It’s a song we’ve all heard before. Poor customer experience. But this song has had a decidedly different outcome, and further evidences that the ‘same-old-song‘ just isn’t being listened to anymore. That’s an important word: listen. A lot of companies, even those trying to jump on the social media bandwagon, aren’t listening. Without that, the outcome can be dire.

Just ask United Airlines…

 

This just stroke me as too funny, and as equally relevant- we do forget how funny we are…

I recently was invited to, what turned out to be, a very interesting web-ex, host by nGenera, on: “Pervasive Personal Identity“. Great stats, interesting trivia and extremely innovative ideas.

My favourite piece of trivia: who holds the most intimate details of its users, with their complete acknowledgement of, management of and payment for by its users? I didn’t get it either…

Is it that I’m looking for it, thus finding it? Or is there simply more out there.

Lil’ bit of column A. Lil’ bit of column B. But I think a lil’ bit more of column B. Where ever one looks these days, there are examples of collaborative design, and web 2.0 tools are not too far behind.

A number of experiences, meetings and articles of late, have demonstrated that collaborative design is getting it’s much deserved attention at executive and board level meetings. But challenges still remain. Most note ably, a very traditional [business] problem: technology & innovation implementation, without a salient and exhaustive analysis of the desired end- state.

So, I am cracking open an Innocent carton for a pretty darn good smoothie. I began to examine the carton, as I usually do, looking for whatever joke, queer fact or just whatever anomaly Innocent had designed into the carton this week. Found some pretty funny stuff.

Something then dawned on me. Is humour a way to gain customer loyalty by bettering the customer experience?

My answer: yes.

Every so often, I review old magazines, blogs, podcasts etc. looking for some topic or thought I may have missed, that might interest me (or others I know). Missed a big one in the latest issue of the Rotman Magazine entitled: “Wicked Problems” (I explain the term later if you can hold on).

Page 17 has an interesting interview with CogNexus Institute founder, Jeff Conklin. The title page states: “Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems“, predicting an interesting analysis of the changing world of problem- solving, that is increasingly solved via a shared understanding of the problem-at-hand.

Sounds very collaborative…

In one of my many (more recent) ‘wanders’ through the internet I re-connected with a distant colleague from many years ago at Rotman. Seeing a new role he’d taken on, led me to his company website. I was hooked. And a deeper ‘cyberdig’ (love that term), reveled a good, rudimentary article on ‘how to start thinking about collaboration: 101‘ for companies. Entitled: “Ten Questions to Ask about Business Opportunities through Collaboration” (sorry you need to register), the writers document the necessary considerations of and planning for a roll-out of a collaborative strategy.

There were definitely a few: “Thank you! Someone else gets it too” moments… But the overall point? Collaboration is more than a strategic advantage, it’s a strategic imperative…

In a close follow-up to a post from yesterday, I came across an interesting (Irish Business) article on the importance of social networking: “Get on the social ladder“. It lays out the: “ten ways to make social networks work for your company”.

Although slightly repetitive, some good material. In a nutshell though…

Not many are oblivious or ignorant of social media and networking, nor don’t use web 2.0 technologies, despite most not realising it. Anyone who has logged into a website, shared personal information online or uploaded any data to the old “internet machine”, in the immortal words of Will Farrell (Blades of Glory for those that know not of what I speak), has participated in social media. True, this particpation may not have taken a direct, or extroverted, form, such as blogs or (registered) networking sites, but those forms are only a sub-set of a much larger category of social media.

But, despite this prevalent and pervasive use, regardless of the ignorance of the masses to its use, a pressing question has arisen…

What is the business model? Well, the revenue potential is still an allusive and debated model, but the value of social media is not…

It sometimes appears Barrack Obama has an exhaustive set of tools to help in both understanding and managing an immense group of stakeholders. His latest tool? Nudges. A recent Times article [on Obama] led me to pick up Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein’s latest books: “Nudges: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness“. Appears that it’s not just Obama who’s using Nudges. Almost everyone is- whether one is aware of their use is another matter.

Click here for the published article (page 25)