Question 1-
Chapter 4 lists five
objectives that companies can pursue with interactive technologies. These five
objectives are related to existing business functions. Give an example of an
existing business function at your company that seems ripe for updating with an
interactive technology. Do you think your company is ready to make the leap?
Why or why not?
Five
primary objectives that companies can pursue in the groundswell include
listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing. Although there are
areas of improvement that my company could work on within each of the
objectives, the listening objective is the most imperative. In order to truly
understand our customer and the needs of our customer, listening is crucial. As
Ricardo Guimaraes stated, "The value of a brand belongs to the market, and
not to the company. The company in this sense is a tool to create value for the
brand...Brand in this sense-it lives outside the company, not in the
company" (Li & Bernoff 2011, p. 79).
The
organization I currently work for is the Southwest Virginia Workforce
Investment Board (WIB), and we serve adults, unemployed workers, and youth
participants. While serving the participants, they are able to talk to their
career development specialist about any issues they may be having, however, we
do not have any other type of customer feedback system in place. This is a
challenge because it does not allow participants to express their satisfaction
or dissatisfaction with their career development specialist, or with our
services. Also, if we do not listen to our participants, then we cannot truly
understand their needs or understand where we can improve as an organization.
In
developing a listening objective for our organization, our organization could improve
not only in our services to the client, but listening would also help us to
develop marketing tools that would better promote our services. Listening would
also enhance productivity, and would give us an advantage over other WIBs
(Helms & Haynes, 1992). With listening, it is also important to remember to
listen all of the time, and not just a few times a year. As discussed by Helms and Haynes, listening
activities include 3 categories: information seeking, evaluating others, and
responding to others (Helms & Haynes, 1992). Learning to listen to our
participants on a regular basis, can also help our organization more
effectively pin point issues as they occur, and not six months later. As Li and Bernoff discuss, listening is
"Ongoing monitoring of your customers' conversations with each other,
instead of occasional survey s an d focus groups" (Li & Bernoff 2011,
p. 69).
Overall,
our organization is ready to make the leap to start listening to our clients,
because we spend a lot of time developing policies and procedures to what we
feel is best for our organization, however, the missing component is listening
to our actual participants, and understanding what they feel would be most
helpful. We often sit around discussing ways we could improve our services, but
in moving forward with a listening objective, it would be beneficial to develop
a listening plan and actually begin implementing it. Our organization could set
aside a specific research budget and develop a private community that would
deliver surveys to our participants, and would promote regular brand monitoring.
In the end, improved listening can help our organization better understand our
participants and will help us move forward in a positive direction in better
serving our participants.
References:
Helms, M. M.,
& Haynes, P. J. (1992). Are you really listening? the benefit of effective
intra-organizational listening. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 7(6),
17. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.bellevue.edu:80/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/215888773?accountid=28125
Li, C., &
Bernoff, J. (2008). Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social
technologies (pp. 9-61). Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Press.
I like how you give an emphasis to listening to your participants. This is very important and in today's world we unfortunately don't do that as often as we should. As a company you do have directions and where you want to be as far as positioning yourself in the market however you can’t never lose sight of what’s really important and that’s ultimately your consumers. I totally agree with you, focusing on what your participants think can only get you guys better.
ReplyDeleteCara, I was particularly interested in this quote from your post:
ReplyDelete>> As Ricardo Guimaraes stated, "The value of a brand belongs to the market, and not to the company. “
We have heard over and over in our classes throughout this program that the market does in fact control the company. After reading this, all I thought about was the Zappos’ philosophy; be sure the customer is happy. In fact, they spend less money on marketing so they can provide greater service to their customers. In doing this, they allow their customers to simply use word of mouth to market for them. They continue to be a successful company while using these tactics. What a great way to run a business!
In terms of what your company could improve, I appreciate that you discussed the listening objective. In fact, I think several companies could simply improve by learning to listen to what their customers. Great work this week; I enjoyed reading your post!
Hi Cara,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I agree with you regarding the advantages of listening and feel the value of listening is sorely under appreciated. I find that as an insider to a process or program, it is easy to mainly focus on things that affect you or your group. Listening to customer feedback often reels you back into a better perspective and reminds you of your purpose. When caught in an ethical dilemma or locking horns with another manager, one of our wise Vice Presidents often reminds us to put the patient’s needs in the center of our focus. Routinely listening to the groundswell can only serve as a constant reminder of your focus as well. Would your company consider using any particular type of social technologies for your surveys?
Tricia,
DeleteThanks for commenting! Yes we are definitely interested in using social technologies for our surveys. I think this is one of our missing components right now, and I am currently looking to address this in our organization.
Thanks,
Cara
First of all, this is an extremely well written and thought out post. I agree that listening and gaining insight to what customers are thinking is critical to an organizations longevity. For many corporations, the challenge seems to be the divide between listening to the "street" or the customer. Too often, corporate direction is set to appease Wall Street rather than Main Street. While listening to customers is an organizations life blood, this can be challenging and confusing. We are a global company, so what is being said varies greatly based on where the customer is located and what the challenges are in that region. Additionally, we have business partners and others in the industry who have their own ideas and initiatives. As a software company, our challenge is trying to assess which of these voices make the most sense at any time. We get our input through multiple sources, including groundswell. It is no easy task to know which "voice" is the one to plan a bet on.
ReplyDelete