NACCM 2009: Two-Way Invention: Co-generating New Products and Services with Your Customers Through Ongoing Dialogues Online

In today’s presentation, Sami Hero, Vice President of Global Web Strategy at LexisNexis shared his company’s approach towards social media engagement and its evolution. LexisNexis built their web strategy over the past several years. In 2007, they launched their Web 2.0 initiatives and engaged in sporadic blogging, building focus groups and using Net Promoter Scores to gather feedback from their customers. In 2008, their focus was on building solutions and services for customer problems and creating 17 customer communities. Growth continued in 2009 as they developed global websites and grew customer communities to 30+. LexisNexis continued to grow its customer engagement in 2010 by adding mobile applications, building deeper customer relationships, and making it a common practice to listen.

Customer-driven innovation needs to be measured says Hero. It takes special talent…find them in your organization and “let them loose”. Age doesn’t matter, skill set does. When asked what skill sets are most important, Hero said that people with excitement, those that display strong writing skills, and those who are passionate about customer engagement make the best choices for managing customer conversations.

LexisNexis actively listens to its customers and users through their website at http://lexisnexis.com/community/ideas. Hero sees the value in these community sites as customers tend to go back to the main website. When at the main site, customers typically end up buying something. This cross promotion has significant value to an organization says Hero. He cautions us, however, in that if you aren’t giving good content, your community will die. Invest the resources to keep the customer conversations alive.