We've had a very busy week here at Oracle and as we build up to Oracle OpenWorld starting in less than 10 days - it doesn't look like things will be slowing down.

Engagement is definitely in the air this week. Our friend, John Mancini published a great article entitled: "The World of Engagement" on his Digital Landfill blog yesterday and we hosted a great webcast with R "Ray" Wang from Constellation Research yesterday on the "9 C's of Engagement".

I wanted to wrap-up the week with some key takeaways from our webcast yesterday with Ray Wang. If you missed the webcast yesterday, fear not - it is now available  On-Demand. We'll leave you this week with lots of questions about how to navigate these churning waters of engagement. Stay tuned to the Oracle WebCenter Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series as we fuel this dialogue.

Company Culture

• Does company support a culture of putting customer satisfaction ahead of profits?

• Does culture promote creativity and cross functional employee collaboration?

• Does culture accept different views of multi-generational workforce?

• Does culture promote employee training and skills development

• Does culture support upward mobility and long term retention?

• Does culture support work-life balance?

• Does the culture provide rewards for employee for outstanding customer support?

Channels

• What are the current primary channels for customer communications?

• What do you think will be the primary channels in two years?

• Is company developing support model for emerging channels?

• Do all channels consistently deliver the same level of customer support?

• Do you know the cost per transaction across all channels?

• Do you engage customers proactively across multiple channels?

• Do all channels have access to the same customer information?

Community

• Does company extend customer support into virtual communities of interest?

• Does company facilitate educating users through its virtual communities?

• Does company mine its customer’s experience into useful data?

• Does company increase the value for customers through using data to deliver new products and services?

• Does company support two way interactions with its customers through communities of interest?

• Does company actively support social CRM, online communities and social media markets?

Credibility

• Does company market its trustworthiness through external certificates such as business licenses, BBB certificates or other validations?

• Does company promote trust through customer testimonials and case studies on ethical business practices?

• Does company promote truthful market campaigns

• Does company make it easy for customers to complain?

• Does company build its reputation for standing behind its products with guarantees for satisfaction?

• Does company protect its customer data with high security measures>

Content

• What sources do you use to create customer content?

• Does company mine social media and blogs for customer content?

• How does your company sort, store and retain its customer content?

• How frequently does content get updated?

• What external sources do you use for customer content?

• How many responses are typically received from a knowledge management system inquiry?

• Does your company use customer content to design and develop new product and services?

Context

• Does your company market to customers in clusters or individually?

• Does your company customize its messages and personalize them to specific needs of each individual customer?

• Does your company store customer data based on their past behaviors, purchases, sentiment analysis and current activities?

• Does your company manage customer context according to channels used? For example identify personal use channels versus business channels?

• What is your frequency of collecting customer activities across various touch points?

• How is your customer data stored and analyzed?

• Is contextual data used for future customer outreach?

Cadence

• Which channels does your company measure-web site visits, phone calls, IVR, store visits, face to face, social media?

• Does company make effective use of cross channel marketing to promote more frequent customer engagement?

• Does your company rate the patterns relevant for your product or service and monitor usage against this pattern?

• Does your company measure the frequency of both online and offline channels?

• Does your company apply metrics to the frequency of customer engagements with product or services revenues?

• Does your company consolidate data for customer engagement across various channels for a complete view of its customer?

Catalyst

• Does company offer coupon discounts?

• Does company have a customer loyalty program or a VIP membership program?

• Does company mine customer data to target specific groups of buyers?

• Do internal employees serve as ambassadors for customer programs?

• Does company drive loyalty through social media loyalty programs?

• Does company build rewards based on using loyalty data?

• Does company offer an employee incentive program to drive customer loyalty?