Yesterday I had the opportunity of participating in a great webcast (recording of which I’m told will be posted to the FASTforward blog later today) with Richard Binhammer of Dell.com and Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt of Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation about “Putting the Social in Customer Experience”. Both Dell and Best Buy have been pushed the envelope in how they are engaging with their audiences – both internal and external – across their own online properties and out in other social networking experiences they don’t control. (As Richard said it best, “What’s the ROI on *not* engaging more closely with your audiences?” J) David Rogers of Columbia Business School did a very nice job in moderating helping these really innovative and smart guys explain how their companies are embracing social media experiences to collect market information, from customers and co-workers, and use that insight to build better products and serve customers better.

From Microsoft’s perspective, we in the Enterprise Search Group are excited to see more and more companies understanding how search is moving beyond just a search box to an enabler of compelling user experiences which bring the voice of the customer into the discovery, purchase and post-sale service process. The right search experience allows you to gather social intelligence and leverage where the social expertise flows, lives, and grows. Searching user-generated content and incorporating user behavior to drive social recommendations, can help your business build participatory communities to grow sales revenues for e-commerce sites, increase subscription and advertising revenues for media companies, and dramatically improve customer satisfaction.

Take ISP Telstra BigPond, Australia’s largest internet service provider, for example. BigPond uses search and recommendations technologies to track customer preferences, point online customers to music, games and video on demand, and to help customers recommend favorites to their friends from their huge range of entertainment services – ultimately building customer loyalty and revenue for their online properties.

I’m looking forward to the next conversation in the FASTforward Insight Series: “Putting the “Social” in Customer Experience” on March 10th at 2 p.m. ET.

The series, which kicked off with a great discussion between Clay Shirky and Euan Semple a month ago and continues through the spring, examines how the emergence of the Social Web and the Social Enterprise is changing the way people browse and buy, search and act on content, and connect to their friends and peers. It also touches on many of the topics and themes that were discussed a few weeks ago at FASTforward’09 in Las Vegas, including the panel discussion I hosted with Jevon, Jon, Euan and Lynda, and that have been discussed here on this blog since its launch by our insightful FASTforward Blog contributors.

In the March 10th discussion, we will look at how market leaders from companies such as Best Buy and Dell are embracing social strategies and tools and embedding them in how their companies attract, retain, and engage with customers. These stories and the many others surfacing these days are fascinating and reinforce what we heard from Clay, Charlene Li and Don Tapscott at FASTforward’09 as well as what we’re thinking about and working hard on here at Microsoft.

The panelists include Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt, the founders of Blue Shirt Nation, and Richard Binhammer, aka Richard@Dell, and will be moderated by David Rogers, the executive director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School.

Find out more, check out the “takeaways” and please join us on March 10th.