Author: Jon

Jon https://jweedon.wordpress.com
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When is an iPhone not an iPhone?

I find myself on the cusp of leaving my current mobile phone provider.

Not because I can get a better deal elsewhere. And not because their competitors offer better handsets or have erected more masts.

Let’s face it, an iPhone is an iPhone, a Blackberry is a Blackberry and a signal is a signal. Does it really matter which company you choose to provide yours? OK, so price can be a differentiator, but fierce competition means narrow pricing spreads. Which is nice.

For me the real differentiator is customer service.

On two separate occasions recently, one over the phone and the other in the flesh, my current mobile telecoms provider has stretched my patience to the limit and caused my blood to boil. The crime on both occasions was borne out of nothing more than indifference and laziness.

I’m not usually this tolerant. A single piss-poor customer experience is usually enough to push me into the outstretched arms of a competitor; something I have done twice in recent years, once with my digital TV provider and once with my mobile phone provider. That said, I’m normally a very loyal customer. Ask First Direct; I’ve been with them for 22 years and I still love them because of their exceptional telephone operators.

On this occasion it’s going to be a question of 3 strikes and you’re out, because in fairness up until a month ago they had been pretty damned good. But given that 3 out of the 4 mobile contracts in my household are with them, I’d say they are in a state of high risk.

I thought I’d try a little experiment. I’ve read quite a bit about how enlightened companies are using Twitter as an additional customer services channel by intercepting negative sentiment and proactively engaging with unhappy customers and turning them from public detractors to advocates. I even wrote about it myself back in April.

I thought I’d try my current mobile provider out. I’m going to give them a chance to redeem themselves by identifying me as a seriously pissed of customer and go some way to restoring my faith in them by showing some interest and offering me some assistance if appropriate.

Instead of complaining openly on Twitter in the traditional manner I’m going to try something a bit different. Through a few deliberately provocative tweets I’m going to give them the chance to identify me as their customer without me actually telling them that I am.

I’m hoping one or more of my tweets will lead them back to this page, where they can read that they have my explicit permission to call me, DM me or email me to discuss the reasons why I am so upset with them.

If they manage to do this I will not publish details of the two very shoddy customer experiences they have recently forced me to endure.

In order to narrow the field, I will merely say that O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile or Orange – it could be you…

I’m not Spartacus

There was something really quite exciting about seeing the deluge of support sweep across the twitterverse in real-time this morning. In a humbling display of defiance and solidarity, twittizens across the world ignited and united in support of one of their own, falsely accused and wrongly convicted.

His crime was to tweet 109 characters that went on to be interpreted by the judiciary as a menacing threat to blow up an airport: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” were the words he apparently wrote to a woman he was due to visit by plane from an airport closed by excessive snowfall.

So on the one hand I find myself rather impressed by the #IAmSpartacus campaign. It resulted in thousands of tweets replaying the offending message. It led to a pledge from the King of Twitter Mr Stephen Fry to pay the fine and associated court costs. It led to 360 news pieces on Google so far today…

On the other hand I chose not to join in all the fun and frolics because I do think that @pauljchambers was a touch foolish to tweet the words ‘airport’ and ‘blowing sky high’ in the same breath (as it were).

I’m sorry but was a bit silly.

But since when has being a bit silly become a criminal offence?

Anyone can see that there was no intent to cause alarm nor to be threatening in any way. In his own mind and in the mind of any right minded person, he was just engaging in a bit of harmless banter and bravado.

None of the pre-requisites of a proper bomb threat were in evidence. No contact with the airport. No intended victim. No attempt to hide his identity. No muffled phone call. No coded message. No known terrorist affiliations. No innocent bystanders at risk.

It looks like the police weren’t sure what they were dealing with. “I had to explain Twitter to them in its entirety because they’d never heard of it” @pauljchambers later told the Telegraph.

The real crime here was the blindingly obvious lack of understanding and common sense from the bench. The judge described the tweet in question as “menacing in its content and obviously so. It could not be more clear. Any ordinary person reading this would see it in that way and be alarmed.”

I think not. That’s just crazy talk…

Permission to send

Make no mistake about it, I do not consider employee communications sent by email SPAM. My definition of SPAM would include the words ‘bulk’, ‘unwanted’, ‘unsolicited’ and ‘indiscriminate’.

Even the most cynical and jaded employee could never accuse employee communications as being indiscriminate. By definition ‘bulk’ would apply as any broadcast employee communications are likely to be sent one-to-many. On the ‘unsolicited’ side, as an employee it would be pretty hard to argue that the company does not have a right and perhaps even a legal obligation to inform you of certain things relating to the work they are paying you for.

That leaves us with ‘unwanted’, which is where I think this discussion needs to focus. This is the basis of permission marketing. Why waste time sending messages to an unreceptive audience? A loyal and enthusiastic customer is likely to elect to receive marketing messages from their favourite brands providing they don’t overdo it. Similarly, a highly engaged employee is more likely to read an email from their CEO than one who has switched off from the company they work for.

So it is a constant challenge for Internal Communicators is to assess the penetration of their company’s broadcast emails.

My experience suggests that very few companies use email management systems/providers such as Vertical Response or dotMailer for their internal audiences. If they did this would be a pointless debate as all the metrics you’d need would be at your fingertips. Come to think of it, why not use these products for Internal Communications? Let’s leave that question for another day!

Most companies use enterprise email clients like Outlook. Yes you can see how many of your emails are never opened if you wish to deploy the read/unread request for every message you send out, but this doesn’t prove much and it annoys the hell out of email recipients. Yes you can survey staff or seek feedback through focus groups – but you can’t do that too often, so the granularity in detail you need will more than likely be missing.

There are many reasons why staff may chose not to read a broadcast email. Not seen as relevant, too long and wordy, annoying frequency, too busy, lost in all the noise, bad past experience etc. Without good feedback mechanisms we’ll never really know.

So why not stick an unsubscribe button on every Internal Communications broadcast email? On a message by message basis you will get instant feedback on the readers’ reaction to the email, measured by the number of unsubscribe requests.

You could then use this data to go back to the requestor on a one-to-one basis and seek feedback which could contribute to you changing the timing, frequency, content, and tone of future emails to improve their effectiveness. You could also use it as an opportunity to seek to change their mind about unsubscribing.

Ideally someone who has actually tried this could share their experience here. Is this something you have already considered and may try out in the future? Do you think your staff would be brave enough to hit the unsubscribe button?

The Social Media Revolution

Ask anyone which invention had the greatest impact on mankind and you’d probably get a mixed response. The wheel, gunpowder, the compass, the steam engine, electricity, sliced bread; take your pick.

Me? I’d go with the printing press.

Think about it. Over the history of civilisation, who has held the keys to social and economic power? Answer – the aristocracy, aided and abetted by the Church. In other words, those with access to education, culture and knowledge.

The printing press democratised education, culture and knowledge. Its contribution to spreading knowledge and learning destroyed the age of belief and blew apart the Church’s claim to a monopoly on knowledge. It paved the way for the Reformation, the Renaissance, Nationalism, the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, and pretty much everything else we see around us today.

So here’s the thing. If the printing press had such a profound effect on the advancement of mankind, what on earth is Social Media going to do to us? OK, so a single printing press in the 15th century could churn out 500 books in the time it took a scribe to write one. Those 500 books still needed to be distributed and consumed.

Just 20 years ago the giant publishing houses controlled much of the printed word. Today it is truly democratised. Anyone with access to a computer and the internet can publish whatever they want in a matter of seconds.

It is estimated today that there are around 1.4 million blogs in blogosphere, and around 900,000 million blog posts are published every day. Facebook has 500 million active users, who share over 30 billion pieces of content every month. Twitter has 100 million registered users and is growing at the rate of 300,000 per day, with 55 million tweets a day. 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, while the site enjoys 2 billion views per day. I could go on but I think you get my drift.

But before we get carried away on the tidal wave of social media euphoria, hold onto this thought. If you spit in someone’s face you’ll get their undivided attention. If you spit into the middle of the Pacific Ocean no one will ever know.

The power now resides with those who can help us navigate through all of this stuff.

Unclear proliferation

We live in a connected world. Buyers have found new ways to buy. Sellers have found new ways to sell. Motorists have found new ways to insure. Students have found new ways to study. Writers have found new ways to publish. Recruiters have found new ways to recruit. Gamblers have found new ways to gamble. Musicians have found new ways to be heard. Families and friends have found new ways to share.

In under a second Google can find more stuff than a pre-internet research assistant could have hoped to have found in a lifetime. In a matter of minutes companies can be rocked to the core by the whiff scandal spreading across the globe faster than the speed of light through multiple virtual channels that are virtually impossible to control.

Yep. We live in a connected world all right.

Many companies are jumping on the social media express, leveraging new and exciting communication technologies and behaviours to find new ways of connecting with their customers and staff. So given the ease, speed and reach of communication technology these days, it’s little wonder we all understand our company’s strategy right?

Wrong. On the contrary, while the world around us has never been more open, transparent and accessible, life in a typical organisation has never been more opaque and trust has never been in such scarce supply.

Why is that? Could it be because many organisations still hang on to the mechanical, bureaucratic, command and control models of organisation that have been with us since the days of the carrier pigeon? Is it because they still cascade carefully crafted, legally sanitised state of the nation speeches through multiple layers of distracted or disengaged management? And because they strip out any semblance of personality from CEO communications to make sure they don’t put a foot wrong, nor waste a single precious word? Somebody told me the other day that their company still sends memorandums around in the internal post! For sure – this could be part of the problem.

Too many organisations continue to inflict somewhat outmoded values and behaviours on an increasingly sophisticated young workforce; a workforce which is already shunning email because it’s too damn slow. Banning Facebook? What’s all that about? You may as well ban prayer in the mosque or swimming at the pool.

I am a very enthusiastic champion of social media. Getting active on Twitter has expanded my professional horizons immeasurably and demonstrated the power of networking on and offline. So when Yammer popped up inside the organisation I was one of the very early adopters because I got it. I didn’t need convincing. I tweet, therefore I yam.

And Yammer has been a very positive experience for my company. It has got our people sharing ideas, intelligence, information and (dare I say it) banter, across the company irrespective of traditional organisational boundaries, allegiances and geographies. It provides us with a means to improve knowledge management, collaboration and innovation in ways I had not thought possible just a few short years ago.

However, it has also given us another channel to contend with. Another application which needs to be opened up every morning, and another source of potentially distracting real-time alerts set to interrupt us as we go about our work.

As you can imagine this causes me some conflict as I have been beating the social media drum hard and fast for quite some time in and out of work; while at the same time witnessing my own increasing failure to keep track of an ever growing number of external and internal sources I rely on for professional and industry news, views and ideas.

I managed a wry smile when I read the following tongue-in-cheek plea for a ‘ceasefire’ recently on one of my favourite community forums:

“Most working days start with logging in to desktop, Yammer, Intranet, IM, Jabber, Jira, Confluence, Conference Calls, Outlook, OCS and getting a coffee. By then it’s almost time for lunch.”

Beware folks, there’s many a true word spoken in jest. As Internal Communicators we absolutely need to embrace these new channels, but we cannot let them multiply at will with no checks or balances. There is a clear and present danger that important information and meaning gets lost in all the noise. Rather than bringing more clarity, the proliferation of communication channels could well be making things less clear. There needs to be some form of unclear deterrent if we are to avoid meltdown.

When it comes to Internal Communications you need to have a single source of truth. One place that staff enjoy visiting and trust; which is a well-managed, easy to find and full of good quality up-to-date, fresh content. I still believe that place is an intranet; albeit the 2.0 versions built on blogging software that encourages instant feedback and interaction as well as opt in/opt out and ‘alert me’ functionality.

Sure, drive footfall through a multi-channel approach, including word of mouth, email, noticeboards, video on demand, and the pervasive SM channels including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn that to varying degrees most staff are using already. But do just that – drive footfall. Don’t repeat the same messages time and time again across every different channel. It’s called spam and your audience will switch off sharpish if you do it.

Social Media in particular should not be used by corporate communicators for pumping out corporate messages. These channels are designed for discussion not presentation; relationship building not hectoring and lecturing.

Everywhere I look I see people predicting the demise of the machine bureaucracy and the rise of the ‘networked’ or ‘connected’ organisation. Centralisation will be swept aside by decentralisation; formal hierarchy will bow down to informal networks; executive planning will succumb to collective learning; leadership will be usurped by the ‘wisdom of crowds’ and instead of working for departments, we will all band together in tribes. Their message is clear – organisations that fail to embrace these new paradigms are dinosaurs heading for extinction.

Poppycockasaurus. It’s all a matter of balance. Machine Bureaucracies that loosen up a little and open their minds to the new possibilities and opportunities offered by embracing the ‘networked’ or ‘connected’ revolution will live long and prosper. But only if they hang on tightly to some of their rigour and discipline at the same time.

And thrusting new business upstarts will find that all that flashes, blinks and swarms is not necessarily the route to salvation and sustainability. There will always be a place for strong leadership and high level company strategy will never successfully be determined by an all-staff vote.

Maybe, just maybe I could be persuaded to turn up for work in a loin cloth.

Chugger off!

Figures suggest that on any given weekday around 500 face-to-face charity fundraisers can be found on UK high streets. Affectionately known as chuggers, a word derived from combining ‘charity’ with ‘mugger’, my local high street seems have more than its fair share of the pesky buggers.

I have no issue with the chuggers themselves of course – they’re only trying to earn an honest crust after all. What bothers me more is the charities who employ them.

Research indicates that two-thirds of the Great British public would cross the road to avoid a chugger and that 25 per cent of people actually hate being approached by one.

Assuming that there is some substance to this research, the stark reality is that deploying chuggers cannot be good for a charity’s reputation. Can you imagine any kind of successful commercial entity operating in a way that knowingly alienates more potential customers than it pleases?

The Public Fundraising Regulatory Association (PFRA) takes a very interesting stance on this very issue. In answer to the FAQ do people have a right to walk down the street without being asked to give to charity they state:

“Sorry if we sound a bit blunt, but, do they, actually? We frequently hear versions of this argument… we don’t want to come across as being flippant and dismissive, but we really think the basis of this whole argument requires closer examination. Where does this ‘right’ come from?”

Well yes, this does sound a touch dismissive and pretty complacent actually. Perhaps they should take heed and do something about it rather than pretend it is not a real problem which is affecting the reputations of their members on a daily basis.

The return on investment for charities that chug is around 3 to 1, which I guess to them must seem pretty attractive. But do supporters really want to see a third of their donations lining the pockets of the chuggers rather than go directly to the charity? I know I don’t and personally I think it lacks imagination and is lazy fundraising.

I have a soft spot for charities who choose to communicate and engage with potential supporters directly and in a way that creates a positive and sustainable relationship, especially those who use volunteers and ambassadors to spread the word.

I know it isn’t easy, but I’d like to see a lot more hugging and a lot less chugging.

Marketing bull

There’s nothing like a bit of marketing bullshit to invigorate your day.

You know the kind of stuff I’m on about: “I need a cradle to grave solution pronto – I want you to shoot for the moon but let’s not boil the ocean on this one amigos, we simply don’t have the bandwidth”…

I’m delighted to report that in my relatively short experience with my current employer I don’t see much of this (other than when agencies pop in to pitch for some business and the occasional chai latte).

So imagine my surprise when I received a draft communication recently from one of our own Marketing boys about a new product he wanted to let everyone know about, which contained the following line:

“…as part of our overall drive to dial up the volume button on our value pillar and to make value core to our brand this year across all channels…”

On the whole, the draft was actually a beautifully written piece and got the message across perfectly until this sliding tackle from behind left me with no choice but to reach for the yellow card.

My modest contribution to improving this line was to simplify the text by removing the offending words, leaving:

“…as part of our overall drive to make value core to our brand this year across all channels…”

Hands up anyone who thinks the volume button and value pillar will be missed?

Space invaders

We have been hijacking everyone’s Windows lock screen at work on and off for a while now. It gives us a nice instant attention grabbing opportunity to remind people of something that is going on, for example a product launch, or as in today’s instance, a donor drive for the Anthony Nolan Trust. It’s non-intrusive in that it only appears when you unlock your screen after periods of inactivity or being away from your desk, and provided you don’t overdo it, it is a nice highly visual trigger to supplement other more conventional communications channels.

And then we went one step too far. The Marketing Team decided to create a series of branded images celebrating our commercial arrangements with Manchester United and Barcelona, for whom we are the official betting partner. Within hours people were complaining about having their ‘personal space’ invaded by an image of the Red Devils. They have a point. We have a very diverse workforce; however the one thing you can say about most of our staff is that they love their sport.

OK, so we can all be proud of our official betting partner status with arguably the two biggest club sides in the world. But if you support Liverpool, Chelsea, or Manchester City do you really want to see Manchester United players staring out of your screen at you every day?

With emotions running high I took the opportunity to throw up an instant poll on our intranet and a few days later the results made very interesting reading.

“The screensaver on my work computer belongs to the company – they can put anything they like on there.”

Admittedly the Wayne Rooney reference was a bit of a gag given all of the nonsense in the tabloid press recently, but I must confess that I expected a slightly higher percentage of staff to agree with the seemingly blindingly obvious statement that the company can do what they want with everyone’s desktop given that it belongs to them.

After a couple of hundred votes, representing well over 10% of the company, nearly a third of respondents made a clear statement that the screen on their work computer belongs to them and thereby implying that we have no right to intrude upon it.

So either I try to look for ways to change this mindset, which I must confess is rather tempting, or I simply accept this as a genuine sentiment and try to make sure that future images are slightly more palatable to what clearly has the potential to be a a highly partisan crowd.

What would you do?

Ninja worrier

Emotional stress is a killer. It is a major contributor to heart disease and other life threatening illnesses. It also causes exhaustion, irritability, angry outbursts, muscular tension and poor concentration levels.

So a stressed employee is unlikely to return optimal performance right? And what is worry if it is not a manifestation of emotional stress?

I don’t worry about much. I certainly never worry about things beyond my control. I don’t tend to worry about things within my control either because I have always found that worrying about things rarely, if ever, contributes to making them better. I have always enjoyed a quiet but resolute confidence in my own ability to make the right decisions, exercise sound judgement and produce good quality work on time without the need to panic or get stressed about missing details or deadlines.

This of course does not mean that I don’t sometimes let people down. Of course I do, we all do, but the people or projects that may have to wait for something are invariably the victims of necessary prioritisation.

Over the years I have learned how my apparent state of calmness even under considerable duress (a skill I acquired during my 15 year stint with the Metropolitan Police) can infuriate people, especially worriers. I guess it’s easy for a worrier to misinterpret my own lack of worry as a lack of interest or even focus; which actually could not be further from the truth.

Years ago I worked for a very talented lady who was also a ninja worrier. She used to react to the pressures of work by winding herself up into a state of increasingly heightened emotion, which occasionally led her to explode in violent rages. And I of course made things worse by not reacting by jumping to attention and running around like a madman pretending to looked stressed.

I was a rower for many years and if rowing teaches you anything it teaches you to remain calm and to channel and control your power so that it makes a positive contribution to the smooth passage of the boat.

If you get anxious and rush in at the catch, it’s like hitting the break pedal instead of the accelerator. The whole crew suffers when you rush your stroke. They have to compensate for your action and work harder themselves. It’s all about controlled aggression.

The truth is, these days, the only thing I ever worry about is the fact that I never worry about anything.

Fixing match fixing

You have no idea how disappointed I am in the latest scandal to hit International cricket. Not because I’m a huge cricket fan. Actually, it is one of the few sports I can take or leave. No, I’m disappointed because the inevitable naysayers start pointing fingers in the direction of the legal and legitimate betting operations that are actually doing more to clean up sport than most people imagine.

My old boss likes to use a tidy analogy on the subject; that blaming the gambling industry for corruption in sport is a bit like holding Boots (the chemist) responsible for the illegal trade in cocaine. I think he makes a very good point.

I was told last year by someone who knows these things that every time India play a test match around $1bn is gambled illegally in India. I read another estimate today written a few years ago, putting the figure closer to $25bn a year even back then.

No wonder with numbers like that that criminal syndicates control these illegal gambling operations, and that they can afford to make it worth their while to ensure they always have an edge when it comes to predicting the outcome of a match, or indeed the outcome of small, tactical ‘spot’ bets during a match.

Such opportunities are dramatically reduced where gambling is properly controlled, licensed and regulated. Where gambling companies only accept bets from customers who they know. Where gambling companies enter into agreements with sporting authorities to voluntarily share information and intelligence about suspicious betting patterns and who is behind them.

Only online betting creates this transparency and provides a level playing field for every customer. Like stock exchanges across the globe know full well, integrity of the markets is everything. Without it, customer confidence is eroded and liquidity will eventually dry up. In fact I’m surprised that traditional bookmakers are allowed to accept over the counter bets from people who walk in off the street without knowing who these people are, but that’s another story.

Match fixing allegations go back to time immemorial, and it is inevitable that pressure will be brought to bear on individuals to prostitute themselves and their sport either through fear or greed, until such time as governments step up to the mark and properly regulate the activity and thereby cut out the criminals currently profiteering from their inertia.