A recent Ars Technica article profiled the Norwegian electricity company Lyse and its off-the-wall way of increasing sales and building brand loyalty – by giving a $400 discount to customers who dig their own fiber optic cable trench. It seems like a cockamamie marketing trick, one that was destined to fail. But the opposite happened. According to the article, Lyse increased its number of customers from 500 in 2002 to 130,000 today.
By having customers mine their own trenches, the article continues, the company found a novel way to build loyalty. After all, the customers did the digging. Plus, it left the Norwegian public with a stellar image of Lyse: Let customers decide where to put their trenches, and reward them for doing so with an tempting discount and prices that are lower than the competition’s.
If you give your employees tools to get their jobs done more efficiently, you are allowing them to draft their own plans.
It is genius, and a tactic that can be applied to many industries. As an IT leader, you consider your company’s employees to be your customers. Your department’s image is important, and how well your customers’ computers and software behave directly affects your bottom line.
Swap the shovel for quality training and tech support. If you give your employees tools to get their jobs done more efficiently, you are allowing them to draft their own plans.
An Office 2007 migration is a fitting example. Without a doubt, employee productivity will dip during a migration. (See an earlier post, “Office 2007 Migration Road Map,” to learn how to plan a successful switchover.) Features they have used for years are suddenly somewhere else. The interface changes are substantial enough that without training, even the savviest users will be lost.
But it doesn’t stop there. The difference between digging the trench for them and handing over the shovel is in what you do next.
If you provide only pre-migration training, or no training at all, confusion will set in, and productivity will plummet. However, if you give your employees ongoing support during and after a migration, you are enabling them to work efficiently and to build skills at the same time. Productivity increases. Employee morale rises. (Jen Darr)
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About Jenny Sweeney
[...] In May 2009, I wrote about a Norwegian electricity company that offered its customers a $400 discount if they dug their own fiber optic cable trenches. The effort was a success; the company went from 500 customers in 2002 to 130,000 in 2009. It also had a bonus side effect of increased customer loyalty. (Read the post, “Building Loyalty with a Shovel.”) [...]