The Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age

Connect Strategy
The connect strategy for business is to become a part of your customers’ con-
versations. With Facebook, which has surpassed 1.5 billion active users, and 
other huge platforms like Sina Weibo, Twitter, and LinkedIn, social media 
have become a global standard for how customers communicate with each 
other. They are also increasingly where customers expect to communicate 
with businesses of all kinds. Whether answering customers’ questions, solv-
ing their problems, or providing product news, businesses are expected to 
be present, responsive, and active in social media conversations.
A connect strategy may take a variety approaches, including social lis-
tening, social customer service, joining the conversation, asking for ideas 
and content, and hosting a community.
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 Social listening: Customer conversations can be a tremendous source 
of market insight for businesses, which can listen and learn with the 
help of numerous tools. Insights can range from product problems to 
drivers of positive customer comments. Many brands have used social 
insights to inform new branding and ad campaigns. Cable provider 

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Comcast has used social listening to identify regional outages even 
before its engineering teams do.
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 Social customer service: Many businesses find that social media can 
serve as an effective channel within their customer service mix, along-
side call centers, instant chat, and other tools. If a business is able to 
answer questions successfully, it can impress not only one customer 
but a network of others as well (a customer who experiences a problem 
but has it resolved well is the most likely to evangelize on behalf of the 
company). Of course, not all issues can be resolved in a social media 
exchange, but effective training can make a big difference. After build-
ing up its social media leadership team, Citibank was able to resolve 
36 percent of its customers’ Twitter queries within that social media 
channel versus only 11 percent for Wells Fargo and 3 percent for Bank 
of America.
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 Joining the conversation: Maersk Line, a container shipping company 
with 25,000 employees, decided to test whether social media could 
help its corporate communications. As an experiment, the company 
began engaging in conversations and sharing videos and photos from 
its ships around the world, using platforms as diverse as Facebook, Ins-
tagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Sina Weibo, and Pinterest. Within a year, 
the project had helped defuse a PR crisis involving a dead narwhale, 
uncover historical video from the company’s archives, and build a large 
and engaged following of customers, suppliers, shipping experts, and 
employees. Among the most tangible benefits for Maersk were new 
networks for hiring and recruiting, new sales leads, and improved sat-
isfaction among both customers and employees.
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 Asking for ideas and content: Many times, companies will connect with 
customers by using social media to ask them for ideas, suggestions, or 
content in the form of photos or videos. Action camera brand GoPro 
built its reputation entirely by asking customers to share their most 
amazing videos filmed with the product, whether surfing, hang glid-
ing, or bike riding. Other companies, from Dell to Starbucks, have used 
tools like the IdeaStorm platform to solicit customer suggestions and 
have then used these suggestions for product development and service 
improvements. This kind of responsiveness can be a powerful way to 
make customers feel a sense of ownership and contribution to a com-
pany’s success.
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 Hosting a community: In some cases, it may make sense for a business 
to host its own online community around a shared topic of interest. 

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Technology provider SAP hosts the SAP Community Network so cus-
tomers, business partners, employees, and others can share insights 
and discuss questions related to their overlapping technology needs. 
The network has over a million unique visitors per month. Procter & 
Gamble had difficulty marketing feminine hygiene products, so it built 
BeingGirl.com, a forum where teen girls can discuss the experiences 
and challenges of young womanhood. Letting customers lead the con-
versation, P&G found that BeingGirl delivered a sales ROI several times 
higher than that for their TV ads for Tampax and Always brands.
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The keys to a connect strategy are focusing on the social media your 
customers use and engaging in conversations to solve problems, learn 
about your market, and become closer to your customers. The goal is not 
conversation for its own sake but value creation for your business.