Customer Service on Twitter

Now that I have finally finished my exams, I can get back to blogging and catching up on my RSS feeds etc. One of the things that I have been looking at on Twitter is corporate organisations responding to customer queries, complaints and comments via their own branded channel.

Just like they should keep an eye on what is being said about them in the blogosphere, it is equally important to go that extra mile and help their customers on Twitter. I think it shows proactive engagement on their part.

Some banking examples include:

• RBC - http://twitter.com/RBC
• Citi - http://twitter.com/Citicorp
• Bank of America - http://twitter.com/BofA_help

For the organisations, this a low cost initiative, but has a potentially high positive effect on the customer who is looking for information. The answers to many of the queries are often simple links to existing FAQ and help material on their existing websites.

Approach seems to differ from organisation to organisation. Some have a single channel, while others allow separation of context by having a separate twitter stream per business unit (i.e. One for Credit Cards, another for Online Banking etc). It will be interesting to see if this type of web 2.0 customer service becomes mainstream, as you would almost expect the big players listed above to be leaders in this domain.

The main point here is that organisations must be aware of what is happening on the web in relation to customers making comment and publishing queries which are there to be answered. What better way to serve them than directly embracing the social media and making a difference to each one.

COP - Dublin Wiki Wednesday

As mentioned in my previous post, I presented a case study of my dissertation project to the MSc in Knowledge Managment course last Saturday at the Dublin institute of Technology. During this presentation, it emerged that a number of the current class are also working on enterprise wiki deployments in their organisations.

As we discussed the many aspects of introducing "the wiki way" into an organisation, I realised that there were lots of things that we could share with each other as this young technology starts to take hold. I suggested that we could investigate the creation of a wiki community of practice to provide a forum for idea sharing and best practice to be accessible to those around Dublin.

So, this week we are in the early stages of working out how best to approach this initiative. I am quite excited about the prospect, as I have read about other "Wiki Wednesday" groups in places like Toronto and London. I hope that we can engage an enthusiastic group of practitioners to participate towards making it a success.

Lots more on this to come!

Banking on Knowledge at MIT

MIT's Media Laboratory and Bank of America are teaming up to examine the future of online banking. The newly created Center for Future Banking will explore the impact of web computing and social networking on the way people manage their finances.

This is something which really interests me, as banks and financial services organisations are often conservative when it comes to innovative schemes like this one. It comes back to the question of whether or not you want your bank to be innovative and outlooking. You would probably want them to be more dependable and consistent.

However, as customer trends are showing, internet and convenience banking channels are becoming more popular. This is particularly evident amongst Gen x and y customers, who are being brought up on the web, and being digital natives, would prefer to transact online.

Some of the questions which the center will aim to address include:

How can every customer be empowered with the knowledge and tools to take better control of their financial futures?

This is where knowledge management on the inside can start to show on your customer-facing channels. I am a big fan of corporate blogging and podcasting, especially where the organisation is using web2.0 media to provide advice for customers. I have spoken before about the RaboDirect podcast series, which was a series of podcasts offering financial advice on a number of topics.

While this may not have brought in millions, it was the number #1 business podcast here in Ireland. It is time for others to follow suit, in a market which is still a niche, but one in which the early birds could benefit from.

How will banking interactions evolve as a customer’s physical and virtual worlds become completely intertwined?

This is an area in which environments like second life have begun to expose as a potential new market. I have experienced live IM sessions with Dell support staff recently, and found them to be much more informative and engaging than waiting on the end of the line listening to Whitney Houston for 20 minutes!

Organisations such as RBC are leading the field here, with virtual agents, a presence on facebook, and an excellent site, called RBC p2p on which 6 students blog to their peers about their financial experiences. This is where organisations need to be, in the same network as their customers. This has moved from the street to the participative web online.

Some organisations have already shown that building a community of customers enables you to provide an improved knowledge providing relationship while being able to gather valuable feedback at the same time - thus they become prosumers as defined by Don Tapscott in Wikinomics. A great example of this is the Sony Vaio user community.

How will social networks and mobile platforms transform customers’ banking experiences, making it easier, more convenient, and better integrated with their daily lives?

This is the golden question! We have seen how internet banking has transformed customer interactions since the late 90's, with a high percentage of customers now managing their finances through their banks online portal.

The demands will grow for more functions and increased engagement over new channels such as mobile internet banking and increased information sharing between banks and their customers.

This partnership will be interesting, as more and more organisations enter this unknown market.

Social Collaboration on the Intranet at BT

Richard Dennison has posted a great case study about Web 2.0 adoption at BT on his blog called Inside Out. It is great to see such transparency and openness in this case, as often this type of information is considered to be the 'competitive advantage' every organisation craves.

However, in the world of social computing, collaboration and knowledge management - things are different! By sharing the experiences of the successes and failures, practitioners can help develop this emerging domain by quickly learning the best practices, do's and don'ts and the challenges they may face.

More and more we are seeing a culture of sharing and transparency amongst those who realise the benefits of the community-culture that social computing can bring to your organisation. Richard notes the challenges and cultural hurdles which understandably face the 'wiki champions' and the 'internal bloggers' when they present their ideas to the security departments and policy makers.

From my own experience, I think that senior management support at an early stage is critical. This was a key element to the success at BT also, as Richard mentions that it was their CEO who publicly announced his support for a more liberal approach.

Selling Knowledge Management - Language is Key

I haven't had much time to post lately, my dissertation is at a very busy stage. One thing that I thought would be useful to share is my experience of turning an idea into reality. I am looking to pilot a wiki-based portal in my organisation to enable better collaboration for COP's (Communities of Practice), Special Interest Groups, Communications Groups etc.

I have found that the language used to describe my project has been very important. People don't readily know what is meant by 'Knowledge Management' and sometimes they can get a little scared when you try to sell an idea as KM. This is also true for web2.0, as is my experience with the word 'wiki'.

Now, almost everyone I have spoken to about the project has heard of wikipedia, but I am trying to demonstrate the benefits of wiki use in a controlled environment behind the firewall, So I have tried not to mention wikipedia where possible. I am enjoying people's reaction and their questions as they try to understand the concept.

I gave the idea a 'brand', so that when the people I meet talk to each other, they will spread the idea by using its' name. I called the portal 'OnePlace' - To signify that all of the work is now in one place, where the participants of a group can easily find their information (documents, meetings agendas, presentations), and that their COP now has a 'Place' (below) rather than simply comprising of a thread of emails and a monthly physical meeting.

So what about the language? I have tried to use words like re-use, reduce re-work, easily find what you are looking for, keep up to date .....to describe the use of a collaborative wiki space when working as part of a COP.

So where has this got me? A pilot is now being implemented, and we will see how the users react. It will be interesting to see how the baby boomers react to using wiki instead of depending on the office suite. I am confident though that even if they struggle initially with WYSIWYG editing, they will experience/observe enough benefits over the traditional email & attachment way of running a COP within an organisation (below).

Please let me know of your experiences with introducing wiki to your organisation?

Enterprise 2.0 and Generation Y - What's the right time to adopt?

I have been reading some papers recently about the differences between the Baby Boomer Generation and Generation Y. Specifically, I am interested in how individuals from both generations will react to the social computing tools when they are eventually adopted behind the firewall in large organisations.

Generation Y kids (those born between 1985 - 1995) are now coming into the workforce. I was born in 1984, so I actually feel a bit left out when I read about all of the excitement around this next bunch!

These individuals (which is a strange way to describe the most connected generation there has ever been) bring with them a whole new genre of communicating. They were the first to experience internet use in their schools, they have come through college with Google, Facebook, YouTube and all of the other social networking sites over the last 10 years.

If I focus a little on their most recent experience - College, here they have used the power of google and the web to teach themselves how to find information. They have used social networking sites to find, rate, share and view content such as music, videos, stories and slideshows with each other.

Now Imagine yourself as one of these guys (e.g. You are 21, and starting in a large MNC):

• You arrive in an environment where there are no efficient ways for finding the information you want, now when you don't know something about a specific task in your company - you can't just google it!
• You have no way of finding others who may know because the corporate directory lists only name, department, email and phone details - there are no full profiles (Knowledge Maps).
• To top it all off, you can't access YouTube, Facebook, SlideShare, Flickr etc because they are all banned in your organisation.

I could add more to this list but my basic point is that these young creative individuals will be like fish out of water when they arrive at their desks on day 1! What I am interested in is when is the right time to introduce Enterprise 2.0 into your organisation.

In the beginning the Baby Boomer senior management will not understand the user urge for wiki's, blogs, and collaborative tools such as tagging and bookmarking, however, at the same time the generation Y knowledge workers will get frustrated with the lack of structure and transparency in the enterprise information environment they will be working in.

Social Networking a waste of time?

We have all heard the recent bad press that facebook is getting amongst the corporate "headstones" saying that employees are costing business millions in lost time on social netorking sites.

Luis Suarez has written a great post on the this called Facebook 'Costs Businesses Dear' - Does It Really? on his blog entitled ELSUA ~ A KM Blog by Luis Suarez (a must read for KM followers).

He raises the great point that maybe the surveys should be measuring how much time is wasted by employees trying to find experts to get the job done?

I am not saying that all organisations should allow a free-for-all on sites such as Facebook, but I would like to know if they understand what benefits social networking could bring to their business?

If not externally through Facebook-type sites, then at least explore ways to promote social networking internally. Who knows who will meet who and spark a great idea?

Luis puts it nicely:

How much longer would the corporate world have to go further, before realising the true potential of social networking; freeing up knowledge workers to do what they do best: share their knowledge with others and collaboratively innovate. . . .

. . . .if I were running a business I know what my option would be. Encourage my knowledge workers to hang out in various social networks, dive into the conversations, use them responsibly and continue building further up on what really matters: connect with people to share their knowledge and collaborate, instead of having to struggle time and time again trying to figure out how to get the job done smarter and not necessarily harder.

The full post is well worth a read here.