In all honesty, getting something they actually asked for would be far more straightforward, acceptable, and all round easier but if your wife is anything like mine, you are never going to be told what that is. But on just one occasion, I absolutely nailed it….

The occasion was one of my wife’s more significant birthdays; she was my girlfriend at the time and some form of divine intervention/apparition had provided me with the knock-out idea – tickets for Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House. Heaven knows how I worked this one out, but as the perfect present – it was gathering weight like an avalanche. The only problem was I couldn’t get any tickets.

The usual calls to the usual places turned up nothing, practically sold out everywhere. I started to venture further afield from the box office, ticket shops, eBay and approached a few, shall we say, ‘unusual resellers’. One in particular called me back to explain that he would buy them from an existing ticket holder for a price, only I had to name that price. It became apparent that a £50 ticket was only going to be obtained for closer to £2,000. A couple of weeks after agreeing such an extraordinary sum, he called me back to say that at that price nobody was going to sell.

It was at this point I began to realise the enormity of the problem: Tickets for the Royal Opera House on that night (her birthday) were particularly in demand because the ROH had been closed for refurbishment for over two years, it was the opening night. To add, the opening performance was Swan Lake, apparently one of the favoured performances of the Royal Ballet, and as if to stick the knife in and give it a good twist, staring Darcey Bussell (principal ballerina of the Royal Ballet).

Now, as with Christmas shopping, the amount of time, effort and desperate offers of cash was leading to despair. I had excluded all other ideas of a suitable present, because this was becoming the one and only perfect birthday gift – Opening Night, Swan Lake, Darcey Bussell – it was the mother of all birthday presents!! If I could have thought of something else, it was never going to compare and I didn’t believe I was ever going to keep this one a secret.

As luck would have it, I was explaining all of this to a colleague who just happened to have an American Express Black Card. I think you know where this is going!!!

After he explained what the Amex Black card was, I went away considering how broke I was going to be if he managed to secure them. Five days later he said he had left them on my desk. What!! Just like that, and besides who leaves such valuable tickets just lying around on my desk? I think I broke the land-speed record getting back to my desk to find them perched upright in my keyboard – still there. In my view he might as well have left a bunch of fifty pound notes on the keyboard and a couple of spotlights to draw your attention in case you missed them, but no, they were still there. Did nobody know just how valuable these things were? I am of course well aware of how trustworthy and honest my former colleagues were, but all the same I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they had somehow ‘disappeared’!!

Turns out, all he wanted was the face value of the tickets, £50 each – bargain, absolute steal if you ask me. But then to me, these things were like diamond encrusted, gold plated kryptonite, to everyone else just a couple of tickets to the Ballet.

And the reason for this story: Well when it comes to friends and colleagues, some very simple gestures of goodwill on their part can provide such unbelievably important, life changing effects that I will never be able to repay the debt (although in his opinion I paid him the money so there is no debt). His name will probably be mentioned in thanks on my gravestone. However this story has more to do with that American Express Card.

At the time, there was a lot of Amex advertising going on, so much so that when I tell the story most of my friends will re-enact that Pamela Stephenson sketch on Not the Nine O’Clock News. There were things Amex said they could do, and believe me they could. Those two tickets weren’t just tickets to the show. They were centre, front row of the Royal Circle, literally 10 metres from the front of the stage (probably not but it felt it).

This isn’t the first time I’ve ever told this story, and it definitely won’t be the last. Every time I tell it, I seem to embellish just how amazing that American Express company can be, and just what remarkable things that Black Card can do. Which is ironic since I don’t have an Amex Card of my own, I used to have one when I worked at EMC, but to be honest it wasn’t the most useful piece of plastic in my pocket. Despite that, I still consider them to be remarkable. I’m not just a fan, I’ve become a disciple.

In many ways, my team within ONI is trying to create customer disciples of our Data Centre Solutions by building out a uniquely different ‘State of the Art’ Data Centre with Enterprise Class Cloud Services that leverages all of our unique skills and strengths within the Cisco portfolio. Unfortunately, like my story, it not something we can easily do ourselves, it requires us to develop an image uniquely associated with that brand, a universally accepted notion that this is what our Brand does, an image that can even survive association with Pamela Stephenson’s breasts, (you will have to look it up), maybe. And then, perhaps most importantly, it requires a simple unassuming gesture of goodwill from a third party to offer that Brand to someone who truly, absolutely wants it. Because for one particular customer, that product represents the Golden Hind or the Lost Ark, to everyone else it’s just a product. That third party becomes a hero, but in the process when the ONI DC team delivers, then that customer becomes a disciple.

Now, do any of my friends know where I can find a pair of size 5, Belcloud UGG boots in time for Christmas?

Let’s take a comparable example, home insurance.

Some of the key things people look for when deciding on which provider to go for is:

• A UK Call Centre – People want their calls answered and dealt with in the UK.
• Value for money – Doesn’t have to be the cheapest but has to make sure it covers you for every eventuality.
• Old for new – When something breaks, you want it replaced or at best completely repaired to a high standard.
• Great customer service – When something goes wrong, you want to ensure that you receive a ‘top draw’ response with an expert to hand.
• Speedy response – In an emergency, time is essential, the quicker the better.
• Reputation – Going for a well known, credible name is essential as you trust them to get it right.

As your home is one of the most important things to you, you want to ensure that when something goes wrong you receive the best possible outcome. IT equipment today is an integral part of any business and if it goes wrong can lead to catastrophic outcomes.

Over recent years IT costs have been increasing with new technologies and business demands driving these. Equipment costs are greater as is the reliance on these to business critical operations. A greater requirement is being placed on these machines and the appropriate care is required for an integral cog in the business mechanism.

We all think the business we work in or own bare no similarities to our own homes, but when we take a closer look, the similarities add up. So when you look for maintenance of your IT equipment shouldn’t you be looking at it with a similar set of eyes?

You see, many of their clients, just like ours, are considering the Cisco UCS Server platform as part of a consolidation and/or virtualisation project but all too often the decision takes forever and no virtualisation or consolidation project ever takes place. His advice was to just make a bet, any bet, it actually didn’t matter which bet but you were never going to win if you never placed the bet in the first place. No sense in checking the lottery numbers if you’ve no ticket in your hand. If you can’t decide to use Cisco UCS servers then stick with the HP one’s you’ve got.

Last month, (or was it longer than that), I claimed that I would be aiming to work almost entirely online, accessing my content from whatever device takes my fancy on any particular day. A number of readers contributed to the ‘debate’, although I hardly think of it as a debate since I didn’t respond to any of them (sorry about that – more about that later), mostly telling me that online was a far too scary place to be. What with the abundance of eastern-european hackers, incompetent cloud service providers and that generally nasty internet – I was destined to lose all my data in some form or other. Fortunately, one of my VMware chums suggested I have a look at Project Octopus and yes I have, and yes it’s perfect.

Now I can tell you all about VMware’s Project Octopus, which I will, but the most significant point this whole episode highlighted to me was that if I hadn’t made such a statement in the first place then my friend would probably have never told me about it. Funny thing is, I didn’t lose any of my data, nor did any of my contacts get subjected to an onslaught of spam and find out about great job opportunities with the finance clearing department of the Somalian Oil Company. Only the other day, my iPhone has got in on the story and asked if I wanted to sync all my pictures, contacts and calendar entries with iCloud… given everything I’ve already said, I could hardly say no could I?

So for those of you still wondering, VMware have announced the beta testing of an project called ‘Octopus’ which is best described as Dropbox using your own data centre as the storage repository. So who’s responsible for the availability of my data, who’s responsible for its security and its backup – me! And that’s as trustworthy as I can get (for me anyhow). Of course there’s a good argument that I don’t want any of that responsibility, nor do I have the time to do any of it – perhaps I really would prefer this delivered as a service in which case the SLAs are very important and yes I would agree with one of my readers that you’d want to read them thoroughly before saying goodbye to your data.

At which point, I must apologise for not replying to any of these comments, you see I don’t get to post my own blogs and as such I don’t get instant notifications of anyone commenting, hence I don’t get to respond directly – that’s another thing I will have to resolve. Now that I’ve embraced Facebook (I’m typing a blog right now, what did you think I was doing?…), Twitter (Gadaffi’s dead, welcome to the new lawless regime…), I’m going to have to take control of my own blogs. For so long I’ve been told by my esteemed marketing colleagues, that the new world, the social media networking world, is where everything is at, where we need to market our wares (did I mention ONI’s Cloud Storage Service?), where I need to ‘get online’, so I’m doing it. I’ve placed my bets and some of them are already starting to pay off. I can’t ever be sure I would have found out about Project Octopus otherwise.

Now let me ask you a question, have you read the iCloud User Agreement yet? All 78
pages?

To his surprise I agreed, but then I asked him when his PA last used a typewriter and the penny dropped. His customers want to buy goods and services, receive marketing material and technical support as before, but in a radically different way. If you can’t service your customers’ needs in the way they want you to, you’ll lose them to the competition – rapidly.

Integrating social media with your Business Communications strategy is much more than just a ‘nice-to-have’. It’s a business de facto and the contact centre’s role in your customer experience management strategy cannot be underestimated. Customers believe that a company’s ability to respond to a problem or request has a greater influence on a quality experience than any other factor, which puts the contact centre at the heart of consistently creating a differentiated customer experience and therefore value-add.

So your operation needs to do more than simply meet last year’s service levels, be efficient or attain an industry average. It must create a distinctive, integrated experience that the customer cannot replicate anywhere else – often called brand loyalty.

So why do we continue to see low satisfaction rates with contact centres? Is it because too many managers are comfortable with their typewriters and are unwilling to accept the new customer contact dynamic?

If you cannot monitor customer dialogues across multiple channels – speech, texts, emails, IM, social media etc and react to them, you’re missing out on vital intelligence that you could use to increase revenue, control costs and enhance your brand.

With the arrival of social searching in Google+ and its recent general availability, the opportunity to appear higher in searches based on positive social media posts and drive traffic towards your website (or indeed the complete reverse) just took a quantum leap forward.

So it’s vital to make social media an integral part of your Business Communications strategy, to strengthen customer relations by capturing the details of what customers and competitors are saying about you, acting promptly and increasing ‘social positivity’. You’ll grow revenues by identifying and maximising cross-sell and upsell opportunities and ultimately drive an improved customer experience by building an accurate view of customers’ behaviour and trends.

Readers of my previous blog will remember that my Mum’s washing machine played a part in a cutting edge business experience and may wonder how that could involve another game-changing technology?

The repair man arrived and after taking the washing machine apart, asked my Mum if he could film the back of it. Still unsure as to how this would fix the old girl (the washing
machine, not Mother!), she agreed and he duly performed the repair whilst filming
the various stages with a running commentary and wirelessly uploaded the film
clip to an intranet site.

By adding the repair video clip of an elderly washing machine to the on-line engineering knowledge base, he made this data available to other engineers for streaming if ever
required. As a result, the company’s engineers do not carry bulky manuals and can drive smaller vans but carry more spares in the space available, which reduces transport costs whilst improving the company’s green credentials. Now that truly is a cutting-edge business experience!

It was then I started to realise that for him phones don’t have wires attached to them and they certainly weren’t attached to bigger boxes with a large dial on the front. In fact just about every phone in our house is wireless with buttons not dials, come to think of it there are laptops all over the shop. I continue to recognise more and more aspects of technology in his life that were simply unimaginable during my childhood. For him, there is no need to accept why things worked any particular way in the past, no basis to consider how something was done, only how it works now. He will probably never have to hold a wired handset, unless he ends up working in an office with desk phones – and even then perhaps he’ll be wearing a wireless headset. Or perhaps I’m still stuck in the present and can’t imagine what the future holds for telephony?

When I think about it, for him the abundance of technology around the house is just normality. He doesn’t understand why TV programmes weren’t always provided ‘on-demand’ and what kind of device would require ‘video tapes’. He also thinks Granny’s TV doesn’t work because he can’t get channel 601. I wonder what he would consider ‘technology’ when he’s my age?

A few days ago, (back into the present), he asked me why I had to use my laptop to ‘do work’. After a brief and fruitless explanation of what I do with my laptop he asked the same question again only this time with so much more emphasis on the word ‘laptop’: Why did I have to use ‘my laptop’ to do that work? As with every aspect of fatherhood, daddy completely missed the point yet again! Now whilst a 6 year old is so much more coherent than a 3 year old, I still can’t help feeling that the question he asked wasn’t the question he wanted an answer to. Turns out after a few blind alleys that the question
really was: If the world-wide-web is everywhere, then why don’t I work on that and leave the laptop at home?

Bit of an over-simplification but what a stunning idea!! In fact when I think about it the only reason I really take my laptop everywhere is because it has a hard disk in it containing a “My Documents” folder. Since it’s a Windows 7 laptop, I’m not even sure it’s called “My Documents” anymore. And of course, as a responsible employee of ONI, I’ve made sure my laptop is securely backed up on a regular basis right? Well errrh no sorry.

Well maybe I do have a backup…. you see now that we’re making extensive use of iPADs at ONI, we needed some file sharing between them and the PCs and I decided to use Dropbox. In case you haven’t heard of it Dropbox is a service which provides access to your files anywhere as long as you took the trouble to install the tool and copy your files into the Dropbox folder first. Once installed on my laptop I made sure to save all that important stuff in the Dropbox folder so I could get to them on my iPAD too. Strange thing is, I actually didn’t put that stuff anywhere else. So as it turns out, I’m primarily storing them on the cloud and my laptop is backing them up locally (albeit the process is actually happening the other way around). Now I’ve got access to my stuff pretty much everywhere, I can access the world-wide-world pretty much everywhere that is. Hmm, that boy makes a lot of sense you know.

With this new enlightened view of the world, I’m beginning to reconsider how I use cloud storage everywhere else too. You see I have a PC at home that uses a well known EMC product to back it up online, but the irony of the whole situation is that my broadband, just like everyone else’s broadband, has more bandwidth for downloads than uploads. So my PC spends the entire evening trying to backup the pictures my wife has just unloaded from the camera, when it will happily restore any file in a matter of seconds. Great for restores, but wouldn’t I prefer it the other way around? It’s all pretty backwards really. Perhaps a better perspective would be to consider my data as stored online and taking regular backups of that by copying it to a local disk or two. Having universal access to my source data seems far more valuable than universal access to my backups.

So for this month, I’m going to try and look at my world in complete ignorance of how it was ever done before, the abundance of technology will become my norm. I’m going to consider each of my son’s daft questions as a source of un-tethered wisdom. I’ll be using cloud storage as the primary source and the PC at home will be a backup for what I’ve got online, I’ll start leaving the laptop at home a few times just to see how much I can achieve without it, and I’ll be opening a shop in my living room so that I will never be poor (still not convinced he’s got that last one nailed though).

Technology has a huge part to play in attracting the best talent to the sector and how it can meet communication expectations of the new generation of tenants. Generation Y, also known as ‘Milliennials’, has like every other generation, been shaped by the events, leaders, developments and trends of its time. The rise of instant communication technologies made possible through use of the internet, such as SMS, IM (Instant Messaging), voice & video applications such as SKYPE and new media used through websites like YouTube and social networking sites like Facebook may explain Generation Y’s reputation for being peer oriented and for seeking instant gratification. What is clear however is that they will have high expectations of the workplace and tools
they use as well as a desire to shape their jobs to fit their lives rather than adapt their lives to the workplace.

In the housing sector specifically there are certain trends that are changing the way organisations need to work. The proliferation of mergers for example, has meant housing associations are often more geographically dispersed than before. A combined focus on reducing operational costs and carbon emissions dictates that excessive travel for face to face meetings is not the solution so there is a need to reduce the importance of these geographical boundaries. New collaborative technologies can create virtual meeting spaces
that allow users to communicate and share content within secure web-driven meeting rooms.

In the same way, the new generation of tenants entering the housing market will have similar demands upon the services they receive from their housing providers. Generation Y are used to and expect instant access to on-demand services via the web and other mediums. In this environment, where competition for housing across the UK has increased, how will any service provider offering services driven by traditional technologies from ‘9 to 5’ survive?

Customer services technologies are today offering choice to the consumer, whether they want to access services on the phone, via email or SMS or via live web chat. Utilising social networking sites are also becoming popular ways for young people to access material and it is an open mind to this type of self service, ‘fast-food’ concept that will determine those organisations that will be successful over the coming years.

By Nick Boon

www.oni.co.uk

As the delivery of customer service moves further away from traditional, physical face
to face transactions, it is even more important for housing associations to ensure the experience remains as personal, effective and efficient as possible. Whereas human contact within community offices is still an important part of a rounded service offering it is widely accepted that the telephone is the preferred and most widely used means of contact between a tenant and their housing provider.

Also important are the new communication media such as e-mail and Instant Messaging
(IM) via the web that are becoming important communication mediums for the growing on-line community demanding access to social housing services. Known as ‘Generation Y‘, young people moving into the job and housing markets want to procure services in ways that are familiar and convenient to them and it is those housing associations that have the ability to manage all communication, regardless of media type that will be agile enough to deliver business growth.

One interesting KLOE that housing associations must balance is that of ‘Access to
Services’. This particular area of enquiry looks at the provision a housing association has made to ensure its tenants can contact the organisation by telephone, in person or via the internet. Although the internet will be critical for the future delivery of services to tenants, research shows that on average web access is only available for around 20% of tenants. This means services such as rent/arrears enquiries and direct debit payments already being offered via the web must also be available over the phone and on a 24/7/365 basis as it is on the internet.

If certain customers are unable to access services such as those delivered via the web, the Audit Commission could review whether appropriate action is being taken to remove these barriers. Contact centre solutions that utilise speech self-service to provide rent payments, direct debit set-up, brochure requests and choice based lettings over the phone are already helping public sector organisations to provide better access to services for customers and improving KLOE performance.

Another important point to consider here is the benefit this has on resources. Once services such as these begin to be embraced by users, these repetitive and mundane tasks once carried out by skilled agents can be dealt with automatically. The critical point here is that of choice.

The majority of bank transactions today take place via a hole-in-the-wall but you can still deal with a bank assistant; supermarkets are introducing self service check-outs but you can still queue if you choose. The choice is often clear, that when looking for simple transactions the most popular route is that which is most convenient and most time efficient. The outcome of this is increased customer satisfaction and the ability for the service provider to focus their skilled resource on those that require it most.

This shows that even within a virtual world, human touch can be delivered by utilising technology. The key is to ensure you understand your customer and how they wish to collaborate with you. In some instances, minimal interaction is required and if this is the case, it means resource can be made available for those that require amore tactile approach.

It is therefore important that the requirements of these tenants are catered for. The huge variation of communicating has brought with it a need for all service based organisations to have a means of efficiently and intelligently handling this proliferation of communication and this is where a unified contact centre approach is required.

The idea behind me writing this blog is not to focus on technology specifically, but to address how the business challenges facing social housing can by themselves make the case for a Unified Comms approach.

Over the last few years there has been a c-change in the attitude towards ICT, no longer being a necessary evil but more of a core business concern. ICT is now represented at board level but it is not just IT Directors that are interested in what technology can deliver. The entire Management Team now recognises that technology can have a major impact on business transformation and is a route to improved client satisfaction.

The proliferation and ubiquitous nature of the web has seen technology impact our everyday lives today more than ever. The traditional boundaries of work and home life are being blurred, information and entertainment is converging and new social networking and collaboration tools are driving change in the way we work, socialise and access services more than ever before.

Housing Associations as with any other service centric organisation have to gear their
business to meet these new customer expectations. Unified Communications has the power to enable greater efficiency throughout. An integrated approach with access to information and the tools for work without restriction to location can help enable staff to work and communicate more efficiently but there are some often unexplored areas in which such technology can drive service within the sector.

Unified Communications has a fundamental role to play in helping housing organisations
deliver upon business growth targets, maximise tenant satisfaction, improve business efficiency as well as reduce operating costs. With this in mind it is clear that Unified Comms is much more than network consolidation, it should be a core element of every business strategy enabling housing associations to be agile and flexible enough to deal with the changing world around us, don’t you think?

Despite seeing these codes appearing more often all over direct mail, e-shots, coffee cups and even on washing labels in my clothes I ignored them, probably for about 18 months. Curiosity however, as always, got the better of this cat and having seen this video on #Mashable I suddenly realised their worth.

You see, words like ‘curiosity’ and ‘intrigue’ interest me, enough to make a 2nd visit to the App store, this time on my iPhone 4 and download a free QR reader. I had to experiment with these and understand them because when used properly in well designed campaigns, curiosity rules and recipients can’t resist the temptation to find out what’s hidden beneath. It’s not a URL, or a phone number, or an e-mail address, it’s a new way to engage and whilst not brand new or revolutionary, it’s a lot more unique and intriguing than the aforementioned.

In my previous post I spoke about QR codes being an integral part of a multi-touch marketing strategy. Even when they are deployed as part of a larger campaign, they can still be completely measurable. You can point a QR code at any URL you choose and by doing just that, suddenly you can measure the success by the number of visits to that page.

Will it work for you? Try it, sample them in e-mail, direct mail and promotional merchandise but be sure to set up a bespoke landing page for each different media so you can track where they work and where they don’t. You can use this generator to produce your own QR codes and make sure you let me know how you get on.

www.oni.co.uk