An incident last week triggered me to go back to ‘Empowered’, Josh Bernoff’s follow-up to ‘Groundswell’, which was published a few months ago.
The book argues that organisations must support and empower employees to solve customer problems. To do this, they need HEROs: highly empowered and resourceful operatives, following a four-step ‘IDEA’ process (peer Influence analysis, Delivering groundswell customer service, Empowering customers with mobile and Amplifying your fans).
Anyway, what’s made me go back to the book was the example at the start of the sort of poor customer service that Bernoff’s HEROs are needed to resolve (Dooce vs Maytag).
I’ve long understood the power Twitter and social media give to people like Dooce, but I’ve never, until now, had a personal example.
Then this:
I was a bit concerned because I’d not booked these tickets, so even though I couldn’t find any records of this payment on any of my credit cards, I wanted to sort it out.
I’d tried phoning, I’d tried emailing, but wasn’t getting anywhere, so I thought I’d try to tweet (read from the bottom)…
This is the email I got sent:
OK, so not quite the same level as Dooce’s story, but then I don’t have over a million followers either. And it will do for my social media training sessions!
There are a few lessons that I’d draw from this.
Firstly, if you’re not on twitter yet, then this is just one more reason that perhaps you should be. Tired of not getting the response you need from an organisation or consumer complaints body? – if my, as well as Dooce’s experiences are anything to go on, this is the way (that sometimes) you get your answer. Especially if you’re in a leadership role in a business or other organisation you need to understand this thing. And the best way to understand it is to do it. Sign up and join in!
As for the Trainline, I thought Inis did a great job – she stepped on my ranting quickly and cooled things down. And within a couple of hours she’d sorted things out for me. As I wrote in my tweet, however, it’s a shame Trainline employees on the other end of my emails couldn’t have done this themselves (and nothing can excuse making it virtually impossible for customers to contact you on the phone). What was the difference? Was it just that I was lucky finding Inis – or is it because she’s one of Bernoff’s HEROs that she’s been put on the twitter stream?
Actually of course, I don’t know whether Ines is a HERO or whether she’s just doing what her managers tell her. And in a way, that’s how I would summarise my thoughts on ‘Empowered’ too. I agree that organisations need to unleash employees to energise customers and transform their businesses. But I don’t think they necessarily need to look for grass roots approaches to do this. Business leaders can take hold of this agenda too.
And just one more point on the Trainline. If the above wasn’t the reason my problem was resolved, is it just that a developing conversation followed by 4,000 people got a little more attention? If so, then I think this has got to change. Increasingly, organisations are going to have to assume that all of their customers are on Twitter and sort out their emails as fast as they do their tweets.
For other companies, I’d simply say you need an Ines. There are a lot of things the Trainline could have done better – better email response, better call handling and so on. But at least Ines was there to catch the ball before it dropped completely. I’d about finished my rant but someone else might have gone on to write much worse if Ines hadn’t responded when she did!
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I realise I didn’t do much of a review of Empowered in my last post. And there are some things in there which deserve a bit more focus. 
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