Thoughts on Internal Social Networking – LocalGovCamp

Earlier this year we embarked on a pilot project on Internal Social Networking using  a product called Bluekiwi.

I was at the Localgovcamp event on Saturday and ran a session on our experiences and lessons learned. It proved very useful to me as well as others so i thought i would capture that in a blog post.

It is important to note here that whilst i am personally keen on social networking as a way of supporting business transformation, the technology is only one part of enabling the wider business change required to realise the benefits of moving in this direction.

Like most organisations we experience a silo mentality, this isn’t always a negative thing, organisational structures are a form of social network, so they do often make sense, but when you work in large organisations, the ability to share and exchange internal best practice and ideas becomes harder if you don’t have any processes for allowing knowledge etc to be shared.

We also recognised that internal helpdesks are often overloaded with simple requests and common questions. The answers to most of these could be captured in a tool which either allowed the helpdesk to contribute or in our view allow users to submit answers themselves – essentially providing a user support community, much like you see online for products.

We did struggle to really know how the organisation would respond to this pilot and were reluctant to promise anything we didn’t feel a pilot could actually deliver. This did mean that the business case was pretty thin on the ground, the main areas we focused on were around possible reduction in helpdesk calls, ideas forum (only one idea had to really deliver the cost of the pilot to demonstrate value) but we also made a big play on the “potential” opportunities that could be presented when people get together and start interacting and having conversations.

We did know that once people started to engage they would start to see the opportunities for themselves (after all they know their business better than we do) and that is what started to happen.  We knew that by “connecting people” in new ways would spark ideas and conversations, we also knew that it would provide new opportunities for surfacing common issues and problems and our hope was that it would become self supporting (after all we all like to chat with our colleague about “stuff”).

We did target some groups, due to the pilot nature, we wanted to focus on enabling groups who could potentially demonstrate value in different ways. So we had a mix of cross directorate groups from different levels of the organisation (no one directly from the front line at this stage) who after conversations with these groups had identified some other groups who they thought they could benefit from being connected to.

We initiated a Pilot Project to help us learn more about how this functionality could offer value  –  my view was that if we could learn to professionally experience Social Networking inside the council and start to engage with staff in new and exciting ways, it wouldn’t be too much of a step to engage with the public in similar spaces.

However the reality of the pilot was that the business case was pretty thin, and was more about learning lessons and a “leap of faith” then about real metrics and business value.

We are only 3 months into the pilot and we are learning about new opportunities all the time, i will continue to post my thoughts about the benefits and pitfalls.

In the meantime, I thought I would share this video interview that David Wilcox recorded of Rob Gray (Blue Ocean IQ) and Myself at Localgovcamp.

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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…