Update: who blocks? at Helpful Technology

For anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the Helpful Technology Blog and you should. It is written by Steph Gray, Social Media Manager at the UK Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills.

Here are the results of his Social Media Test Suite Survey.

• Update: who blocks? at Helpful Technology.

Customer Experience, Australia Day and Chinese New Year

Today i received a call from Southall Travel who i used to book the flights for my family holiday to Australia, my first thought was why are they phoning me, but to my surprise i received some excellent customer service.

The lady on the phone asked me to confirm my details by stating what she knew about me and the details of the flights i had booked and then said there is a slight change to the return flight. She informed me that our connecting flight in Hong Kong was now delayed by 35 minutes. I chuckled to myself as i thought wow, they have phoned me to tell me that one of my flights has been changed and is now 35 minutes later, to be honest 35 minutes is nothing and i mentioned that we will be in the airport anyway so are unlikely to notice such a changed but thanked her for taking the time to call me. She then said that she would send me a new itinerary and that i should print these out. Within 2 minutes of putting the phone down the new details arrived in my inbox.

I came away from that experience thinking what excellent customer service and even though the flight information had changed by 35 minutes and it doesn’t really impact us, it could impact a wide range of other people and i valued the fact that they are aware of our details and that they have a policy to contact and communicate with their customers of teh slightest delay or changes in the original booking.

This got me thinking to some of the key lessons the public service could learn regarding simple customer service.  I have often been on the receiving end of projects, bookings and other transactions that have not bothered to contact me once the original transaction has been completed.  The fact that this simple experience which was only a phone call to ensure that i was kept informed and was then sent new updated information is not rocket science but just common sense.

On a separate note and perhaps a coincidence, it is also Australia Day today so even the though our weather isn’t that good at the moment take the time to overcook meats on semi hygienic BBQ’s, laugh at English Cricket and down a few cold ones.

On an international note it is also worth noting that today is also Chinese New Year and we are now in the year of the Ox. You can find what your year is here.

To celebrate both, i will have a chinese stir fry with an australian cold beer. I refuse to laugh about English sports…why? well everyone else does…

Better late than never

Over the past few days and weeks i have been looking for books on and around the theme of social media and change. Some of them i wish i had read a while ago, but as the post title states, better late than never.

In a conversation with Sharon Richardson (@joiningdots on twitter) on wednesday, she suggested i read the book – “Wikinomics” by Don Tapscott.

In adding it to my amazon wishlist, i thought i’d search you tube for any relevant videos etc and found this one.

Sharon also mentioned the book “We Think” by Charles Leadbeater, again i did the same and found this short video

If you are interested in collaborative creativity, this TED Talk features Charles Leadbeater talking about the rise of the amateur professional

Do you have any good books you would recommend i read in this area?

Being “creative” with Social Media

I happened upon this blog post by Stef Lewandowski via a tweet or retweet or two.

The rules or general approach that Stef highlights are brilliant, however i thought i would try and add to or even compliment them with perhaps some overlap, which i make no apology for.

1. Start thinking
   Probably the hardest thing to do really whilst seeming like the easiest. Henry Ford said “thinking is the hardest job there is which is probably why so few people do it”
   The challenge is to try and find conditions which make thinking easier to do. This is something you will need to ask yourself. I find walking and being in water, either a bath, shower, swimming or surfing as long as i am water a great place to think.
   So get out an about and try new things and find out what conditions enable you think clearly.
2. Use and recognise laziness as an asset
   Now i don’t mean the traits that make people fat and overweight, i mean the desire people have to achieve more by doing less. I wouldn’t say i was lazy as such, but there are certain task that i dread doing and therefore have a lazy attitude towards them, but in recent times social media tools have enabled me to reduce the burden of these tasks, researching online and looking at other websites, RSS saved me huge amounts of time.
   Laziness should be harnessed, i have often wanted to get a project going but felt other people would be better at doing it than me so adopted the cuckoo approach (which lays its eggs in other nests for them to manage) this approach not only gets an idea developed but also allows others to take credit for ideas and innovation so increases their willingness to support other new and exciting ideas in the future.
3. Accept what you’ve got and get on with it
   We always hear people complain about lack of this and lack of that, we need to accept what we have and prioritise, and make the best use of the skills and resources we do have. Nearly everyone else is in the same position but yet they deliver innovation.
   Social media tools are a great opportunity here, we could do so much without doing anything more than what is already there, now why aren’t more things being done?
4. Bend the rules to breaking point or cheat
   Understand the rules of the game we all play and push the boundaries until they nearly break and if they do, so what you may well have invented a new game.  Many successful companies broke rules or did things outside of the rules and found new niche markets to explore and benefit from. Low cost airlines are a classic example

But the biggest thing i agree with in Stef’s post is allowing yourself to fail and fail yourself to success.

Now with these rules or guidelines, i will start to approach social media opportunities in the same way and see where it gets me, it seems that this is a lower cost strategy because the cost to set up, trial and fail is so low. After all, we won’t get it right every time but a t least i won’t be wasting huge amounts of pubic money on the process.

I think i was doing this to some degree but now i have a framework which i have accepted it may make it easier.

Please share your experiences and or failures so others can benefit from your learning.

Doing what you do best – Google Video Discontinues Video Uploads.

Last week Google announced via its Video blog that it will be discontinuing support for video uploads, content already there will remain. This at first was a bit of a shock, NO i said to myself how can they take that free service away, but hold on don’t they own you tube so itsn’t their a bit of an overlap perhaps….

They explained that what they want to do is to focus on the core strength of Google video which from their perspective is the ability to search for video across the web. This is a direct quote from their blog post “Turning down uploads at google video“

We’ve always maintained that Google Video’s strength is in the search technology that makes it possible for people to search videos from across the web, regardless of where they may be hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.

What i think is great about this decision is that Google as they state with most of the products look to innovate often and by that nature they review often to ensure that what they have done fits the market. This is the perfect example of an organisation who built their reputation on simple and easy searching across a complicated platform, focusing their energy on developing that exact thing.

The key lesson from this is that we should always look at what we do and how we do it, then evaluate whether it offers value and look to develop in areas which we are strong or have skills.   The process of innovation and developing ideas for Google and for anyone will expand your knowledge and your thinking (this is the personal development path we all have) but it has expanded their core strength into video. This is respect and for that i take my virtual hat off to them.

In the meantime however we are now looking at Vimeo for our online video uploading solution.