It’s a well-known fact that customers now expect your business to be “on-demand”. They tweet a complaint with the expectation that you’ll see it and respond quickly. They check-in on FourSquare looking for some immediate reward or offer. They order a product and expect “in-stock” status and shipping overnight.
More than on-demand response, they expect on-demand acknowledgement. And when they don’t receive it, they certainly don’t waste any time sharing their dissatisfaction through the social-Web. And so businesses are hiring PR firms, community managers and installing software to help deliver on-demand product and customer acknowledgement across the enterprise.
So your business is now on-demand, but what of your employees? Isn’t it logical that they must also be on-demand? And by that I’m not referring to employees running to the office whenever they’re buzzed or called. I’m referring to an evolving corporate expectation that employees become available to brainstorm, plan, execute and support business initiatives outside of their daily schedules or departmental responsibilities.
In the traditional model, new business initiatives that required cross-silo collaboration would involve executive direction, a project manager and Gantt chart full of meetings and contingencies among the required departmental teams. Three months into the new initiative – after some 15 meetings that focused on territorial fights over control of resources, data or responsibilities – some form of a project plan might start to see the light of day.
Imagine a business managing their social engagement or customer service this way? When someone Tweets a complaint, a request is submitted to the C-Suite for a project manager to create a cross-silo team to analyse the issue and formulate an appropriate response. Clearly this makes no sense, yet why do we operate our internal business communications this way?
The Speed Of Social Enterprise
As we explore the evolution of the business into a social enterprise, we must re-think internal communication structures (and where applicable: technologies) that enable executives and front-line employees from across multiple departments to come together on-demand to explore a trending opportunity or brainstorm a business problem discovered.
Future enterprises must enable their employees to operate on-demand and free of their department’s perceived roles and hierarchal structures in order to achieve results at the speed which the market now demands. Technology has created a sense of urgency and customer expectation that businesses must adapt to and silos are simply in the way of that effort.
Focusing on quick customer acknowledgement without addressing internal structures that allow employees to facilitate that process will increase business costs with little impact on customer satisfaction or bottom line results.
What do you think? Can an enterprise operate outside of traditional collaboration models?
Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
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