Social Media: Lip Lock or Lip Service?

Social Media is the latest marketing porn from enterprise communication and contact center vendors designed to titillate users’ pocketbooks.  But unlike other business tools, social media enables us to see if the propagandists are users or insincere shills.  Put another way, should users place faith in the recipes of those who don’t cook?

What got me started was a June 15^th Avaya webcast where Jorge Blanco (Product Marketing VP for Contact Center) gave a talk about the need for social media adoption by contact centers. He ended 15 minutes early and took no questions from the audience.  After I Tweeted this, he answered offering to answer any questions I had.  My response:  “@av_jblanco My first question may be why do I have a larger Twitter presence than someone trying to enlist customers into Social Media?”  (Blanco’s total Twitter usage as of that day – 17 Tweets, 63 Followers, 15 Following.)  Not surprisingly, my question went unanswered.  In the meantime Blanco has changed his Twitter handle but stands at a measly 22 Tweets, 62 Followers and 32 Following.  His last Tweet was July 14 and his Tweets are locked.

Before you think this is a Blanco Bash, he is not alone in not practicing what he preaches.  It turns out that social media usage is sporadic among “thought leaders.” But shouldn’t thought leaders by definition be leading, not abstaining? 

Methodology

Since every other word out of these “guru’s” mouths is Twitter or Facebook, I checked Twitter usage by senior executives, key management and selected analysts within the enterprise communications market as of August 7, 2011. I have concentrated on those vendors with significant contact center portfolios as this appears to be the niche where social media product integration is centered.

 Because every vendor has Twitter accounts run my marketing/advertising/PR departments, I have ignored those.  I have also ignored the product managers and marketers. What I’m measuring is the usage of the tools by those preaching from podiums, webcasts and conference tables.

Alcatel-Lucent

Alphabetically, I’ll begin with Alcatel-Lucent where we see CEO Ben Verwaayen largely absent from Twitter.  This is a very common occurrence as no CEO has a Twitter presence.  But what Mr. Verwaayen does illustrate perfectly is the “moth to the flame” effect of Twitter. While he has an account, he’s sent one Tweet, Follows two but has 121 Followers. If Twitter can be thought of as a stream of consciousness made of many minds, clearly he offers no value to the “conversation,” yet people cling to him.

Charlie Isaacs, who leads eServices and Social Media, illustrates another Twitter effect.  Mr. Isaacs is a smart guy and great to hang around with but there’s no way he can “Follow” 9,187 people with any cohesion.  I conclude that he has Following sub-lists with the rest being courtesy Follows.  But with 9,178 Tweets, he and his 9,611 Followers, clearly “get” what social media can do for personal enrichment and professional goals.

Global Sales Leader Tom Eggemeier also “gets” Twitter with 934 Tweets but like Mr. Isaacs, gratuitously Follows many people.  But he’s in Sales so we forgive him. J

Most surprising is Paul Segre, EVP and President of the Applications Group which includes the Genesys contact center application.  He has no Twitter account that I can find.  Chief Marketing Officer, Nicolas de Kouchkovsky appears to be new to Twitter but has become a semi-regular Tweeter.

	Twitter Handle	Tweets	Last Tweet	Following	Followers
Ben Verwaayen, CEO	@verwaayen	1	Oct 28	2	121
Tom Burns, President of ALU Enterprise	@tburnssocial	114	August 6	102	219
Paul Segre, EVP. President Applications Group	None
Charlie Isaacs, eServices and Social Media Leader	@charlieisaacs	9,178	August 7	9,187	9,611
Nicolas de Kouchkovsky, Chief Marketing Officier	@nicolask3	286	August 7	76	204
Tom Eggemeier, Global Sales Leader	@TomEggemeier	934	August 2	1,611	1,746

Aspect Software

Considering contact center is pretty much all Aspect Software does, its Twitter presence is as virtually non-existent as its social media product strategy. Of all the relevant executives, just one has a Twitter account I can find, EVP of Sales Mike Sheridan.  Neither the SVP of Marketing Laurie Cairns (now gone) nor Director of Product Marketing Nancy Dobrozdravic appear on Twitter.  But at least Aspect isn’t hypocritical.

	Twitter Handle	Tweets	Last Tweet	Following	Followers
Jim Foy, CEO	None
Mike Sheridan, SVP Sales	@MikeOnUC	1047	July 26	743	950
Michael Regan, SVP Engineering/Technology	None
Nancy Dobrozdravic, Dir Prod Mktg	None

Avaya, Inc.

WW Marketing honcho Chris McGugan has an honest set of numbers with over 1,400 Tweets and realistic numbers of “Followers” and “Following.”  Newish Twitterer, Steve Hardy is also trying to make an honest go of it. But as I noted above, Product Marketing VP for contact centers Jorge Blanco appears uninterested in engaging in what he’s telling customers to buy.  Others in the executive team are dabblers.  This inconsistent showing is especially dissonant given Avaya’s release of Social Media Manager for the Nortel Avaya Aura Contact Center.

	Twitter Handle	Tweets	Last Tweet	Following	Followers
Kevin Kennedy, CEO	None
Jorge Blanco, VP Prod Mktg Contact Cntr	@Jorge_R_Blanco	22	July 14	32	62
Lawrence Byrd, Dir of UC Architectures	@LawrenceOfAvaya	114	June 21	83	195
Chris McGugan, VP, WW Mktg - Contact Cntr	@cmcgugan	1,443	July 22	154	500
Steve Hardy, Dir UC Prod Mktg	@steevh	270	July 27	1,055	1,203

Cisco, Inc.

I figured Cisco would be all over social media and they are with Marketing-driven anonymous personas for every type of potential Cisco customer.  However, like other contact center social media solution vendors, their internal Kool-Aid pitcher remains mostly untouched.  CTO Padmasree Warrior is mythical in her numbers of followers.  Unfortunately Cisco’s social media participation by UC and contact center executives is pretty low with Contact Center GM John Hernandez squeaking out just 15 Tweets in 22 months.

	Twitter Handle	Tweets	Last Tweet	Following	Followers
John Chambers, CEO	None
Padmasree Warrior, CTO	@Padmasree	8,029	July 21	240	1,397,161
Ross Daniels, Director UC Marketing	@rdaniels1999	204	July 14	157	167
Barry O’Sullivan, SVP Voice Tech. Grp.	@barry0s	68	August 3	1,803	1,272
Laurent Philonenko, VP/GM Cust. Contact	@Laurent08	381	August 7	189	387
Blair Christie, SVP Corp Communications	@BlairChristie	63	July 29	44	600
John Hernandez, GM Contact Center	@ciscojohn	15	August 4	93	80
Michael McNally, VP Software Dev. Contact Center BU	@michaelmcnally	96	May 22	788	363
Alex Romero, Social Media Bus. Analyst	@Arom1000	1,148	August 7	4,141	4,388
Lynn Lucas, Sr. Director Collaboration	@Lylucas	1,042	August 7	101	290

Interactive Intelligence

Everyone’s favorite at Interactive, Tim Passios is the only executive I could find using Twitter personally.  CMO Staples and sales leader Blough don’t appear to have accounts.  Unsurprisingly, it’s the Social Media manager who’s knocking it out of the park in participation.  (It’s always the manager layer that’s really doing the work)

	Twitter Handle	Tweets	Last Tweet	Following	Followers
Gary Blough, EVP Sales	No Profile Found
Joe Staples, CMO	No Profile Found
Tim Passios, Dir. Solutions Mktg	@tpassios	617	August 1	91	230
Denise Meyer, Social Media Comm. Mgr.	@DeniseMichelle	1,384	August 4	557	701

Siemens Enterprise

Siemens told the world social media was coming so many years ago that the critical integration was to MySpace!  Their product execution mirrors their executive participation.  We see Eve Aretakis, the senior executive for product development who has re-Tweeted someone else’s thoughts in all but 7 of her 59 Tweets.  The relatively new outside CMO hire, Chris Hummel has just 5 Tweets under his belt.  Contact Center Director Don Greco,  on a panel discussion at EnterpriseConnect for social media in contact centers, doesn’t even have an account.  Oh, and who stood on the podium touting integration with MySpace?  Mister 4 Tweets, Mark Straton (who hasn’t Tweeted in nearly two years).  The lone winner is Adrian Brookes who not surprisingly came from Cisco.

	Twitter Handle	Tweets	Last Tweet	Following	Followers
Hamid Akhaven, CEO	No Profile Found
Chris Hummel, CMO	@ch22	5	12/12/2010	10	16
Eve Aretakis, EVP Prod Mgmt & Dev.	@EveAretakisSEN	59	March 30	81	138
Gerald Kromer, EVP/GM Services	@GeraldKromer	67	July 25	12	137
Mark Straton, SVP Marketing	@mstraton	4	11/26/2009	8	46
Paul Lang, VP Marketing	@paulwlang	107	July 21	50	70
Adrian Brookes VP CTO	@abrookesuk	591	August 4	135	234
Paul McMillan, Dir. UC	@bithead001	402	June 21	131	155
Don Greco, Director Contact Center	None found

Analysts

By and large, the analyst community “gets” social media.  They understand that social media used well can generate business but also provide synergistic insights from the communities they maintain.  Obviously there are exceptions. 

Gartner’s UC and Contact Center practices are non-existent with no Twitter account found for Bob Hafner, Steve Blood, Bern Elliot, Drew Kraus and Jay Lassman.  Whether this is a policy or not, the result is the same.  Likewise, old-timers like Marty Parker, Ken Landoline and Jim Burton reflect the aversion of their generation. Their credibility is questionable.  Similarly, I would call out Sheryl Kingstone from Yankee.  She wrote a research report on social media but her own experience is pretty light.  At the other end of the spectrum, we give Vanessa Alvarez our Mavis Beacon award for her stunning 20,968 Tweets!

	Twitter Handle	Tweets	Last Tweet	Following	Followers
Brian Riggs, Current Analysis	@brian_riggs	2,262	August 5	364	1,401
Ken Landoline, Current Analysis	@klandoline	0	Never	13	17
Jerry Caron, Current Analysis	No Profile Found
Vanessa Alvarez, Forrester	@VanessaAlvarez1	20,968	August 7	834	5,674
Henry Dewing, Forrester	@hwdewing	283	August 2	98	362
Rob Arnold, Frost & Sullivan	@rob_arnold_ucc	675	August 7	119	562
Elka Popova, Frost & Sullivan	@epopova	1,310	August 7	169	735
Melanie Turek, Frost & Sullivan	@melanieturek	310	March 1	91	557
Audrey William, Frost & Sullivan APAC	@ Audrey_William	785	August 7	174	336
Adrian Ho, IDC	@adrianho11	3,602	August 7	478	583
Christine Bardwell, IDC	@C_Bardwell	1,479	August 7	403	1,164
Maribel Lopez, Ind.	@MaribelLopez	2,544	August 4	521	2475
Sheila McGee-Smith, Ind.	@McGeeSmith	2,921	August 7	360	1,406
Stephanie Watson, MZA	@steffwatson	9,698	August 7	1,219	1,427
Ian Jacobs, Ovum	@ianjacobs	2,061	August 7	476	1,299
Blair Pleasant, UC Strategies / CommFusion	@blairplez	5,035	August 7	984	2,267
Jim Burton, UC Strategies / CT Link	@JimBurton	3	8/31/2009	3	65
Marty Parker, UC Strategies / UniComm	No Profile Found
Don Van Doren, UC Strategies / UniComm	@DonVanDoren	296	May 5	100	307
Nancy Jamison, UC Strategies	@NancyJami	1,118	August 7	476	607
Zeus Kerravala, Yankee	@zkerravala	683	July 21	205	719
Sheryl Kingstone, Yankee	@skingstone	101	July 12	78	392

Summary

And there you have it.  A representative sample of who uses social media and who’s just trying to talk customers into buying  into it.  Given the consumerization of the enterprise, I think it’s more than fair to question vendors' and presenters' use of the tech and toys they’re selling.  In decades past, it was understandable that an analyst or executive didn’t have a PBX running under their desk, but today that’s changing. 

As I have said repeatedly, as an end user exploring a new technology, I’d talk to those who use it and those who have NO vested interest in you buying it. “Do as I say and not as I do” is not a convincing mantra.

HD Video Conferencing

Something old, something new, something borrowed, but what’s right for you?

At Interop this week, while squeezing in-between the clouds, I had a chance to see the coming rethink of video conferencing from Alcatel-Lucent.   Like many things from Alcatel-Lucent, it’s overdue but really quite smart.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We all know the story.  In the Flintstonian era of video conferencing, there was more preparation involved than the average royal wedding.  Everything had to be setup and pre-tested days before with doors barricaded lest overzealous cleaning personnel breathe on something.   Flash forward to 2006 and Cisco’s TelePresence makes it easy to “dial” and instigate video conferences – conference room dust bunnies became extinct. 

Bandwidth capacity and usage have expanded in lockstep.  Enterprise video is one of the technologies benefitting from and pushing capacity.  During the five years since Cisco’s TelePresence wowed us, video has become one of the market’s top over-buzzed words (happily, unlike UC and cloud, we all understand what video is). Those standing to make the most money from video proclaim it is the new dialtone. While part of an organization’s communications mix, video won’t be added anytime soon to the list after “food, clothing and shelter.”

Skype can be partly blamed for people’s interest in seeing other people located far away.  Microsoft’s purchase delivers application ubiquity if not leading technology (so Skype fits right in). Personally, I think Skype has made a subtler impact on communications by dropping the annoyance barrier to speakerphone conversations.  Skype may not put a video chicken in every pot, but it may place the deskphone handset in hot water.

Something old:  Polycom, Cisco TelePresence, LifeSize, et al.

When Cisco’s TelePresence debited in 2006, in addition to its ease of use, the market was agog seeing the level of thought put into the experience as much as the technology.  You remember?  The new CCIDs (Cisco Certified Interior Decorators) creating those fabulous matching TelePresence suites making everyone appear in the same room?  Polycom and Tandberg quickly followed suit offering their own flavors and fabric swatches.  LifeSize, Vidyo, etc. entered the market as skin-and-bones options for HD Video without the matching hotel artwork in the background.

Flash-forward to 2011 and video has become entwined with today’s nascent mobility boom (Leaving the over-hyped need for mobile video for another time – none having yet mastered basic walking and texting). The thought of getting everyone together to meet in a special room for a video conference with far-flung colleagues borders on the quaint.  And once you bring in other video feeds from mobile or desktop devices, the “magic” of being in the same room is shattered.  I suspect those interior designers aren’t as busy as they once were.  (Note:  Tablets are mostly about the hardware and making the conferencing GUI mobile.  It was the topic of my first blog)

I have no doubt room-based HD video conferencing solutions will continue to sell well, but the thrill is gone.  In the years to come, those dedicated video shrines may become as unused as their over-complicated predecessors, albeit for completely different reasons – no one will be in the office to turn them on.

What I like about these systems is their unclouded ownership.  Buy it, install it, it’s yours.  Upkeep is pretty minimal.  For power users, this is the way to go; hosted video will eat you alive. 

Something new:  Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Immersive Video

It’s not even released, and yet Alcatel-Lucent’s Immersive Video (IV) is the future.  Gone is the need for the matching oak credenzas and plastic flowers required by the telepresence movement.  This new gem uses software to identify a participant’s silhouette, strip off the background and project only that onto a user-selected electronic wallpaper; regardless of device or location.  Drag and drop controls make it fairly idiot-proof to setup and participate in conferences.  IV also eliminates the love-hate of watching your own video reflection (a la Skype). IV places you at the head of the table as an unobtrusive shadow.

Why is this better?  It’s inherently mobile. It’s software. It expands on the “common experience” pioneered by the room-based telepresence systems without the need for interior designers.  It only shows what’s relevant and that’s powerful.

Initially, Alcatel-Lucent may self-host the first few demo systems for prospective customers and carriers.  The plan is for IV to be sold lock, stock and barrel to service providers and large organizations.  Smaller organizations have can get the functions without the large up-front costs while larger users can own it.

I have only two caveats. First, it’s not production-ready.  The demo is Flash.  It’s a concept where creative types were encouraged to joyfully run amok.  Once bean counters and reality set in, the end product could be materially different, or like the BlackBerry Playbook, half-baked.  Secondly, we’re talking about Alcatel-Lucent, not known for cutting-edge or keeping to a schedule.  By the time this comes out others could leap-frog.

Something borrowed:  Avaya web.alive

Nortel acquired DiamondWare in 2008 whose business, since 1994, was creating 3D gaming and tactical interfaces for consumer gamers and military (a large overlapping market I’d hazard a guess).  Perhaps it was a hangover from the previous year’s success of Super Mario Galaxy or the Lion King that made Nortel think animation was a foundation for business communications.  More likely it was just another feeble attempt to right a sunken ship.  At any rate, what may have appeared interesting all those (3) years ago continues to be an ill-thought out skid mark for Avaya.

At its simplest, web.alive is a cartoon conferencing world based on gaming.  In my opinion, animated avatars remove the import of business communications.  Secondly, the controls, while clearly built with a joystick in mind, are (I’m being nice) clumsy on a keyboard.  Participants must move their avatars around the virtual environment by clickity clacking commands (left arrow, left arrow, control, shift, up arrow, oh forget it!).  And like a Roomba, participants continually run into walls, furniture and each other (but with web.alive the carpet remains dirty).  Sound quality and data presentation are also fairly bad with participants clustering around either the speaker to hear or the data screens to see (screens can’t be enlarged).  It’s like that winter scene from March of the Penguins where the male penguins are huddled together against the Antarctic cold.

Web.alive is offered only as a hosted service which in this case is a boon for users who can pay for a conference once and then decide to use something else.

What’s right for you?

Regardless of whatever decision needs to be made, research is key.  Businesses must first understand what their needs truly are (and will be) with respect to HD video conferencing (or have a VP with budget and weakness for shiny new things). 

I suspect most will have limited needs and will either opt to purchase a basic federatable video conference solution from the likes of Vidyo or LifeSize (why pay the Cisco premium?).  The way technology is changing (hopefully) towards something like the Alcatel-Lucent solution, these pieces will be reusable within a more encompassing and mobile option.

Those working for a game publisher like Nintendo, EA, Activision or Ubisoft may find comfort and familiarity in the Avaya web.alive solution. 

For those operations that see a focus on collaborative video communications, keep very close to Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (wherever they wind up).  For right now, at this minute, they’re sitting in the cool chair.

The New 700 Features

In the olden days, PBX makers touted their 100-year heritages and their mythic “700 features” to serve the needs of every customer.  When VoIP came along, those same vendors harrumphed that the IP interlopers like Cisco, ShoreTel, Zultys, Asterisk and PingTel had mere handfuls of features.  And while the market continued to care, customers cared less and less.

Old-line communications vendors continue cleave to their 700-feature legacies in a world that simply doesn’t care.  Unused, the knowledge is lost, becoming irrelevant.  When PC-based conferencing tools are down, how many users remember how to setup a conference on their desk phones? How many bother to even record outgoing voicemail messages where once these were updated daily.  One-number services and call forwarding throw voice messaging on the same scrap heap as the secretary’s message pad.

You see, while the VoIP revolution was happening, another was running alongside, seemingly disconnected.   Voice, the standard of business communications for 100 years, was losing ground to a beaten foe; written communication.  It began with email supplementing voice communication as users grew tired of phone tag.  Users adjusted to alternate forms of (written) communication realizing that not every question required an immediate answer (and that many times email was quicker). Also, what started as a side benefit to avoid painful messages or prickly recipients, text-based communications have roared back to life as today’s leading communication method (albeit without franked postage).  Recently email has bloomed into texting, instant messaging, and social media while voice communications and messaging have continued to wither. 

But take heart, just as communication continues to change, so the 700-features must change.  Unfortunately while Unified Communications has been over-buzzed for years, vendors have yet to take a unified view towards rewriting the 700-features to encompass all forms of audio, written and visual communication.  Each format is cordoned off with its own rules, only tangentially touching. 

“Collaboration” is the latest industry buzz and can be thought of as UC version 1.2.  It’s more name change than substance.  It brings video into the picture and tries to rehash the unrequited glamor of the failed workforce automation and CEBP revolutions of the early 2000’s, while like UC, making everything mobile, mobile, mobile.  It talks about bringing systems together but becomes fuzzy on exactly how users will interface with these far-flung myriad systems except that it will depend on devices, devices, devices. 

Taken down to a day-to-day level, whereas unified messaging delivered voicemail to email, the encompassing “inbox” hasn’t been built to bring all today’s communications and their associated preferences together.  Too complex for Microsoft Outlook, the multimodal inbox hasn’t been built.  The multimedia contact center agent desktop begins to address this but is too transactional to account for the continuum of communications required by office workers. Of course everyone talks about portals, but a portal is just an empty frame until content is added and delivered. 

Cisco’s Cius (wherever it is) and Avaya’s Flare claim to be collaboration portals but they don’t begin to bring it all together either.  In reality both are mostly slick interfaces for (video) conferencing with a side-order of email.

End users need to have conversations with their suppliers who, while touting everything should be moved to the cloud, aren’t delivering the “700 features” today’s users need to be productive.  Everyone likes the easy way out; unfortunately that’s why the hardest choice is usually the right one.

The Outer Limits of Manipulation

During my trip to the US for Enterprise Connect, I was sickened by the state of my native land. Clearly the gulf between worker and wealthy is growing everywhere; but it’s a disease the US has spawned and exported like so many artery-clogging cheeseburgers.  Notions of “empathy” and “fairness” have become as antediluvian as spell checking.  How can the workering class be trained to habitually abdicate their best interests to a small, unsympathetic ruling class? 

One of the first steps in war is the need to dehumanize and demonize an enemy thus diminishing humanity’s innate empathy towards each other.  Stirring primal, fear-based xenophobia through propaganda will provoke one group to target another – think America/Communism, America/Muslim, and Democrat/Republican. (World War II goes without saying.) No matter what side you are on, the other side is always the enemy.  Today's enemy are the economically underprivileged (those least able to fight back). This targeted xenophobia also offers populace and ideological control

A second method of control (useful in economic war) is the mirage of “Attainment porn” – the delusion that no one should vote against the privileged because someday wealth may be theirs. It’s the deception that keeps casinos, game shows and reality TV afloat.

Modern communication is partly to blame.  Social networking and other technologies have tricked people into loosening their interpersonal bonds with humanity.  As evidence, I give you the stunning array of meals that can be reheated in a toaster and microwave thus minimizing time away from a computer or TV.  Time that in the olden days would have been spent in the company of (thinner) 3D people.

Just as the American diet craves fat and sugar, the American mind now craves shallow shouting matches interspersed with Kardashiana.  By making the unimportant important, truly meaningful topics glide by like a dog’s pill wrapped in peanut butter. Debate and discourse have been replaced by bile-filled partisan actors whose goal is groupthink not critical thinking.  

These rapid-fire communications dull the ability to make an informed decision with their need for instant consensus – fence-sitters, like bisexuals are viewed with suspicion by both sides.  The limited human attention span is also sapped as the more information thrown at the human mind, the more it forgets.  New Orleans, Haiti and Japan are not movies that end when the lights come on or once you’ve texted your $10 donation. 

Here’s a test.  Count the number of “cuts” in a single TV commercial. Cuts from one image to another are known to stimulate an animal response that makes humans pay attention, ditto diagonal and moving images or words (it’s why there are so many).  Think cat and bouncing ball of string.  If the lowly cat food commercial is manipulating you, what else in the media is?  Answer? Everything.

I don’t necessarily hate the media and communications; they both provide a valuable service however steeped in subliminal influence it may be.  But if the average person would come to even partly understand the extent to which they are being continually manipulated, perhaps humanity could stumble out of its spoon-fed darkness.

All this was said 45 years ago and with a lot fewer words.  The problem is we thought it was just entertainment, not prophesy. 

“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to...The Outer Limits.”

 — Opening narration – The Outer Limits – 1960s