Trend 2 - Five Trends that indicate Social Media and ECM are Converging

Trend 2
Real-Time: The Use of Chat and Search to Access Content
More Details From the Article: The Convergence of Social Media and ECM

Trend 2
Real-Time: The Use of Chat and Search to Access Content

Chat –
Chat has been part of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems for years. There are numerous clip_image013providers of Chat Services as components of Call Centers. Chat allows agents – either human or bots (see Trend 5) – to connect people with content. Chat scales globally and can be very cost effective – especially with rise of IP based chat solutions. Chat is here to stay.

clip_image015Search –
Requests using natural language queries and computer generated queries that can dive into content and retrieve information will be tipping point for the Convergence of ECM and Social Media.

Search will be THE KEY to the success of any enterprise application going forward. The ability to search content in any form (text, audio, and video) is the nirvana and no one has cracked it in its entirety.

Additional Details about Trend 2

Chat –

  • Chat as a social Media tool has allowed companies to put people (and sometimes bots – see Trend 5) at the front lines to guide and direct the customer experience. The smart companies are learning from their encounters and adapting their systems to both Cost and Customer Effective.
  • Chat allows agents to be remote yet still provide top notch service. If the chat agent (human or bot) has access to the content (the Enterprise Content) they can provide a value added service. Especially, when combined with Search. When used effectively a great search component can easily pay for itself many times over by helping to keep the customer happy and perhaps up sell and cross sell for add-on products and services.

Search –

  • The effective use of search across all of the enterprise content repositories is the magic bullet, the holy grail, the golden ticket, whatever you want to call it. True Enterprise Search is NOT here today. No single company has cracked the code across all the disparate content types – YET!
  • The real-time aspect of search will allow for personal access to content that arguably you own (assuming it’s your data – medical, financial, social, etc.) that resides in corporate or government repositories. Note: The concept of data ownership is a topic for another time.
  • Caveat: There are plenty of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts out there that have much more insight and expertise than I do into all the subtle nuances that make search such a critical component of Social Media.
  • Enterprise Search will enable the corporation and by extension the individual to quickly scan vast repositories of information. I think Search will be THE KEY to the success of any enterprise application going forward. The ability to search content in any form (text, audio, and video) and to be guided towards “search” terms and concepts that you may not have been explicitly searching for will be the first steps into nirvana. No one has cracked it yet. Or if they have – they aren’t telling.

Search and Chat are here to stay and they will only get better and more widely used as both Social Media technologies and Enterprise Content Management systems converge.

Thinking Points:
How have you used Chat? Does your company have a Chat option as part of the Call Center? Is Chat effective? Is Chat considered part of the Social Media technology stack?

Will Search become the way companies create community and foster authentic experiences? Is Social Media ready for the impact Search will make?

Your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated. Please feel free to comment on this blog, tweet about it, Retweet it and if you are so inclined send me e-mail directly. You can also find me on Facebook and LinkedIn too.

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About The Author:
I have spent the better part of the last 16 years working in various aspects of the ECM space. I spent time at Kofax, Microsoft, FileNet, K2, and most recently Captaris (which was acquired by Open Text in Nov 2008). Prior to that I was a Unix VAR running my own company.

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