On Wednesday, October 19, 2016, the world’s first Workplace by Facebook User Group took place at ServiceRocket headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. The topic for the first meeting was “Why Workplace.” Rob Castaneda, founder and CEO of ServiceRocket hosted an open and engaging discussion with special guest, Ursula Llabres, Head of Customer Success, Americas for Workplace by Facebook.

 

Rob kicked off the discussion with a brief summary of his article, Why Workplace by Facebook will win, in which he argues that Workplace represents the first communications platform that focuses on a mobile-first workforce of employees who do not sit at a desk all day long and in some cases do not have email. It is the first tool that has the promise of connecting all employees, not just white collar workers. 

 

That is a huge change in employee communications and collaboration. 

 

 

Rob asked Ursula how often she uses email at Facebook when communicating with her team. Ursula responded with, “Zero. Almost Zero. I mean, not at all."

 

Rob then shares his email stats, stating that he used a tool called Gmail Meter to measure his email use. In the first full month using Workplace, Rob’s volume of internal email dropped nearly 30%. And without even trying. For Rob, email has become his foreign affairs department…a means for communicating with the outside world. 

 

But Ursula then challenged even that assumption that email must be used for communicating with people outside of a company's domain (customers, partners, vendors, suppliers, etc), introducing the concept of multi-company groups.

 

 

Multi-company groups are semi-private groups that allow you to communicate with people outside of your domain using the standard Workplace Group features. In this scenario, there would be little need to communicate with customers, partners, vendors, suppliers, etc, using email because it could all be done the multi-company group. 

 

After Ursula and Rob chatted a bit, they took questions from the audience.

 

Ursula responded to an important question about the early adopter use cases. There are three that she described at a high level.

 

First, Workplace is optimized to connect all employees, especially and including connecting employees that do not have email and do not sit at desks all day. Practically speaking, this is a first in enterprise collaboration technology, which are currently optimized for people with computers and sitting at desks. What about the flight attendants, field technicians, and retail store sales staff? In a mobile-first world, these employees do not have computers or email addresses at work, but they do have mobile phones with the ability to have the Workplace App and to communicate and engage with everyone else in their companies.  

 

Second, Ursula talked about the crisis communications use case of non-profit organizations needing to connect staff and global volunteers around events occurring around the world, who do not have laptops or for whom mobile phones are a much more practical way to communicate. 

 

Third, is the broad internal, company-wide communications use case in which company executive teams want to engage employees around company messages in a more direct way. The most visible manifestation of this is using live video to broadcast meetings and take questions, live (in comments) from the audience.

 

For global companies this is huge and does not require the logistical expense and resources of a large-scale A/V infrastructure. Just turn on your phone and go (although a high-quality condenser microphone makes a big different in audio quality). Moreover, conversations can continue after the live stream is over in the comments. 

 

Rob then described how he now uses live streaming in Workplace to broadcast ServiceRocket’s all-hands meetings. 

 

The promise of the intranet was to be the place where employees start their day. But the content is too stale and too one-way.

 

Ursula described it this way: the intranet is now the place where people go to collaborate. It starts with people. Content follows. Not the other way around. 

 

 

I will not describe everything that happened at the user group, you should watch the video and attend future sessions. I will just tease you with some of the audience questions that spurred interesting conversations.

 

There were some of the questions raised by people who attended:

What’s next you ask? Well, we have meetings already scheduled for November and December. Topics and speakers have not been finalized, as they do, there will be messaging sent to members of the User Group. So join it now. 

 

I hope to see you at future meetings.