In my job I see what our business could do to make our clients happier. I deal with our clients all day so I hear all of the good, and all of the bad they feel towards my organisation. I am in a prime position to be an innovator, an innovator for change. Anyone, who works in any capacity with clients at any organisation is in a prime position to be an innovator for change. How many times have you felt apologetic toward a client/customer in your current place of employment? I am willing to bet on more than one occasion. All you have to do is listen…
So why do we just sit on it and say nothing?
Ahhh…. I could write forever here… “Don’t shoot the messenger”, “don’t make waves”, “think of the money”, “it’s only temporary”, “things will change”, “my manager wouldn’t listen anyway”, “I don’t like my boss”, “I’ll deal with it later, I have lunch in half an hour…” the list goes on. According to the British Heart Foundation one in three say managers don’t care about well being. Isn’t it time that changed?
Paradigm shift – What if happier customers, meant more enjoyable work, and salary rises! Guaranteed!
Now that is real incentive to to embrace any enterprise 2.0 that will produce happier customers, isn’t it ?!
How would you feel about your company establishing a metric that measured overall customer satisfaction and reporting bi-annually?
What if a positive result guaranteed:
- More money for you
- More enjoyable work for you
- Longer lunch breaks for you
Would you be interested? My guess is yes. You’d look like the people below wouldn’t you? Actually getting recognized for going the extra mile!
Enter Airport 2.0
What is it? It’s a wiki, and it is a face book group. Employees use their real names and they write so that they can improve things using their unique perspective. They contribute so that they can make the airport as enjoyable an experience as possible for all travelers. They use the feedback they get on a daily basis, the disgruntled customer at lunch time, as well as the international lady who was over the moon about the excellent service she received at check in.
They write about it all, because they can, because they are in the prime position to do so. They have the power to make the airport as ideal as it can possibly be, because they are empowered by enterprise 2.0.
Getting started?
Rewards? Metrics? Whatever it is, employees need to be informed. Employees must know that they are valued, they must know how much their salary increases if the enterprise 2.0 innovations are successful. They need to know how they can receive longer lunch hours, they need to know exactly how it all works. Why should they help the airport benefit if they do not benefit themselves as a result? To make their bosses richer? Come on.. Fair is fair, no one wants to be a slave to big business and I think often times people at large organisations are more of a number than an individual and it is time this changed. Every employee should be told exactly how they are able to benefit by contributing quality to the wiki or Facebook group. This can be at the discretion of managers, the CEO, it doesn’t really matter, as long as details of tangible benefits are relayed to everyone.
The benefits, like those from enterprise 2.0 itself, would then cascade until they moved right up the chain to the very top. The idea here is to get everyone working as unit because they want to benefit, because they want to work in a great place.
If this subject has taught me anything it all it is that enterprise 2.0 is about harnessing power and knowledge that we already have but are not yet utilizing. It is about establishing innovative ways to communicate, to connect, and most importantly to develop a real presence – a tangible unit with many parts.
The Brisbane airport is sitting on a gold mine of untapped information. I say it’s time to install some pipework and get people involved and get the information flowing. If airport management realise that the best enterprise 2.0 endeavors are mutually employee / management beneficial and move in this direction I can foresee changes inline with what clientele actually want emerging at Brisbane Airport in the next 2 – 5 years.
As I have said in many of my blog posts enterprise 2.0 takes time. To fully realise all it has to offer you may have to wait for multiple cascading benefits to emerge. This subject has taught me that it is only a matter of time, it won’t happen over night but done correctly, it will happen.
If you do your research, and are especially careful with the way you implement enterprise 2.0, it is only a matter of time until you see real benefits, real results.
Enterprise 2.0 could very well be one of the only industries where it is possible to get out much much much more (with time) than you put in!
What do you think of the Brisbane wiki / Facebook idea?
Good luck with your assignments and the final exam everyone, thank you to all my readers for your insightful comments throughout the semester.
Great References:
http://www.bhf.org.uk/ThinkFit/default.aspx?page=1234
http://www.adamhijazi.wordpress.com 🙂
adamhijazi 
Hey Adam,
I would utilize social media tools as an employee if I had specific metrics of rewards (example 50 customer likes = increased lunch break duration). I think it is a good method of encouraging employees to go the extra mile if they are not already and reminding them that their extra effort will be NOTICED. I have had jobs in the past where I was completely autonomous but lost the drive to work at 100% efficiency due to not having my efforts noticed.
As this is the last blog post for the semester – Thanks for the interesting reads, even on the not weekly E2.0 related blogs 🙂
Hi Adam,
Thanks for your response mate. I totally agree with you naturally. I have been in work places where I feel under appreciated and I start to resent them. I mean, why, why should I? Because they are nice enough to employ me? That is one school of thought, sure. Nowadays though there are lots of options and lots of employers for people who are prepared to go that extra mile. I am one of those people, and clearly, so are you. We are the people who deserve to be REWARDED for our efforts. Establish metrics so that you can deliver real rewards and you will see excellent results from the employees who are willing to go that extra mile, you will also quickly weed out the ones who aren’t!
You’ve hit the nail on the head mate, Enterprise 2.0 isn’t a quick fix, for lack of a better phrase “a box with flashy lights” that managers can simply stick in the corner and hope it addresses all their woes.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint to the finish line, and even then a race isn’t a very good analogy as the finish line is forever shifting with the emergence of trends, opportunities and setbacks that go hand in hand with this fascinating and enriching medium.
For me personally, I agree with you that being able to personalise the work that employees contribute makes them feel far more valued and in turn fosters a positive, creative and industrious environment instead of a vanilla coloured set of walls they occupy between 9 and 5.
Awesome blog post to end the semester with mate!
Hi Adam.
Excellent post. I like your strategy to focus on client. I don’t know you are familiar with the concept of balanced scored cards, but there is a perspective for “Client” and this is totally related to your point about increase customer satisfaction, customer retention, and increasing the number of clients, and how to obtain a best ROI from that perspective. Therefore, in my view, you are on track.
As per you airport strategy, I particularly liked the idea of integrating wiki and facebook in a common tool, it can work quite well depending on what information you are planning to expose. For example, in my view airports as an aviation service has two different perspectives: 1) flight information (e.g. flight number, departures/arrivals, delays, weather, etc), and 2) secondary airport services (e.g. car rental, restaurants/coffees, book shopping, etc)
In my view the social media strategy for each perspective will be quite different, what do think? How does the 2 airport’s perspectives sounds?
Charles
(charlestontelles.wordpress.com)
Hey Charles,
Yeah, I am absolutely familiar with balanced score cards. Tech management right? Maybe a little bit in Information Systems consulting? You are right they could be used to illustrate my point. Now that you have mentioned them I definitely think I should have thought to integrate them.
Absolutely re perspectives. Possibly even more. You could have employee portals, consumer portals and traveler portals. The way Brisbane Airport is setup right now is hopeless, I couldn’t even get wi-fi when I was there. They need to seriously look into implementing something like we are discussing.
Hi Adam.
Yes, Tech management background. Focus on client is one of my favorites perspectives. Hopefully, BAC will realize the importance of client satisfaction.
By the way, in the domestic airport if you can get free wi-fi around the Virgin VIP area 😉
Hi Adam,
Excellent post there! I enjoyed reading it very much!
That is such an important thing that you have mentioned. “it won’t happen over night but done correctly, it will happen.” – How true that is eh! Such benefits of the implementation of 2.0 Tools will not happen overnight. Also, like you mention, the sucess and the benefits of the implementation can only be realistically realised IF the organisations do it the correct way. And in my point of view, is having their social media strategies sorted out. For example, emphasizing on the human factor, like the employees as well as the customers channel, in order to gain valuable feedback/ comments, regardless of whether they are good or bad.
Keep up with the great work!
Hey Yvonne,
Absolutely. Corporations need to realise that social media being successful is about reading the people. Satisfying the people and what they want. Less about traditional principles of business and ROI
Also I think it is extremely important to get the implementation right. If you read your target audience incorrectly you are going to fail. It’s that simple. Implementation is everything, people need to think it is BENEFITING them first, then and only then can it benefit the organisation in return (many times over).
Nice post adam!
I really enjoyed reading your blog for this week and it is interesting. I how the strategy is about making your customer happier. What do you think about Brisbane Airport social media now? Is it enough or need to expand their use of social media?
I think they should expand the use of social media to attract not only travelers to the airport, but people who wants to have great time there because of the restaurant, events, and many more. For example, Changi airport in Singapore is not only an airport but also a shopping mall.
Cheers,
Adithyas Hartawan
Hi Adithyas,
Yeah – I totally agree with you. Our Aiports (it is only a matter of time) should be like shopping malls – better than. Venture out to the airport when you want to shop somewhere that is 4 times larger than the largest of our existing supermarkets (say Indooroopilly). That would be truly awesome, I’d almost pay admission for the privilege if it was done right.
I’d like to take this opportunity to re-iterate something I keep repeating and repeating in these blogs. Regardless of how brilliant an enterprise 2.0 idea you have, it is not going to be successful unless its implementation is perfect!
Honestly I doubt an idea would even have to be super excellent, people are still quite accepting of new social media.
They’ll give most things a try once.
You have to catch them that one time!
Something as amazing as a super shopping center (like the airport could be in the future) implementing an enterprise 2.0 strategy of its own for itself, and for the general public, is almost enough for it to be a guaranteed success short term.
Long term is a different story, for long term you need good quality AS WELL as a good implementation.
Good luck with your assignment mate.