Tag Archives: twitter

Don’t spend any money on NHS Jargon Busters – it’s sorted! Download the Apps.

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20130509-224405.jpgI’m not ashamed to admit my naivety and ignorance. In the last post I was astonished to find out there was a book available called ‘NHS Jargon Explained’. I was just scratching the surface…..

On the basis that jargon is “the specialised or technical language of a trade, profession or similar group”, and the NHS is a massive organisation with very many specialist groups, this shouldn’t be surprising. A quick search using twitter turned up some interesting examples of NHS ‘jargon busters’. These are my favourites, apologies to anyone worthy who’s not on the list.

Guardian Newspaper, Glossary of Healthcare Jargons and Acronyms. This is 2011 vintage and has about 70 examples of the most common NHS jargon. I was a bit surprised to see BT (British Telecom) feature. Apparently it’s something to do with them running the N3 Network. Have a look at the Guardian article to find out what N3 means. You also need to know that a ‘spine’ isn’t necessarily that thing in the middle of your back.

NHS Local, West Midlands. This is provided by a group of NHS organisations, Universities and private sector organisations that are “transforming healthcare by changing the conversation between patient and the NHS” (that’s not jargon is it). The jargon buster has about 70 explanations, mainly to do with maternity services. Very useful if you need to use that service. A great explanation of ‘oily fish’ can be found here.

Leicestershire NHS, Health Informatics Service. This is blog by a Communications and Marketing Officer in Leicestershire NHS, that explains about 30 Information Technology terms used in the NHS. Helpful information about the language used by another specialist group that will be of benefit to those who don’t work in IT or understand it. Unfortunately there was no explanation of exactly what ‘informatics’ means (is it just me?).

Health and Social Care Information Centre, National Casemix Office Jargon Buster. I had to use the jargon buster to understand what a ‘Casemix Office’ does: “A system whereby the complexity of the care provided to a patient is reflected in an aggregate secondary healthcare classification.” Phew, thank goodness that’s cleared up. There are about 60 definitions here, some of them pretty baffling, but it is the language of a very specialist group. Well worth a look if you want to understand what ‘complications and comorbidities’ are all about, alongside ‘cliff edges’, ‘unbundling’ and ‘spells’.

NHS Confederation Acronym Buster. This has a bumper 500 acronyms explained. There is even Application Software (an App, see the NHS Leicestershire definition) available to download for free. This is very helpful and something you could keep under the desk for emergency situations when the healthcare experts are running wild. My only gripe would be that defining acronyms is only half of the problem solved. The jargon remains.

My Health London.  This is an award-winning information website for health services in London. The jargon buster is in a section focussed on young people and there is also a free App you can download called ‘Well Happy’. This is worth a look as it has very clear, jargon free explanations under headings such as ‘Sex and Relationships’ and ‘Alcohol and Addiction’.  Very useful for those difficult conversations with the teenage kids.

This has been a bit of an eye opener. Specialist groups certainly do have their own language, unfortunately jargon to outsiders. There were other examples I stumbled across from the third sector, IT, property and law. Nothing I could find specifically from the world of Local Government… yet?

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. In a large and complicated organisation like the NHS the occurrence of many specialist groups with their own technical language (jargon) is inevitable.
  2. The specialist groups need to make sure they don’t exclude outsiders by the use of technical language that isn’t easily understood.
  3. The good news is that may specialist groups are trying their best to share their ‘jargon busters’ which are free for everyone to use. Hopeful those who aren’t as well-developed or inclusive will pick these up and use them.

Picture Source: My Health London, Young Peoples, ‘Well Happy’ App.

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https://www.myhealth.london.nhs.uk/health-communities/young-people/download

Opportunity in Adversity. Glass Half Full Thinking at Arriva Trains Wales (@ArrivaTW)

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Here’s quick follow up to the post about Arriva Trains Wales and their journey to improved customer service.

Last week saw another blip on the tracks. On Tuesday morning damaged signaling cable caused significant disruption. I know because I was due to meet people who were stuck at Newport (and I picked it up through Twitter).

It was interesting to observe that those people making use of Twitter (following the various train companies and Twitter hash tags #) were far better informed (and less stressed) than those who weren’t, but that’s another story……

What has grabbed my attention is the request ATW put out on Twitter for feedback on how communication worked during the disruption.  I think this approach is interesting in a number of ways. My observations:

  • You have been horribly delayed in your journey (not actually ATW’s fault), but they have tried their best to communicate with you while it was happening;
  • They have been honest and open about the limitations of their current communication  methods (no live tweeting on the disruption, see picture below);
  • But they do care about how they communicate with you, so they are asking how things worked on Tuesday so that they can make things better;
  • Sending this ‘how can we get better’ message takes some the heat out of the situation (in my opinion);
  • Gathering feedback in a structured manner while the issue is still live should capture information that is ‘fresh in the mind’, so it’s probably more accurate;
  • In my view, this is better than something six months down the track when a generic customer service questionnaire asks a potentially vague question about ‘communication during disruption’; and.
  • How good is your memory of the communication aspects of the event likely to be in 2 weeks time, let alone 6 months? This (almost) real-time feedback has got to be more useful.

I really like what ATW are trying to do here. It’s a good attempt at trying to engage with service users through Twitter as part of the improvement journey. Even though it was a difficult situation they have seen an opportunity to try and make things better. Real ‘glass half full’ thinking, nice one ATW.

I wonder if any other public service providers might have a go at something like this?

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. During disruption, service users really appreciate knowing what’s going on. Twitter offers an opportunity to do that.
  2. Being open and honest about your limitations and asking for information on ‘how do we improve’ is a good way of engaging service users.
  3. Gathering feedback while the situation is still ‘fresh in the mind’ should provide information which is more accurate than a survey months later.

Open and honest communication with @_LaurenCook_. Followed by a few screen shots of the survey. A wide range of communication channels available. I count 12!

@ArrivaTW- twitter love is a Long Train Runnin’ (without love) at the minute

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How to read this post: click on this link, let the soundtrack start, come back here and start reading…….

I’m sending some Twitter love to Arriva Trains Wales (@ArrivaTW). They are trying hard to engage with customers through Twitter but aren’t fully feeling the love yet. It’s also an opportunity to link to some music from The Doobie Brothers in the shape of Long Train Runnin (Without Love). I reckon the Arriva Trains Wales Twitter operators should adopt this as their theme tune. Nothing like a bit of 1970′s funk to lift the spirits.

Over the last year I’ve been enthusing about London Midland Trains and how they engage with customers through twitter. If you don’t believe me follow them @LondonMidland, you could even try tweeting them, there is a better than 75% chance of them responding to you very quickly. How do I know this? Well I follow @engagementindex who send me regular tweets on customer service performance of a range of organisations who use twitter. I have posted about the fantastic performance of @LondonMidland previously, and had commented that @ArrivaTW had some way to go…..

Well something has changed. In the July update from @engagement index I spotted that @ArrivaTW had leapt up the rankings. From a position where they weren’t responding to any tweets from customers they were doing much better.

My spirits soared, look how things can change in a year.  Twitter enabled customer service for trains in Wales (and the Marches).  Even better was the new @ArrivaTW Twitter bio. An honest statement, “we try our best to reply”.

I had to take a closer look for myself. Unfortunately this has coincided with an incident at the main Cardiff Train Station. A collapsed wall resulted in major disruption for several days. Hardly the fault of @ArrivaTW, they just run the trains, but they got plenty of criticism on Twitter. If want to see the collapsed wall, check out the @ArrivaTW Twitter pictures, brilliant use of social media.

What I saw on twitter were valiant attempts by the @ArrivaTW tweeters to help out, but unfortunately on occasions they got some pretty offensive comments.  It’s a real shame. Nobody deserves that kind of abuse, particularly when they haven’t caused the problem and are just trying to help. Perhaps @ArrivaTW should add to their twitter bio, “please try to be polite (we are real people with feelings)” just like the one on @LondonMidland.

So, what the PONT?

  1. Here is some Twitter love from me to @ArrivaTW. What a difference in a year.
  2. Nobody deserves abuse for trying to deliver a service in difficult circumstances (particularly if you didn’t cause the problem), at the end of Twitter account there are real people with feelings.
  3. Keep plugging away @ArrivaTW. Hopefully the love will come, even if it feels like a Long Train Runnin’ (without love).

There is some love out there for @ArrivaTW!

Doing something that scares me ……. Canton Social Media Surgery

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A while back I was having banjo lessons. The banjo teacher couldn’t actually play the banjo. He was a fantastic guitar teacher, but had zero experience of banjos. He would joyfully rationalise this situation by assuring me (after he’d taken my £20) with soothing words, “don’t worry my son; as long as I stay one step ahead of you we’ll be just fine….”

Things felt a bit like this last week when I helped out at the Canton Social Media Surgery, with me staying just about one step ahead.

Having spent a while blogging, using twitter and other bits of social media I felt like I had enough experience to do my bit and help other people. I was slightly anxious, being very much in the territory of that Eleanor Roosevelt quote of “do one thing every day that scares you”. The other side of this was forcing myself to become more competent by trying to teach what I knew, a bit of a test……….. well I wasn’t disappointed.

Juliette and Nicky  did a good job of preparing me. Plenty of pre-surgery reading, assuring me I’d be fine and giving me the grand title of ‘surgeon’. I was then introduced to my ‘patient’ a lovely lady. As I recall this is how it played out:

  • Lady: “I’m not that good with technology”
  • My thoughts: Great I’m on safe ground here…..
  • Lady: “I’m interested in WordPress, but I don’t know very much”
  • My thoughts: Excellent, I’m bound to dazzle you with my knowledge…..
  • Lady: “I have been on holidays, the campsite had WIFI so I’ve been looking at WordPress”
  • My thoughts: okaaay……..this could be interesting……..
  • Lady: “I’ve done some WordPress research….” and she produced an A4 notebook containing what looked like about 20 pages of neatly written notes
  • My thoughts: Arrgghhh…….. Where’s the fire escape!

Fortunately we had a chat about Twitter while I gathered my senses and then we moved onto WordPress. In the end everything went very well. I found out that I do actually know a few things, and learnt quite a lot as well. Admittedly some of the learning came later that evening when I got home and clicked a few WordPress things (not that anyone would notice).

This process of learning was a big thing for me was. Recently I heard Physics Teacher Alessio Bernadelli talk about how first year sixth form students (year 12) had learned about photo electricity by posting blogs to be reviewed by year 6 students. The act of explaining what they  knew to others helped their personal understanding. This is nicely summed up in a post from another teacher, Lucy Bunce in her blog where she quotes from the book Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams…….”What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind”

My experience at Canton Social Media Surgery was about combining three things:

  1. really understanding what I know by explaining it to someone else;
  2. staying just one step ahead; and
  3. learning from the person you are teaching.

Overall this made for a very rewarding experience. Thanks to my ‘patients’ who were very tolerant and to Juliette and Nicky for letting me take part, hopefully I’ll get invited back next time.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. As Dirk Gently says, if you really want to understand something, explain it to someone else.
  2. It’s amazing what you learn from the people you are supposedly teaching, just be sure you open yourself up, look and listen.
  3. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “do one thing every day that scares you”. It worked for me.

Picture source: This isn’t my banjo teacher. It’s Don Wayne Reno a fantastic bluegrass banjo player with the band Hayseed Dixie (who I happen to quite like).

NeverSeconds, School Dinners, Social Media and some learning for Public Service

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 Single tweet, massive impact.

Situation.

  • 30th April 2012 a 9 year old school pupil starts the NeverSeconds blog as a writing project with her dad.
  • Martha writes about what she gets for school lunch and takes photographs.
  • This is done with the approval of the school.
  • The blog also acts as a link to raising money for a school meals charity.
  • Blog gets some good attention, kids from other places send pictures of their own school meals and they are posted.
  • June 2012, negative press articles attract the attention of those responsible for providing the meals, the Local Council.
  • Thursday 14th June Martha is told to stop taking photographs of school dinners by the Council.
  • Martha publishes this on the blog in a ‘Goodbye’ message.
  • The world of social media, twitter in particular, erupts.

Social Media Impact

  • A very prominent school meals campaigner (Jamie Oliver) sends a message of support and encourages his 2.3 million followers to retweet it.
  • Twitter gets very busy with people talking about ‘#neverseconds’.
  • The story is picked up by television, radio and newspapers.
  • Politicians become involved, some via twitter.
  • Considerable pressure is put on the Local Council.
  • Friday 15th June the Council reverses the ban and Martha is allowed to use photographs of the school meals in NeverSeconds.
  • This all happens within a 24 hour timeframe.
  • ……and the world of social media erupts even further.

A few numbers

  • Never Seconds blog had received in excess of 4,500,000 page view by 11am on Saturday 16th June (still climbing).
  • The page view counter on Saturday morning was flicking over at rate too fast to count. It was about 200 views per minute (12,000 / hour) when it had slowed down a bit.
  • The ‘#neverseconds’ hash tag attracted thousands of tweets.
  • The donations to the school meals charity have reached over £45,000, the fastest rate of donations they have experienced; and it’s still going on.
  • There are 2 more weeks until the end of term, plenty of time for more school dinner blog posts.

Some thoughts

  • The council has received a massive amount of publicity in a very short space of time. Most of it negative, using phrases like ‘bully’. It’s going to be an interesting day back at work on Monday.
  • Will this improve the quality of school meals? Particularly once social media has gone away? Who knows, but the fear of a return to this level of exposure might be a big motivation.
  • What happens next for Never Seconds and Martha?

So what’s the PONT?

  1. Censorship is a risky activity in the world of social media. It backfired hugely for this council (even if they do claim good reasons).
  2. The speed and scale of social media will cause problems for most organisations. Most public services aren’t equipped for this sort of 24/7 media pressure.
  3. As an example of ‘citizen voice’ from within a group of generally ‘quiet’ people (primary school kids), this is a pretty loud and high impact. As part the ‘digital natives’ entering wider society and the world of work, there is an interesting future ahead for public services.

Interesting Links: Council Statement. http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/node/38630

Infographic:  http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1105/lunch/flat.html Do students eat like prisoners? Well worth looking at.

 

 

 

 

Also have a look at the Streisand effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect.  An attempt to hide or remove a piece of information online has the unintended consequence of publicising the information more widely.

@engagementindex on Twitter, @LondonMidland Trains customer service is fantastic …. Official!

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Yesterday London Midland Trains tweeted that they were proud to have retained the top spot on the @engagementindex on Twitter. I’ve posted previously about how London Midland Trains use Twitter and how they provided  real time customer support trying to cross London during a time of rail disruption.

This tweet got me intrigued, so I had to take a look, and it led me to the trains report on the Engagement Index Engagement Index website.

Here is the graphic which is clear and easy to understand. Basically it is the ratio of direct tweets to an organisation that they have responded to, and those they have ignored. London Midland scores very highly as it responds to a high number of the tweets sent directly to them. The contrast is the train company at the bottom end that received  79 direct tweets and ignored them all, Arriva Trains Wales, oh dear.

During March 2012 London Midland Trains received 1022 direct tweets; they responded to 767 and ignored 255. That might seem a high rate, but having seen the London Midland twitter stream when things are busy, there is a lot of traffic, and you could forgive them for not responding to some of the more ‘jaunty’ tweets (there is an interesting post on the Engagement Index blog about how to deal with tweets that contain swearing). The only other organisation that seems to come close to the London Midland performance (apart from Greater Anglia Trains) is Halifax in the banking report

What I like about the Engagement Index approach (apart from it being free) is the fact that it is beautifully straightforward. I can’t do any better than to quote straight from their website:

Overview

The Engagement Index is a score on how well or badly a business is replying to messages aimed at them. It is a measure of their customer service performance on Twitter. More and more consumers / customers are turning to social media and in particular Twitter to engage, ask, complain to brands and businesses. Engagement Index measures how well or badly those companies are at replying to those messages.

What’s the aim?

To develop a simple scoring system with the aim of raising the customer service bar particularly in the UK. Sadly customer care in the UK to my mind is in the most part still very poor. Twitter is a game changer for businesses. Through Engagement Index I want businesses to be able to track themselves so that they can see how they are performing, see if the resources they have allocated are sufficient and aimed in the right places and so on.

A couple of posts from John Dell’Armi give a good perspective on why organisations need to treat social media and particularly Twitter like any other form of customer feedback.  This one talks about having  nothing to fear (if you do the right thing) and another one about train companies of all things, “if you are on twitter, you need to be on twitter”.

So what’s the PONT?

  1. Customer (service user) engagement on Twitter is just like any other form of engagement, so don’t ignore it.
  2. The Engagement Index is a powerful tool for measuring engagement. It  also allows benchmarking between and across sectors, and its free!
  3. Public services could a useful area for the Engagement Index to focus its attention next.

Picture Source:  http://www.engagementindex.co.uk/reports?sector=trains

Twitter to the Rescue – real time customer support from London Midland Trains

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This is an example of what I think is great real-time engagement with customers. It’s
about London Midland Trains and how they use Twitter, which I’ve mentioned before

The story is as follows. Our hero, is heading off to see his favourite football team play. He has to get across the city, which is a challenge on any day. The story unfolds…………(the tweets timeline starts with the earliest at the bottom of the box)

Phase 1. Getting to the Game

Today there has been an incident which has caused major problems, particularly for his transport provider of choice, London Midland Trains.

So far so good.

Alternative arrangements have been suggested over Twitter by London Midland Trains.

A few adjustments to the travel plans  and he makes it to the game (with the help of ‘best wife’).

Phase 2. Thinking about the journey home.

Must admit, I’ve been in this situation myself a few times. Getting home isn’t really a priority until the game is over.

It’s not looking good for our intrepid traveller.

Phase 3. The setback.

Things don’t look good at all.

Then the London Midland Twitter folks come to the rescue and there’s route home possible. Phew!

I find the ’real time’ element of this amazing. One of the great benefits is that anyone else who is having problems travelling can also ‘listen in’ to the Twitter conversation and get the advice.

Phase 4. The happy ending.

Our hero gets home safely, AND the team wins (3 nil!), AND London Midland Twitter get a public thank you.

Brilliant! A win, win, win situation.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Real time customer support is achievable by using Twitter.
  2. In the end a potentially upset customer, understands your position and says thanks, in public.
  3. Just imagine the applications it could be used for across other public services.

Let Twitter on the Train take the strain……..

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Twitter to the rescue?

Twitter to the rescue?

Last week I got stuck on Leeds Railway Station for a few hours.  It gave me the opportunity to have a conversation with a chilled out and extremely well-informed individual, who seemed to know everything that was going on. They weren’t a train company employee, just someone who had harnessed the power of Twitter. Through Twitter feeds from the Train companies and ‘listening’ to other tweets they knew exactly what was happening and were organising themselves accordingly (no stress).

In the conversation they mentioned how good they thought London Midland Railways were at using Twitter, so I decided to take a look. Out of curiosity I also had a quick browse at the Twitter presence of my local train company, Arriva Trains Wales.  My first impressions were that London Midland (LMR) seemed have taken full advantage of Twitter and are using it effectively to manage some of their customer relations.  Arriva Trains Wales (ATW) weren’t using Twitter to engage with their customers to the same level. This might have explained the people expressing their views via unofficial #arrivatrains tweets, where they were using lots of rude words.

This grabbed my attention. No way I was going to leave this alone without a bit of deeper digging.  Here are some of my observations on how the two organisations use Twitter. At the end there is also a comment on how some of this might be relevant to public service organisations which are also using Twitter.

Volume and Frequency. LMR tweet a lot! There were over 20,000 on their profile and I counted about 160 tweets on a last Saturday (30th June).  This huge volume and frequency may be a consequence of them running about 1300 services a day and dealing with 50 million passengers a year.  Along with this huge volume of tweets, what amazed me was that most tweets seemed to be direct responses to questions or conversations with the customers.  Tweets were being sent directly to individuals. Whatever way you look at it, that’s an absolutely huge database of information and interactions with customers, what they think and feel about the service provided. What a valuable resource.

By comparison ATW had sent out 1300 tweets. OK they are smaller than LMR with 65,000 passenger journeys a day (approx 23 Million per year) but they had managed to attract 2,800 followers compared to LMR’s 7,200. So customers are interested in what they have to say on Twitter. I couldn’t get a number of tweets for last Saturday (30th July) there were none. On the previous Friday there were 2 and the Thursday 8.  In comparison the LMR tweeters seem to operate well beyond ‘office hours’ and really get stuck into the conversation. Passive they are not.

Routine customer service.  “I’ve had a problem and want it sorted”………I can help……. “Here is the link to where you can claim a refund”.  Very straightforward.

Tone and Interaction. I won’t try and explain much here, just insert an example of the things I’ve seen. The LMR tone is quite informal, but overall really helpful. The ATW tweets are factual and informative, but there’s no interaction with the customers. It’s all ‘push outwards’ tweeting and little responding to incoming traffic. I think they might be missing a trick here as there are lots of people tweeting back to LMR and thanking them for the help.  Have a look for yourself:

This was part of a longer conversation where the customer was unable to get the service. The LMR tweeters had provided information and then followed up with a question asking if it had worked. The end result is a happier / less unhappy customer.

I could go on for ages on this, but probably best not to. It’s getting a bit obsessive and I might have invented a new age addition to train spotting, Rail Company Twitter watching. I’m stopping for my own good.

One final thing, I don’t know if the use of Twitter had anything to do with it, but LMR had good results for their 2010 customer satisfaction.

So, what’s the PONT?

  1. Some Train Companies have huge experience of using Twitter (20, 000 tweets). Perhaps other organisations can learn from their experience?
  2. Interactions with customers over Twitter provide a huge database of information that can be used to improve services.
  3. Amongst the complaints, lots of people seem to give the organisations positive feedback on Twitter. Particularly if they respond and tried to help.

Picture source: http://blog.piersdillonscott.com/2009/08/rail-fail/