Prayag anchors CSAT studies for a few clients and a valuable lesson learned is the importance of working closely with your customer when the initiative is in progress to ensure the desired results.  Running a CSAT initiative required detailed planning and faultless execution – after all you are dealing with your client’s customers. So, it makes sense to involve your client every step of the way to make sure the study goes through smoothly.

One area especially where client support really matters is in getting responses from the end users – your client can be really useful in reaching out to their clients and urging them to respond to the questionnaires.  While you will continue to follow up with the target audience (client’s client) to gather  feedback, we need to remember that too many follow ups are not acceptable and can work at cross purpose. Here, if the account managers from your client organization pitches in and convinces their client to respond, chances of getting responses are higher. Why is it important for the account managers to collaborate? Couple of important reasons why –

1. Opportunity to show the target audience that you care for their feedback
2. Demonstrating your commitment to customer satisfaction to your organization

On the flipside, not being proactive leads to the unwanted conclusions such as fear of negative feedback or reluctance to engage with the client and so on. In fact, one of our clients has made it a practice to identify account managers who have not managed to get their clients to participate in the CSAT few times in a row. This list is then analysed and shared with the CEO underlining the importance placed on customer feedback in this particular organization.

The point is, we need to work in partnership with the customer during a CSAT study – we have found this to be a good approach given the sensitive nature of this exercise and also provides some comfort to the end client.

Popularity: 14% [?]

We  have been pretty much been taken over by social media – both at a personal and professional level. I’m sure that youhave  a presence in at least one of these – Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin or some such. We are used to a world where you can stay updated on what companies are up to if you choose to. When there are important changes/announcements from a company – for example, when quarterly results are announced, you get to know what the results are and reactions to the results from both industry as well as your social circle in very near real time.

No questioning the power of social media and it’s here to stay. Here are a few examples across spheres where it has worked beyond expectations in my view:

Kolaveri – Within days of its release, this song got close to 1.8 million views on you tube and is one of the most searched videos.  Somehow, the song was able to connect with the audience and thanks to the viral effect managed to set a record. What a great way to promote a movie and all of this almost free! Yup! we had a blog on this too – http://blogs.prayag.com/latestbuzz/general/viral-power-makes-it-look-so-simple-but-is-that-so/.

Kinaxis: A supply chain management company, Kinaxis has achieved great results through its blogging efforts.  Apparently, the company experiences a 7 fold increase in website traffic, 3.2 times increase in conversion, and 5.3 times increase in blog traffic in 2009 compared to 2008. How did it manage this – through a thorough understanding of their target segment and their areas of interest, With this, the published relevant blogs including those from industry experts and positioned themselves subtly as leaders.  Some of our readers may recall that we covered Kinaxis sometime back because of their series of entertaining videos (http://blogs.prayag.com/latestbuzz/general/whacky-video-competition-will-it-blend-will-you-win/).

H&R Block –the tax consultants based in the US had such a simple strategy and that was what was so impressive. They did not opt for any of the jazzy tools and instead focused on timely content to their target audience.  There is a case study on their efforts & results available at http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2011/06/09/andys-answers-how-hr-block-uses-social-media-to-help-customers-through-the-stress-of-tax-season/

Will be great if you can share some of your personal favourites too!

Popularity: 24% [?]

Off late, I have been having wondering about the volumes of content floating around – newsletters, RSS feeds, social media updates and what not. How much of this content is actually read and used? Taking my personal example, I wondered what made me select content to read and mercilessly delete the rest? Here is my list – please add what you think works for you as well.

1. Catchy headlines – by this I don’t mean the fluffy ones- but something like this catches my attention and makes me click on the link provided. Example: Today’s headline in Economic Times “Struggling to keep pace, Infosys faces a tough time ahead” or from a newsletter I have subscribed to –  “6 Steps to Getting Started With Google+”. These headlines succinctly captured the essence of the content and I did not have to spend time going through the article to figure out what it was all about. Takeaway – convey the meaning crisply and in simple terms.
2. Keywords in the summary of the content – if I come across keywords that am interested in, it definitely makes me want to read more. A high-level or vague summary discourages you from exploring it further.
3. Timing of the content – I found that during the middle of the work day, am not inclined to check out what updates are being published. What works for me is catching up either early in the morning before the rush starts or probably just before wrapping up for the day. So, maybe we should look at what time these updates are published?
4. Nature of the content – I have found that the more serious updates and announcements work well during the week – probably got to do with the frame of the mind. Over the weekend, I do not mind trivia and lighter content. Again, trivia interspersed with the serious stuff is welcome during the week too – good to take a break!
5. Content quality – if the content is laid out well with enough substantiation, I find it lot more worthwhile to spend my time on it rather than take part in a guessing game. Take this article for example in today’s Mint – this was a good one I thought – http://www.livemint.com/2012/01/22222627/Wipro-is-getting-back-on-track.html. Notice the url too – gives you a good idea of what the article is all about.

These were some quick thoughts on what makes me pick and choose from the tonnes of the online content available.  Let me know how you pick your content.

P.S Also – what did you think about the title?

Popularity: 33% [?]

While reading up on BYOD and consumerization of IT, I came across some interesting statistics as well as ideas. For starters, do you know that 10 million iPads are expected to be sold this year? Amazing isn’t it? While talking to people in the industry, I also realize that this trend is becoming more and more mainstream. Am sure you would have seen a few ipads being used in meetings! Few companies have even started running BYOD campaigns internally. For the company, yes, this means lesser investments in devices and also potentially improving productivity and employee satisfaction.

However, while this is all exciting, as always, there are a few challenges that need to be overcome by IT teams. One of the biggest challenges would be the security angle. With a multitude of devices to service, it is a veritable nightmare for IT teams. Imagine having to upgrade business apps across different kinds of devices, OS’ etc. Also, allowing employees to bring in their own devices leaves IT teams with very less control and company sensitive data  could be compromised easily. So, what are some ways in which security can be enforced on this trend?

Typically, security was enforced at the end point or at the device end – your laptops have anti-virus software for instance. However, this is not really practical in the new scenario. So, companies such as Cisco are moving security to a cloud server in the back end. So, your device does not have any security software and instead when you connect to the office network, scanning happens from a cloud server. So, both consumerization of IT and cloud computing have been effectively married to provide employees with a much better work experience while taking care of company interests as well. Wonder what other technology advances we have in store for us next!

Popularity: 29% [?]

Many new-fangled phrases about technology releases are being bandied about – you would have heard of consumerization of IT, social computing, analytics and what not. What is achievable with these new technologies is quite amazing both for businesses and consumers. The consumer world has never been as spoiled for choice before. Consider this – smart and smarter devices, multiple forms of communication and collaboration tools, intelligent buildings and so on. And now there is Siri. Apple as usual has managed to get a headstart by introducing this really cool piece of technology. For the uninitiated, Siri in layman’s terms is a virtual personal assistant that operates on voice based commands and is available on latest versions of the iphone. Here’s more – you can command Siri to perform tasks using natural language. Apple has a demo on its site – apparently, if you ask Siri, what is the traffic like at this point, it identifies your location and then figures out the traffic in that neighbourhood and gives you an update. How cool is that?

Yesterday, I happened to see a demo of Kinect and my first thought was that the holodecks of Star Trek is no longer a fantasy. Guess it is only a matter of time before we start seeing them.

On the social side, much has been discussed about the power of social media – be it to fuel the Egypt revolution or in other parts of the Middle East/West Asia.

On the business side, context specific help can be made available through specially designed eyepieces. With these, workers can diagnose and resolve problems much more effectively. The possibilities are countless and am not even going to get started on using smart devices at work to improve productivity and so on. Those seem like basic uses suddenly.

Have you come across any technology that you have used and which has made a difference? Do share – will be interesting to compare notes.

Popularity: 28% [?]

HP’s recent decisions and actions apparently have shaken the confidence of its key stakeholders – investors and customers. In fact, customers are reconsidering their partnership with this technology giant especially after its decision to spin off its PC business and end the smartphone and tablet businesses. The main grouse is that the direction the company is not clear enough and whatever signals the company is giving is surely not comforting. This from the world’s largest technology company! Obviously, the HP management will have its hands full with damage control exercises in the weeks to come. While HP’s rationale behind exiting the PC business may be attributed to the dwindling prospects of the PC what with tablets and smartphones on the rise and fortify its enterprise software presence through the acquisition of Autonomy. However, a staged exit may have been more effective given that PCs are still the most significant form of computing device today.

Closer home, we saw companies such as Satyam (now Mahindra-Satyam) and Wipro go through turbulent times as they dealt with management shake-ups. Yes, there were some instances of clients backing out especially in the case of Satyam. Wipro was transparent and had meetings with their clients and explained the changes and the reasons behind it and won the support of customers.

So, when a company goes through a major change, here are some steps it should definitely consider – impact of its strategy change on the market and demands/expectations from the market and  on finalizing the change plan, communicate to key customers and stakeholders and gauge their reactions and gain acceptance.  Obviously, HP would have followed these steps too – but for now, it looks like something went wrong somewhere.

Popularity: 40% [?]