Enterprises today have started to seriously consider the ramifications of running a business without a private social network. The powerful effects of social media—both in business and in our personal lives—is driving demand for the same model to exist privately within an organization. For more information, please visit http://www.tibbr.com/

1. Make Your Customers
Happy For Life:
Why Facebook for the
Enterprise Isn't Enough

2. Why a private social network is better than Facebook
Enterprises today have started to seriously consider the ramifications of running a business
without a private social network. The powerful effects of social media—both in business and in
our personal lives—is driving demand for the same model to exist privately within an organization.
A recent McKinsey study showed that companies leveraging this type of platform are seeing a
25% increase in productivity. Benefits include faster access to knowledge, better collaboration and
increased innovation. Even more intriguing is how businesses are using private social networking
to serve their customers better.
Your customer happiness level is a reflection of how effective a product or service is, and
determines how successful it will be. Increased customer satisfaction has a direct impact on
purchase decisions, renewals, referrals and retention. A referral from a loyal customer, for example,
has a 92% retention rate versus only 68% from a customer found through more traditional sales
and marketing channels. In this paper, we will examine how private social networking improves
customer satisfaction and positively impacts your company’s bottom line.
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3. 2
6 ways to use private social networks
to improve customer satisfaction
1. Knowledge sharing. Employees can use the network to find the right answers for customers.
2. Private communities. Communities serve as a live Q&A, provide an archive of resources
for the customer and build trust and mutual understanding.
3. Leverage feedback. Businesses can use the community to gather feedback and involve
the customer in the product/ service direction.
4. Involve experts to ensure confidence. A private social network connects employees to
people with the right expertise. This authority can be brought into the dialogue with the
customer to provide better support.
5. Alignment. The network connects employees across departments – so sales marketing
and product managers align for a more consistent message for customers.
6. Social CRM. Adding a social layer to your CRM system lets employees collaborate
on customer issues in context, creating more effective customer interactions.

4. If your team can collaborate better,
your customers will be happier
Social media has given customers a voice, and with that voice they’ve made it clear they expect
better service, support and products from the brands they do business with. They expect their
interactions to be timely, accurate and thoughtful. While organizations try hard to satisfy these
expectations, sometimes their internal environments create friction and employees aren’t able to
follow up fast enough or with the right information. But private social networks are bridging those
divides and giving employees the environment they need to share, ask questions and find key
information to serve their customers.
Private social networks apply some the basic elements of Facebook—connecting people and
information in an easy-to-use social platform—but go a step further by connecting employees
to work-related documents, links, business applications and relevant conversations in context.
Workplace social essentially improves collaboration behind the scenes, creating a better
impression for customers.
Frost & Sullivan recently released a study on the impact of collaboration technology. The study
found that collaboration accounts for 41% of the forces driving customer satisfaction.
Companies in all industries find that collaboration generates positive returns on revenue and
innovation, with the highest return being on customer satisfaction.
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5. If your people can find the right people,
your customers will notice the difference
From reaching the right people to finding relevant resources, private social networking platforms
are an important part of customer experience strategy. IDC’s June 2012 Social Software Survey
showed that the number-two reason businesses use social software is to respond to customer
and/or partner inquiries. Why? Sometimes an employee’s interpersonal network at the office isn’t
large enough to find the best solution to a customer’s inquiry.
Private social networks connect you to unconventional sources—archives of questions, answers
and discussions—as well as subject-matter experts to get you the help you need. Employees
can post a question to the network to quickly crowd-source answers for customers.
Asking questions is one of the fastest ways employees can get to specific information. Andrew
McAfee defines this as “Enterprise Q&A,” the ability to ask questions to a large audience,
a “technologically-facilitated way to achieve serendipity.” In a study conducted by McAfee and
AIIM, 45% of users said they were satisfied with their private social platforms’ ability to provide
Enterprise Q&A. Respondents said they found serendipity, or answers coming from unanticipated
people and places.
Better customer service is not just about enabling your support team, it’s about facilitating
knowledge sharing and discovery across the entire organization. This lets employees make
more informed decisions, leading to more positive customer experiences all around.
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6. Your customers like Facebook,
but a private community makes them feel secure
In addition to sharing knowledge internally, more businesses are creating private communities to
connect with customers. These communities allow businesses to engage customers and address
questions, thus thwarting complaints that might be posted on consumer social media channels.
Not only do communities provide an archive of dialogue, best practices and resources, but the
business-to-customer interaction builds trust and mutual understanding.
When the customer has a new question, the community serves as a live Q&A; when the customer
has feedback or suggestions, the secure environment allows for more transparency and deeper
discussions. According to IDC’s Social Software Survey, the top reason businesses launch social
media initiatives is to gather feedback and insights:
“The main outcome for customer engagement is to have a closer
relationship with your buyers through enabling community participation.
Monitoring and tracking this involvement can lead to better insight
into their behavior as well as likes or dislikes to focus more direct
1:1 marketing efforts.
”
Customers can contribute ideas and have a say in the direction of a product or service to
better meet their needs. Simply involving the customer in the private community builds deeper
relationships, so they feel more committed to the company.
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7. 3 ways organizations are making their
customers happier
Reed Smith engages their clients through collaboration
International law firm Reed Smith LLP enhances collaboration with clients using tibbr private
social networking. “We have a large global platform that our clients leverage by having us represent
them all over the world, but this also presents a challenge for partners’ response for managing the
relationship with that client,” chief knowledge officer Thomas Baldwin said. “By having the case
teams working with that client use tibbr to post regular updates, our hope is that these partners
can quickly see a roll-up of client activity, stay in touch with what is going on, all without cluttering
their email.” By providing more transparency and oversight on client matters, private social
networking improves communication between the firm and clients.
Wingstop maintains an active feedback loop for customers
San Francisco Bay Area franchise Wingstop uses tibbr private social networking to improve
collaboration between all their restaurant owners and to generate fresh perspectives on product
positioning and corporate messaging. “One of the problems we had was determining if it was
possible to get one consistent pricing,” said Tony Lam, President of Wingstop Marketing Association.
“So I posted this survey on tibbr and 95% of the respondents said they would agree to one
consistent pricing. It’s been a very big challenge because every store has had the ability to
determine what prices they want to put on their menus. Now regardless of what restaurant you
go to, the prices are going to be the same throughout the whole Bay Area.” The private social
network enables brand partners across 35 restaurants to provide a feedback loop of customers’
expectations and agree on a consistent message going forward.
OOCL proactively averts delays
Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), a container shipping and logistics company, applies
private social networking to solve problems and meet their customers’ needs faster. “Every
shipment we do crosses at least two countries if not three, so that would bring up a lot of small
details that an enterprise application would not be able to cover,” said CEO Steve Siu. “To enrich
the context and conversation ... tibbr pays a role there to get the ideas to come across, so the
whole company can respond much better.”
When it comes to shipping and logistics, exceptions are inevitable. Despite OOCL’s ability to
automate business processes, employees need to be notified when exceptions happen so they
can work together to provide the best solutions. By bringing critical application updates into the
context of a private social network, employees can respond to exceptions much faster and serve
their customers’ needs more efficiently.
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8. Conclusion
Private social technology provides an opportunity for businesses to become more connected and
adaptive to customer needs. By leveraging the collective wisdom of the network, the response time
and quality will improve and organizations will see an overall increase in business performance.
A McKinsey Study showed that 70% of companies are already using social technology, and of those
businesses 90% report seeing benefits. But even with these promising results, it is becoming
apparent that improving customer experience is where the untapped potential lies.
About tibbr
tibbr is the social network for work. It brings people, applications and actions together in
one place—on a desktop, smartphone or tablet—so work gets done faster.
tibbr also gives real-time insights on the people and topics that are influencing your business,
making it a great tool for discovery and innovation. It encourages the sharing of ideas and
inspiration so organizations can take advantage of their collective intelligence.
Launched in January 2011, tibbr is already used by over a million humans in more than
100 countries, revolutionizing how we communicate, collaborate, share and learn.
Discover more at www.tibbr.com.
Try tibbr at try.tibbr.com/tibbr/web/signup
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