Who Me? Social Media? I’m an Engineer!

It’s a cliché that a company is the sum total of the people who work there, and clichés are so often true!  Social media enables companies to give each person a voice, and to demonstrate the superiority of the company by showcasing the employees.  This approach also creates greater employee engagement. 

The Clover Architecture model of social media (http://socialmedia-insideout.blogspot.com/2011/04/clover-architecture-4-leaves-of.html ) is built on the 4 leaves of leadership, governance, culture, technology.  Inherent in each leaf is the idea that social media is integrated throughout your organization.  What does that mean?

v  Executives are actively involved with social media.  They blog (http://socialmedia-insideout.blogspot.com/2011/03/passionate-leadership.html); they deliver podcasts; they participate on internal and external social forums.

v  Central policies and processes define the guidelines, but social media activities are dispersed throughout your organization.  You might want to have a social media guru on-board, but s/he does not function as an approval log-jam.

v Collaboration, sharing, experimentation and transparency are part of the core culture.  The organization rewards process as well as outcome.  Individuals are incented to reach out to colleagues and customers.  Their individual voices and personal brands are valued as representatives of the organization.

v Technology platforms are easy-to-use. 

How do you actually implement these goals?

IBM helps employees to share their passions, their personal interests, and their professional and technical insights on personal IBM blogs.  (I love that “personal corporate blog” is no longer an oxymoron!)  As IBM notes:

 “…the opinions and interests expressed on IBMers' blogs are their own and don't necessarily represent this company's positions, strategies or views. But that doesn't mean we don't want you to read them! Because they do represent lots of business and technology expertise you can't get from anyone else.”

Then IBM lists the individuals’ blogs.  (Check out the blogs at http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/ )  The impact?  More engaged employees who are also professionally growing; more engaged customers who create personal contacts and recognize the depth of expertise in IBM employees – and in IBM.

As part of an effort to enhance customer experience, a high tech product company  with whom I worked decided to make their engineers more accessible.  At first, the engineers had mixed reaction – they aren’t social media wonks; they aren’t great communicators; they don’t have time!  On the other hand, they are passionate about their work and the products, and they love sharing their enthusiasm and knowledge.  We created discussion forums, and the key product engineers conducted live-chats at designated times.  The result exceeded the goals.  What happened?

v Engineers felt recognized and appreciated; they were virtually signing their names to their research and product designs and establishing their personal value.  They found that sharing their knowledge was fun.

v Engineers were re-energized; customers and other forum participants had interesting ideas and good questions.  Innovation began to expand beyond the limiting four walls of R&D; new ideas created more new ideas. 

v Customer service and customer satisfaction rose significantly; customers loved having access to the experts.  In addition, capturing the discussion threads and making the answers easily accessible drove down the number of calls to the customer service center.  The number of calls is the primary driver of cost, so customer service costs plummeted. 

Enabling employees to share internally and externally is a win-win.  What approaches have you found most effective?

6 Customer Benefits of Internal Social Networks – Disarming Road Warriors

“Road warriors” usually earn that name the hard way. 

I recently had a two-leg trip, flying first to Cleveland and then to New York.   I arrived 90 minutes before my flight, to see the big red Cancelled on the board.  It was the airlines last flight to Cleveland that day.  The airline wanted me to wait until the next day to fly, but I would miss my meeting.  So I bought another ticket on a different airline and requested a refund from the original carrier; and then the fun began.

My original ticket had been purchased through a “partner” airline.  The agent at Airline One, who really was trying to help, had to call the internal Help Desk to determine how to handle my one-leg refund.  The internal Help Desk was flooded with calls – all for the same issue.  Passenger anger visibly rose as the agents hung on hold, and the passengers could hear each in turn asking the SAME questions.   

I finally received an “authorization” for a refund, but the agent claimed the partner airline had to process it.  Partner Airline sent me back to Airline One.  And then back to Partner Airline.  I was getting lots of exercise, but not much satisfaction.

Then an agent at Partner Airline said he couldn’t process the refund, but ANOTHER agent there could.  I waited for him.  Good thing I had a long wait for my flight.  The agent again really was trying to be helpful, but he didn’t know how to handle the situation either.  Twice he disappeared for long periods behind a closed door to: Ask someone else? Look it up?  Call the Help Desk?

Same problem as Airline One.  Too much time holding for the Help Desk.  Agents were calling for each passenger (and the line was growing!).  I finally got my refund, and heard the agent tell the next person that they couldn’t process the requests; she had to wait and go on-line to request the refund.  They also called Airline One and told them to stop sending passengers over; Airline One could handle it themselves. 

The agents were angry with their “partner” agents; they were tired of being yelled at by weary passengers; they couldn’t get sufficiently rapid response from their own company.  They punted.  The warriors hit the war path verbally and on-line.

Wow.  The number of loud, angry passengers was impressive.  People were still angry when the flight I had snagged finally departed 5 hours later.

A fairly simple internal social networking platform linking the agents with the Help Desk staff would have done wonders.  The benefits:

§        A one-to-many communication model   

§        Quicker access to information 

§        Faster responses to not-really-one-of-a-kind problems  (maybe someone else had already encountered the problem!) 

§        Happier passengers who screamed less

§        Agents who were less frustrated   

§        Reduction in bad WOM 

Internal touchpoints cross over to affect customers.  When employees work smoothly together, customers benefit.

The next leg of my trip…my flight was Cancelled….