Next week, Oracle plans to launch their Oracle Listens program, a way for customers and partners to provide feedback to the company in an open and transparent way. (Disclosure: I was asked by Oracle to provide feedback on an early version of Oracle Listens. Content for this post was obtained in a formal, on-the-record briefing.)
The main page of Oracle Listens has a single, simple box with the encouragement, "Enter your idea for Oracle here." (see a screenshot to the left). There's also some light text explaining how Oracle Listens works.
The user is then taken to Oracle Mix, the company's existing community site where users can create a profile, groups, and most importantly, submit ideas and engage in Q&A with each other.
Karen Tillman, VP of Corporate Communications at Oracle, said that the goal is to "provide a level of transparency that's available with social networks. We're making sure the customers and partners are being heard and networking with the right people in the Oracle ecosystem."
To that end, about 30 top Oracle executives will be reacting and commenting to ideas being submitted. In addition, marketing and product managers are being encouraged to participate in the conversation, and these employees' responses will be highlighted as coming from "expert" contributors. The executives will be actively participating until the start of Oracle Open World September 21st. (I asked Karen if we'd be hearing from Larry Ellison -- her response was classic, "You just never know!")
But what's most interesting is where you'll find Oracle Listens -- whenever someone visits www.oracle.com, they will be redirected to the Oracle Listens page. This will happen for about two weeks until Open World, and then will move to a spot on the regular Oracle home page.
To me, this is the most audacious part of the program -- that they are hijacking ALL traffic to the Oracle.com and diverting them to Oracle Listens. It's a bold move that highlights how serious Oracles is about listening to and embracing their customers and partners. And more importantly, they are mobilizing resources within the company to be available to respond to incoming ideas.
When I talked with Karen Tillman and Oracle Listens project manager Marius Ciortea, they expect there to be some hiccups, but that they'll listen to the feedback make changes, and "keep on plugging". And the risks are many. Regular Oracle.com visitors will be annoyed to have to click through Oracle Listens each time visit to get to the regular home page. Ideas submitted may be lame, receive tepid or no responses and submitters get annoyed. Responses from executives and employees may be tepid, wrong, or worst, non-existent.
But I think the biggest risk is that Oracle as an organization does not sustain the effort over the long term. By design, Oracle Listens is a program -- okay, it's basically a campaign -- that will culminate at Open World in a few weeks. But what happens after that? Once Oracle's customers/partners get a taste of this "new" Oracle, they are going to want more, and the risk is that Oracle executives and employees will go back to their daily routines. But I suspect that some executives and employees -- not all, but some -- will also get hooked and will stay engaged.
Overall, I'm impressed. It's not often that a company makes this visible an effort to engage their customers. All too often, initiatives like this are buried behind a link somewhere on the home page, if it's there at all.
One interesting piece of background. The Oracle Listens program was the outcome of an internal marketing leadership summit that the company had in January. Present during the brainstorming was Oracle President Charles Phillips, who embraced the idea from the start. Karen related that with Charles' support, they didn't face many battles in making it happen. This demonstrates just how crucial executive sponsorship is when it comes to social strategies.
Once Oracle Listens goes live, I hope you'll give it a whirl - and let me how it could be improved. Hey, while you're at it, submit it to Oracle!
