll also follow up with a more general overview of thoughts on the whole event. As ever, interested to hear your views.

Posted by Steve Ellis on April 26th, 2007 at 6:24 am

Daniela

I didn’t live stream the event, my signal was weak and I wasn’t sure the attendees at this conference would be as understanding compared to Web20 and AdTech.

If you’ve any questions about the preso, be sure to ask here in the comments, I’ll be happy to explain

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on April 26th, 2007 at 7:09 am

Oh Daniela. On my slides, the one about the “#2 Future: New Listening tools”

That is Factiva’s market, you’ve an opportunity here.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on April 26th, 2007 at 7:11 am

Steve

Thanks for this honest review. As I left in my comments, I wasn’t trying to scare anyone, the goal was to educate and be a resource.

This is the greatest mix: CRM and social media. Wow, If do not check for a week, so much valuable stuff is missed!

Posted by Yulia on April 26th, 2007 at 10:34 pm

Another thing: can I reference your info from your presentation in my class? I can see tons of applications of this knowledge. My professor would be SO excited!

Posted by Yulia on April 26th, 2007 at 10:38 pm

Yulia-

Yes, please feel free to use any of this content, of course, I kindly request you reference me, that is all!

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on April 27th, 2007 at 4:26 am

Of course, always cite sources!

Posted by Yulia on April 27th, 2007 at 7:47 am

[...] Of course, the other thing to consider - as Jeremiah points out - is that in the Web 2.0 world, reference programs will be about opening up your customers views - good an bad - and listening to them, rather than trying to control them. The companies that get that right will really reap the benefit. [...]

Posted by Program Perception is the key to Customer References « marketing and technology on April 30th, 2007 at 9:39 pm

Mine is WAY to werid so i shall not say mine unless your VERY open minded about things

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