Book Of Brilliant Things

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy



I was over the moon last week, when the postie (God bless Royal Mail), dropped a lovely mini-book through my letterbox. It was the brilliantly funny collection of cartoons and comms doodles, from the excellent Helen Reynolds.

Twitter peeps will no doubt know her as @HelReynolds and the nice folk at @WeAreResource have made the publishing happen. Copies are going to be hot property and I have my own personalised front on mine.

I have followed the excellent cartoonist @MartinShovel for a long time and Helen went on one of his courses together with MarthaLeyton. While I can take a mean photograph, I cannot draw to save my life, so I am gushing with admiration for what she has achieved.

You can say an awful lot in a cartoon, that would be tricky or even offensive in another medium. They can convey a message far more quickly than a slab of text. You don't need to be able to read to understand a cartoon. How many government or health messages have you experienced as a cartoon?  They connect with our childhood sense of humour and use a relaxed method of getting across often dull or painful messages.

I have occasionally used cartoons (other peoples of course, with a credit), in presentations. They can diffuse tensions, particularly as they are an easy way to spotlight stereotypes and smooth the way to raising issues or introducing change.

Looking through the variety of Helen's work in her book, she touches on many of the themes I see in my work, particularly around change and perceptions of social media among other things.

Here's a few of my favourites, I have encountered more than one of these myself. Before you ask, its Chocolate Hobnobs for me at meetings every time!

(c) All toons from the fabulous Helen Reynolds

So, get yourself on one of Helen's or WeAreResource's courses or sessions, and snaffle a copy of this excellent tome yourself!

Catch the blog monthly archive at https://archive.org/details/@housingitguy

Related Post: Is it not time you were using your customers eyes and ears? 

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.

Simple Minds - Book Of Brilliant Things.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

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Communication Breakdown

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

Twitter is a wonderful thing. Even more so I think, when you meet some of your mutual followers in real life. I had the great pleasure of meeting one of my followers this week for a spot of lunch and a chance to put the social housing world to rights. Rest assured, next month, we will be tackling the Middle East.

Yvonne is a retired, but very active as a social housing tenant, in her community and with her housing provider. She has completed many TPAS courses and takes pride in spreading the positive message of involvement with her landlord. IMHO we need plenty more Yvonne's in our homes and many more of her age digitally connected/happy to educate others. A keen eBay'er, I put her on to Auctionstealer.co.uk and Quidco to further enhance her on-line shopping savings.

More and more retired and older residents are now being introduced to the web and how it can improve their lives. I feel that even compared with two years ago, we are in a very different place. Even Barclays are getting in on the action. They know the cash and service improvement value of customers using the internet, rather than physical branches to bank. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diWTH3QIcuY where the pleasures of Google maps, Skype and of course Barclays fine on-line banking are revealed. If as an RSL you have not got an interactive internet portal, for customers to log/check repairs, see rent statements/make payments or log ASB etc, you are already failing badly.

I was interested to hear from Yvonne, what she felt was the biggest area she felt would improve her relationship with her landlord. The answer was better communication. "They never come back to me", just about sums it up. Communication is the key. Quite often, tenants ask questions on the telephone, by email or other channels and those requests can just be lost. Not intentionally in many cases, but frustrating nonetheless.

So how can IT and software applications tackle this? Well, most integrated Housing Management Systems incorporate CRM, Front Desk Query, Tasking, Workflow Trays etc, so we have the means of recording all these interactions. So we have the means. If you don't have the means, find out what you could introduce to supply this element. The next step is to have everyone buy in to use it. Now that should not be tricky, but you would be surprised how often people connive to resist introduction of CRM & tasking.

Now for me, I like the idea of a task tray. All the things I need to do, and when they are due. To meet the communication needs of residents like Yvonne, CRM needs to be used in both directions. That is where many organisations go wrong. Log interactions from your customer services centre and also when your staff interact, out of the office. In fact ALL interactions need to be logged (or accessible) within CRM. Tasking should support escalation, referral and effectively provide a 'snail-trail' of how that piece of communication was dealt with, at each step of the way. All staff need to be engaged, any gaps will create vulnerabilities and inevitably complaints. Those complaints cost money.

So have you got the software applications in your housing organisation to prevent 'Communication Breakdown' and are you really using it properly?

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You can link with me on LinkedIn here - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy It would be great to connect !

Read on to, 0845 on its last call for our customer service centres:

http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.com/2014/05/last-call-0845.html

Led Zeppelin - Communication Breakdown.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

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