We know it’s a brave new world for consumers and brands. If United breaks your guitar, or your Maytag doesn’t work properly, you can take on the company that messed with you via social media — and you may well win.
But technology empowerment works both ways. Consumers can take a stand against poor business practices, and brands can empower their customers like never before.
Mobile is a hotbed of innovation in this department. Point your phone at a restaurant and see if it’s worth an evening out. With the addition of cloud services, you get stuff like the iPhone app from UK car dealer Auto Trader, which can tell you the make, model and the price of used cars just from snapping a license plate photo.
To take it one step further, companies that invest in technology and innovation can not only sell more products with digital tools, but empower their own employees. Below, we’ve highlighted some examples of businesses that are using technology creatively to solve customer issues and spur innovation.
Workers Already Use Third-Party Tech for Business
Based on a survey we did late last year at Forrester Research, 27% of information workers regularly use login-required web sites that the company doesn’t sanction, like LinkedIn or Google Docs, for work purposes. Around 12% download and use their own applications not provided by the company, like video editors, and 8% are using smartphones they pay for themselves for work purposes. Unlike in Dilbert’s office, IT doesn’t control technology within corporations any more — workers do.
I argue that this lack of control inside and outside companies isn’t a sign of the apocalypse; it’s the beginning of a new way of working — one in which employees know their job is to use technology to solve customer problems.
Don’t be surprised if this proposition elicits echoes of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Ten years ago, this idea was radical, and people who espoused it were screaming in the wilderness. Now it’s actually working, even at large companies.
Principles at Work
At Best Buy, CMO Barry Judge encourages staff to come up with “half-baked ideas,” which the company works on and then rolls out. For example, Remix is a project which opened up the company’s website API so others could build sites or apps on top of it. Using Best Buy’s wealth of product, pricing and image data, developers could implement useful third-party applications to track rapidly dropping retail prices, for example.
Twelpforce, a shared Twitter support service, was programmed by Ben Hedrington, a Best Buy website staffer, in his spare time. It was rolled out by John Bernier, who solved problems like how 2,500 hourly staffers (Blue Shirts, Geek Squad, and the like) could share a Twitter service without violating labor laws. These are empowered employees.
At Vail Resorts, CEO Rob Katz radically shifted the company’s media policy, embracing short-lead advertising and social media. He hired social media staffers instead of buying magazine ads, and trained the staff on how to turn pictures, videos and tweets into fast-spreading, word-of-mouth ads.
At Dell, there are so many social initiatives going on that Manish Mehta, who reports directly to the CMO, runs a council of high level execs who share best practices weekly.
The Rise of Empowerment “Heroes”
The companies that work like this act quickly. They blunt customer complaints and turn detractors into promoters. They innovate as a matter of course. The reason is that all the employees feel empowered to create and contribute, rather than leave it to their research and developments departments.
I call these people “HEROes:” Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives. They typically know more about customers than they do about technology, and companies need more of them.
HEROes need tools to understand the challenges they face. They need managers who support them rather than squelch their initiative. They need IT people who give them technology advice, resources, and help them to see pitfalls and risks, and identify when their projects are ready to scale up.
This isn’t a pipe dream. I’ve seen HERO-powered companies innovating, and there are more every day. This mentality is the future of daily work, and it’s an inversion in the power structure of companies. The companies that have figured this out have a head start on the rest. Does yours?
0 comments:
Post a Comment