Online retailing doesn’t always deliver

Hey, Gerry Harvey and the crew of the whingeing Australian retail coalition – online retailing doesn’t always deliver!

If you’ve been following the brouhaha here in Australia over online retail then you would know that some of Australia’s biggest retail behemoths have been whingeing boldly and loudly about the non-application of GST (10%) to overseas online retail below $1000 in value.

If you believed these retail dinosaurs, you’d think that online retail was a great evil attacking the very fabric of fair-faced capitalism! Nothing could be further from the truth.

As this latest article identifies, online retail has some problems that should be familiar to anyone who has spent a little bit of time understanding the phenomenon. Problems facing consumers shopping online include:

• non-delivery
• item was not what was claimed online
• privacy and security issues with internet transactions
• confusion over application of domestic consumer law to overseas purchases

One of the reasons consumers shop online is because “bricks-and-mortar” retail has let them down.  Big retail in Australia generally has poor customer service and the range of products on sale is far fewer than what is available online over the internet. The first problem is something big retail could fix but it would cost them extra money in recruitment and training, something they all want to avoid. The second problem is unavoidable due to globalisation and communications – something that has been obvious over the past 20+ years.

Rather than spend the millions of dollars on a public relations campaign whingeing about a paltry tax payment, big Australian retail could actually improve performance through good ol’ fashioned competition. They could provide better service. They could offer a wider array of products. They could lower some of their prices to be more competitive with online (still higher, but not the umpteen hundreds of per cent differences we often see now). This comes at a cost to the retail monoliths and this is the real reason why they fly the online tax propaganda.

Retail stores in Australia have a huge advantage over online:

• products are visible and tangible
• products can be bought on the spot
• there is no postage charges and overseas currency banking fees to pay
• good customer service builds consumer trust and improves word-of-mouth marketing
• Australian retail can use their own online stores to supplement their retail stores, thereby being both supportive of the business and enhancing the brand (but only if the online store actually meets consumer needs)

The trouble is, big Australian retail needs to put in some effort to compete. That’s why the CEO and Board of Directors get paid the big bucks – to work hard on strategy and operational performance. Quite frankly, I don’t see much evidence that they are willing to work hard beyond the easy fix of spending their company’s money on simplistic advertising drivel.

Reflections on Web 3.0 social media conference

I have had a few days now to reflect upon what was presented and discussed at the Web 3.0 social media conference that was held in Sydney last Thursday and Friday.

The key point is that social media cannot be ignored by companies and nor can it be ignored by “marketeers”. “Marketeers” is obviously some cutesy professional term used these days to describe marketing executives or marketing departments; a noun that I find strangely childish and stupid.  But I digress.

For the organisation, social media offers scope, range, and reach to potential customers and clients. Using social media tools such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn allows organisations to communicate using channels that are becoming increasingly popular. 

Mark Higginson from Nielsens reported that growth in the online sector in Australia was strong, even showing a growth in online media use from the 55-plus demographic. Moreover, in the words of Alex Crompton from Aussie (Home Loans), “It’s (social media) where the people are.” In other words, look at where your audience is and work out the best (if not all) the media channels necessary to connect with them. The online space will continue to eat into traditional advertising channel revenue as people spend more time online.

Not surprisingly, the case for social media use was strong. Not only did presenters emphasise the communication and marketing aspects, but many also told us of the importance of “community”, “engagement” and “the social” aspects of the online universe. Online brand reputation and “tribal support” are significant, as both Alex Crompton (Aussie) and Karen Ganschow (Telstra) indicated in their presentations. Products and services can be improved by using social media as a way of listening to customers, and then using the feedback to enhance the customer (and brand) experience - all good commercial sense. Generating online champions who advocate (and even solve problems) on your behalf, is even better!

Nick Love from Fox Interactive Media was confident that the internet in the near future would be totally about “the social”. Nick was so confident , that he forecast that “social” media would become redundant since the social aspects of online use and interaction would become embedded into everything that happens online. Nick referred to the “social web” as a way of explaining how pervasive the shift to social networks was becoming. Mark Higginson from Nielsen wasn’t convinced (and nor was I) that the internet in the future would be totally social, but I think Mark and I would agree that the social aspects of online communication and engagement will continue to grow and become very important.

The three of us would agree, however, that social media has an important “reputation currency” associated with it, something at the heart of authenticity and engagement. It remains to be seen how marketeers will leverage “authenticity” and “engagement” to sell their wares and promote their brands.  Actually, it is already beginning to happen on social media sites such as Youtube where content is becoming monetised (product placement is a classic example).

Karen Stocks from Youtube keenly promoted (financial) success from Youtube celebrity spinoffs and content creators such as Australian Natalie Tran. Youtube offered global reach, attention, and eyeballs for product placement and brand awareness. At the heart of Youtube success was “viral marketing” – some authentic and often accidentally successful Youtube clip that captured “people’s imagination” and took off. One quoted example was the Mentos mints in the bottles of diet coke that literally took off, and with it sales of diet coke to boot! Of course, it’s not all beer and skittles (or mints and coke) for Youtube content creators. Naomi Klein warned us in No Logo that companies prowl for ideas from a range of sources (and these days social media is one of them) for emerging trends and then commercialise without any profit going to the edgy content creators who displayed their ideas first.

Michael Kordehi proved that Microsoft has informed and entertaining speakers with a great presentation on enhancing a richer and deeper personal experience with the web. Michael showed off some of the IT whizz-bangery that he and his team had done for NineMSN’s Grazia magazine. The image quality of the digital fashion shoot photos were enhanced for much finer image detail (something clients wanted from fashion photos online) AND also to enhance the way readers could share these images with their friends. Using your own navigation around the images, you could then save and send it to friends so that they saw the same sequence of images as you did. I think he referred to it as an “e-journey” but I think he’ll need to do more work on that term to make it part of the popular lexicon.

Other professionally presented talks were from Paul Borrod of Facebook and Cliff Rosenberg from LinkedIn, both of whom promoted the social media benefits of their respective services. I already use LinkedIn but I must say that I am a little more inclined to take Facebook  more seriously than I have in the past, based on some improvements to the interface and an assurance to improve privacy.

Marc Lehmann (Saasu.com) talked about the naturally selected web which pretty much was about getting the web to cut through the mess and give you exactly what you want without relying on search. Because we are all still time-poor, we need a more life-like web that relates to our own needs and our own digital identity. Marc thought that today it is not about the web, it’s all about the data. How can we get the data we need and personalise the information to meet our individual demands and save us time?  And Nicholas Gruen, in his presentation on Government 2.0 and web 3.0, also advocated how the provision of (government) data could be used by people in many different ways – the classic example was the Gov 2.0 mashup late last year at which an inventive bunch of people reframed and rearticulated government data into informative and interesting ways. In other words, put the data out there and let the people work out for themselves how they will use it and what meaning they will derive from it.

One of the best presentations from the conference was from Sandy Carter of IBM. Sandy gave some excellent real-life examples of companies using social media for a variety of strategic purposes. The message was clear: before using social media, an organisation must articulate and understand the problem it is trying to solve and then work out how (or if) social media can make a positive difference. In fact, 80% of your time should be about planning and setting out the objectives and the strategy, while the remaining 20% is about the technology and the tools. Much of what Sandy had to say, and in far greater detail, is in her book The new language of marketing 2.0. The book outlines a set of six steps (ANGELS) that provide a useful guide to utilising traditional marketing techniques with what web 2.0 has to offer. And thanks Sandy for the free copy!

There  were other interesting papers that I summarised in my notes but I need not go into detail here. Suffice to say, the conference encouraged thought and good discussion about how social media can be leveraged to improve communication, enhance marketing and customer engagement, and promote new forms of interaction and community among online participants. The conference was very impressive indeed.

The web 3.0 conference 3-4 June 2010

I will be attending the conference in Sydney, Web 3.0 & the future of social media, being held at the Sheraton-on-the-Park Hotel in Elizabeth Street.

I will be interested in hearing a realistic assessment of the future of social media. I will be especially interested in the social media crusaders and what they have to say about business embracing web 2.0 tools and thinking.

It will be interesting to hear how far business has come in accepting social media as a legitimate form of communication and business sttrategy because I am not sure how much the government sector really wants to engage in this space. Naturally, I understand the reluctance for government to fully implement web 2.0 (not sure we’re ready for anything further than that!), but I am still watching to see how Gov 2.0 really translates into practice.

My fear is that Gov 2.0 is more about dumping content onto websites than really engaging in the conversation with the citizenry. I hear Senator Kate Lundy is a real advocate for Gov 2.0 but with such an adversarial political system, I can’t see too much leeway being given for governments to really become transparent and open to detailed scrutiny.

We already have seen the media dump on the government over the funding of a home insulation scheme – a scheme let down by the insulation industry and greedy quick-make-me-rich merchants exploiting a good idea. It must be difficult for even the Gov 2.0 advocates to encourage more openness in government, especially when other members of the government want to censor the internet and treat the technology with such suspicion.

So, I will see what I can discover about the  leading edge private businesses who see the benefits of web 2.0.  I’ll report back after the conference with my notes and responses.

On media needing multiple platforms

Hot on the heels of my blog post yesterday, an AFP syndicated article on the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) website today says that media companies must look at multiple publishing platforms to enhance revenue streams. 

The article, Media need multiple platforms: execs, says that “with advertising revenue eroding and free content abundant, media companies are going to need to adapt their strategies to the new environment ushered in by the internet, they said at the Bloomberg BusinessWeek 2010 Media Summit.   Hard to believe it has taken the media companies this long to work out this very fundamental change to publishing and content creation!

And why is it that media companies have been so slow?  Perhaps it comes down to sticking one’s head in the sand and pretending change isn’t happening. Or perhaps a media company might like to think it can bully alternative publishing and content creation providers out of the media business.  But perhaps it all comes down to the fact that changing traditional media publishing means doing new things.  And doing new things means thinking very hard about a changed publishing environment where control is no longer the sanctity of media company monoliths.  We already see how traditional and control-centred companies like to work in the music industry; desperate to hold onto oligopolistic control of music content and distribution despite a rapidly networked digital world.

However, change is inevitable and some media companies are actively looking at all the opportunities.  Julie Michalowski, vice-president for business development at Conde Nast, was quoted in the SMH article as saying:  ”What we want to continue to do is to build digital relationships so that we can have a multi-channel relationship with our consumers that includes print and includes other ways that they want to access us”.  Hooray for that!

On the media tsunami

Readers may recall a blog post I wrote last December called On sailing ships and dodos.  The post was about traditional media moguls trying to keep control of media publishing and content.  In the new distributed world of publishing and content generation, this traditional strategy of publisher control is breaking down.

Indeed, traditional media will face even greater competition as the media tsunami hits in 2010, according to media commentator Tom Foremski in this recent online article.  Foremski is a former Financial Times journalist who started a news blogging service in 2004, called Silicon Valley Watcher.

Foremski writes that “the many different forms of media will continue to flourish and splinter and to compete with each other in 2010, only at a far greater scale.  This is all made possible because of the availability of very powerful and inexpensive self-publishing tools and services”.  These new self-publishing tools includes blogs, Twitter, podcasting, Facebook, etc.  Whilst many of these tools for self-publishing have been around for a few years now, they are becoming easier to use, with improved functionality and integration.

Not only will all this self-publishing have an impact on tradtional media empires, but it will also impact on advertising and public relations.  Dilution of advertising and public relations messages within the media space will become a real problem as more self-publishing and user-generated content competes for eyeballs.

In my opinion, media and PR will need to be far more focused and targeted, using the right communication tool and content, to reach the right audience.  A one-size fits all publishing model won’t work.   Moreover, companies will need to better understand all the different types of media, communication tools and channels, to work out how best to integrate their media campaigns, and support (rather than compete) the different types of media channels.

In other words, a more networked publishing model needs to develop to take advantage of different forms of media publishing and content generation.  And more attention needs to be given to the re-creation of content in different forms in order to tailor information and content in ways more useful and specific to individual consumers.  The web 2.0 “mashup” approach is something to consider by making a range of information available to be reconfigured in different ways.

The times are a changing. Organisations, especially media companies, better get used to the idea.

On network culture

One of the interesting things about humans is their interrelationships with other people.  There are historical reasons for this based on family, tribe, and community.  Such groupings were necessary to survive.  In most human societies today, the family unit is still the foundation of people’s relationships.  Friends and the people we socialise and work are also part of the human interrelationship matrix.  And interestingly, people have relationships with characters in books and on television, they have online relationships, and they have virtual relationships in digital spaces such as Second Life.

It should therefore be self-evident that people relationships are significant in nearly all that we do.  In fact, modern humans are truly part of the networked society as a consequence of the internet and World Wide Web.  We have in fact extended the possible reach of our relationships, widened the scale of intensity of relationships (between very weak to very strong); and increased the scalability of our relationships.  So shouldn’t we now recognise the importance and value of the network culture?

In many organisations, relationships are grounded in an “old style” corporate mentality dealing primarily with direct work-based relationships, often hierarchical in form.  In most cases, the network is based on physical proximity.  However, relying only on work-based physical contacts to get one’s work done is not enough these days.  In order to get the right person with the right information at the right time, we need more than just physical proximity.  We need access and immediacy.  We get access and immediacy through our networks, often facilitated through information technology channels.

In a recent blog post by Stefan Lindegaard, called How to create a networking culture, Stefan outlines some ideas for establishing and recognising a network culture within an organisation.  Not surprisingly, this recognition starts at the top. Stefan says: “Leaders [need to] show a genuine and highly visible commitment to networking. Leaders must walk the walk, not just talk the talk. … Leaders should also share examples of their networking experiences whenever possible”.

At the practical working level, Stefan has identified the following: “People [need to be] given time and means to network. Frequent opportunities are provided to help individuals polish their personal networking skills. Not everyone is a natural networker. But almost everyone can become good at it with proper training and encouragement.   Both virtual and face-to-face networking are encouraged and supported. Web 2.0 tools and facilitated networking events maximize the opportunities people have to initiative and build strong relationships”.

Now this all makes very good sense.  Why wouldn’t organisations want to leverage individual and groups’ people networks to get things done more quickly, more efficiently, and more effectively?  Such networks are at the heart of collective intelligence and knowledge management.

Why not use all the network facilitation services available in our modern world, from coffee shops to internet and Web 2.0?  And why should there be any doubt about the value of people networks when we can see how fundamental interrelationships between people have been over time?  Network culture should no longer be revolutionary – it should be accepted organisational practice.

On experiencing context

I want to talk about experiencing context.  I want to investigate what it means to experience something that is really going on rather than what is supposed to be going on.  I want to see what happens in practice as distinct to what the theory might suppose.

I am reading the classic book on urban planning by Jane Jacobs, called The death and life of great American cities.  As a lapsed economic geographer, I am always drawn to the intersection between economics and space and how in practice these two dimensions work.   The first observation, certainly if you are from Sydney as I am originally, is that there is a dark nexus between property developers and urban development.  Much has been made about the power of developer influence on government planning, for instance.

In fact, I recall one big developer wanting to concrete over the beautiful Kuring-gai Chase National Park in the north of Sydney to build more multi-dwelling housing!  The worst part, of course, is that besides giving the developer more profit and more power, the architecture of said multidwelling housing leaves a lot to be desired with their prefab look and feel.

In the introduction to Jane Jacob’s book, she cites an example of a so-called slum in Boston (in the 1950s) called the North End.  To much of Boston, and certainly the city planners, North End was a major slum.  Yet when Jane Jacobs visited the place before a future-planned “redevelopment”, she was amazed by the life and vitality of the place.  She rang a planning friend who confirmed he thought it was a slum, albeit a slum with pretty good health and socioeconomic statistics behind it.  Moreover, her planner friend actually visited North End and found it to have a “wonderful, cheerful street life”, even better in summer.

Jacobs says: “Here  was a curious thing. My friend’s instincts told him North End was a good place, and his social statistics confirmed it. But everything he had learned as a physical planner about what is good for people and good for the city neighbourhoods, everything that made him an expert, told him that the North End had to be a bad place” (page 15).

The story certainly tells me how important it is to experience the context.  I doubt whether it will always be good enough to just look at the theory, or the statistics, or the expert opinion, without experiencing the context for oneself.  More importantly, however, is the finding out about the experience from the people active within it.

It therefore comes as no surprise that in many areas of our professional lives where we have to make decisions, we often rely solely on past experience, our previous training, and the thinking that pervades ourselves and like-minded colleagues.  This is quite insufficient.  We need to explore other ideas and other people’s views, especially the views of the people involved – the real stakeholders.  And if we can break these patterns, either through our own determination or allowing some disruptive thinking to break through from elsewhere, then we can at least look at the world in a different way.

If we can experience context, and include the contextual experiences of those involved, we can make more informed choices and decisions that reflect the real context as distinct from our personal-world-view context.

On bad complexity

How many times have you had to do a task and throughout the experience say to yourself, ”there must be an easier way to do this – why do they make it so complex when it should be so simple”?  I often have this very thought when paying a bill or searching for a product on a website – why is it so difficult to get what I want done?  After all, don’t these people want my money?

Web expert, Gerry McGovern, offers an explanation in his recent blog post, Eliminating bad complexity. Gerry is not talking about complexity science but rather how complex an activity or task is.  Does the activity or task have to be that complex if it doesn’t lead to good customer experience?  Gerry makes the distinction between good complexity and bad complexity.   ”Good complexity leads to greater convenience, choice and options. Bad complexity leads to frustration, wasted time and wasted money”.  I can definitiely say that I have often experienced bad complexity.

There are people responsible for providing services, especially on the web, who are not thinking of the customer but are thinking of their own personal agendas.  Tasks and activities are more difficult  than they have to be because the provider wants to do something else than serve the needs of the customer.

And this type of behaviour also occurs within organisations.  Gerry goes on to say: “Many organizations have enemies within. Departments and divisions care only for themselves. They will introduce complexity that makes the organization as a whole more dependent on them. In fact, the way modern organizations are structured rewards bad complexity”.

I often wonder whether organisations really care about good customer experience. 

I appreciate that understanding the customer and their needs is difficult.  Making complex organisations work together to maximise good customer experience is also not easy – but it can be done. Amazon.com is a great example.  Amazon has a simple (and ugly) website that makes it easy for the customer to buy products; usually books in my case.  In addition, Amazon gives me the occasional alert on books I might be interested in based on my searching and buying history; a service that is not intrusive and where I have often found a book that might otherwise have remained unknown to me.  The work behind the scenes at Amazon is probably a complicated and complex set of interactions and behavious but the customer experience is simple and fulfilling.

It seems clear to me that maximising good customer experience should lead to more sales and greater revenue.  However, perhaps increasing revenue is still not enough motivation to change “bad complexity” within organisations or in service provision.  There are obviously other motives in play…motives we see all the time as a customer, at work, in sport, and in politics.

Perhaps it is the customer experience that is “bad complexity”….. well, at least for many organisations.

On internal and external sources of knowledge

I just received my latest Gurteen Knowledge Newsletter from David Gurteen.  David alerts us to a new book by Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell  entitled No more consultants: we know more than we think.  I have already ordered the book for my personal library and look forward to reading the book when the order arrives.

I have often wondered what the appeal of hiring external consultants is when people already working within an organisation could do the same or even better job at solving a perceived problem.  There seems to be an attitude that only good knowledge exists outside the organisation; a situation that I feel undervalues the existing knowledge assets of an organistion, or at best, underutilises that existing knowledge capability. And perhaps this is where knowledge management needs to make more of an inroad – in bringing these knowledge assets out in the open so that they get the righful attention of decision-makers.

Of course there will be times when people are busy working on other things and so a consultancy allows for an issue to be looked at sooner rather than later. But in many situations, it’s almost like the organisation doesn’t think highly of it’s own staff being able to undertake the work, something a bit strange when the staff are best placed to consider the workplace context.

Now before readers get the wrong idea, I do think that consultants have an important role to play, especially in offering a new approach to problems and in looking at issues in a different light.  Good consultants really want to help their clients overcome obstacles, look for new opportunities, and solve problems that really matter to an organistion.

I often take on the “consultancy role” when I start a new job or where I want to begin a new project: I seek to determine the current position of the organistion; what are the problems, constraints or concerns about the project or activity; what are the priorities and capabilities within the organisation; how this all fits within the organistion or business unit’s overall strategy and desired outcomes; and then I look at solving problems and issues within the organisational context using whatever combination of people and resources is required for the task at hand. 

Management certainly need to consider the effective utilisation of knowledge assets that exist within the organisation as well as what external knowledge assets can bring to an organistion.

On purpose and need: an example

In my previous blog post I strongly advocated the need to determine purpose and need in our knowledge management planning and strategic thinking.  In fact, purpose and need are important in most business contexts.

To illustrate the point more, I was pleased to read in my latest Good Experience newsletter about how a major US hotel chain (Courtyard by Marriott) went about reinventing itself in order to deliver a better service to meet customer need.  You can read the interview from the Good Experience blog.  Also of interest, and something I have advocated previously, is thinking about marketing principles and practices and how we can use this in our knowledge management activities.

The key message from the interview was in defining a purpose (who is our customer and how do we service that customer to ensure they prefer to stay at Courtyard by Marriott) and working out the best way of meeting that particular need.  The method Courtyard by Marriott took to undertake this transformation was in good market and customer research.  Out of this research came “a set of insights based on what we learned from our segmentation, interviews, and ethnography”. Courtyard by Marriott calls these results the “brand blueprint” and the rest of the interview talks about how the hotel chain went to work making the “brand blueprint” come to reality.

And the result: “We’ve seen a dramatic change in our market share, almost 10%, a 28% increase in guest satisfaction from the new lobby, and average food profit has increased 113%”.

The classic marketing approach to determine who really is your customer is something that practitioners in knowledge management should also consider seriously.  Sometimes, it is important to realise that one cannot service everybody to the same extent or in the same way.  It is certainly the case that people have different needs even inside the one organisation.  When the hotel chain determined who was the main game, they sought to understand this particular segment in order to determine how best they could match their needs.  I am curious to find out if they used any form of archetype analysis in their research. 

As a consequence of the research and analysis, the company worked out strategies and designs that would support the now-recognised needs of the customer.  Listening to your customers is very important and doing what is best for them (and not just for yourself) is critical.

I think that those of us in knowledge management can take some lessons from this essentially marketing experience to enhance our own abilities to rethink our purpose and meet the needs of our particular client groups.

On determining purpose and need

I was reading the latest blog post from Gerry McGovern this morning. Gerry highlights the fact that Craigslist is an immensely popular website, even more popular than bookselling behemoth Amazon, but the site is incredibly ugly.  Craigslist, in case you don’t already know, is a webite for localised classified ads and discussion forums. Craigslist is successful not because it looks good; it works because it serves a particular purpose that satisfies a particular need that people find easy to use and which gets results.

I don’t want to get into the merits of website content and aesthetics right now but I do want to reinforce the absolutely essential task of determining purpose and need. What is the purpose of this activity and what need will it fulfil?  In my field of knowledge management, establishing purpose and need are vital to any effective strategy or activity.  Purpose and need should be key determinants not only for websites, but also for intranets, document  libraries, discussion lists, and communities of practice.

Craigslist (and Googlefor that matter) succeed with pretty basic and boring interfaces because they do what the customer wants them to do in a simple and consistent manner.  There is consistency in terms of use and in what outcomes can be expected.  There is no mystery – no lack of clarity nor uncertainty about what people using Craigslist and Google are actually there to do.

Half the battle of getting people involved in a knowledge management or content management endeavour is to ensure that these activities serve a particular purpose to meet a definite user or client need.  Having something somewhere for the sake of it, or on the off-chance, is not good enough. Clarity of purpose and establishing activities and facilitating solutions based on need are far more effective ways to use time and resources.  And if there is a need that is served by a particular service or activity, you will find there will be no shortage of use.  Craigslist is indeed the proof.

On a writer in residence and the airport experience

The bods at Heathrow Airport in London are reported to have hired author Alain de Botton as a writer-in-residence. The idea is to give de Botton unfettered access to the airport so that he can write about the modern experience of airport life. As de Botton says in the article, airports are a good microcosm of the global themes of human life (ok, I paraphrased a bit here).

However, de Botton will only have full access to Heathrow Airport for a week so perhaps the tag writer-in-residence is a little on the exagerated side. I guess that the term short-term publicist doesn’t have the same sort of public interest as writer-in-residence for those high brow types in London. But let’s wait and see what de Botton gets to the bottom of at Heathrow first before speculating any further as to the outcome of the exercise…

I suppose the bods at Heathrow Airport are hoping that de Botton can write something positive about the airport experience since it has continually underperformed passenger expectations. The opening of Terminal Five last year was a disaster. And when I travelled through Heathrow in 1986 on the day Terminal 4 opened, there was a baggage handlers strike and the best part of the Heathrow experience back then was leaving it!

Yet now in this modern age I am surprised that de Botton wouldn’t just blog or tweet about his airport experience. The fact that he has been contracted to write a book based on his one week tour of duty at Heathrow smells suspiciously like a publicity stunt to me. Moreover, the chap needs to be given more time – let’s say a writer-in-residence for three months. We all know that one week doesn’t make a summer!

So de Botton will write a book that will be published and all will be revealed then – hopefully including the answers to many a passenger problem at Europe’s busiest airport epicentre.

But speaking of answers, Heathrow Airport should just listen to the thousands of customers that use the airport each day if they really want to know what goes on in the airport and what people really think. Having a well-known author intermediate these airport experiences in the 21st century is no longer necessary – go straight to the source and get the information direct from the people using your services and respond accordingly. I am sure there would be plenty of narrative fragments (stories) that could be collected from customers and suppliers,and then aggregated to identify common patterns or themes that the airport owners would need to address.

That is, of course, if you’re really serious about understanding the true airport experience.

On outcomes and impact

There are many ways to find out about things. Research is obviously part of that. And research likes to use quantitative measures in order to maximise objectivity, even if these measures don’t give you much meaning.

Let’s look at hit rates on a website – a metric commonly used for “statistical purposes”. What does it mean? Well, it means that a website or page view has been looked at a certain amount of times. The inference is that the more hits you have the better must be the result. But what is the result?

If the intended result is to have as many hits as possible since one assumes hit rates equate with “eyeballs”, then surely high hit rate numbers are great. But is this the result an organisation really wants from it’s website? What happens as a consequence of the “eyeballs” is the question I really want to get an answer to. In reality, high hit rates could indicate a bad website. Your website visitors and customers are clicking away, frustrated by their inability to reach an outcome they want to achieve. Just get those click rates up and everything will be fine….hmmmmm.

Let’s do a survey then. A survey is actually pretty limiting.  A questionnaire is bounded by the construction of the questions and limited answer options. In nearly all cases, one could answer a question yes or no, depending on the particular circumstances at some point in time. Surveys also don’t do a great job in measuring continuous change over time. And conducting surveys or focus groups with large numbers of people are often difficult and time consuming, certinly if a continuous process is required.

Yet these methods are still held to be superior to more qualitative approaches to research. However, if you actually asked your website users what they thought of the website, perhaps they might tell you that it takes a lot of clicking to get through to complete the task at hand. They might tell you that your website is poorly organised, with lousy navigation and confusing labels. They might tell you that the photos on the home page add nothing to their customer experience. They might tell you that your website could better… for them. And if you have a continuous dialogue with them, they will be even more insightful as to how to improve or validate what you are trying to do. Observation at point of impact is a good way of thinking about this.

I can see some meaning from getting those kind of responses! Click rate numbers – forget it. Now I have real information that can make an impact to the people I say (and the organisation) I am trying to serve.

So what we are interested in finding out is impact. What is the  impact that occurs from what we are doing? This is different to outcome. Click rates are an outcome. Obtaining continuous feedback to ensure satisfied customers buy from you, recommend you, and stay loyal, is another.

Now what if we could get this feedback quickly, continually over time, on a large scale, context-sensitive, and in a way where the person giving us the information gives it in terms of how it affects them, and not through some intermediary or stilted survey method?

I set the scene this way to introduce some thoughts from a presentation at the ANU yesterday by Dave Snowden,  special guest speaker at the ACT-KM forum. Dave talked about a number of current projects he was working on. The common element from his talk was the importance of  determining impact and how then to take relevant action as a consequence.

I will use the example of the Liverpool Slavery Museum in the UK from Dave’s talk yesterday; albeit the Children of the world project was for me the most fascinating.

One could count the number of people going through the museum each month and year. The numbers might indicate level of popularity but one can’t be sure. At best, they show that “x” number of people came and paid “y” number of UK pounds to do so.  One could do a simple accounting calculation at this point and perhaps leave it at that.

But what if you wanted to know what effect the museum had on people? What if you wanted to know how successful the museum was in educating visitors about slavery, or in providing a unique experience? What really was the impact of the museum visit?

[It is of course true that if you don't want to know about your customers' experiences and are happy with just throughput figures - akin to an assembly line - then impact will have very little interest for you. The process will be sufficient].

Dave told us how there are computer screens and keyboards at the museum where people can record their experiences and feelings about the museum exhibits. People can nominate any of the individual exhibits to make a comment or express a feeling. The people making these comments are then able to “index” or tag their comments using terms chosen freely that signify meaning to them. Nobody  is interpretating what they say and adding any bias. At the same time, this information capture is continuous and provides for scale, something a static survey couldn’t do. The museum now has thousands of narrative fragments “indexed” by the individuals themselves. This information is aggregated and patterns observed. These patterns may suggest a change to a particular exhibit, or perhaps some alteration to how a museum education officer conducts a group tour.

In the Liverpool Museum case, they have both quantitative information (number of visitors and monies received) AND what impact the museum had on the visitors.

Yet still there are detractors:

• stories (narrative fragments is the preferred method used by Dave Snowden) are not real facts
• some people may just write junk and not tell the truth
• it’s all so subjective

All three statements might be true. The point is, if we want to measure impact, then we need to know what people think and what effect something had on them. And we need to know what they think, not what what we might guess at. The capture and aggregation of narrative fragments is a good way of doing this. “Junk” can be easily discarded but sometimes “junk” may be of interest as a weak signal, something we should pay attention to. Where you want to establish an impact on people, of course there is subjectivity. However, how the narrative fragments are captured, aggregated and used is quite a rigorous and objective method in itself.

Lastly, no matter what the method, unless people use the tools correctly and respond appropriately, no research activity will have any validity.

On social media – the Euan Semple interview on guruonline

Social media is a topic that should be of interest to anyone working in organisations. It still amazes me that social media remains unknown or is treated with suspicion from senior management-types when social media is just an extension of the ways in which people operate in the real world.

People like making connections. People like socialising and sharing experiences. People trust other people they know, and whose opinions they value. And people realise that getting things done or finding out about something can be achieved by relying on their friends, contacts, and networks. Indeed, as choice and decision-making in one’s personal life becomes more complex, so the reliance on personal connections and trusted contacts increases in importance.  Why not amplify these norms for the benefit of getting things done and solving problems more efficiently and effectively within an organisation?

So I was very pleased to receive an email earlier today from a friend about an interview with Euan Semple on social media. Euan Semple is an excellent speaker and authority on the use of social media within organisations. The interview is based on fifteen questions that Euan answers in his usual thoughtful, personable, and considered way. Questions range from why organisations should get involved with social media, how organisations can use social media, what are the tools, and what will be the benefits.

The interview is on guruonline , a web-based service that provides free information on a range of topics from experts in the field. I really like the way the interviews have been presented on the site. Each question is answered as a single slice so that one can choose the questions and responses of interest. I certainly recommend the guruonline interview with Euan to managers in business and government who don’t really understand the benefits and opportunities offered by social media.

I will spend some time in the next few days looking at guruonline and some of the other topics of interest on the web site. But for now, I thoroughly recommend listening to Euan Semple talk about social media and why it is important for business and other organisations to consider for their own workplace situations.

On why marketing and communication matters

Via my latest Working Knowldge newsletter from the Harvard Business School, I found my way to this blog post from John Quelch about how marketing won Barack Obama the recent Presidential election in the US. The key message for me was that marketing matters – big time.  And the news isn’t lost on me in terms of my professional work – information management and knowledge management.

The first observation I want to make is that even small actors can make a difference. The blog says that over half of the $639 million of campaign funds raised by the Obama camp came from people making donations of less than $300 each. Aggregation matters.

The second observation is that the Obama message used as many communication channels as possible. This is really important – just because the message goes out on one channel doesn’t mean that there is no need to send out the same message (in appropriate form) using other channels. Naturally, one must consider the overall costs and benefits, not all of us have the Obama fundraising power. However, what we can do is look at the different communication channels and seek to exploit as many relevant channels as possible within our defined limits. Remember, many web-based and digital networked communication channels are very inexpensive. Communication channels extend your communication reach.

Thirdly, while it may be comforting to appeal to your current or known audience, it pays to go that bit further and extend your target zone to people that could come on board. That means looking where the potential gains are with the message and the service you are delivering.

Finally, the marketing pitch from Obama was both emotional and functional. Establishing an emotional response to products and services was something I learned in Marketing 101, but the fact remains that we obtain a greater sense of personal value and satisfaction if we can look beyond just the function. After all, do Ford, Renault and Mercedes just make cars?

I was asked recently about how I would improve the standing of an information service within an organisation. There are three critical responses: deliver to the customer what the customer needs, make the information service visible through marketing and communication (after ensuring you can deliver a quality service AND have the capacity to support new business), and keep up the level of personal communication with your stakeholders AND potential stakeholders, thereby generating trust and emotional engagement. An information service is more than just a function.

The key is communication. And marketing is a form of communication. Marketing is a good thing – use it wisely and it can yield tremendous results.

And if you’re still not convinced, go to your local ABC shop and buy yourself the DVD of the Gruen Transfer – an essential look at advertising and marketing.