Are you really listening? Using the internet to listen and meet customer needs

I've been reading a fantastic book recommended to me by my DGM, What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith.

It discusses 20 habits that hold back successful people and key behavioural changes that can help overcome them.

One behaviour discussed is listening, where Marshall makes the statement,

80 percent of our success in learning from other people is based upon how well we listen. In other words, success or failure is determined before we do anything.

Listening is a regular theme in management and self-help books, however what struck me in this case was that effective and active listening isn't only a key attribute for individual success.

It's also a key factor in organisational success.

Many government agencies spend a great deal of time and money on listening.

We engage in market research, hold community consultation sessions and ask stakeholder groups for input. We consult subject matter experts, implement feedback systems and even share information with other agencies.

Then we attempt to pull all of this data together in meaningful and useful ways to guide policy and service delivery.

Most organisations find listening a difficult and challenging process. Across the private and public sector some organisations shine but most are poor at listening.

If we're all spending so much money on it, why is this so?

Possibly because the process of listening is never perfect. It can involve the wrong groups, or fail to share information widely enough.

'Listening' may be an activity undertaken periodically, rather than constantly, and by specific groups or individuals, rather than seen as a responsibility for the entire organisation.

When listening the context may not be understood, or organisations may simply fail to accept and absorb what they are hearing because it doesn't match the preconceptions of staff or management.

Some organisations even shy away from listening altogether, as either they fear what they may hear or they believe they already know what their customers want.

I've learnt three key things about organisational listening in my working career.

1. Customers are telling us more about what they want every time they interact with or talk about us
   
2. The more organisations listen the better they become at understanding and meeting customer needs
3. Listening is a continuous two-way process

Working in the online industry I've only learnt one further thing about listening.

1. The internet is the most effective and cost-efficient tool for listening ever invented.

The internet is a knowledge capture system as well as a communications medium.

It allows individuals and organisations to share information and converse with larger and more diverse groups on an ongoing basis at extremely low cost.

It can capture every aspect of these interactions, removing the ambiguity of memory or creative interpretation (although still allowing filtering through preconceptions).

It can also capture behaviours - not simply what people say, but observing what they do, how they interact with information and services.

Most organisations do not yet understand this and make limited use of the information flowing through their web servers, or reachable via search engines and social networks.

However, those that understand it gain enormous benefits.

I've been given many reasons as to why organisations do not use the internet to listen (my response is in the brackets);

• Not everyone is online (not everyone attends focus groups either!)
• Our existing systems work fine (how can you know this if you're not listening?)
• The internet is new and untried (the people using it are your existing customers)
• We don't have the expertise (employ someone - as is done for market research)
• We don't have the budget for it (you don't need a budget)
• Our IT team won't let us (you don't need IT involved)
• We don't like to be first mover (you're not)
• It's too hard (it gets easier)
  
• We're scared about what people may say (they're already saying it - go listen)
• No-one will take us seriously (is your goal to improve customer service or protect egos)
• We already have a website (creating a radio ad doesn't make you an expert at talkback)
  

I'd love to hear any additional reasons you've been given for not using the internet in this way.


I will be blogging later in the week on ways in which organisations can use the internet to listen.

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Asking staff for feedback on your intranet

I'm a big believer in asking customers what they want and regularly checking how satisfied they are with the services provided.

Where this relates to our Agency's intranet, our staff are my customers.

In some ways this is a great group to have as customers

• They work in a controlled environment (using the same software and systems)
  
• They have some similar needs and goals
  
• There are more opportunities to influence their behaviour than with external customers (via different communications channels, policies, processes and standards)
• They often know what they want and need!
  

In other ways this can be a tougher than regular crowd

• They understand the material better than my team
• There is less tolerance for failure (no product recalls, or money back guarantees possible)
• They often know what they want and need!
  

You may have noticed one item is listed in both. This makes capturing feedback extremely important.

An intranet is not essential to the operations of most businesses or agencies. Organisations existed long before intranets were possible.

However information is essential to their operations. The more efficient an organisation's internal information flows, the more effectively they can operate and compete.

An intranet's value is in its ability to get the right information and services to the right people at the right time - in accurate, usable chunks. If an intranet doesn't provide the right information, or deliver it appropriately, it will be bypassed.

Collecting feedback is essential in identifying who need what information when, and tracking the changing needs of staff over time.

Staff already know what they need (most of the time) - as intranet managers our job is to get what they need to them.


My intranet goals
Since taking over the intranet team about a year ago, my goals have been to;

• Understand intranet use within the organisation
  Benchmark and track how people used the intranet - content and frequency
  Benchmark and track what people thought of our intranet (perceptions governing usage)
  

• Improve the intranet's effectiveness in supporting organisational objectives
  Identify issues and improvements (continually)
  Track the effectiveness of changes
  

• Increase engagement with the intranet
  Encourage staff to move from passive readers to active users
  Provide opportunities to innovate and contribute
  

Achieving these goals
To achieve these goals I've worked with my team, and others in the agency, to put some systems in place to capture information on the behaviours of intranet users and their usage of the system.

We've also put several different feedback mechanisms in place that improve our understanding of what our customers (staff) need - and allow us to improve on an ongoing basis.

They include,

• Effective intranet reporting systems, for ongoing site and search usage
  We use Webtrends for traffic, supported by Mondosearch for search reporting
  
  
• A six monthly user satisfaction survey (moving to annual) for big picture snapshots
  Using ATOSurv - a great survey tool developed within the ATO
  
  
• An external survey facility useful for rapid and brief spot surveys on specific topics
  Using SurveyMonkey - which allows us to provide survey results easily to groups across the agency
  
  
• A page feedback system for rating individual intranet pages and collecting useful comments regarding improvements
  This is a custom-developed extension to our CMS. Only implemented a few weeks ago, it has already been used over 300 times to rate various pages in our intranet and leave feedback.
  

Why go to all this trouble?
Together these tools provide my team with the management information necessary to manage our agency's intranet system.

They provide a continuous picture of intranet activity and satisfaction, allowing us to both understand the overall trends and deal with spot issues with individual pages or topics.

The result of this is that we are better able to;

• give staff access to the information they need to do their jobs more effectively
• give teams across the organisation feedback on how staff uses the information they provide
• give management input on how rapidly staff are adopting and applying behaviours, policies and systems mandated by the organisation
• provide our customers with a better service experience
  

I believe that the value - although hard to measure - of all these benefits far outweighs the time commitment required to actually listen to our staff.

What do you think? (yes I'm listening!)

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Web 2.0 University coming to Australia and New Zealand

One of the challenges with the Web 2.0 phenomenon is to gather an effective picture of what Web 2.0 actually is, and how it can be applied for the benefit of your organisation and customers.

It's often a case of the Blind men and the Elephant - the view people take away is based on which part of the elephant they encounter.

So I'm please to see that Steve Collins of AcidLabs is bringing Web 2.0 University to Australia and New Zealand, with the first Executive Bootcamp to be offered at Web Directions South.

Web 2.0 University provides a leg-up for business leaders seeking to explore, understand and use Web 2.0 business techniques and technologies to improve an organisation's effectiveness.

It was founded in the US and has been extensively used by Fortune 500 companies as a business education solution to bring senior executives up to speed on what they need to know about Web 2.0 methodologies.

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Website/intranet redesign or realignment - is there good reason for change?

My team's web designer forwarded me the article Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign from A List Apart earlier this week.

It looks at the justification behind design decisions - whether to change the design, layout and information architecture of a website or product - dividing it into two camps.

Redesigners - who base their decision on emotional responses to aesthetics.

It’s been 2 years since our last redesign.
Our current stuff just looks old.
A redesign would bring new traffic to the site.

Realigners - who based their decision on strategic objectives and user needs.

Market trends have shifted. Should our website be adjusted accordingly?
Our users’ needs have changed. Do we need to adapt?
We’ve added 3 new sections and a slew of new content to the site over the last 12 months. Are we presenting content as effectively as we can?
Our current website does little to convey the strength of our product offering.
Does our online presence enhance or devalue our overall brand perception?

I don't believe the line is ever that clear cut, sometimes aesthetics are used to sell strategic changes and sometimes vice versa. I also do not agree that realigners are 'better' designers (for whatever value of 'better').

However I do feel the article does touch on a key factor for management, of websites or any other system or people, perceptual versus objective truth.

Often as web managers we are the closest to our own sites, seeing blemishes that are less visible to others. On the other hand we may also accept and overlook fallacies and faults that others perceive as major flaws. It's a little like being in a relationship. We often simultaneously see more and less in our partner than others can from an external perspective.

Therefore when deciding whether to make design or IA changes it is crucial to step outside our own emotional engagement and seek the views of our audiences, our peers, management and neutral parties.

Otherwise we may - knowingly or unknowingly - be primarily driven by our own personal views or emotional responses, while publicly justifying changes based on organisational goals or audience need (or simply on the ultimate reason that 'it looks better').

I can think of times in the past where for personal or organisational reasons I've redesigned a website or intranet simply due to aesthetics. I can think of more times when there were reasons driven by audience needs or organisational realignment.

I can also remember times when I made aesthetic choices, but justified them as strategic decisions.

These are the decisions to be guarded against as they are, in my view, the most likely to lead to errors of judgment.

It's about being honest with yourself and understanding your own drivers.

Do you operate as more of a realigner or redesigner?

What would your peers say?

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The first 5,000 days of the web, and the next 5,000 days

There are a lot of perceptions and assumptions about what the internet is - or isn't. All of us make them - drawing conclusions about our world, often in the absence of reliable current knowledge, is part of being human.

Personally I feel the need, from time to time, to get out of my own headspace - cast aside my preconceptions and judgements - and look as objectively as possible at what is really occurring around us.

I find TED talks a fantastic way to achieve this, and recommend the following talk by Kevin Kelly about the first 5,000 days of the web - and the next 5,000 days.

We've come so far, and there is so much further we can go.

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