He is a regular blogger for Lithium and in the Lithosphere you'll see him as PaulGi. You can follow him on Twitter at @lithiumtech or @bladefrog
LiNC 2011 is a week behind us. It's been a little bit of a whirlwind in reality, with very little time to reflect on everything that happened last week.
Like all of us, business rarely sits still, and this week I headed off to Manhattan to talk with some customers.
Now that I am sat on a plane heading back westwards to San Francisco, I wanted to get down some thoughts about this year's Social Customer Excellence Awards, affectionately known by us all as the Lithys.
Now this is proving a little challenging sat in 34F of my flight, and I am sure the passenger next to me loves my elbow in his side while he is watching the Heat vs Bulls on the in flight entertainment... but we do what we must, right?
I like telling customer stories, it's part of my job at Lithium. I am pretty privileged in my role to talk with some of the smartest, most motivated and leading edge --sometimes bleeding edge-- social strategists and practitioners about what they do.
The Lithys is the opportunity for those customers to tell their own stories, have them voted and commented on by their peers and, possibly, be rewarded in front of everyone for their achievements.
This year the Lithy's were harder than ever to judge. There were 23 entries across our six categories:
- Best Community ROI
- Most Innovative Social Customer Program
- Best Social Insight
- Best Community Business Integration
- Best Community Story or Anecdote
- Best New Community (launched after 6.1.10)
When I launched the program for this year, a couple of entries came into the Lithosphere, but I was a little worried that we might not get as much interest as last year. Really, I didn't need to worry as you all started to submit incredible entries.
The thing that I wasn't expecting was the level of excitement at LiNC itself, with people trying to grill me about who had won...
So without further ado, here is the 2011 Social Customer Excellence Award Winners
Best Community ROI – Tom Tom
Finalists: AT&T, HP Consumer Support, Slimgenics
Most Innovative Social Customer Program - HP Consumer Support
Finalists: Research in Motion, Riverbed, Sephora, Silverpop, The Home Depot, Verizon Residential
Best Social Insight - Sephora
Finalists: Research in Motion, Slimgenics, Verizon Residential
Best Community Business Integration - Verizon Residential
Finalists: Research in Motion, Sephora, Slimgenics,
Best Community Story or Anecdote – Lenovo / Research in Motion - We just couldn't decide between these two great superfan stories
Finalists: HP Consumer Support, Sephora, Slimgenics
Best New Community (after 6.1.10) – The Home Depot
Finalists: Best Buy Canada, BSkyB, Rogers Communications, TomTom, Sephora, Slimgenics, Xerox
Congratulations to all our winners, Oh and sorry again to the HP team who I insisted on saying HP Consumer Reports, not Consumer Support... Sigh - sorry about that guys!!
