Come on baby, do the Social-motion!

I know that I touched on it in my Dreamforce recap, but we feel it more and more each day – the Social Enterprise is here & it’s not going anywhere. Commercials now direct people to their Facebook page instead of their company website. Companies are now providing customer service via Twitter. Anyone who watched some of Benioff’s recent talks has seen what brands like KLM, Bank of America and Gatorade are doing. And just last week, a fellow Salesforce MVP had his own experience with the Salesforce Social Media team.

Personally, I’ve had some fantastic experiences with brands on Twitter too. When I had a question about my cable service, RCNConnects was able to answer it for me. When I tweeted that I was bummed about missing the honeymoon special at our hotel because our trip was too far from our wedding, Karisma Hotels tweeted right back & changed my reservation to include the package. And while on vacation, when I got a strange charge alert via email, I tweeted @BofA_Help & they were able to resolve the issue without me having to navigate the dreaded phone system.

And yet with all that, a recent study by Maritz and Evolve24 show that 70% of companies are ignoring complaints on Twitter. And get this – they also found that 83% of the complaints that received a reply, the individual felt more positive about the company afterward.

I think Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, said it best: “To any CEO who is skeptical at all, you HAVE to create a social enterprise today.You have to be totally connected with everyone who touches your brand. If you don’t do that, I don’t know what your business model is in 5 years.”