Customer to Customer

I just gave a keynote this morning at the Transcentive annual user’s conference. (Transcentive provides software and services for managing 401K plans.) One of the main points of the talk was that B2B and B2C are both being shaped by “C2C,” customer-to-customer conversations; this matters because it means that businesses have lost their main way of controlling their markets: the selective release of information. So, I went through some sites that have lively C2C interchanges not knowing that the next speaker was announcing Transcentive’s own open-ended discussion boards. (I was really pleased to hear that the inspiration for putting up the boards came from The Cluetrain Manifesto and Chris Locke’s Gonzo Marketing.)

The Transcentive board is in its infancy. They’ve seeded it with a bunch of threads, which is a good start. But, I hope Transcentive understands that the success of a discussion board is subject to the same sort of randomness that turns a local diner into a citywide sensation for a month and then returns it to obscurity. So, I applaud Transcentive for having the guts to open up a space for unfettered discussion among customers and employees. It’s risky but it can be so worthwhile for everyone involved.

Categories: Uncategorized dw