EMC Community Support Forums: recognition of our Community champions

My role in EMC is changing. That's not what I am blogging about though. It's about what EMC eServices are doing to recognize, empower and reward our most valuable contributors in the Support Forums. Now it's not like we have not been doing this already. We have. And we have even got them together to talk about what it's like to be a champion in the Support Forums. See here: Meet the Support Forums MVPs

But we are expanding the program to include more people and recognize those that are the superheroes in the Forums. Nothing as yet is set in stone. But here are some ideas around what it will entail. Such people would be recognized and empowered. We would highlight them, give them a voice via blogging, vlogs as well as traditional discussions. We would reward these people with early beta release testing rights, educational credits, access to exclusive groups with other MVP's and developers. We would invite these individuals to EMC events in their local areas. We would ask such individuals to participate in our Ask the Expert program, answering questions from other customers in a special live events and online.

It's cool this is shaping up. And it's great that EMC is bringing a sharper focus to the Support Forums, recognizing the people who make it such a great and powerful community. And I am absolutely fired up that I am a part of making it happen. In the coming weeks I will have more about this and what it entails. And it won't just be about customers. This will include employees of EMC too in all areas. Pat Gelsinger described EMC, shortly after he joined the company, as extremely customer focused. How very true. It's my intention to advocate the Support Forums as a communication channel to all people working in EMC who communicate with customers. Which is as Pat Gelsinger says, all of us.

Thank you Steve Jobs!

It was through the traditional Medium of the wireless radio while driving at 9am this morning in West Cork that I heard the awfully sad news of Steve Jobs passing. We have lost a luminary to be sure. I was never fortunate enough to meet the man. But I am an ex Digital Equipment Corporation Employee. You can't have worked there and not have heard of him and the legendary story of the mouse.

He certainly revolutionized technology and changed our lives. I am late to Apple technology, but when I bought the iPad I am writing this blog post on I got the experience. The staff talked about how Steve liked to make things simple and elegant right down to the packaging. The staff there revered the guy, it was extraordinary to hear a CEO being talked about by staff at a store. But that's Apple. The Apple that Steve Jobs built.
I am sure the staff there are in bits at the news. He will be missed by the world, but most especially by his family. My deepest sympathies goes to to them.

Forbes have put together this tribute video (linked below) to honor Steve Jobs. It includes EMC's own Howard Elias speaking about him.

Thank you Steve Jobs for all you have done for technology and the people that it helped and continues to do so.

EMC Support’s evolution in Social Media.. A lot done, a lot more to do !

It’s been a hectic September for eServices. We have been extremely busy with our recent platform upgrade on ECN. Now that is settling in and people are seeing the benefits (and yes those niggling issues, but we’ll get them settled very quickly).  As well as addressing a lot of bugs it brings nice features to your discussions. Highlighting / embedding the answer in discussions, making it easier to mark questions as answered with one click. Other major abilities we have are Ideation and Videos. They were there before the upgrade, but with the improvements we will be using these features in the Support Forums to broaden the experience and sharing of solutions and knowledge.

As a distraction from testing the platform during the upgrade, I took time out to read Why Social Media is disruptive 

It was a fascinating read. The referred article was written in February of this year. What was especially interesting was the “Social Media Case Study: Inspired by Dell”. Now it is obvious that Dell is a rags to riches story in this case. But it is interesting to see how Dell got personally involved and listened to its customers socially. It is clearly apparent that social listening is absolutely required from a Customer Support perspective. Dells efforts are well highlighted and I take my hat off to them for a job well done.

EMC is coming from a different place. But what is common to Dell’s requirements (and practically all other businesses out there in Social) is the need to get personally involved. Social Media is a good disruption as it challenges us to integrate more with our customers.  EMC is certainly getting that right. In our Support Forums, not only are we opening up content, we are opening up our engagement. This broadens out to other Social channels too. 

For instance @EMCsupport on twitter listens and shares information on trending topics in our Support Forums. Over time this will grow to sharing other initiatives like featured blogs and videos on the Support Forums, related to trending EMC Support topics. We are developing a plan to share video solutions for trending Support problems our customers are having. The idea here is to quickly share the workaround to a known issue, and get it published to our Forums video section. (YouTube is also being considered for this also). We can then share this via Twitter, Facebook, Google + and other Social channels. Our own social listening from a Support perspective is still developing. There is a lot more to do to improve and build further engagement. We will be providing that by widening our Forums to Multilingual geographies with Multilingual Support Forums very soon. 

There are many other exciting initiatives underway. But essentially it comes down to customer engagement, listening, getting personally involved, and of course being relevant. A lot done, a lot more to do!