Can employees be trusted to interact with customers online?

I believe employees should be trusted to interact with customers online.

Employees interact with customers in retail stores,  call centers and with friends and family at the pub – why then shouldn’t organisations allow employees to interact fully with customers online?  Toby Ward’s post on Twitter about the State of the Internet –  clearly shows that a lot of intelligent people spend time online, so why not pull back the corporate veil?

As an advocate of giving employees the space to interact with customers online you can imagine my disappointment when I found out a Vodafone employee had uploaded an obscene post on the official VodafoneUK Twitter site today.

It was such a random post, followers thought the Vodafone Twitter account had been hacked!

On a personal note, I know the guys in the web relations team at Vodafone and they were gutted this afternoon.

They’ve worked so hard to build a good online reputation for Vodafone and to have someone try to unravel their efforts is a real shame.

Their speed and genuine care about apologising to customers was impressive – they’re a real credit to the brand.

Ok, I accept I’m biased towards Vodafone but I’m sure customers would be forgiving and won’t let one person ruin the hard work of so many?

To see if this was the case,  I thought I’d scan some of the Vodafone followers who’d been contacted on Twitter to see how they responded to the apology and although this isn’t a thorough analysis I found some interesting tweets;

Claire was impressed with the quick response from Vodafone

Emma said ‘no worries’

Adam was pleased to see the human side of a corporate brand (that’s interesting!)

Jordan was thankful for letting him know what had happened and thought it was embarrassing for Vodafone

Rhys didn’t want Vodafone to worry about apologising to him and didn’t want the brands reputation being damaged

The followers posts I read accepted the apology and understood it wasn’t the ‘brand’ speaking but a single renegade voice.

Vodafone is pioneering the ‘employee/customer’ online interaction – it’s bold and brave and I truly believe it’s the way of the future.

I hope this incident doesn’t stop more organisations from doing the same.

If you want to read some articles on the story there’s already a lot of online coverage from the likes of Melcrum, cNet, New Media Age, Guardian and The Register.

Filed under: The Customer Interface, employee communication, trust, vodafone

Is the tone right?

In today’s economic climate being seen to over invest in employee experiences can do more harm than good.

Employees are more likely to question the value of an experience even though the intention was to genuinely increase their engagement with the organisation – it’s a real challenge the get the tone right for employee experiences.

So, how do get the tone right in tough times?

Here are a few simple principles I find useful to keep front of mind

• care – show your people you really care for them, make them feel valued, design with people in mind
• easy – if it’s easy to understand and act upon it shows you’ve thought about the previous principle!
• authentic – be real and honest, transparency is respected
• creative – try new things, don’t hide behind fear, be bold, think differently
• simple – be clear on the big idea, the core, stick to it

Sure, it’s easy enough to default all messages to the BAU (Business as usual) channels and focus on message effectiveness and efficiency but people still want to be surprised and delighted by the organisation they work for. People still want to feel an emotional connection to the brand they belong – why should the experiences slow down and stop?

I don’t believe they should.

What do you think?

Filed under: Uncategorized, employee communication, employee engagement

Internal messaging – what’s important?

It’s an eye opener to get an insight into the number of internal messages customer facing employees are expected to take on board every day – as well as stay on top of giving the best service they can to our customers!

How do you ensure the most important messages get through to the front line? More importantly, what are the most important messages anyway?

The sender of the message will argue (‘till the cows come home) the message they’re sending is critical, it’s crucial…and if you listen to them for long enough you’ll be convinced!

I suggest asking a simple question find out how important a message is:

Will this message give the customer a better experience…right now?

If it does – clear the path and get it to the front line straight away.

If it doesn’t – it can wait until after the customer is happy.

I appreciate it’s a tough call but it’s gotta be a matter of customer priority – surely?

Filed under: internal communication, Customer experience, employee communication, internal communication, internal messages

Efficiency runs deep

The impact of the global economic situation dawned on me this week.  I’m having more conversations around creating experiences (live and online)  which focus on delivering useful and effective experiences for the audience/user. Audiences expect  communications to be real, down to earth and by no means opulent. I remember less than a year ago delivering events with 3D imagery, grand sets and non stop big experiences, one after another – those days have gone. I’m doing more for less and making what I’ve got, work harder – it’s quite simply, a turn of events! There’s something quite refreshing about cutting through the crap.

Filed under: Uncategorized, "communications channel", employee communication, events, experiences, internal communication