The holy grail of customer centricity is involving customers in every aspect of your business and having an organizational mindset that values and leverages customer input wherever and wherever it applies. But is this worthy goal really attainable? While today’s social technology platforms allow unprecedented interaction both within and outside the organization, complexities arise when crossing the gap that separate those inside the organization (employees) from those outside of it (customers, prospective customers, business partners, and others).

This report discusses the organizational, technological, business, and social issues around the potential convergence of employee and customer communities. It also looks at the perspectives of the technology vendors who develop and market social software systems, and the social media practitioners who ensure that these systems provide business value. And it answers the title’s questions, albeit in two ways: one being an idealistic answer and the other being a reality-based, pragmatic one.

(Note: This report was adapted and expanded from a series of posts on the Impact Interactions blog, at http://impactinteractions.com/blog.)

INTRODUCTION

Social Technology…Inside and Outside

Social technologies have had a big impact on the ways that companies do business, both inside and outside the organization. Companies are using social tools—discussion forums, blogs, microblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, and more—to help employees be more productive and effective. They are also using the same types of tools to engage with those outside their organization, i.e., their customers (users, readers, subscribers, members, etc.) and business partners.

Social media and a more sharing-oriented mindset are helping to break down the walls that separate internal from external. Those traditionally outside the organization—customers, prospective customers, and business partners—not only know more than ever before about what’s going on inside (thanks to blogs, Twitter, etc.), they also have more of an opportunity and ability to influence things within the company (for example, through crowdsourcing mechanisms).

It’s also much easier than ever for collaboration efforts to bridge the internal/external gap. Many vendors and service providers offer collaborative spaces for members of customer advisory groups or 24x7 focus groups to interact directly with groups of employees. And, if you manage a customer community, you can—in fact, from our perspective, you should—have employees intimately involved. The lines, then, between inside and outside are becoming increasingly blurred.

I’ve had a handful of recent conversations—with vendors and with practitioners at B2B, B2C, and employee communities—about this potential coming together of employee and customer communities. Their perspectives vary, but they all observe that, while communities are about more than technology, technology plays an essential underlying role. So if social software and social media are at the heart of the shift towards increased interaction, collaboration, and transparency between “inside” and “outside,” perhaps there is an eventual convergence, a single ecosystem, that can be supported by a single social technology system.

The overarching question becomes, can there be one technology platform and one set of resources that supports (1) internal communication, collaboration, and learning, as well as (2) external collaboration, customer engagement, and peer-to-peer support?

After all, social is social, right?

Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?

Idealistic Answer: Yes

As someone who resonates with just about any customer-centric approach, I love the concept of an organization that values customer ideas and insight (and builds ongoing internal processes that leverage such input), and looks to connect employees and customers and partners whenever possible. A convergence of employee and customer communities would enable these connections to happen more painlessly and more frequently.

Employee/Internal and Customer/External communities have a great many similarities. Both types of communities…

Leveraging these similarities would result in streamlined technology and centralized resources, which would be directly beneficial to organizations (by saving time and money), and indirectly beneficial to customers (by having their voices heard more often and more clearly).

So there’s a lot to like about the concept of a single technology platform that supports both employee and customer communities. It fits in philosophically with the direction in which many social media enthusiasts think organizations should be headed.

But sometimes things just don’t work out as planned…

Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?

Pragmatic Answer: No

While the walls that separate inside from outside may be coming down, the internal walls are seemingly as strong as ever. It’s hard to get those silos to tilt, let alone fall.

The unfulfilled promise of CRM is a good analogy here. Remember when “the 360-degree view of the customer” was in vogue? In theory, it was a great idea, to have everyone in your organization working off the same system and the same data. Companies will benefit from the streamlined technologies and centralized resources (sound familiar?), while customers will benefit from more relevant marketing communications and offers, and from better-informed support reps who can provide improved service. This isn’t how things panned out, of course, largely because of the way that organizations are structured and operate. Very few organizations have a single CRM system. Most are lucky to have federated customer information—in which customer information is pulled together in a loosely-coupled manner.

So, in addition to the similarities discussed above, there are vast differences between internal and external communities, including:

1. BUSINESS GOALS, USE CASES, AND KPIs. While there is some overlap, the business goals of internal and external communities are largely different (as are the Key Performance Indicators that measure them). For example:

2. BUSINESS UNITS AND BUSINESS OWNERS. The differences in business goals stem from the fact that different business owners sponsor these communities. Employee communities tend to fall within HR, IT, or Administration/Operations, while customer communities tend to fall within Service & Support, Marketing, or Product Development/R&D. As was the case with CRM, it’s rare that these business units are aligned in terms of needs, process, and technology.

3. SOCIAL DYNAMICS. The modes of human interaction between employee communities and customer communities are more different than they are alike. Both types of communities do rely on a core set of enthusiasts/influencers who handle a lot of the heavy lifting, but the reasons and motivations for participating in each vary. People act and interact differently when they wear different hats; in an internal community, you’re wearing an employee hat, with all the good stuff and all the baggage that goes with it. (Think organizational politics; how candid are you going to be if you know your boss—and the HR department—are listening.) You’re potentially more anonymous in an external community, where, for the most part, the stakes are lower.