More and more
organizations are looking outside for solutions to some of the challenges that
they are facing. That is an excellent way of getting in touch with experts, who
are the frontrunners in their
particular subject.
According to
Wikipedia crowdsourcing is: a neologism for the act of taking a task
traditionally performed by an employee or contractor,
and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group
of people or community in the form of an open call. For example, the public may
be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task, refine or
carry out the steps of an algorithm, or help capture, systematize or analyze
large amounts of data.
This methodology
could also be used internally. This “incrowdsourcing” is perfectly suited to
engage employees who are daily in touch with customers, but who are
traditionally not involved in the marketing and sales processes.
There are many
‘forgotten’ groups in organizations who know quite well what the customer
needs, but they are simply not being asked to express their ideas. When you get
them involved in the process they will feel valued and fulfilled. And the
implementation of their ideas is effortless, as they were the initiator in the
first place.
Here are some of
the people in your incrowd:
–
Receptionist
–
Project managers
–
Service
engineers
–
Maintenance
engineers
–
Waiters
–
Administrators
–
Invoice
specialists
–
Customer
services
–
Cleaners
–
Janitors
–
Drivers
You can ask any
of them how to improve your services and they will immediately come up with at
least five suggestions. If you seriously check their contributions, they will
be your eyes and ears in the market.
A great example is what Best Buy is doing with
@Twelpforce. Best Buy is encouraging hundreds of
employees to handle online customer service and company promotions via Twitter, even airing commercials
not mentioning their own website but merely the URL of the profile they created. Best Buy
employees can use their company and Twitter ID to register for the service,
after which tweets from the lot of them will be displayed in a single stream on
the same page.
Once
registered, tweeting Best Buy employees from across all operations can send
messages from the @Twelpforce account.
So, how are you using “incrouwdsourcing” to engage your employees??
RADICAL SERVICE INNOVATION
Follow me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/ArnoldBeekes