Customer Advocacy :This is the right time, and this is the right thing.

" This is the right time, and this is the right thing." - Thomas Moore

Well, it's been a while and yes it's the usual excuse, I have been busy. But I really have.
Remember this post of mine? Well it is finally becoming a reality and I am delighted! We will finally be able to recognise and thank our loyal community members who advocate on behalf of their community.
 Matt Brender and I are the unlikely duo who will spearhead this Project. Matt describes our Project very well on his own blog post about what is codenamed Project DNA

Recognising and celebrating our Advocates at EMC will be amazing!

The enthusiasm and Passion both Matt and I have for this Project are summed up in this quote from his post " We’re ready to go big, and there’s no way we’re going home unsuccessful."
I love it ! Recognition for our advocates is finally getting the big roll out it deserves.

 It's just fantastic!

EMC Ask the Expert

And tied to that is the other behemoth of a Project that I'm heading at present, EMC's Ask The Expert. It's going great guns and it's thanks to those advocates we plan to thank through Project DNA, who are making this project a great success. We've even launched our own twitter account for it @EMCAskTheExpert and tomorrow we kick off our first experimental "Tweet Chat". you can follow it it if you wish using #EMCATE.
it will be about "Performance calculations in Clariion / VNX" which is also a current ongoing discussion on our Ask The Expert Support Forum.

 

And that of course is not all, we will continue to expand Ask The Expert to product updates and launches, facilitating access to Customer advocates and subject matter experts who can make sense of a new feature or launch and what it means to EMC community members and product users.  And we will continue to bring in experts to address hot topics relevant to our Support Community members.

For more information on how Ask The Expert works you can listen to .. well .. me :) talk about it when I was recently interviewed about it by the InFocus team 

I am increasingly busy, but I have to say I am enjoying every minute of it. It's incredible how much the Support Community in EMC has grown. It offers so much to the existing and newer community membership and it's provided by dedicated community members sharing their experience, knowledge and expertise. I love being the Community Manager for it, as I get to know these community members, listen to them and advocate for them. The passion of our advocates is amazing. And I am delighted and honoured to play my part in having EMC recognise them through Project DNA. Much more about that very soon, that's a promise. :)

Social Communities are good business

Social Communities are growing at a fantastic rate around the World and are becoming part of most businesses DNA. For EMC this is clearly a strategic direction and one I have witnessed blossom before my very eyes. 

One day I might post about something other than Communities. But as I live and breathe Community at present and it's my current predominant passion, (adding a caveat that my family is my overriding passion in all) I can write about little else at present.
 That said it won't always be that way :).

Anyway, Communities! Well, they are good business models. I can hardly claim that that as a revelation. I won't :) . Here in 2012 we can see John Moore's prediction from his blog post in 2010 were prescient. Social Support Communities: a path to real success with your social business strategy

EMC's Social Support Communities are a big piece of its eServices business, and of late it's gotten a lot of focus. When you have a VP and Senior VP in your business unit pushing Social and Community you know its sound business. And when you hear that the highest executives in EMC see this as a vital play you know you're striking gold.

But don't take my word for it. Listen to our VP, Julie Larsen talk about the entire eServices strategy on a recent guest spot on Silicon Angle's TV, The Cube. Julie's  focus on providing best in class self services for EMC Customers is driven by meeting customer demand for these services.It's a great interview from the perspective of the challenges and the strategies EMC is taking in in online social collaboration.

This is echoed again in an interview with our Senior VP Tony Kolish and VP Julie Larsen once more, at EMC World on EMC TV.  They talk about the transformation of Customer Services for EMC, and again Social Community Support is called out.

From my perspective its crucial to have executive buy in and we obviously have it at EMC.

With that piece secured, and our Community growing and collaborating at an exponential rate, its important to not rest on your laurels and prevent stagnation. It's important we value our Community members and the recent RAMP project rolled out to the EMC Community Network has been a huge step in the right direction.
That does not stop there either. One aspect that is a big piece (and something I am ferociously passionate about) is Reward and Recognition for the Community members.
It's important to recognise those who are dedicated to helping their fellow community peers. Not only to thank them for their previous efforts, but also to facilitate them in helping us to make the Communities more amenable to the rest of the membership. And also to reward their past efforts by inclusion in EMC developments like Beta's and early road-maps etc. I am working closely with EMC's Matt Brender on this from the Support Community perspective, as Matt is leading this for the entire EMC Community Network. We are both pumped and excited to be highlighting our Contributing Community members.We want to reward our community members, but we want to reward them with something that is relevant to them and will help enrich their Community experience.

In the mean time things for EMC eServices are moving ahead with great endeavors.  There has been the launch of the new EMC Online Support Experience, the new  EMC Chinese Support Community,  and the continuing success of the Ask The Expert initiative. Well, we also just launched the @EMCAskTheExpert twitter account last Monday.  We are really looking forward to leveraging this to promote events on the Ask the Expert Forum.
But beyond that we want to hold Ask the Expert Tweet chats and the like too. We also want this to be another channel to hear our customers, partners & prospects. We will be soliciting topics and Experts but most of all we will be listening to what people want. I am honoured to be a part of this and it is amazing to see  just how much the EMC eServices Support Community and division have grown.

Indeed it's Community all the way. It's going great guns and it is made possible by the dedication of real EMC Customers, Partners and employees. Fun times!