crowdsourcing

Social Media: The Elephant in the Bored Room

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Pardon the idiom, and yes, the misspelling was deliberate.  You may want to grab a sandwich, this is a long read.

For the longest time it has occurred to me that most companies find themselves in a state of what I like to label Permanent Whitewater. As they careen through the rapids, it is anybody’s guess as to whether they will capsize.  And the philistines they have appointed as commissioners would be more appropriately described as Ommissioners, as they have omitted themselves from understanding the world and leading their charges.

Now, what does that have to do with anything?  Thanks for asking.

For those of you who can find California on the map, you will recall the great turnip boycott of the nineteen seventies—I know they boycotted grapes, but I like grapes and do not like turnip, so I choose to have my own protest.  Anyway, this boycott worked, and as a result, the working conditions for migrant workers improved albeit only modestly.

And here is the kicker.  An entire industry was brought to its knees.  That is not the surprising part.  The surprising part is that all of this change was brought about at a time when there were three television channels and when people actually subscribed to newspapers.

From where I sit, social media can be divided into two camps, those who have not slept since the launch of Google+, and the far larger camp of those who have not lost a minute of sleep.  Businesses, for the most part are well entrenched in the latter group.

Part of the reason why businesses are slow to adopt social media can be attributed to their lack of belief that social media matters or can impact their business one way or the other.  And frankly, I think that has a lot to do with why our economy continues to rejoice in its malaise.

So, how to those of us in the first camp get those in the second camp to see the world our way, how do we get them to jump head-first into social media.  The answer is simple.  We need to create our own turnip debacle.

They say it cannot be done, so let us show them.  The one thing that would get companies to embrace social media quickly and unashamedly would be if there was one less company.

Companies, big ones, fat ones, firms that climb on rocks—feel free to finish the tune without my help have the following issues, they think they:

–       control their market

–       own their customers

–       are managing their customers

Companies are wrong about those three assumptions and the use of social media can and will prove this.  I would ask for a company to volunteer, but that would take too long.

If ABC, CBS, and NBC were able through their coverage of the grape boycott, bring about change to an entire industry, imagine with me what impact a global, committed bunch of savvy social media users could do to a single firm.

Here is what I propose.  Let us pick one firm.  The characteristics of this firm should be that it is well known and not well liked—this way if it self-destructs we can argue that we acted on behalf of a greater good.  It should also be a firm associated with technology, a firm that ought to at least be able to spell social media.  If I were asked which firm I would choose I would pick a firm in some aspect of telecommunications, say a firm like Comcast or Verizon—an easy target, a firm facing a customer experience war armed only with their CRM.

Now, the idea of our little social project will be to provide a heads-up to all of the other companies about the start date of the importance of social media.  Let’s tentatively agree on starting on the first of November unless there is a game on television I want to watch.

The goal of the project is to demonstrate that the bourgeois, the working class, with its harmless set of social media tools, can create affect enough of a disruption to an organization to make that organization sit up and take notice, or to make it disappear.

I am sure you remember the YouTube video of the Comcast technician that fell asleep on a customer’s couch.  It went viral, but Comcast did not, and that was simply a single posting by a single customer.  What would happen if the social media mavens decided to use the tools at their disposal and concentrate their efforts at or against a single firm?

Crowdsourcing 101.

I think the end result of such an effort would have a significant impact.  The impact could easily bring about more fundamental change about how firms use social media than was brought about by the grape boycott.

Sometimes something has to be sacrificed on behalf of the greater good.  Although a rising tide lifts all boats, it can ruin your day if your firm is the one chained to the pier.

What are your ideas?

 

Healthcare Social Media: How to put it to work for you

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A cold wind is blowing in from the north, blowing so hard that at times that the rain seems to be falling sideways, echoing off the windowpanes like handfuls of pea gravel. The leaves from the walnut trees, that had prematurely yellowed, dance a minuet as they slowly make their way to the ground in the woods. It feels like the first day of fall, a day for jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and a pair of long woolen socks. The temperature has nosedived. On a normal day, the first indication of sunrise would have begun to push the darkness from the sky. But today is not a normal day. The clouds are hanging low and gray against the dark sky.

The garage door creaked and moaned as it rose along the aluminum track. Halogen headlights pierced the darkness. Its driver, an unkempt and rather rotund woman in her 40s eased the car down her driveway and proceeded through the still slumbering neighborhood. She was a friendless woman, who along with her husband and daughter kept to herself. The neighborhood children were afraid of her, too frightened to retrieve a ball if it fell into her yard and certainly too scared to Trick-or-Treat at her home.

“Were those your dogs barking? I was asleep,” she screeched at me as she exited the car wearing her oversized pajamas. The site alone was enough to frighten children and a few grown men. “I’m going to find out whose dogs were barking,” she chided. “And when I do, someone will be hearing from me. I took my last neighbors to court because their dog barked. I don’t like children. I don’t like dogs. I don’t like yard work, and I don’t want to be invited to any community activities.” I feel pretty confident she won’t have to worry about being swamped by invitations.

It was actually almost ten in the morning the day she registered her complaint—dawn to some people I guess. Three days later, the letter arrived in the mail. The return address indicated it was from a homeowners association. The letter stated that if we couldn’t control the barking of our dogs that we would be reported to the community board of directors. For second, we didn’t know how to react—then we started to laugh. The reason for the laughter was simple; my wife is on the Board of Directors. It’s like the East German Stasi are alive and well and living in Pennsylvania. I can picture this woman hiding behind her drapes, her little steno pad in hand, recording each and every bark that disrupts her bliss.

She’s a tattletale, a 40-something whose problem solving skills never grew beyond that of a third grader. She lives right next door, 100 feet away. We’ve only seen her three times in the 28 months we’ve lived here. Six months ago she sent us a fax, complaining about something or other. A fax, mind you. To her next door neighbor. This is too easy. It’s social networking run amok. She has become my poster child for bad manners, a benchmark against which all subsequent social networking commentaries will be measured.

There are many good social networking opportunities, especially for large healthcare providers.  Such as?  Do you record the number of patient calls you get each year by call type?  The fully loaded cost of each call is probably somewhere around twenty dollars.  It costs a lot of money each time you answer the phone; do you spend it effectively?

What percentage of those calls are resolved the first time?  What percentage of those calls could be answered  more effectively without the phone? How do you answer a call without a phone?  By having the caller get what they need from some form of social media site.

Imagine that in less than a few months you redesign part of your web site and you develop several YouTube presentations to explain your bills better than any single person could explain it on the phone.  You could provide a similar service for patients who need help contacting their insurance company, and need help filing a claim.  The ROI on social media is significant, and it’s nicer than sending a fax.

Well, that’s it for the moment. I’m off to the store. I think I’m going to buy a third dog.

Patient Experience Management–what is it?

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If you watch too much television your brain will fry. Sometimes I feel like mine is in a crepe pan that was left sitting on the stove too long. Two nights ago I’m watching Nova or some comparable show on PBS. The topic of the show was to outline all the events that took place that helped Einstein discover that the energy of an object is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared, better known as E=mc². It was presented to the audience at a level that might best be described as physics for librarians, which was exactly the level at which I needed to hear it. It’s physics at a level that is suitable for conversation at Starbucks or any blog such as this.

So here’s what I think I understood from the show. It tracked the developments of math and physics in 100 years prior to Einstein’s discovery. The dénouement appeared to occur when Einstein and his fiancée were riding in the bow of the small boat. Apparently, he was leaning over the side of the boat and noticed that the waves generated by the front of the boat moved at the same speed as the boat. He then noted that fact only held true for those persons in the boat, who were in fact, traveling at the same rate of speed. However for those persons watching from the shore, that same wave was not only moving slower than the boat it got further behind over time. Some other things occurred, yada, yada, yada, and there you have it. Clearly, the details are in the yada, yadas.

So here’s what happens when you watch too much television. As I’m running this morning somehow my mind takes pieces from that show and staples them together to yield the following. Let’s go back to the equation E=mc². For purposes of this discussion I’ll redefine the variables, so that:
E = the percentage of Patient Complaints/Inquiries.
m = Patient in-bound calls.
c = number of Patients
If this were true–this is an illustration, not an axiom–the percentage of complaints in the call centers of an healthcare provider is equal to the number of in-bound calls times the square of the number of patients. So as the number of calls increases the number of complaints/questions increases and as the number of patients increases the number of complaints increases exponentially. Of course this is made up, but there appears to be a grain of truth to it. As a number of calls increase the percentage of complaints is likely to increase, and as the number of patients increases there will probably be an even greater increase in the percentage of complaints incurred. I think we can agree that a reasonable goal for a healthcare provider is to decrease the percentage of complaints and perhaps to shift a hefty percentage of inquiries to some form of internet self-service vehicle.

I think sometimes the way providers like to assess the issue of Patient Experience Management  (PEM) is by looking at how much money providers throw at the problem. I think some people think that if one provider has 2 call centers, and another provider has 3 call centers, that the provider with 3 must be more interested in taking care of the their patients, and might even be better at PEM.  I don’t support that belief. I think it can be demonstrated that the provider with the most call centers, and most Patient Service Representatives, and the most toys deployed probably has the most problems with their patients. I don’t think it’s a chicken and egg argument. If expenditures increase year after year, and resources are deployed continuously to solve the same types of problems, I think it’s a sign that the provider and its patients are growing more and more dysfunctional.

How does this tie to Einstein and his boat? Perhaps the Einsteins are those who work with the provider; those who are moving at the same speed, those in lockstep. From their vantage point, the waves and the boat, like the provider and its patients, are all moving forward at the same speed. Perhaps only the people standing along the shore are able to see what is actually occurring; the waves distance themselves from the boat in much the same way that the patients distance themselves from the provider.

PEM is such an easy way to see large improvements accrue to the provider, especially using social media.

Social Media: The Elephant in the Bored Room

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Pardon the idiom, and yes, the misspelling was deliberate.  You may want to grab a sandwich, this is a long read.

For the longest time it has occurred to me that most companies find themselves in a state of what I like to label Permanent Whitewater. As they careen through the rapids, it is anybody’s guess as to whether they will capsize.  And the philistines they have appointed as commissioners would be more appropriately described as Ommissioners, as they have omitted themselves from understanding the world and leading their charges.

Now, what does that have to do with anything?  Thanks for asking.

For those of you who can find Vietnam on the map, you will recall the great turnip boycott of the nineteen seventies—I know they boycotted grapes, but I like grapes and do not like turnip, so I choose to have my own protest.  Anyway, this boycott worked, and as a result, the working conditions for migrant workers improved albeit only modestly.

And here is the kicker.  An entire industry was brought to its knees.  That is not the surprising part.  The surprising part is that all of this change was brought about at a time when there were three television channels and when people actually subscribed to newspapers.

From where I sit, social media can be divided into two camps, those who have not slept since the launch of Google+, and the far larger camp of those who have not lost a minute of sleep.  Businesses, for the most part are well entrenched in the latter group.

Part of the reason why businesses are slow to adopt social media can be attributed to their lack of belief that social media matters or can impact their business one way or the other.  And frankly, I think that has a lot to do with why our economy continues to rejoice in its malaise.

So, how to those of us in the first camp get those in the second camp to see the world our way, how do we get them to jump head-first into social media.  The answer is simple.  We need to create our own turnip debacle.

They say it cannot be done, so let us show them.  The one thing that would get companies to embrace quickly and unashamedly social media would be if there was one less company.

Companies, big ones, fat ones, firms that climb on rocks—feel free to finish the tune without my help have the following issues, they think they:

–       control their market

–       own their customers

–       are managing their customers

Companies are wrong about those three assumptions and the use of social media can and will prove this.  I would ask for a volunteer, but that would take too long.

If ABC, CBS, and NBC were able through their coverage of the grape boycott, bring about change to an entire industry, imagine with me what impact a committed bunch of savvy social media users could do to a single firm.

Here is what I propose.  Let us pick one firm.  The characteristics of this firm should be that it is well known and not well liked—this way we can argue that we acted on behalf of a greater good.  It should also be a firm associated with technology, a firm that ought to at least be able to spell social media.  If I were asked which firm I would choose I would pick a firm in some aspect of telecommunications, say a firm like Comcast or Verizon.

Now, the idea of our little social project will be to provide a heads-up to all of the other companies about the start date of our little social media experiment.  Let’s tentatively agree on the first of November unless there is a game on television I want to watch.

The goal of the project is to demonstrate that the bourgeois, the working class, with its harmless set of social media tools, can create affect enough of a disruption to an organization to make it sit up and take notice, or to disappear.

I am sure you remember the YouTube video of the Comcast technician that fell asleep on a customer’s couch.  It went viral, but Comcast did not, and that was simply a single posting by a single customer.  What would happen if the social media mavens decided to use the tools at their disposal and concentrate their efforts at or against a single firm?

Crowdsourcing 101.

I think the end result of such an effort would have a significant impact.  The impact could easily bring about more fundamental change as to how firms view and use social media than was brought about by the grape boycott.

Sometimes something has to be sacrificed on behalf of the greater good.  Although a rising tide lifts all boats, but it can ruin your day if your firm is the one chained to the pier.

What are your ideas?

EHR: the wisdom of crowds

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According to National Geographic, a single ant or bee isn’t smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems. The ability of animal groups—such as this flock of starlings—to shift shape as one, even when they have no leader, reflects the genius of collective behavior—something scientists are now tapping to solve human problems.  Two monumental achievements happened this week; someone from MIT developed a mathematical model that mimics the seemingly random behavior of a flight of starlings, and I reached the halfway point in counting backwards from infinity–the number–infinity/2.

Swarm theory. The wisdom of crowds. Contrast that with the ignorance of many to listen to those crowds. In the eighties it took Coca-Cola many months before they heard what the crowd was saying about New Coke. Where does healthcare EHR fit with all of this? I’ll argue that the authors of the public option felt that wisdom.  If you remember the movie Network, towards the end of the movie the anchorman–in this case it was a man, not an anchor person–besides, in the eighties, nobody felt the need it add he/she or it as some morphed politically correct collection of pronouns.  Whoops, I digress.  Where were we?  Oh yes, the anchor-person.  He/she or it went to the window and exhorted everyone to yell, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”  Pretty soon, his entire audience had followed his lead.

So, starting today, I begin my search for starlings.  A group whose collective wisdom may be able to help shape the healthcare EHR debate.  The requirements for membership is a willingness to leave the path shaped by so few and trodden by so many, to come to a fork in the road and take it. Fly in a new flock.  A flock that says before we get five years down the road and discover that we have created such an unbelievable mess that not only can we not use it, but that we have to write-off the entire effort and redo it, let us at least evaluate whether a strategic change is warranted.  The mess does not lie at the provider level.  It lies in the belief that hundreds of sets of different standards can be married to hundreds of different applications, and then to hundreds of different Rhios.

Where are the starlings headed?  Great question, as it is not sufficient simply to say, “you’re going the wrong way”.  I will write about some of my ideas on that later today.  Please share yours.

Now, when somebody asks you why you strayed from the pack, it would be good to offer a reasoned response.  It’s important to be able to stay on message.  Reform couldn’t do that and look where it is. Here are bullet points you can write on a little card, print, laminate, and keep in your wallet if you are challenged.

  • Different standards
  • Different vendors
  • Different Rhios
  • No EHR Czar

Different Standards + Different Vendors + Different Rhios + No Decider = Failure

You know this, I know this.

To know whether your ready to fly in a new direction, ask yourself this question.  Do you believe that under the present framework you will be able to walk into any ER in the country and know with certainty that they can quickly and accurately retrieve all the medical information they need about you?  If you do, keep drinking the Kool Aid.  If your a starling, come fly with us and get the word out.  Now return your seat backs and tray tables to their upright and most uncomfortable positions.

Social CRM–Patients are like little thunderstorms

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The web never ceases to amaze me. I’ve gotten to the point if I can’t find something I’m looking for, no matter how obscure, I figure that I did something wrong in how I framed the search.

For example, I was trying to connect to a high school classmate, someone I hadn’t spoken with since before Al Gore invented the internet. This guy got a pair of boxing gloves for his 14th birthday. We each wore one, and jousted only long enough for us each to land a blow on the other’s nose. It hurt—a lot. We gave up boxing.

In tenth grade biology, we bet him five dollars that he wouldn’t jump out of the second floor window. The teacher, who knew of the bet, turned her back to write on the blackboard. He jumped. Go straight to the office, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. We used to see how fast his red and white Mach II Mustang would go railing down Route 40. He was the guy you voted best person to keep away from bright shiny objects. The last I heard he went to a teaching college.

Anyway, I Googled him—from the imperative verb Google—I Google, you Google, he, she or it Googles. I can’t tell you his name for reasons that will soon become apparent. Google spits back links to things like military intelligence, think tank, counterinsurgency, small wars, and army major.  I think I’ve made a spelling mistake—this cannot be the same guy who jumped out of classroom window—and I add his middle initial to the search criteria. Up pops a link to CNN’s Larry King—the air date—just days after 9/11. The topic of the show; ‘the hunt for Osama Bin Laden’. To quote Lewis Carroll, “things keep getting curiouser and curiouser.”

The web. Social networking. A great tool if you’re one the outside searching, deadly in the hands of your customers.

If your firm is targeted, you are pretty much defenseless. Each patient is capable of creating their own digital perception of your hospital. True or false, makes no difference. Patients are like little thunderstorms popping up everywhere. Healthcare providers scurry around like frightened mice passing out umbrellas and pretending it’s not raining. They’re late, their patients are wet, and they are telling everyone. Very few firms have learned that they can’t put the rain back into the clouds.

Sort of reminds me of the line in the movie Young Frankenstein, “Could be worse, could be raining.” It’s raining, and even the best firms have run out of umbrellas. What is your firm doing about it?

 

Wayne Newton’s 4th law of relative immobility

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Last night I was speaking with a woman at a gathering of graduates from my high school.  She got into the subject of reading glasses and then commented that she first learned she needed regular glasses since the age of four.

As she was not wearing glasses, I asked her if she’d had Lasik.  No, she said, “I always hated how I looked in them, so I quit wearing them in high school.”

“Don’t you miss being able to see things?” I asked.

“Not really.  This is how I’ve seen the world for the past thirty years.  I’ve grown comfortable with how I see the world.”

I think many business leaders have the same perspective.  They get comfortable with how they see their world—comfortable with the issues and how to address them.  Given the choice, people will stay in their comfort zone.

Do you remember your physics?  Relative motion is the branch of physics that studies the motion of the body relative to the motion of another moving body (Newton).  For example, if you are in a train and another traveling at the same speed pulls alongside you, it appears to both set of passengers that neither train is moving.  If your train decelerates it will appear to you the other train has accelerated.

Now, take the perspective of someone standing on the platform viewing the two trains.  To that person, there is no illusion.  The bystander can see exactly what is happening; who is moving forward and who isn’t.

Some business leaders get caught up in what I call Wayne Newton’s 4th law of relative immobility.  When they look out their windows at the executive in the hospital across the street, it appears they are both moving at the same speed and at the same direction.  That is how they have seen the world each day for the last several years.  They look at each other, wave, and then go about their business, knowing their competitor hasn’t passed them or changed course.

But you and I know why it looks that way to them.  The reason they have not been passed is because neither hospital is moving forward.  The reason they do not perceive a change of direction is that they are both moving in the same direction.  In actuality, there is no motion.  Only an outsider can see neither hospital is moving.

When Patients Rule: Crowdsourcing & S-CRM

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The one application of crowdsourcing that is most overlooked is one which hardly fits the definition. This type is not premeditated. It is the type where the “machine” is a means to an end, and it does not originate at the organization. In fact, the organization is the target of this type of crowdsourcing—Social-CRM.

Most definitions of crowdsourcing include the notion of a call going out to a group of individuals who are then gathered via the call to solve a complex problem, acting like a shared problem solving methodology, much like the theory of Law of Large Numbers.

The crowd is likely to have an upper limit in terms of the number of members. By default, traditional crowdsourcing is fashioned to work from the top down; it is outbound, a push model.

Social-CRM (S-CRM) tends to work from the bottom up. There are no boundaries to the number of members; in fact, there can be thousands of members. Also atypical is the fact with S-CRM no single event or call to action drives the formation of the crowd. The crowd can have as many events as it has members.

The unifying force around S-CRM is each member’s perspective of a given firm or organization. Members are often knitted together by having felt wronged or put-off by an action, product, or service provided or not provided by said organization. Most organizations do not listen to, nor do they have a means by which they can communicate with the S-CRM crowdsource. This in turn causes the membership to grow, and to become even more steadfast in the individual missions of their members.

In traditional crowdsourcing, once the problem solving ends, the crowd no longer has a reason to exist, and it disbands. With S-CRM crowdsourcing, since the problem never seems to go away, neither does the crowd.

Every firm has one or more S-CRM groups biting at its ankles, hurting its image, hurting the brand, causing customers to flee, and disrupting the business model. Even so, most organizations ignore the S-CRM crowd just like someone ignores their crazy Uncle Pete who disrupts every family gathering.