Please Tell Me the Social Media Fad is Dying
One chapter of a prominent professional organization is trumpeting its regional conference with the headline: “Social Media Rocks.”
Social media may rock, but that’s not the point.
To be sure, some social media can be useful tools for achieving business goals by communicating faster, less expensively and with more flexibility. For example, we helped a company implement collaboration software (wiki)to improve idea sharing across functions as part of a new product development process.
The point is whether some of today’s most pressing business problems have anything to do with social media, or the lack of them. What is the business case for using social media to fix quality, service, cost, speed, productivity, or safety problems in your organization? If it’s there, by all means use them. If not, don’t be sucked in by all the marketing hype.
For the uninitiated, social media include podcasts, blogs and wikis and online sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and a gazillion others. They enable people to communicate interactively (hence, “social”).
Within any business, communication is a process to be managed rather than a narrow set of tools that somehow magically come together in the best interests of the customer. Yet, many people are treating social media as the holy grail. “Social Media Rocks.” These folks lack business perspective, and an appreciation of history.
We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that social media represent tools in a huge inventory of other tools and processes, the most antiquated of which is (gasp!) face-to-face relationships and human interaction.
Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago when the shiny new toys were desktop publishing, audio-visual/synched slide shows, email, PowerPoint, two-way video-conferencing, intranets and so on. Now it’s social media. As with the other shiny new toys, social media are and will continue to find their niche.
Many CEO’s I talk to understand this history and the need to have a business case for solutions they adopt. Yet they are being pressured by staff people who want their CEO to be perceived as “contemporary.” They’re being pressured to develop social media strategires without first understanding the business problems the media are intended to address. To these leaders under pressure, I encourage you to keep resisting until someone can demonstrate value. That’s what your customers and shareholders expect of you.
I hope the social media discussion is turning a corner–from fad to legitimate business solution.
Creating Ownership in New Cultural Values
Q. How can you ensure employee buy-in when new organisational values are created?
Our organisation is going through the process of creating new values. Staff are involved in this process. I know there are lots of factors involved in getting staff buy-in, but wondered if there are any particularly effective ways of communicating the values to the whole organisation. Thank you.
Communication Leader, United Kingdom
A. Values are represented by “the way we do things.” The actions you take communicate your values. So, if your intent is to change how you do things, people need to 1) understand the business case for taking the action, 2) know how they can influence desired results, 3) understand what actions are acceptable and unacceptable given the desired culture 4) believe it’s in their best interests to act in accordance with the new way and 5) have the resources they need to take those actions. This, plus being involved in the process will go a long way.
Learn from the hundreds of companies in the eighties and nineties that sabotaged their change efforts by plastering vision and values posters on their company walls. I’ve never seen a correlation between the number of values posters on walls and hallways and in a company’s stock price.
It’s what you do–not just what you say–that will generate ownership.
Build Loyalty with a Customer Service Playbook
By Don Reynolds, Jim Shaffer Group Partner
This year’s MSN Annual “Hall of Shame” Survey identifies companies that deliver the worst customer service. In most cases, more than a third of their customers rated overall customer service as poor.
To a large degree, these results reflect industry customer satisfaction in general–poor service performance outpaces service excellence.
Unfortunately, the service levels reflected in this survey are likely to continue into 2010 because of actions companies have taken during the recession. The number of employees who work directly with customers has been reduced. Companies have cut back on training and improvements in technology to serve customers better. Meanwhile customer expectations will continue to increase.
Leaders should take cues from leading sports teams that create playbooks that identify specifically what team members need to do–and the resources they need–in specific situations to maximize their performance.
Here’s what your service excellence playbook should describe:
1. Specific processes that need to work well and actions your people can take to improve critical service encounters your customers have with your organization. There can be as few as 10 to as many as 50 critical service interactions for customers to judge your performance excellence (or lack thereof).
2. A defensive game plan identifying performance factors where there is a downside if customer expectations are not met, but where there is a limited upside potential if customer expectations are exceeded.
3. An offensive game plan identifying actions that need to be taken because exceeding customer expectations has a significant upside.
How do you start?
First, map the overall customer experience–examining the experience from your employees’ and customers’ perspectives. What do your customers require? What’s important and unimportant to them? What do you do well and what do you not do well? Compare this importance/performance mapping to the various encounters customers have with you and how each encounter can improve loyalty or increase dissatisfaction when not met.
Identify which encounters your people need to focus on improving and what might prevent them from doing so. What support is needed from human resources, communication, learning and development and information technology to enable your people to deliver?
Create, implement and regularly monitor/measure a plan to eliminate barriers to your people delivering superior service.
Continuously raise the bar and improve over and over again.
Jim Shaffer