User-Generated Content: The New ECM Imperative
A visit to almost any company website provides further evidence of the impact and popularity of UGC among consumers. The vast majority of brands today include the now-familiar “follow us on Twitter,” and “join us on Facebook” links. Moreover, video, podcasts and other “lean back” formats of content are taking the driver’s seat over traditional “lean forward” content such as a brochure, copy-heavy website or slide deck.
Organizations must go where their customers are—communities, YouTube, social networks and other UGC-friendly hotspots. Similarly, the types of content must be relevant—chiefly, content must be tethered, rich media and most importantly immersive and interactive (lean forward vs. lean back).
New Business Opportunity
UGC takes the laziness out of content. Content is critical to virtually every business. It’s the output of most processes, the way we preserve intellectual property and the way we document the history of the organization. However, despite all the good things content generates, it’s pretty lazy. And content has significant costs associated with it to capture, store and manage it. Much of the content that exists does only that—costs us money, time and effort. But the vast amount of content being generated by new tools and technologies can really change all that, transforming content into a source of opportunity as opposed to a “thing to spend money on.”
UGC is rapidly becoming the driver of innovation. From Microsoft Windows 7, where we’ve seen the “socialization of the PC,” to business-to-consumer sites like Dell Ideastorm where companies directly engage with their customers online, to enterprise tools like OpenText Pulse where global staff collaborate around themes and ideas, UGC eliminates many of the barriers (geography, time zones, lack of immediacy, etc.) that plague true innovation.
The new breed of UGC-driven tools not only help organizations improve customer engagement and satisfaction but also “contain” it. UGC does have the potential to adversely impact customer experience; on the other hand, organizations can provide a direct channel for customers to voice opinions and ideas, share experiences and discuss other aspects of the relationship. Wells Fargo, through its Stagecoach Island community, encourages retail banking customers to share everything—good, bad and downright ugly. The company won’t particularly like everything it “hears,” but at least it is consolidated rather than spread across a half dozen or more UGC-driven sites. In turn, Wells Fargo can also understand trends and act on them, taking the focus away from ad hoc responses to customer inquiries and instead developing a true customer-centric approach.
Lastly, UGC represents a new (and significant) opportunity to generate revenue. Organizations that successfully monetize UGC realize cost savings, incremental revenue and ideally a whole new channel. Marriott, for example, encourages guests to send in pictures from their visits to the company’s resorts and hotels. Marriott uses the photos and videos on its website, creating a “community of guests” feel while at the same time eliminating the cost of photo shoots and creative agency fees. With the information gathered from visitors, Wells Fargo is able to act on deficiencies in their customer experience strategy, improve overall customer satisfaction and, ideally, improve their “wallet share” (the number of products “owned” by banking customers).
In short, while there are risks, threats and challenges created by UGC, the opportunities it represents can definitely outweigh them. Transforming content from a cost into a source of capital is not the pipedream that many ECM trends have turned out to be. We are witnessing significant and tangible value from even early, “beta” and phase-one kicks at the can. Just as ECM created a new reality for working with, collaborating around and managing the lifecycle of traditional business content, UGC (and the tools that readily facilitate it) will change the way we think about content—putting it to work for businesses and not just throwing money at it.
OpenText enables you to create value from content in a changing world. With OpenText, your content becomes a source of innovation, efficiency and profit. We provide industry-leading content management technology to empower people, foster agility and control the risk and cost of content. For more information, visit
www.opentext.com.