CIM Board Elections – why I’m standing and why you should vote!

I recently decided to stand for election to the CIM Board of Trustees. I’m very fortunate in being freelance that I can allow myself time to put some effort and energy back into an institution that I love (despite it’s flaws).

I’ve been a member for over 20 years and in that time I have benefited greatly from CIM. It’s kept me up to date, helped me to network and introduced me to some wonderful people that I am very proud to call close friends (you know who you are). It has rewarded me with some status (I became chartered in 2002 and was elected a Fellow in 2005), which has helped me be taken seriously as a professional marketer. It’s added to my personal development by making me the Chair of the North West Regional Board and it’s provided me with numerous speaking opportunities.

So now it’s time for me to give back. I have some skills and experience which might be useful (in using data and in delivering customer experience) but more importantly, I am keen to get stuff done and to help CIM transition to a new business model which is fit for purpose in a digital age. And I’d love to see members, especially those out in the regions, be more valued and better served by what should be, and can be, one of the best professional bodies in our industry.

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And hopefully, when the voting closes on Nov 6th, you will see that you can make a difference too.

*dismounts from soapbox*

Thanks, Dawn

By Dawn | October 5, 2017 | CIM, Marketing |

Internal Communications

I was recently asked to fill in for a speaker and give a presentation on Internal Communications. This is not one of my key topics, but after a bit of thought I realised that I’d been handling internal comms for years. Firstly, as part of the management team at Brother and latterly as part of a research project I assisted with for AMBS and the British Quality Foundation on excellence in business, which highlighted some great internal comms examples. Several of the attendees at the event have asked for my slides, so they must have seen some use in the information I put together. With that in mind, I thought I’d share the ten things that I think are important about internal comms. These are numbered, but not necessarily in order!

1. Make internal comms a priority

This means getting senior buy in and support for internal comms and making sure every manager knows that it’s their responsibility to communicate with their teams. The top person in the organisation will (by accident or by design) set the tone for the internal comms strategy. (My advice would be to get a group together to handle internal comms. If you can’t get your most senior person, try and get their PA/EA. And don’t make it just about marketing, it should be a multi-disciplinary team (see point 10).)

2. Have a plan

Draw up a plan for routine communications (what, how, who by, who to, when etc.). Even if you don’t stick to it long term, it helps to focus the mind and shows up any inadequacies of your current internal comms. Identify areas where you need to communicate more and new channels that you might need. When you’ve done that, make a plan for crisis communications. It’s better to have a plan you don’t need, than to need a plan and not have one!

3. Be consistent

Make sure the messages that go out are consistent with each other. This means that you need to make sure everyone has enough information to answer questions with the same response and you need to make sure that you have agreed a “party line”. (You don’t want to be like Theresa May and Boris Johnson arguing in public about what Brexit could mean – nobody wants to see that.)

4. Be relevant

Don’t force people to read stuff that is irrelevant to them. This will turn them off and make your relevant communications get lost in the noise. Don’t include lots of statistics and technical background if they aren’t needed (you can always put a link to these for the terminally curious to keep your messages clean).

5. Be appropriate

Provide different levels of details and emphasis and use different language and tone of voice for each comms channel and each audience. The core message should be the same (see point 3) but how it is delivered can be altered to suit the recipient. Think about how you might deliver financial news differently to a senior team or finance department compared to the restaurant staff or delivery drivers. But make sure the detailed information is available to those that want more.

6. Use multiple channels

Common Communication Tools

In today’s business world, there are a myriad of tools available to communicate with employees. Each has its own benefits and drawbacks. Some are more formal than others, some support more graphics. Some encourage feedback whilst others are predominantly one way. Select the appropriate channels for the type of message – don’t be afraid to use multiple channels for the same content (adapted to suit the channel). Bear in mind that often people respond not to the message itself, but to how it is delivered. Nobody likes being “dumped by text” (apparently, though my dating days predate mobile phones, so I’m fortunate not to have first hand knowledge of this!).

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We all receive and interpret messages against a background of other noise and events. Some days, it’s just not appropriate to put out certain messages. Be mindful of this, especially if you have already scheduled or automated messages to be sent! Tragic events alter the mood of your audience. Corporate events also impact on how your audience will respond. Ask yourself if recent events are likely to make your audience more receptive or more cynical of your message.

8. Be proactive

Tell people in advance of an event (where possible) or as soon as feasible afterwards. Tell people in an appropriate order for major events. For example tell those affected by redundancies before telling all staff, discuss with those who have to deal with an impending crisis such as a product recall before telling others – this allows you to get plans in place and answers to questions sorted.

9. Communication is a two way process

Encourage feedback and discussion wherever feasible. All parties benefit when people are more engaged. Employees will understand more when they can query or participate in decision making. Managers learn from the questions and suggestions made.

10. Be holistic

Be as inclusive as possible. Decide for yourself where the line between “internal” and “external” lies. Does it include volunteers, suppliers, business partners? Make communications as open as possible. Decide what can and what can’t be communicated (my personal preference is to communicate as much as possible, but organisations differ on this). Be mindful of competitive confidentiality, but share as much as possible. And share it as widely as possible. Making information available to all makes people feel included and informed (even if they don’t read it!)

Finally, a thought about culture. Internal communications and corporate culture go hand in hand. One drives the other – they cannot exist without each other. Culture will dictate how you handle internal comms and internal comms will dictate the culture of the organisation. You can’t change one without the other. And change is slow, so be prepared to stick at it for the long haul. Developing and implementing a new comms strategy, like changing culture, takes time and can be a lonely and frustrating business.

I hope you find this useful!

I’m sure you will have additional items of your own – please feel free to add them in the comments

By Dawn | October 4, 2017 | Uncategorized |

What is Customer Experience?

Tone of voice adds to customer experience

A customer’s experience begins well before any transaction might take place. Take this sign outside a Manchester cafe – cake or no cake. It sets up an impression of delivering cake (which is very important) but also of a sense of humour and playfulness. If I go in for cake, I expect a friendly welcome in a quirky atmosphere – and I haven’t even stepped inside yet! If the inside of the cafe doesn’t deliver these things, then I will be disappointed, almost regardless of how I’m treated as a customer and how good the cake is.

Customer experience, for me, is about creating expectations and then delivering against them. But it’s also about more than service – it’s about ambiance, smells, emotions and feelings. It includes design, tone of voice, attitudes of staff and yes, tasty cake (or other quality product).

One of the academic papers I read recently (1) provided a review of customer experience literature and built a framework of four dimensions of customer experience as follows:

individual experience – how the product or service fits into the life of an individual customer
customer journey – how the relationship is developed over a long term
service ecosystem – how the organisation takes into account the other organisations and factors which affect the product or service
measurement – the importance of using multiple measures to asses a product, service or relationship

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I’ve been finding these four elements useful discussion points with my clients – exploring each factor to see what can be improved. They create much food for thought, as they challenge organisations to be much holistic about designing and maintaining customer experiences.

How are you measuring up against these four elements?

Reference:

(1) De Keyser, K. N. Lemon, P. Klaus, and T. L. Keiningham, “A Framework for Understanding and Managing the Customer Experience,” Mark. Sci. Inst. Work. Pap. Ser. 2015, Rep. No. 15-121, Forthcom., no. Report No. 15-121, pp. 1–47, 2015.

By Dawn | July 18, 2017 | Uncategorized |

What is Big Data?

This is something I’m often asked, and in truth, there is no set definition (yet). The definition I hear most often is that Big Data relates to Volume, Variety and Velocity (the 3Vs). This definition comes from Doug Laney and was used to describe the challenges of data back in 2001. Since then, more Vs have been added, and in some cases taken away – but many definitions relate to the form of the definition – and they are very subjective. One industry’s large volume is another industry’s small fry. What was big last year is very manageable now.

More recently, definitions have arisen which describe the outcome of the data – if it’s transformative, it’s big. Or if it provides new opportunities or can combine data in new ways, then it’s big. I find these functional definitions more exciting – they really focus on the opportunities that data can bring in the modern world.

But perhaps we need a definition that can combine both these elements – the form and the function. Since 2015, these kinds of integrated definitions have started to appear. My favourite is the one provided by Akter and Fosso Wamba in 2016 (1):

“A holistic process that involves the collection, analysis, use and interpretation of data for various functional divisions with a view to gaining actionable insights, creating business value and establishing competitive advantage! (Akter and Fosso Wamba, 2016, p178)

There are lots of elements in this definition; the fact that it describes a whole process, not just the data and the fact that it mentions “various functional divisions”. This is one of the biggest challenges for many organisations implementing big data projects – the fact that these project cross functional boundaries and require the breaking down of traditional silos – but that’s a topic for another day!

Importantly, for me, this definition of big data allows us to think in much broader terms and for organisations it puts the emphasis on the competitive advantage to be gained – this is not data for data’s sake, but gathering and using data with a purpose.

I hope you might find this definition useful and enlightening.
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References

(1) Akter and S. Fosso Wamba, “Big data analytics in E-commerce: a systematic review and agenda for future research,” Electron. Mark., vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 173–194, 2016.

By Dawn | June 18, 2017 | Big Data |

Happy Talk

Image of ONS Interactive tool for well-being and other stats

I’m loving this new interactive tool from the ONS, which gives statistics relating to the national well-being, as well as some primary stats on employment, education etc.

Grab and spin the wheel to see different stats – each includes links to the source of the data too, very handy!
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Useful summary to keep a link to, if you’re sometimes asked for top line figures and how they’ve changed.

Now, if we can only figure out how to make everyone happy at the same time, and even whether that would be a good thing!

By Dawn | October 1, 2013 | Data Visualisation |

Hello

Well, it’s finally here, my new website and my new business.

After years of working in a large corporate, being here feels very different. But I know that there are lots of people who are frustrated and struggling with all the things that kept me awake over the years, so I’ve broken free so that I can help them (you).

In too many organisations, there are piles of information and data. And the outside world keeps talking about “big data”, and for those of us that are just about getting a handle on what we’ve got, that’s quite a scary term. But I don’t think Big Data is where it’s at for the vast majority of us. I think “Right Sized Data” is more appropriate. What’s the use of Big Data if you don’t even have the fundamentals in place? What will Big Data help you do, if you don’t even know what questions you should be asking of it? What if you work in a niche, B2B world and don’t even think there is any Big Data for you?

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So let’s start harnessing what we’ve got, using it for proper insight and getting proper competitive advantage or customer value from it. And if you want help or inspiration to do that, then my mission to start this business and this website has found a cause.

Thank you

By Dawn | October 1, 2013 | Big Data, Right Sized Data |