founder, Caitlin Begg
Combining 7+ years of client experience and in-house sociological research
Our story
Founded in 2016 after Harvard undergraduate sociology thesis
Left LinkedIn in 2017 to pursue Authentic Social full-time
Authentic Social Founder Caitlin Begg started Authentic Social in 2016 after writing her Harvard sociology thesis on virtual impressions and how technology affects communication + relationships.
We've been in business for 7+ years without any venture capital or outside funding because of our research-first approach.
Over the last seven years, we noticed that most organizational issues can be traced back to some type of interpersonal or intersystem conversation dysfunction, especially within the contexts of hybrid and remote work.
As an extension of her 2016 Harvard sociology thesis, Caitlin now researches technology's effect on conversation and sociotechnical systems. Within these contexts, further areas of research include the future of work, artificial intelligence’s impact on conversation, and more. This research is constantly integrated into processes and methods for Authentic Social, and she presents the research around the U.S. and Europe.
WHAT IS SOCIOTECHNICAL
SYSTEMS STRATEGY?
WHAT IS SOCIOTECHNICAL
SYSTEMS STRATEGY?
"Sociotechnical systems" refers to social and technical parts of an organization. Sociotechnical systems strategy involves prioritizing the joint optimization of social and technical systems for organizational success.
In simple terms: aligning people, products, and processes to optimize performance and reduce inefficiencies.
More about the history of sociotechnical systems, dating back to the 1950s
Some areas of focus
Social selling process re-design, improvement, and mapping
Communication strategy for hybrid and remote organizations
When most organizations want to optimize sales or communication processes, they usually:
Ignore the problem and focus on only technical solutions (The flawed "ANOTHER SOFTWARE WILL FIX THIS!" mindset)
Work with a big-name consulting company that locks you into multi-year seven-figure contracts, and whose staff often lack sales and communication-specific knowledge and research
Work with a "sales / communication guru" who promises (and then inevitably fails) to solve all of your organization's woes overnight
Authentic
Social
Method
ASSESSMENT
To begin, Authentic Social conducts a proprietary sociotechnical and qualitative analysis of the organization to properly identify areas for improvement. Some organizations choose to just
IMPLEMENTATION
Customized to fit your organizations needs and timeline, Authentic Social then implements the recommendations from phase one. This includes regular meetings, hands-on approach, and onsites whenever possible.
ADVISORY
To ensure continued success of your investment, Authentic Social then stays on in an advisory capacity; working with your team to ensure success. The timing and intensity of this can be adjusted according to your organizations' unique needs.
3x increase in appointments for top partner of Fortune 1,000 B2B tech company.
Worked with large team of reps across business lines to increase business development effectiveness. Within first quarter of engagement, 3x increase in appointments. Over the course of a year, 5.2x increase in appointments YoY.
Select Client Examples
Fortune 100 B2B tech sales leadership benefitted from sociotechnical selling training, leading to improved cross-functional knowledge, communication, and performance.
In work with company's sales leadership, focused on sociotechnical selling training, leveraging technology, sociological methods, and a relationship-forward approach for improved social selling strategies.
32% increase in response rate, 8x increase in appointments for B2B tech startup.
Trained new and existing business development representative team. Organization was having major issues with pipeline and outbound leads - an average of ~1.2 appointments / month per business development representative. Extremely low response rate (single digits). Within a quarter of engagement, response rate drastically increased and resulted in a 8x increase in appointments.
Get in touch
We are based in lower Manhattan. You can reach us at (646) 360-0246 or info@authsocial.com.
Research
Learn more about founder Caitlin Begg's independent sociological research at