Posts Tagged ‘website’

Institutions as Mobilising Networks

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

The book I’m reading at the moment is “The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age“. The book links to a number of themes I’m interested in, particularly developing knowledge content and user generated content (and also a number of the drivers indentified in the recent NCVO future of membership report).

The book looks at how new technology such as social networks and virtual environments will change how people learn. And although the book is aimed mainly at higher education, there is plenty of read across into the membership organisations as many are knowledge-based and/or educational.

I’ve just finished the chapter titled “Institutions as Mobilising Networks” which contrasts how institutions are often viewed - as rule-driven, centralised, old fashioned and slow moving - with how they could be - trend setting, dynamic, agile and innovative.

The key opportunity (or challenge, depending on how you look at it) is: to use social media and learning environments to aggregate, coordinate and disseminate knowledge and facilitate learning - to mobilise the network of members and other potential participants.

Taking up this challenge could dramatically improve engagement and knowledge development in an institution’s area of interest.

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Open OS Map use gains momentum

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

The increased availability of Ordinance Survey map data was trailed in the Governement’s Power of Information Taskforce Report in 2009.

The OS’s OpenSpace API for using interactive OS map data on websites is gaining momentum with the release of additional developer resources, which now include a wiki, blog and forum. There are some good example applications on the wiki, including where to find “Boris’s Bikes”.

OpenSpace is free for use by not-for-profit organisations as long as the service is not charged for and is not behind a member-only login. There are daily limits on the data downloaded and the terms and conditions need careful scrutiny (as always). A “pro” version is also available.

For many there will be a usability decision to be made between this and Google Maps, with OpenSpace having significant advantages for applications to do with walking or away from major centres (as demonstrated by my experience of trying to navigate the South Downs Way using Google Maps on my iPhone).

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Book Review: The Best Service is No Service

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

“The Best Service is No Service” by Bill Price and David Jaffe is an excellent book that ought to be compulsory reading for all companies with a customer service element, mostly because so many of them are so very far from providing even reasonable service.

The book gives clear, practical advice and loads of examples of where service has gone wrong and of best practice (plenty of examples from Amazon and first direct for instance in this category).

A few of the most significant points they make are:

  • Good quality self service has major benefits, making it easier for users to do what they want, when they want and significantly reduce operational costs
  • Get rid of unnecessary reasons for people to contact you (”dumb contacts” is the phrase they use in the book) - eliminate contacts that have no value to the customer and no value to the organisation
  • Value those contacts and relationships that are most important to you and have the greatest benefit to the organisation
  • Gather metrics on what people are trying to find out about, both on the website and through calls
  • “Service” is not just the province of a contact / service centre, it is equally important across the whole operation

    • The advice should transform customer experience where it is poor and have a major impact on the bottom line of companies who take notice.

    It is interesting to think about how this impacts on the NFP sector. I think the key issues are:

  • NFP organisations are different from the Amazons and BTs of this world. The relationships with their key stakeholders (particularly members / supporters) are more complex and long term, especially where it forms an important part of their career development or social engagement. This makes the following points even more important.
  • It shows the need for joined-up service, which is likely to be across the whole set of services and interactions - knowing about the member or supporter and their interests across all departments, not just the contact centre and using that information to provide excellent service.
  • Route calls and enquiries to the people who are best suited to provide the best answer.
  • Give ownership of important relationships to the most appropriate department (not necessarily the contact centre).
  • It is particularly important to provide good self service.

    • The two key IT elements of this are:

  • The website needs to have good self service functionality and provide information to eliminate the need for people to phone / email. So, people should be able to update their details, make donations, pay their subscriptions, book events, etc.
  • The CRM needs to be interfaced to the website and be the repository for contact history, preferences, areas of interest and information needed for marketing.

    • Also available: ebook version

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    CRM and Website Integration

    Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

    Organisations are often faced with the dilemma of how to select their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and website CMS (Content Management System) - should they use the same supplier for both, with the promise of out of the box integration?

    This is a dilemma we find quite a lot of people having and there isn’t a single answer that suits everyone.

    The main problem is that organisations very rarely start with a “green field” - there are always legacy systems that have to be taken into account and the business case for change to be considered. This is the main reason why there isn’t one solution that suits everyone. If you have already made a considerable investment, there may not be a good commercial case for changing.

    In general, membership system / donor system / CRM (I’ll refer to them collectively as CRMs) suppliers don’t provide very good website CMSs and certainly not systems with market leading facilities. So in most cases it doesn’t make sense to use the supplier of your CRM for your CMS.

    It is generally better to use a best-of-breed CMS. There are some very good low cost and open source CMSs and a good range of companies, contractors and potential employees who can provide the implementation effort needed to build your website, content, and facilities for your forums, blogs, etc. There are a number of membership organisations and charities using the leading open source CMSs Drupal and Joomla! for example.

    The other angle on this is that integrating your CRM with your website shouldn’t be too difficult - most CRMs and all CMSs worth considering should provide web services interfaces. If your CRM doesn’t provide web services, there are also alternative methods that can be used (and if this is an area of difficulty or significant cost, maybe its time to reconsider your CRM platform).

    A more detailed question is - what data needs to be saved in the CRM and what can be kept in the website? In most cases, the answer is that data needed for managing relationships (with members and other stakeholders) should be in the CRM and other data can be in the website. So items such as name, contact details and areas of interest need to be in the CRM, and display preferences and forum postings in the website. This means that there is a relatively restricted amount of data that needs to be passed across the interface.

    Related links:

  • Ready for real-time relationships? - the implications of “social CRM”
  • Advantages of using a Content Management System - reasons for using an off-the-shelf CMS
  • Seminar on 24th March 2010: Power to Your People: The Death and Rebirth of CRM

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