Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Trust in a Customer Relationship Model 2.0

979763_hope The recent change of Facebooks terms (now claiming perpetual worldwide license for all content) showed how hard it is to build up a trusted relationship in the Web 2.0 world.

Although Mark Zuckerberg probably did not have any ulterior motives and reversed the change in terms shortly after facing massive protests from the community, it shows that there is very little trust in corporations and users are suspicious by default when it comes to their own content or data.

For CRM 2.0 this means customer rights have to be treated very very carefully as long as the new communication channels are completely established and trusted. It is not acceptable for users to read and sign complicated and long terms and the community will react very harsh if some parts of the terms seem to be fraudulent. In essence – treat your customers like you would like to be treated yourself. The communities in the Web 2.0 will find any malpractice and make it public, possibly causing massive damage to a brand. “Don’t be evil” and stick by it!

John Sviokla has listed the following principles on his blog post:

  • Allow users to own their content and identity
  • Make all "sharing" options default to the most conservative setting
  • Create a better infrastructure for anonymity and tracking of content
  • Don't sneak up on the audience
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4 comments:

  1. Good one Guido :)

    I have posted a response on my blog - http://scorpfromhell.blogspot.com/2009/02/of-trust-reputation-in-social-crm.html :)

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  2. Great piece! You nailed it.

    -Adam

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  3. Yes, you should not compromise the ongoing relationship you have with your clients just for a little side action.

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  4. Hi Guido, You are right on the money. This is one issue that is absolutely essential to deal with for any commercially created social network. Facebook has never done a very good job on this.

    I have a few universal principles on these matters that complement John Sviokla:

    As a social network there are four things that should be remembered:

    1.The social network is responsible for providing a reasonable expectation of privacy for each and every member of the network. That means that the individual who provides the profile retains ownership of the profile and is, in effect, licensing the use of that profile in a limited way.

    2.That the terms of the “license” must be mutually agreeable and always transparent. There are no hidden or undue uses of the profile by the social network.

    3.The member must feel that they have control over their profile at all times. This one is mission critical. It is no different than a customer feeling that they have control over their relationship to your company.

    4.The social network is must do what it has to so that it is trusted AS A PEER by the individual members of the social network. This one is critical to all businesses, whether a social network is involved or not. Suffice to say, the individual members can’t see the social network as an abstract entity. It MUST be seen as a “trusted peer” to be successful.

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