Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Social Media Policy Failures

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

Social media is seen by many as a panacea to the challenges of “good” customer service; a direct interaction with their customers. Don’t get me wrong, when it is done well, it is an excellent tool to support the organisation, however, on three separate occasions in the last 12 months or so, I have seen some spectacular failures!

As a small organisation, we know what is being said to and by us at anytime, as the organisation grows, the greater the need for external communication to also be disseminated internally. Failure to to so, is actually counterproductive for organisation concerned. Let me demonstrate, by way of example, how not thinking through the communication flow fully, an organisation un-intentionally feeds their most valuable asset, customer facing staff to the hordes!

December 2010, Europe saw some pretty spectacular snow-falls, depending on your age! Most of the continents major airports were shut, for varying periods, days if you were in the UK! I was travelling back from a week in France and Germany, intending to take the first flight out of the local airport, with a major flag carrier, into the UK, with the intention of flying out again on the Monday. Early alarm call and off to the airport, not a lot was moving but they were de-icing our aircraft. A delay was then announced, due to the late inbound arrival of the aircraft the night before, crew duty time. Spending the time catching up on e-mail etc, it became clear that we would not be going anywhere fast. Twitter feeds from the both the destination airport and the Airline, all stated nobody was getting home that day, the local staff and the crew all said we would be boarding in an hour! This confusion, between the centre and front-line staff, was beginning to generate a certain amount of friction between passengers and staff! The staff remained professional and extremely helpful, in the face of some fairly severe questioning. I eventually flew direct to my next assignment, if you are interested.

Recently, Tuesday, in fact returning home from a night out in London, with my family, a meal and show. We were on the train home, arrived Cambridge no issues, with half the Christmas refuse attacking the rail lines, if all the tweets were to be believed! Our train was 45 minutes late leaving for our final destination. There was no solid information from the train crew, just telling us that they hadn’t been advised on reasons behind the delay! The Train Operating Company (TOC) were tweeting that there were signal issues due to the high winds, then we were advised that the train would terminate three stops early due a tree hitting a train. Replacement buses would be provided, however, there was no estimate of their arrival. How was this information presented by the TOC’s staff; they had not a clue! They resorted to patronising the passengers and essentially shrugging their shoulders.

These two incidents were generated by mass transport providers, granted, a TOC will move more people than an airline, at any point in time! I suspect that this market is not alone! What lessons should be learned, here are my thoughts:

  • Always ensure that customer facing staff have the same information, that technology aware customers will have access to; you only have to see the number of smart phones, tablets and mobile enabled laptops to see this is essential.
  • Ensure that staff have access to modern devices, who uses a pager in 2012? Obviously, the TOCs do!
  • Ensure that customer facing staff have the right attitude, nothing is more certain to further erode a companies image than less than professional staff!

The solution is not really rocket science, it requires a combination of:

  • Appropriate and adequate processes, that are reviewed regularly.
  • Regular refresher training, addressing both soft people skills and hard technology updates.
  • A budget for technology, this is not a carte  blanche recommendation to invest in several hundred of world’s most popular tablet, there are a range of options to suit all organisations.

What is important is recognition that an organisation is not a series of “silos”, policy decisions need to be reviewed by all operational divisions. Social media is not the exclusive plaything of the marketers as it appears in a lot of organisations. The agreed policy must ensure that internal and external communication will be matched, otherwise we will see, repeated, at points where the organisation meets the customer the sort of friction described above. It will be happening everyday in every walk of life!

Social Media, New Technology and a Dinosaur

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

This is a very late part three to an occasional series on a dinosaur and my forays into social media and new technology. In previous parts, I have extolled the virtues of having an online presence and how, as a business we had been paid for a small task from a contact generated through twitter. This year has seen us employ a number of staff, 4 at one point in Dublin, all year in support of a contract with a household name in the airline industry. This contract was initiated on a Friday evening through Twitter, a trip to Zurich followed rapidly and then de-camping to Dublin for nearly six months! Since I have come back from the emerald isle, I have been assisting them with further aircraft deliveries. A fantastic year all round.

With this heavy workload, a number of things have had to go by the board, time at home with my family, writing articles for the blog. There are a mountain of applicable topics for future blogs. I have tried to keep our online presence when I can, tweeting and maintaining our business relationships through Linkedin and Facebook etc.

It appears that one of our contacts through linked in will be in a position to offer us significant employment going forward; so what can be taken from this? The more I look into this and the more I develop our online presence the more I am convoked that this is the way that business relationships will be established in the future. What starts as a bitbof banter on twitter will lead to more professional relationships through other mediums and business opportunities will arise!

That deals with social media and how we are trying to maintain our foot print in the twittesphere! That is where new technology comes in, smart phones and tablets, I can recommend a series of articles, blogs and other assorted outputs from Paul Saunders over at Conduce, www.Conduce.net.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time traveling this year, again! In almost all cases, it is not possible to get a full-sized lap-top out and produce a blog, a proposal, an NDA and countless e-mails, some operationally critical for London’s Air Ambulance, another little project we have. I have fallen into the category of tablet user that sees them as business critical; well in my case, if I can catch up on or clear a significant number of e-mails while on a train or a plane, to have time with my family, it is business critical!

I have loaded the tablet with the means to access from where ever our project management functions, our virtual office and web-site, a busy commuter train becomes an office! Obviously, I do not do anything that should be treated confidently, 20 years of military service takes a long-time to fade.

This blog has been produced on the 1734 from Luton to Brighton.

Help For Heros

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

You may not know, I spent many years serving in the Royal Air Force, both as an airman and finishing my career as an Engineering Officer. I have been out of uniform for 11 years now, though for a number of years, I was supporting the military from the other side of the fence.  For the last 10 years of my service I was actively involved in appointments directly supporting operations, split between the former Yugoslavia and the enforcement of the no-fly zones over Iraq amongst other smaller humanitarian operations.

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University or Further Education?

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

I think that this might be a little controversial and will hopefully spark some debate! I will state up front that I am an indentured apprentice with 6 years productive employment before going to university, gaining a BEng in Aerosystems Engineering, my career since then has been involved management, including establishing and running Mackenzie Morgan. My primary area of expertise is airworthiness management and all that that involves. I believe in the value of a university education.

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EBACE 2010 Impressions!

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Well I am back at the day job, not that I don’t enjoy it, I do, but what were my impressions of the tenth EBACE in Geneva? Obviously having been to one before I am perfectly qualified to comment! I went out for two days this year to understand the market better, to have longer to discus with those on the stands and booths the challenges we all face and how we might be able to help them meet those challenges. (more…)