Is your department tribalising?

The Tribalisation of Business is holding its second annual survey on social media use within organisations.

If you run communities or leverage social media as part of your business you can participate in the 2009 survey here.

Sponsored by Deloittes, Beeline labs and the Society for New Communications Research, the 2008 survey had some very interesting findings around the management and cost of online communities.

For example the 2008 survey had the following major takeaways,

#1: Communities are about Delivering Game-Changing Results

• Communities can increase revenue per customer dramatically, i.e., 50%
• Communities will increase product introduction success ratios
• Communities amplify everything you do- increasing effectiveness and decreasing costs

#2: The Rise of the CMO 2.0?

• Communities should be an important part of the CMO’s toolset (but for many large companies - there is an under-investment and scale problem)
• Companies should evolve the role of the CMO into Chief Community Officer (but that will require drastic changes in attitude and approach to marketing)
• If done properly, communities will transform the way marketing works (reduced costs, improved effectiveness, new opportunities)

#3: The Need for New Management Thinking

• Mismatch between community goals and associated investments
• Major gaps between Community Goals and what is being measured
• Communities have yet to combine with major talent initiatives
• Communities will transform most business processes

#3.5: The Worst Practices Enjoy Wide Adoption

• The “build it and they will come” fallacy
• The “let’s keep it small so it doesn’t move the needle” phenomenon
• The “not invented here” syndrome

Also the survey found that,

• Marketing, Research, Sales and/or PR departments ran the organisation's online community in 60% of cases. IT ran the community only 6% of the time and Customer Service only 2% of the time,
  
  
• most communities (71%) were managed by one or fewer full-time staff, with another 13% managed by 2-5 staff,
  
  
• the annual operating budget for 58% of communities was under US$50,000 and between US$50,000 and $200,000 for another 24% of communities,
  
  
• the majority of organisations (85%) learnt about online community through participating in online communities or reading blogs - attending conferences was used for learning by 53% of organisations and the media by 51% of organisations, Consultants and agencies were only used by 28% of organisations and Analysts by 26%,
  
  
• the biggest obstacle to success (51%) was getting people to engage, the second biggest was having enough time to manage the community at 44% and attracting people to the community was third at 35%.
  

More interesting graphs from the 2008 survey are listed here.


So my takeaways?

• Online communities are about community, not technology - don't give IT control,
• there's not a large investment to start,
• you should participate online to learn about online communities - don't rely on consultants and agencies to build your internal understanding,
• you have to work the community - don't rely on the community building itself,
• tap into existing communities where possible, it's faster, cheaper, easier and more effective than re-inventing the wheel.

But if you're reading my blog you've already figured these out already - correct?

It's the people who are not reading blogs who need the education!

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Less online hurdles = more egovernment customers

The complexity of screens and the registration and sign-in processes for some Australian egovernment (online) services disturbs me.

In the commercial world I lived by a simple rule of thumb, on average each hurdle I erected between a customer and their goal reduced the overall number of customers who reached their goal by 30%.

To visually demonstate,

Hurdles 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Customers 1,000,000 700,000 490,000 343,000 240,100 168,070 117,649 82,354 57,648 40,354 28,248

Percentage using 100% 70% 49% 34% 24% 17% 12% 8% 6% 4% 3%

This mean that if I started with one million customers and had ten hurdles, only 28,248 of them (3%) would be willing and able to jump all of them to use the service.

If I cut this to six hurdles, this would increase usage to 117,649 customers (12%) - or four times as many - a 400% increase in usage!

If I could cut it to only three hurdles, that would raise the number of customers able to use the service to 490,000 customers (49%) or another three times as many - 300% increase from the six hurdles figure or a massive 1,700% increase from ten hurdles.

In other words, removing hurdles can dramatically increase usage. While in reality it is never as linear as this, remove the right hurdles and the number of customers using an online service will soar.

When engaging customers online we already have built-in hurdles people have to meet to use and interact with our egovernment services:

• Access to a computer
• An internet connection
• Comfort with using the above
• Mandatory registration processes (even for simple transactions)

However there are often additional hurdles that organisations erect such as,

• No sales pitch for services - explaining by video/animation and audio how a service works and what benefits it provides customers
• Difficult-to-find services and registration/sign-on links
• Overly complex registration/sign-on processes
• Unnecessary information collection - to the extent of asking customers information they are unlikely to have access to
• Badly written service, security and privacy information
• Poorly constructed workflows with unnecessary or out-of-order steps and no clarity on where the customer is in the process (how many steps remain)
• Error messages in bureaucratic or tech-speak that dead-end the customer (no way forward)
  
• A lack of appropriate acknowledgement when steps or transactions are correctly completed
• Forcing customers to switch channels in the middle of a process without warning or when tasks could be completed entirely online
• A requirement for complex and non-intuitive password and usernames
• Difficult password and username retrieval processes (if a service is used less than weekly, most customers will forget their password at some point)
• A lack of tutorials, contextual help or step-ups to live online interactions with customer service officers (such as Avatar-based agent interactions, or actual staff interactions via text chat, voice chat or video chat)
• Services that require the use of plug-ins, older web browsers or are not friendly towards mobile devices

There are approaches to reduce or negate many of these hurdles already implemented in the commercial sector.

Most of these can be adopted by government without compromising security or privacy and all lead to greater usage and satisfaction with online services.

Some of these 'hurdle-repellents' include:

• Upfront video demonstrating what the service does (the benefit) and how it works (ease of use)
• Larger and more prominent registration/sign-on) buttons, with less clutter on pages to distract customers
• Use of plain english in all instructions and error messages, generally in informal language
• Extra large form fields (12pt or larger) for easier reading
• Simpler workflows with less steps and clear progression bars explaining the next step
• Customer-defined usernames and passwords (or use of email address as username), with visual aids to maximise security (such as password strength indicators)
• Secret questions (some user-defined) to provide a second line of support for customers who forget their passwords
• Clear and simple 'forgotten password' processes which do not require customers to switch channels (to call)
• Contextual help integrated into every screen
• Video or text and graphics tutorials for each workflow - clearly accessible within the workflow and before a user authenticates (double as sales tools)
• Live online help, potentially with co-browsing (where the customer service officer can see what the customer is seeing)

There are other commonly used approaches to reducing the hurdles for your customers when using egovernment services. Try out some commercial sites and you'll quickly gather more ideas.

So why reduce the hurdles for customers - potentially at a cost to the government?
The benefits for the government agency include faster outcomes, lower cost transactions and greater customer satisfaction. There's a side benefit of more timely and accurate reporting as online transactions can be easier to capture and report on than those over a counter or phone.

The benefits for customers include less stress when transacting (therefore more likelihood they will keep using the same approach) and faster outcomes.

The downside? Government will need to invest more in our online infrastructure to make it easier and faster for customers.

I reckon that trade-off is well worth it.

So what is your agency doing to remove online transaction hurdles for customers?

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Australia ranked lucky 13th in egovernment - down from 7th position in 2008

The Waseda university in Japan has released its 2009 Waseda University International e-Government Ranking, the fifth consecutive report on how 34 leading countries are progressing in their egovernment activities.

Australia managed to reach 13th position, down from 7th in 2008. In fact Australia experienced the second greatest year-on-year fall in ranking of any country (only Hong Kong did worse).

Australia ranked 6th in 2007, 8th in 2006 and 6th in 2005.

The top ten for 2009 included Singapore (who beat the US into the top position for the first time in the ranking's history), USA, Sweden, UK, Japan, Korea, Canada, Taiwan, Finland, Germany, Italy and Norway.

We did beat New Zealand, who came in at 19th place (down from 15th last year).

The ranking found that network preparedness was a requirement for success, with countries with more mature (and faster) networks being more effective at launching and maintaining egovernment initiatives.

It also found that usability was a key factor in the adoption of egovernment services and that more countries were treating this as a key priority.

Other factors included a shift towards a central online portal for nations and the support and scope of the whole-of-government CIO in terms of egovernment initiatives.

Web 2.0 adoption was also highlighted as a factor, particularly in the success of Asian countries - who now hold 4 of the top 10 positions in the ranking.

Australia scored in the top ten for two areas of egovernment, Interface Function and
Applications and e-Gov Promotion. We did not reach the top ten for the other three areas, Management Optimization, National Portal or CIO in Government.

A press release with details of the ranking is available at www.giti.waseda.ac.jp/GITS/news/download/e-Government_Ranking2009_en.pdf.

A press release for last year's ranking is available at www.obi.giti.waseda.ac.jp/e_gov/2008-02_World_e-Gov_Ranking.pdf

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Making government data available online for mashups - US moving to legislate

The US government has taken the first holistic step towards making federal data available online in bulk.

This would allow the public to reuse the data, mash it up with other sources and repackage it online in innovative ways - potentially uncovering relationships and new uses that were never conceived of by the government.

Reported in Threat Level in the article, An API for Federal Legislation? Congress Wants Your Opinion, the first step calls for a feasibility study to assess the cost of making data publicly available in bulk.

The step is being enshrined in the new Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which is already in the process of being passed.

In the words of the sponsor for the feasibility study,

“In our web 2.0 world, we can empower the public by providing them with raw data that they can remix and reuse in new and innovative ways," says Honda, who is vice chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch. "With these tools, the public can collaborate on projects that can help legislators to create better policies to address the pressing challenges facing our nation.”

The Australian government has a great deal of data which could similarly be freed up to work for the common good of the nation, but access to it varies by department and there are no common standards for how it should be made public.

Perhaps we also need a centralised legislative approach to move towards greater and more consistent access.

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Should rail timetables be restricted under government copyright?

NSW has been the scene of an interesting series of events over the last week regarding the right of iPhone developers to republish NSW Rail timetables in their applications.

Covered in the Sydney Morning Herald articles, CityRail puts brakes on iPhone timetable app and How RailCorp's derailing commuter 'apps', last week it emerged that NSW Rail had threatened four developers with legal action for repackaged NSW rail timetables into applications for iPhones, breaching copyright.

The reason for the legal action given to the SMH was,

"RailCorp's primary concern is that our customers receive accurate, up-to-date timetable information," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

Next the NSW Premier stepped in and as covered in the article, Rees orders RailCorp to talk to iPhone app makers, releasing the news publicly initially via his PremierofNSW Twitter account.

I've blogged previously about the need for government to make it easier to reuse publicly released government information.

Why copyright material that is made available online anyway? if the aim is to simply prevent out-of-context use or commercial reselling, there are options like Creative Commons available.

Indeed the ABS has taken steps in this direction, beginning to publish most website content under a Creative Commons license.

I envisage timetables as an appropriate type of information to be offered as a web service or RSS feed. This would allow NSW Rail full control over the accuracy of the information while allowing other websites and mobile applications to integrate it into their offerings. The public can then vote with their feet as to which version of the information they prefer, and how much they are willing to pay for it.

Much the same type of service is already offered by the Bureau of Meteorology - and the success of OzWeather on the iPhone is a testament to the successful integration of information possible when there's a web-savvy government agency and a developer who finds a way to add value to the raw data.

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