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Social Media 2012: State of Adoption

By

Esteban Kolsky, thinkJar, LLC

and

Denis Pombriant, Beagle Research Group, LLC

August 10, 2012

+

Our Sponsors The following companies funded this research.

We appreciate their support.

Copyright © 2012 Beagle Research Group, LLC and thinkJar, LLC

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Social Media 2012: State of Adoption Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6

METHODOLOGY 8

KEY FINDINGS 8

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 11 Q1. Please rate the following statements True or False. N=268. 11 Q2. Please check from the table below those social channels you have already adopted, the ones you are thinking about, and the ones you don’t intend to adopt. N=231. 12 Q3. In your organization, who understands better the value of social media (please pick one) to drive adoption of the concept? N=203. 13 Q4. Please use True or False to identify your perspective on hindrances to adoption of social media in your organization. N=231. 14 Q5. Where is your organization in the process of rolling out social media for Internal and External uses? N=110. 15 Q6. Please select from the table below the business functions in your SALES organization that are already using social media, planning to use it, or have no plans to use it. N=110. 16 Q7. Please select from the table below the business functions in your MARKETING organization that are already using social media, planning to use it, or have no plans to use it. N=110. 17 Q8. Please select from the table below the business functions in your SERVICE and SUPPORT organization that are already using social media, planning to use it, or have no plans to use it. N=110. 18 Q9. Please select from the table below the business functions in your organization that are already using social media, planning to use it, or have no plans to use. Among the channels you use in your organization, please rate their usefulness with EMPLOYEES, using a scale of 1-‐to-‐5 (1=NOT useful, 5=VERY useful). N=110. 20 Q10. Please select from the table below the business functions in your organization that are already using social media, planning to use it, or have no plans to use it. Among the channels you use in your organization, please rate their usefulness with CUSTOMERS, using a scale of 1-‐to-‐5 (1=NOT useful, 5=VERY useful). N=90. 21 Q11 – Please use True or False to identify the INTERNAL benefits your organization receives from social media use. N=106. 23 Q12 – Please user True or False to identify the CUSTOMER SERVICE benefits your organization receives from social media use. N=110. 24 Q13 – Please use True of False to identify the NON-‐SERVICE BENEFITS FROM CUSTOMERS your organization receives from social media use. N=110 26


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Q14 – In your organization, which department understands social media best and is driving deployment? N=110. 28 Q15 – How long has your organization used social media channels (for any purpose)? N=110 30 Q16 – Please check the appropriate boxes to let us know how you use each social channel. N=105. 31 Q17 – In addition to Social Media and Social Channels, how far along is your organization in implementing Social CRM? N=105. 33 Q18 – If you are implementing or have implemented Social CRM – what method did you use? N=105. 34 Q19 – The Future of Social Media. N=105. 35 Q20. What title best characterizes your primary job responsibilities? N=100. 36 Q21. What industry do you work in? Choose the closest fit. N=102. 37 Q22. Please select the statement that describes your role in the purchase process for software. N=102. 38

CROSS TABS 39

CONCLUSIONS 40


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Figures Figure 1 Social media attitudes, thumbs up! ........................................................................................................................ 11 Figure 2 People understand the value of social to a business. ...................................................................................... 13 Figure 3 Hindrances to adoption are NOT technical. ....................................................................................................... 14 Figure 4 Internal vs. External rollout. ..................................................................................................................................... 15 Figure 5 Social media in SALES processes. ............................................................................................................................ 16 Figure 6 Social media in MARKETING processes. ............................................................................................................... 17 Figure 7 Social media in SERVICE and SUPPORT. ............................................................................................................. 18 Figure 8 How useful are various forms of social media? ................................................................................................. 20 Figure 9 Rating social media’s usefulness with CUSTOMERS ....................................................................................... 21 Figure 13 Table 4 as a chart. ....................................................................................................................................................... 26 Figure 14 Which department understands socialmedia best? .................................................................................... 28 Figure 15 How long has your organization used social media channels? ............................................................... 30 Figure 16 What do you use social media for (as a chart)? ............................................................................................ 32 Figure 17 Will or do you use Social CRM? ............................................................................................................................ 33 Figure 18 Suite or best of breed? ............................................................................................................................................... 34 Figure 20 Who answered the survey. ...................................................................................................................................... 36 Figure 21 Industries represented in the data. ...................................................................................................................... 37 Figure 22 Who buys social media? ........................................................................................................................................... 38 Tables Table 1 Personal social tools are popular with business too. ....................................................................................... 12 Table 2 INTERNAL benefits of social media. ........................................................................................................................ 23 Table 3 CUSTOMER SERVICE benefits of social media. ................................................................................................... 24 Table 4 NON-‐SERVICE BENEFITS from social media. ...................................................................................................... 26 Table 5 What do you use social media for? ........................................................................................................................... 31 Table 6 How will social use affect your business? ............................................................................................................. 35 Table 7 Cross tabs made to order. ............................................................................................................................................. 39


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Executive Summary

ur study shows that while social media is being adopted by many organizations these adopters are not yet at the point of taking maximum advantage of the technology. Many have simply begun using social media as a replacement for older broadcast approaches to distributing messages without necessarily taking advantage of the

multiple ways social media can capture customer data for analysis and for deployment of novel information to customers.

These companies are applying social media to old problems in conventional or tactical ways. There is little evidence that these companies are using social media to implement bold new strategies that they hope to dominate their markets with. Some of this conservatism may be due to the economy. With slack demand there may be little interest in rocking the boat to go after net new customers if there is potential for losing traction with existing customers.

Although most of the companies surveyed have made some attempt at involving social media in their business processes, there is an apparent difference in many minds between social media per se and social CEM. A significant plurality of our respondents, 39%, said they would not implement Social CRM though an even larger number, more than 60%, said they have implemented social media or would within the next six months. Although this number would show mainstream adoption for Social Media as a channel, the slow rise in interest for Social CRM and other tools that fully leverage the power of those channels indicates a resistance to fully embed those channels into business – at least without specific proof that they work.

One of the telltale signs driving our observations is the heavy reliance on popular but more consumer oriented social tools including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as primary social channels. These popular social tools are first off personal social tools adapted to business processes and they are focused more on outbound communication. While many companies also utilize corporate blogs and some individuals also use personal blogs, the idea of using communities lags but communities are gaining and with that companies are able to gather more customer-centric information.

Furthermore, the majority of declared expertise in social media is in sales and marketing where nearly 54% of respondents say the expertise resides — but sales is a secondary consideration as over 45% say the expertise resides in marketing alone. Interestingly 17% say social is a joint effort within the organization.

It is worth noting that the parts of the enterprise that understand social media least — operations, legal, HR — are some of the same groups with the greatest qualms about its implementation (Questions 4 and 14). Qualms include security, legal and applicability to specific tasks.

O


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It is understandable that a company might wish to use social channels that its end user customers use so that they can meet customers where they are. However, the most popular social channels we found are primarily used for outbound rather than inbound communication. So, we see a relative lack of data gathering and analysis in early social media adopters indicating an interest in telling and selling but not in listening and analyzing.

This is troubling in that listening and analyzing are two of the more important reasons for social media’s existence and clear differentiators with older broadcast tools and methods. Without listening and analysis, social media quickly becomes just a less costly approach to broadcast messaging and the real power of the technology goes unrealized. All this drives our assertion that social media in business is still in its early days as we have seen similar approaches to using new channels when email, e-commerce and other communication channels rose to popularity during the early days of the public internet.

On the bright side, a plurality of respondents nonetheless sees the value of social media use as tools for improving the customer experience and therefore satisfaction and loyalty. They also see the value of social media in crisis management. Most importantly, senior executives understand social as a business proposition and are open to adoption. We see these as hopeful signs that when given exposure to social channels and their utility, more companies will take on social for daily customer communication and involvement.

Vendors can also gain valuable information by studying the data that discusses adoption and why companies might be reticent about taking on social media. Among the issues holding up adoption are concerns about security, utility, how to implement and use the technologies and legal and cost factors. Importantly IT reticence is not high on the list. This strongly suggests that social media vendors still have much work to do educating their prospective customers in not only the benefits and advantages of the technology but also in practical how-to ways. We have seen early success stories and case studies begin to emerge, beyond the early adopters, and we expect to see more to show the way — vendors are starting to advertise their early wins in grand fashion.

So, social media is gaining adherents. Companies are starting with what they know namely, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as the first tier plus other technologies like blogs and communities. Perhaps one reason for this is that the most popular types of media have few business champions. Twitter, Facebook and blogs are intuitive and people can figure out how to use their basic functionality without help or even a manual. But more advanced uses, such as for customer service and industry-specific processes and functionality, are not intuitive and need to be taught. Another generation of more analytically driven social tools is coming onto the scene right now and future iterations of this report will, no doubt, show their influence.


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Methodology This study is the first in an annual series that will provide an understanding of social media adoption and benefits over time.

Our effort started with a list of more than 20,000 names and about half of the responses came from this list. However, we also reached out through social media — Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and LinkedIn — to recruit people to participate. By far this experience shows social outreach to be a superior method of identifying and recruiting participants. The study ran over a three-week period form June to July and crossed the July 4 holiday and the start of summer vacation. Better timing would have given us higher numbers of responses but we believe would not fundamentally change the results.

There was substantial falloff between questions 4 and 5. We believe this is because the first four questions dealt with adoption issues and the remainder dealt with implementation and a substantial number of those starting the survey may have had interest in getting started but could not discuss any benefits as they were too early in their processes. (See below for more.) This fall off is another indication of how new the social media in business market still is.

Key Findings 1. It’s still an early market. The majority of companies surveyed have some

experience with social media primarily through the big name social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, corporate blogs and video sharing sites like YouTube. This suggests that companies are just getting started; other data shows that reliance on these media is primarily outbound. In other words, companies are using social as a low cost way to broadcast a message but not necessarily as a means of collecting customer input that can be turned into valuable information.

Note: The authors are involved as judges in the ongoing CRM Idol 2012 competition where we see many examples of emerging companies focusing on this next phase of social media and we therefore can confidently say that data collection and analysis will be important next milestones in social media’s rollout to business.

2. Obstacles to adoption remain but they are largely not technical. Executives “get it.” The line of business people are less sure and younger people generally have more experience with social media and they get it too. The sticking points are not IT related. People say they have some concerns about legal issues, security and many haven’t figured out where in their organizations or which business processes should be attended to first. This shows there’s plenty of opportunity AND that vendor messaging has not cracked the nut yet. It also shows a tremendous opportunity for vendors and


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providers to show the way to do it, including lessons learned, best practices, frameworks, and methodologies.

3. The usual suspects have the greatest adoption e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, plus the corporate blog and video. Reliance on these media, which are primarily oriented toward outbound personal communication, is a good indicator of the level of sophistication for social media use. While these channels are important they represent the last mile for social media use. Other activities like capturing customer input lag and a strong case can be made that companies are building out their social strategies in a sequential process.

4. It should not be surprising that video and picture sharing are among the top social media. Many organizations have not yet adopted video as a messaging tool in part because it can be expensive and it requires additional expertise that must either be hired or bought on a consulting basis. But in other research we have seen that organizations that have adopted video and sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo are discovering strong ROI especially in the sales and marketing process. Video sharing through links in social media is a natural fit and companies are eagerly adopting it.

5. Marketing and service have more uses for social media than does sales. Customer service has more use cases for social media than the other two areas combined. Sales adoption is clustered around the early parts of the funnel such as prospecting and providing information. Marketers know that social is useful for capturing supplementary customer data and using it in nurturing programs. Customer service uses social media in a variety of situations for improving first call resolution and providing correct information to customers. Overall marketing’s use of social media appears to be more sophisticated that either sales or service as these two departments use social for outbound communication primarily. Marketing is at least beginning to collect customer input for data collection.

6. Social media has also made significant impacts inside the organization for communicating with and among employees. Among its benefits are, better employee feedback, greater individual participation in problem solving and greater job satisfaction. Although people see easier recruiting benefits, they do not see improvement in employee retention with social media. Nonetheless, a company’s positive experience with employee give and take through social media will give some the confidence they need to use social media in novel ways with customers to capture more feedback — internal successes will easily lead to further adoption of the technologies and to seek external use cases.

7. Content is king. Ranking the three major social media for usefulness, Twitter is first followed by Facebook and then LinkedIn. Interestingly, corporate blogs and product/service blogs are rated higher than the top three services indicating that people want specific content and they are not put off


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by content size or the time it might take to read or view it. So the three popular social tools might help get the conversation started but successful companies will quickly discover that they need more content for follow up. Our CRM Idol experience this year confirms this point: we are seeing a larger-than-normal number of vendors focused on content creation, tracking, and management.

8. About 70% of those who completed the survey said they were involved in the purchase process and 27% said their job titles were in a range from SVP to C-level or board members. We therefore feel that this report represents opinions of serious decision makers.

9. We conducted this survey in Europe too. But the results did not yield a sufficient response to be deemed quantitative. This analysis focuses only on data collected from the primary, U.S. based survey and while there may be some responses from overseas in this data we are considering it the primary data and not loaded with a significant response from outside the U.S. or North American market. We are including all data, including the European data we collected in a separate volume of deliverables for Tier 1 and 2 subscribers. Other deliverables where appropriate will be forthcoming.


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Results and Discussion

Q1. Please rate the following statements True or False. N=268. There were few surprises in Question 1 which dealt with attitudes about social media in business. Large majorities believe that social media is an important new business tool and not a fad that will be gone after a short time. While people believe in social media’s future, additional questions indicate they are still skimming the surface for benefits. Also, respondents strongly agree that social media generates an enormous amount of data, which can cause problems as companies grope with it.

Figure 1 Social media attitudes, thumbs up!

Respondents understand social media’s uses in business and when given a chance to cynically respond that it is only useful in PR or that it was for young people, most rejected the argument. This is an early indication of the maturing of the technology as it moves from the fringes into mainstream adoption.

0 100 200 300

SM is the next major step in collab. activities SM is a young person’s technology with limited Companies that fail to embrace SM for business SM will become a key communications activity

SM helps us focus on new ways of SM technologies provide an excellent means of SM technologies provide an excellent means of

SM will allow us to add value to customer SM is a new set of channels for the business to SM only provides value to marketing, PR, and The volume of SM information to track and SM has allowed us to solve speciHic business Embedding SM information in CRM would

True False


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Q2. Please check from the table below those social channels you have already adopted, the ones you are thinking about, and the ones you don’t intend to adopt. N=231.

Table 1 Personal social tools are popular with business too.

Answer Options Use today Will use in next 6 months

Will use in more than 6 months

No plans

Wikis 81 19 7 115 Video 156 30 6 36 Twitter 155 16 5 53 Public community 90 23 15 93 Product/ service blog 85 35 24 85 Pinterest 71 31 12 112 Pictures 178 17 4 26 Personal blog 87 23 12 105 Other public microblog

47 15 9 150

Other public channel 79 19 14 112 Other (rate here) 18 4 1 83 Linkedin 177 8 6 37 Facebook 183 3 7 38 Corporate blog 123 24 17 64 Branded community 88 24 14 94 Activity streams 82 22 15 104

Question 2 gives us the first indication of what social media means to the population. Clearly Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, video and photo sharing scored well followed by corporate blogs. All of these media types are used primarily or exclusively as outbound messaging tools and only secondarily as listening tools. As discussed above, listening constitutes one of the great advantages of social media and while adoption of listening makes a decent showing though it lags more conventional uses. Finally, activity streams for employee-to-employee communication makes a respectable showing given its relatively recent appearance in the market.

(Note: An interesting crosstab would be to show the application of each channel by function — we have other questions e.g. questions 6-8 — that ask what functions it is used for — we can cross-tab the people answering this question by that one, then summarize by time they spend doing each — you get the idea… maybe too much detail, but it would be interesting).


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Q3. In your organization, who understands better the value of social media (please pick one) to drive adoption of the concept? N=203. Figure 2 People understand the value of social to a business.

This result is somewhat surprising because it suggests that senior and middle management see the strategic value of social media, second only to younger employees that presumably already use it in their personal lives. This suggests that adoption is being driven from both ends toward the middle, which is a positive sign for anyone promoting the idea of social media in business. We also see an early trend to trust service providers (consultants, SIs, and advisors) with their knowledge of social media — a key point that indicates willingness from the companies to begin the knowledge transfer and deployments of social media.

0.00 5.00 10.00 15.00 20.00 25.00 30.00 35.00

Senior Management Middle Managers Line Employees

New Generation’s employees (digital Customers

Partners/suppliers Competition

Analyst/advisors Consultants and SI


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Q4. Please use True or False to identify your perspective on hindrances to adoption of social media in your organization. N=231.

Figure 3 Hindrances to adoption are NOT technical.

These results suggest that fear, in various forms, drives or actually hinders adoption. Various forms of apathy run second to fear and together this data suggests that vendors have not done an adequate job of making their cases for incorporating social media into business processes. They may be trying hard but in a new market, the messages need repetition and supporting documentation in the form of success stories, lessons learned, and early best practices. Many of the fears are far afield from fear of unknown technology — such as “Not sure which business cases can leverage social media yet,” “Legal issues,” and “Security issues” and “Don’t understand benefits”. All this suggest potential customers simply do not understand how the addition of social media to their business processes can make business better. This is clearly a challenge for the vendor community and one where they can enroll the help of service providers — always a go-to resource for confused enterprise users.

0 50 100 150 200 250

The costs

Fear of unproven technology

Fear of negative impacts

Waiting for better technologies

Don’t understand beneHits

Security issues

Management apathy

IT apathy

Business unit apathy

Company culture is counter to social media

Legal issues

Not sure which business cases can leverage

True False


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Q5. Where is your organization in the process of rolling out social media for Internal and External uses? N=110. Figure 4 Internal vs. External rollout.

The response rate drops significantly with this question as we move from discussing attitudes about social media to those of implementation. Clearly fewer people answering the survey had direct implementation experience and so quit responding (many of them indicated so in their comments to us throughout or following the survey via email).

Although the number of unique respondents to the question is 110, there were 184 answers for external use and 238 for internal use indicating that there are multiple projects in different states of completion going on in this population. When combined with the responses from Question 4 that showed fear is an important motivator, this data indicates that companies are nonetheless taking prudent risks and identifying projects to pursue.

We feel the numbers are representative of the business community when considering the roles they play in selection and implementation of social media – especially in such an early-stage market.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Not on our agenda Interested in using Strategy in place

Justifying to management

Decision made, working on implementation

Piloting

Deployed, evaluating

Deployed, improving and optimizing

Internal Use External Use


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Q6. Please select from the table below the business functions in your SALES organization that are already using social media, planning to use it, or have no plans to use it. N=110. Figure 5 Social media in SALES processes.

According to data from Question 14, the respondents rated marketing, not sales, as the department that understands social media best and is driving deployment (45%) (another potential cross-tab, question 14 by each of the uses in sales, marketing, customer service). Sales scored only 8.2% on the same question, just slightly ahead of other departments. The sales responses show an interest in top of the funnel activities for social media such as prospecting, providing sales information and driving commerce. However, within the next six months, interest is projected to shift to activities slightly later in the pipeline such as scoring leads. This may suggest a logical and programmatic approach by many sales organizations to bringing social media into the sales organization. We think the “No plans to use” response is relatively high in all categories but we suggest that this does not mean never, simply that few sales managers are looking past the next six months and we suggest this would be a typical sales strategy.

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Prospecting

Making offers

Providing sales information

Driving commerce

Reselling, cross-‐selling or up-‐selling

Scoring leads

Completing proHile information

Collecting social ID

Use today Will use in next 6 months Will use in more than 6 months No plans


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Q7. Please select from the table below the business functions in your MARKETING organization that are already using social media, planning to use it, or have no plans to use it. N=110. Figure 6 Social media in MARKETING processes.

Marketing lives up to its reputation from Question 14 as the most advanced department adopting social media. It has made good penetration in all marketing areas, for instance about 28% of respondents say they already use social media for receiving customer feedback. This is important as a marker of full adoption, more so than using social media to provide information since that function can be carried out by older technologies. For social media to take over a function from an older technology simply shows a change probably driven by cost savings rather than strategy.

But adopting social media for receiving customer feedback goes beyond conventional marketing as gathering customer feedback by old methods has been slow and expensive and therefore not done as frequently as many marketers would like. Using social media for gathering customer feedback represents an activity that is either new or expanding for many marketing groups and shows real adoption of social media as a strategic tool.

Complementary research done recently shows the use of social media as potential replacement for focus groups and related market research functions is gaining interest in marketing departments fueled by the early successes showcased by the vendors. While more complex use cases are necessary, early results show ROI that surpasses that of other channels.

0 50 100 150 200 250

Use today Will use in 6 next months

Will use in more than 6 months No plans

Providing information Testing messages and offers

Receiving customer feedback Moving leads along funnel


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Q8. Please select from the table below the business functions in your SERVICE and SUPPORT organization that are already using social media, planning to use it, or have no plans to use it. N=110.

Figure 7 Social media in SERVICE and SUPPORT.

Customer service gets only 6.4% of the response in Question 14 about which department best understands social media. This is somewhat surprising because our data shows that social media is already so well used in customer facing ways for knowledge management and community management. This data exemplifies some of the same issues we see in much of this research, namely that organizations are using social media primarily for outbound communications. However, there is solid evidence that many organizations are also using social media for capturing customer voice at least around the idea of service. Thus we see good uptake for product and customer communities and the numbers for organizations with “no plans” are among the smallest we have encountered. There is also good evidence that support organizations are looking ahead to implementing social solutions for partner and supplier coordination and new product research in the near term. This suggests that the support center is one of

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Product community (improvement) Customer community (proHile, attitude,

Solving issues Knowledge creation

Knowledge repository Knowledge management

Escalating issues Other functions

Human resources

Partner management

Supplier management

Product research and design

Coordination

Use today Will use in next 6 months Will us in more than 6 months No plans


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the more progressive areas of the organization, regardless of the 6.4% rating in Question 14.

Additional research done by thinkJar in the area of Customer Service shows that early results from using the most popular channels (Twitter and Facebook) were disappointing and that may explain the low numbers in this survey in that regards considering the larger numbers for adoption of those channels.

Additional uses for customer service leveraging communities and focused on knowledge generation and management will change these results in the next few iterations of this report.


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Q9. Please select from the table below the business functions in your organization that are already using social media, planning to use it, or have no plans to use. Among the channels you use in your organization, please rate their usefulness with EMPLOYEES, using a scale of 1-‐to-‐5 (1=NOT useful, 5=VERY useful). N=110. Figure 8 How useful are various forms of social media?

This was a hard question and should have been split into two — however, the number of respondents did not drop, showing an interest by respondents to provide feedback in exchange for an answer to the questions. We wanted to know if an organization used a particular social tool, how useful the tool was in the organization. These are relatively average marks nearly across the board with the average of the averages 3.57. Though the average of averages is a statistical “meh” the data suggests that companies find most forms of social media to be moderately useful for internal uses. The data further supports the idea that established personal social media is well received in business.

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Corporate blog

Personal blog

Facebook

Twitter

Other public microblog

Activity streams

Branded community

Pictures

Other (Please rate here)

NOT useful (1) 2 3 4 VERY useful (5) N/A


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Q10. Please select from the table below the business functions in your organization that are already using social media, planning to use it, or have no plans to use it. Among the channels you use in your organization, please rate their usefulness with CUSTOMERS, using a scale of 1-‐to-‐5 (1=NOT useful, 5=VERY useful). N=90.

Figure 9 Rating social media’s usefulness with CUSTOMERS

The answers to this question are virtually identical to the question above. The average of averages is again 3.57 possibly indicating a lack of refinement among

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Corporate blog

Product/ service blog

Personal blog

Wikis

Facebook

Linkedin

Twitter

Pinterest

Other public microblog

Other public channel

Activity streams

Public community

Branded community

Video

Pictures

Social business platform

NOT useful (1) 2 3 4 VERY useful (5) N/A


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users on the best use cases for social media. We expect to see this question to be more focused as we move from the trial stages of social media adoption into the use cases backed by results in the next iteration of this report.

Again blogs score well as do video and pictures followed by communities. This suggests that we are still in early days of adoption for customer facing and employee facing social media. Pictures, videos, and more so blogs are the first line of contact between customers and companies in social media since they have a high-impact and are easy to setup and use. We expect the sophistication contacts and channels to be refined as companies learn more about the value and the uses of the many channels. Many systems are in place but the business processes that turn these tools from tactical to strategic are still being worked out. A future iteration of this question will need to add social hubs and social marketing tools coming to market now as well as to accommodate the next iteration tools we will discover in successive years.


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Q11 – Please use True or False to identify the INTERNAL benefits your organization receives from social media use. N=106.

Table 2 INTERNAL benefits of social media.

Statement True False

Better employee feedback 70.0% (70) 30.0% (30) Employees participate more in solving problems 67.0% (67) 33.0% (33) Greater employees satisfaction 64.0% (64) 36.0% (36) Reduced employees attrition 41.0% (41) 59.0% (59) Faster resolution of management issues 49.0% (49) 51.0% (51) Improved collaboration between departments 67.0% (67) 33.0% (33) Better public perception of the organization 68.7% (68) 31.3% (31) Easier recruiting of new employees 60.2% (59) 39.8% (39) Higher employee productivity 51.5% (51) 48.5% (48) Easier to implement customer feedback 57.0% (57) 43.0% (43) Improved leverage of partners and suppliers in the ecosystem

53.1% (52) 46.9% (46)

We don’t use social media for internal interactions

40.6% (39) 59.4% (57)

This question was intended to begin to track the benefits that organizations perceive they received from adopting social media for internal uses. However, previous research conducted by us showed us that over 60% of companies don’t track benefits or don’t receive the benefits they expected to get from their implementations. While the results of this study are not conflicting with previous ones, including the ones in this question, we would like to use this question to track progress of benefits as adoption and implementation increases.

The surprise responses in this question came from the lower vote-getters, not the highest. We expected easier recruiting (60.2%), better perception (68.7%) and other similar PR-focused reasons to be high. We also expected to see collaboration rear its head as a reason to use Social Media (after all, it is the purpose for those channels to exist and be leveraged).

We were a little confused when we saw that the lowest votes went to reducing employee attrition — in this age, offering social media for either personal or work reasons, while at work ranks as a major benefit. A lot of senior managers don’t comprehend social channels and the prowess of the solution – thus they would not consider them to be essential and block them. Any organization that does not block their employees from using social channels is an advanced organization that merits recognition and lower employee attrition.

The responses to this question, including the 40% or more that don’t use social media for internal uses, are not very surprising and in line with what our other research indicate.


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Q12 – Please use True or False to identify the CUSTOMER SERVICE benefits your organization receives from social media use. N=110. Table 3 CUSTOMER SERVICE benefits of social media.

Statement True False

Greater customer satisfaction 70.0% (70) 30.0% (30) Greater customer retention and / or loyalty 63.6% (63) 36.4% (36) Reduced time to resolution 57.1% (56) 42.9% (42) Fewer customer complaints 43.0% (43) 57.0% (57) More interactions handled with same personnel

58.6% (58) 41.4% (41)

Higher rate of first-close resolution 51.0% (50) 49.0% (48) We don’t use social media for customer service

45.9% (45) 54.1% (53)

When we created this question we were looking for two things: first, a confirmation that customer satisfaction remains the largest concern for any organization doing customer service — something that has not changed in those using social media. Second, a confirmation of the number of organizations that are doing customer service via social channels — to corroborate earlier research that put the total near 60 percent — which came in at around 55% (within normal error margins) verifying that.

The three elements we were unsure of are those that actually surprised us in these results:

1. Forty-three percent of organizations are using customer service via social to reduce the number of complaints (which is surprising since the way most implement it is as “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” where the complaints are indeed sought to be put out).

2. Fifty-one percent are seeking a higher rate of FCR (first close resolution), which for most organizations has become the golden metric in customer service and this low rate shows that social has not yet become a customer service channel managed like the others.

3. Those quoting customer retention or loyalty as a reason to do what they do was higher, 63.6%, than we expected but we suspect that further evaluation and discussion will yield a lower understanding of what it really means to retain customers or build loyalty or at the very least a lower number of organizations tracking it.

The results of these benefits received by the organization would profit from a further evaluation using cross-tabs to ensure that the people claiming these benefits are indeed working towards these goals as opposed to merely ticking off the boxes (see below).


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Similar to the results from internal use of social media, we are going to use this question for tracking through time how adoption and implementation progresses. The majority of this study was intended as a longitudinal study to measure changes over time and while all of the responses have some interest in the short term, the tracking over time will provide the most value.


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Q13 – Please use True of False to identify the NON-‐SERVICE BENEFITS FROM CUSTOMERS your organization receives from social media use. N=110 Table 4 NON-‐SERVICE BENEFITS from social media.

Statement True False Identifying new product ideas 67.0% (69) 33.0% (34) Help find new messages and positioning 69.3% (70) 30.7% (31) Identify demand 72.0% (72) 28.0% (28) Reaching new contacts 77.5% (79) 22.5% (23) Improve forecasting 41.8% (41) 58.2% (57) Customers want to talk to us via social channels

61.6% (61) 38.4% (38)

Customer want to talk among themselves in social channels

65.7% (65) 34.3% (34)

Social media is invaluable for crisis management

49.5% (49) 50.5% (50)

We simply use social media to monitor our market

37.5% (36) 62.5% (60)

Figure 2 Table 4 as a chart.

When we set out to create this question we were looking for two things: a confirmation of the maturity level that social media had reached within the organization (evidenced by the last two statements) and a better understanding of how organizations saw social media in what was supposedly the most common environment: non-service interactions.

We were gratified to see that the concept of monitoring and the advice of “just listen” which had become the battle-cry of many gurus in the early days of social media adoption in the organization are a thing of the past. We are also quite bullish that the numbers are so low (37.5% use social media just for monitoring, and a tad below half use it for crisis management) this early in the adoption

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Identifying new product ideas Help Hind new messages and positioning

Identify demand Reaching new contacts Improve forecasting

Customers want to talk to us via social channels Customer want to talk among themselves in

Social media is invaluable for crisis management We simply use social media to monitor our

True False


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process. Our estimates from early results is that social media adoption in the enterprise for specific business purposes is around 30% - early mainstream adoption.

Finally, one of the results that came in higher than we expected was the fact that more organizations believe that customers want to talk among themselves than to the organization (65.6% versus 61.7%) – showing once more that the level of understanding of what social media does for non-service interactions is more complicated than simply creating a new pool of potential customers to target (although that number still remains high around 69.3% versus the less than fifty percent we would’ve expected to see).


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Q14 – In your organization, which department understands social media best and is driving deployment? N=110. Figure 3 Which department understands socialmedia best?

We sought to find out if Social Media “ownership” in the organization, or at the very least who is the mastermind behind it remained around 70% as it had been the case since the concept of social business became de rigueur in organizations 18-24 months ago.

We were pleased that only 45% of respondents identified marketing as the owner of the efforts, but a tad baffled by the low answer rate coming in from IT or Operations as we expected showed either a stronger drive from the technology side to embrace social media (recognized as a technology for business by most organizations adopting it) or a stronger maturity level by organizations showing that they had internalized the concept and deployed social media the same way as they have done the telephone or computers — part of operations, not something novel to have around.

The final point that needs further evaluation is the joint effort between departments that shows 17.6 percent of people in that camp. Combining this result with responses to other questions trying to understand the maturity level yields a surprising fact: although more organizations understand that social media is a mature technology to operationalize in the organization, the vast

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Sales

Marketing

Customer Service

Operations

IT

Legal

Human Resources

No one really understands it well enough to

It is a joint effort between departments and

Other (select here)

Response Percent


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majority of organizations lack the understanding of how that is done and are waiting for more feedback and direction.

These early indicators that the technology is no longer an unknown factor supports the underlying findings that social media is no longer a “shiny new object” but is becoming a trusted set of communication channels. At this stage, the market needs more success stories, lessons learned, and best practices to understand better how the early-adopters and first-practitioners solved the easier problems and to support mainstream adoption.


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Q15 – How long has your organization used social media channels (for any purpose)? N=110 Figure 4 How long has your organization used social media channels?

This question was very straightforward, we were simply establishing a timeline to further our understanding of the time organizations have been working with social channels. The responses were interesting to say the least. Early research done by us showed adoption was stronger between 12 and 24 months, highlighting the maturity level of the respondents to this survey and their more seasoned opinions.

These answers, in combination with the rest of the survey, show the long-way ahead for social media to become more firmly embedded with business users and companies. For most technologies, a deep business understanding of the value and returns it can generate does not happen for at least three-to-four years or even longer for complex or expensive technologies.

The results in this question reflect the fast-pace at which social media entered the enterprise and how quickly it was adopted — but they also show that more people are in the early days of adoption. Corroborating other answers here as well as other research, we expect social media to be a key investment area for the very near future as maturity begins to show in early case studies and success stories.

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

Not applicable, not using social media

Less than 6 months

Between 6 months and 12 months

Between 12 and 24 months

More than 24 months

Response Percent


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Q16 – Please check the appropriate boxes to let us know how you use each social channel. N=105. Table 5 What do you use social media for?

Channel Customer

Engagement Content

Generation Lead

Generation Customer

Service Feedback

Generation

Corporate blog 68.8% (53) 53.2% (41) 36.4% (28) 27.3% (21) 44.2% (34) Product/Service blog 67.2% (43) 40.6% (26) 28.1% (18) 45.3% (29) 39.1% (25) Personal blog 45.5% (20) 36.4% (16) 13.6% (6) 9.1% (4) 38.6% (17) Wikis 38.1% (16) 50.0% (21) 4.8% (2) 38.1% (16) 16.7% (7) Facebook 79.5% (58) 35.6% (26) 39.7% (29) 28.8% (21) 38.4% (28) Linkedin 67.6% (48) 26.8% (19) 56.3% (40) 18.3% (13) 28.2% (20) Twitter 77.8% (56) 30.6% (22) 41.7% (30) 33.3% (24) 37.5% (27) Pinterest 62.5% (25) 35.0% (14) 17.5% (7) 17.5% (7) 25.0% (10) Other public microblog

64.7% (22) 29.4% (10) 20.6% (7) 17.6% (6) 35.3% (12)

Other public channel 66.7% (24) 36.1% (13) 30.6% (11) 25.0% (9) 27.8% (10) Activity streams 52.3% (23) 34.1% (15) 18.2% (8) 15.9% (7) 22.7% (10) Public community 56.8% (25) 29.5% (13) 18.2% (8) 27.3% (12) 34.1% (15) Branded community 68.1% (32) 40.4% (19) 29.8% (14) 40.4% (19) 36.2% (17) Video 71.8% (51) 38.0% (27) 35.2% (25) 32.4% (23) 22.5% (16) Pictures 69.6% (48) 33.3% (23) 26.1% (18) 26.1% (18) 21.7% (15) Social business platform

60.0% (30) 36.0% (18) 28.0% (14) 42.0% (21) 38.0% (19)

Other 64.3% (9) 28.6% (4) 7.1% (1) 21.4% (3) 21.4% (3)


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Figure 5 What do you use social media for (as a chart)?

The purpose of this question was not to be analyzed individually, but to inform the choice of channel for the most common CRM functions organizations use as well as to provide a choice for cross-tabbing. . Responses in the table above are also interesting to understand the mindset of organizations as well as the frame-of-mind of consumers looking for social solutions.

One additional data point; as we explained above the authors of this report are also judges in the CRM Idol competition — an early indicator of direction for vendors in the market. A very interesting trend in 2012 was the vast showing of vendors that are focused on content management, tracking, and reporting — corresponding both with early maturity in the market as well as to the second most-responded item in this question.

We believe that this question will continue to serve as the “canary in the coal mine” for those trends, the early indicator of the areas that will benefit from further focus by the vendor community. As we highlighted elsewhere in this report, we expect customer service and feedback generation to become stronger suitors for the hearts of Social Media adopters in the organization.

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200

Corporate blog Product/ service blog

Personal blog Wikis

Facebook Linkedin Twitter

Pinterest Other public microblog Other public channel

Activity streams Public community

Branded community Video

Pictures Social business platform

Customer Engagement Content Generation Lead Generation

Customer Service Feedback Generation


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Q17 – In addition to Social Media and Social Channels, how far along is your organization in implementing Social CRM? N=105. Figure 6 Will or do you use Social CRM?

Organizations are, for the most part, just beginning to implement Social CRM. This also corresponds to the trends identified in other research that shows that business uses for social media are still in the early stages. While we expect CRM functions to be early adopters, marketing is one of the stronger supporters for social media. In reality businesses are still in the early exploration days of how to use those channels for business value. We used this question to assess early interest in Social CRM but we did not expect it to deliver further value than that. We will use this question to cross-tab by channel usage to derive interesting ideas around what tools work well and which ones do not for Social CRM and to improve future surveys.

0 10 20 30 40

Not applicable, not using, not interested

Less than 6 months

Between 6 months and 12 months

Between 12 and 24 months

More than 24 months

Response Percent


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Q18 – If you are implementing or have implemented Social CRM – what method did you use? N=105. Figure 7 Suite or best of breed?

There are two aspects to this question that we found interesting. First, it validates the previous question by providing an almost identical number for organizations not doing Social CRM right now (which also confirms that the adoption is further ahead than we expected coming into this survey, which was just 40% adoption).

The second aspect, and one that is certainly representative of a learned lesson, is that most organizations doing it are not looking for a suite of products to “do” Social CRM. That choice shows a maturity level in the organization that did not exist in previous iterations of CRM where suites were considered the de-facto standard and most organizations simply bought a Suite and spent too much time and money in trying to implement what was oversold and too much for their needs. The focus on best-of-breed and complete functionality per business requirements is a sign of CRM maturation.

But it also means fewer suites are on the market and the possibility that companies see social as a departmental rather than organizational tool. If that’s the case then it confirms our case that company adoption of social is in its infancy. Also, this is supported by marketing’s being the selection of a plurality of respondents, i.e. social is a marketing thing.

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

Best of breed approach

Integrated suite from an existing vendor

Integrated suite from a new vendor

Social business platform

No preference

Not going to do Social CRM for now

Response Percent


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Q19 – The Future of Social Media. N=105.

Table 6 How will social use affect your business?

Yes No Response Count

Could you see your company losing business in the future to other companies that are better or faster at adopting social networking technologies?

70.9% (73) 29.1% (30) 103

Could you see your company spending more than competitors on customer relationship management because you have not adopted social networking technologies quickly enough?

55.3% (57) 44.7% (46) 103

This is an interesting question that will become more so in the next few iterations of the survey. While we agree with the results, and also show some maturity in understanding the place of Social Media in the organization, we also crafted this question to monitor over time how the perception of it changed. We expect these percentages to go up through the next two-to-three years to reach almost 100% by then; maturity of organizations taking on Social Media is quite high by the data collected.

These early results, however, show that companies are taking social media seriously and understand the implications it has to the organization. While the number of people that can see it becoming a serious competitive advantage (or at the very least an equalizer between competitors) is quite high, the most interesting part of this answer is the inclination to spend more going forward. A majority of organizations understand that their investments are going to rise to be able to provide solutions on par with their needs.

Note: Crosstabbing this with each function adoption can yield very interesting results on which function is considered crucial for competition and which function can be considered supportive of social media adoption.


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Q20. What title best characterizes your primary job responsibilities? N=100. Figure 8 Who answered the survey.

We had good participation up and down the corporate hierarchy and across many industries, though the fall off from the beginning was substantial. Upwards of 27 percent of those finishing the survey came from the EVP/SVP level or above (Q20).

0 10 20 30 40

CEO, COO, Chairman, President CFO, Controller, Treasurer

CIO, CTO, CSO, CPO Executive VP, Sr. VP General

Vice President Director, Manager

Architect Manager/Other IT Manager Other Corporate/Business

Supervisor Line of Business user

Response Percent


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Q21. What industry do you work in? Choose the closest fit. N=102. Figure 9 Industries represented in the data.

We had participation from a broad assortment of industries. While many can be classified as being in the business to consumer space, several, including manufacturing and process industries were well represented. While b2c industries might benefit most from social media aimed at customers, b2b companies will certainly find use for social media aimed at helping employees collaborate.

It is interesting to see a low incidence from financial services but pretty high from healthcare, manufacturing and retail — areas where investment is expected to rise in the coming quarters based on our other research.

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

Aerospace/Defense Contractor Manufacturing & Process Industries

Finance/Banking/Accounting Insurance/Real Estate/Legal Services

Government: Federal(including Military) Government: State or Local

Health/Medical/Dental Services/Retailer/Wholesaler/Distributor (non-‐

Transportation/Utilities (Energy, Water, etc.) Communication Carriers (ISP, Telecomm, Data

Construction/Architecture/Engineering Data Processing Services

Education Agriculture/Forestry/Fisheries

Mining/Oil/Gas Travel/Hospitality/Recreation/Entertainment

Advertising/PR/Marketing/Media Business Services/Consultant (non-‐computer

Response Percent


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Q22. Please select the statement that describes your role in the purchase process for software. N=102. Figure 10 Who buys social media?

Less than 30 percent classified themselves as observers without any influence on the social media spending process and over a third, 34.4 percent, said they have direct responsibility for customer facing social media selection and deployment. So while the numbers may not be huge they represent people with real authority and their opinions therefore carry significance.

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

I have direct responsibility for customer facing social media selection and deployment.

I have direct responsibility for employee facing social media deployment within our organization.

I am part of a committee or group that is working on recommending and planning for social media.

I am just an observer in our social media initiatives.

Response Percent


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Cross Tabs We have indicated several places where it would be interesting to perform cross tabs, and analysis and we would like to hear back from you on your preferences. We propose providing the following options.

Table 7 Cross tabs made to order.

Tier Number of cross tabs provided

1 6

2 3

3 1


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Conclusions Many of our conclusions have been stated in Key Findings and in the individual analysis of each question. To pull it all together we have these ideas:

1. Social media in business is still in its early phase when companies are making the most obvious uses of the technology such as for outbound communication. In this situation social media is not being exercised to its full extent but this is a typical early market phenomenon. Not far down the road emerging companies are doing more social monitoring and serving up data for analysis and inclusion in things like marketing plans. For now, it is true that adoption is progressing without the hindrances of overly skeptical executives. The Executives appear to get it and are supporting judicious implementation in many cases.

After early attempts at derailing it by “social media gurus” focused on popularity metrics over business ones as well as the lack of correlation between those “social metrics” and KPIs, we are starting to see the businesses rally to adopt social media for their purposes. While early indications still place Marketing as the “owner” and primary user, we see strong understanding and adoption in other areas — always a good sign for furthering enterprise adoption. It is encouraging that senior executives “get it”.

We are beginning to see the move away from “shiny new object” to business tool and this is shown in this report in several parts: businesses see value propositions and use cases, adoption experience for the early adopters is reaching critical time periods where “skunkworks” and pilots are giving space to serious business implementations, and engaging the expertise of advisors and consultants is starting to rise.

2. Social for in-house use for collaboration is also in the ascent and the organizations we surveyed are beginning to see the value of enabling greater employee collaboration.

3. The understanding that social media channels are a critical part of the organization’s infrastructure going forward is another strong point for the long-term adoption by the enterprise.

4. This survey focused on business to consumer kinds of relationships but business to business is also a valid area for approach by social. Though not in this survey, we have seen in other venues such as CRM Idol competition, many emerging companies focusing on applying social media and techniques to the business to business market and we expect to see their influence in a future iteration of this work.

5. There is still much to be done. Social communication as the primary activity must be replaced by more data capture, analytics and information injection into business processes for social to be fully adopted.


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We expect to see the next 24 to 36 months focused on completing strategies, adopting social as basic infrastructure, and seeking better use cases both among employees as well as customers. We would like to see vendors and service providers play a bigger role in delivering case studies, lessons learned, and best practices to show the way for mainstream adopters to leverage the tools and technologies.