I’m a big fan of the work that Esteban Kolsky has been doing with Social CRM and he recently stated that he is going to be branching over towards the Enterprise 2.0 space.  Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0 efforts need to work in conjunction with one another and that’s what this whole post is about.  Dion Hinchliffe recently wrote an article stating that Social CRM is Ground Zero for Enterprise 2.0 and I couldn’t agree more.  This is why I have been working with Esteban Kolsky on thinking through some of these ideas and developing frameworks around them.  I’m working with Esteban on a Social CRM presentation that I’m going to deliver for the New Communications Forum towards the end of April which should be quite interesting.  The idea of the Experience Continuum is taken from one of Esteban’s older posts, we just worked together on designing the new visual for it which I am going to go through and explain.

I’m sure Esteban can do a much better job of covering the details and concepts behind this but I’ll just provide an overview.  The key to this framework is to understand that the process between SCRM and E2.0 is never ending and that they both integrate into one another.  The feedback and the knowledge that is obtained from SCRM is then fed back into the Enterprise to be acted upon.  Once action is taken the customers once again provide feedback and so the process continues.  This never ending sharing of information and customer empowerment is what is referred to as the experience continuum.

Let’s briefly identify the four key areas within the continuum, keep in mind that the same structure exists for both internal E2.0 and external SCRM efforts.

Biz function

• This refers to who is going to take the specific action and receive the information.  Is this going to be handled by the customer service team or by the marketing/pr team?

Rules

• Every business function has it’s own set of rules and governance for how to various initiatives are to be approached and executed.  For example Comcast uses their customer service team to front end their social media efforts, from there any issues that cannot be covered by their team get ticketed and forwarded to the correct team in the correct department.  Having a set of rules and processes in place is a necessity.  Keep in mind the set of rules also applies to anything that goes on internally within the enterprise.

Channel

• This is the method of communication and execution.  How is the response/action going to be handled and through what channels.

Community

• This is the final process that actually deals with execution and community interaction.  Again this can be the external community of users or the internal community of employees and stakeholders.

As I mentioned this is the basic high level overview of the Experience Continuum.  I’ll let Esteban get into more detail and will perhaps update this post with his notes, but for now I’m curious to hear  your thoughts and ideas.  Please feel free to poke holes, analyze, and critique all of the above and we will make changes that make sense.

(Cross-posted @ Social Media Globetrotter)