Is your customer service shaped around delivering happiness?

What type of Question is that? - well Zappos.com has focused on delivering happiness to customers, suppliers and employees alike to grow from $ 0 to over $ 1 Billion dollars plus in sales - in a period of less than 10 years !

zappo.scom delivering happiness book, written by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh , charts the journey of Zappos and it's adoption of "actionable and emotional based core values".

Deploying emotional intelligence within a business context by engineering and weaving "Wow-ness" into every customer, employee and supplier touch point. With this approach zappos.com have been able to create such phenomenal growth. They have charted new waters and navigated through these, over the years, thanks to their core emotional values that energize and enthuse their tribe of stakeholders. This has allowed Zappos to continue to further develop and improve every aspect of their business that guarantees the delivery of further happiness, and an ever increasing phenomenal impact on the bottom line too.


The core themes that I took away from this book:
1. Construct, capture & share actionable key core values that build WOW!
2. Recruit people who are passionate about what you do
3. Build mechanisms to test if new recruits are in for the money
4. Improve processes that benefit stakeholders in line with wow factors
5. Build mechanisms of work development & progression giving employee choices
6. Care for your employees! work environment and outside activities, investment?
7. Remember you are building a "movement" - how different will you make yourself?
8. ID your emotional, functional, transactional value add, do you know it?
9. keep your employees biz thinking sharp: zappos has library of popular books
10 Your stakeholders count too - build a win-win for all concerned.

"going the extra-mile to build a smile" - with everyone your organisation comes in contact with appears to be the bottom line of this book.

The scientific evidence behind the happiness strategy!
Rewards, Happiness, Motivation and Company Culture? You have to get down to the conscious and sub-conscious. Luckily there is a whole field of scientific discovery through psychology focused specifically on the area of happiness. Check out the video below. Enjoy ;-)




Book Bonus Bits...

website for book...
http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com/

book resources...
http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com/resources/happiness-studies-and-articles/

Insights on zappos culture...
http://www.zapposinsights.com/main/

Zappos culture book (free)...
http://www.zapposinsights.com/main/culture-book/


Other Related books I have read tha corroborates what this book says and enhances the field and approach to delivering and building happiness into what you do.

Website demos can be a doddle with twiddla

Live real time web demo & collab with twiddla - doodles and chat too....

Yes, live website demos, doodling & chattin is a doddle with twiddla, oh and did I mention it was free?





Yes, yes, my wonderful charity chums and little charity chums helpers and buddies! - I bring you another fab free online collaboration review! - have no fear, - Twiddla is here!!!!

kiss good bye to thumb twiddling when asked to support charities, colleagues or invidiuals with web platfomrs/technologies! - this is a tool that is very, very useful and easy to use! If you know how to use drawing tools in microsoft word or powerpoint and can use a browser - then you re 90% of the way there with twiddla! - it's that easy! - really!

Shapes, text bubbles, free style pencil drawing, adding images - it is all possible with twiddla. You can even chat with colleagues, or if you have skype you can talk to them explaining verbally what you are doing. It's that simple.

So check out the video I have prepared below - and get familiarised with the possiblities.

What is even better is that after contacting the twiddla team as a charity, they told me that anyone with a '.org' or '.edu' email can be upgraded for free. What's the difference? - Well, when you demo a site for people you can do so under the privacy of a "private" - "password protected space".

You can email the unique and customisable password and URL to your audience, so no clown can come in and start grafftiying your work and loading other sites. If you want to get your free upgrade then, send an email to info[at]twiddla.com, put into the subject free 'charity' or 'education upgrade' - and in the body tell them that william doust sent you. So now turn the lights down, get your popcorn and get ready to watch the twiddla show.

Ressource(s)

twiddla website & sandbox
http://www.twiddla.com

twiddla free upgrade email contact & details
email: info[at]twiddla.com
subj: free 'charity' or 'education upgrade'
body: william doust told me & sent me
terms & conditions: must have a '.org' or '.edu' for free upgrade
(to password protect your sessions)

skype
http://www.skype.com

Charity Chums - social bookmarks sharing group for charities & non-profits
(share annotated web resources with our little group on diigo)
http://cli.gs/rJ4y91

Charities-from virtual tools to real world collaboration

Charity Chums - linking charities to collaborate smartly and build a better future together ;o)
Through lovely conversations I've encouraged charities to start talking and helping each other with the use of free web and communication tools. It started all with Skype, and web disoveries were then added to the mix - and these are now shared with the use of diigo - bookmarking and web annotation on a web platform.

What's even better is that these initial conversations that were started with free technologies, will now lead to face-to-face meeting to exchange best practice. Thanks to the NCVO's connect scheme they should be able to get together - fingers crossed. This is the scheme where £250 are shared for the day's expenses. £150 - goes to the host and £100 for the visitor. Agh ;0)

Could dabbling in communicating and collaborating via fee web-tools create evidence - to piggy back off other funding? - who knows, but it is worth a cheeky try! - specially when the NCVO connect Scheme has several round fo funding. Next round in June.

Why you could save time - and time is money in the charity sector - by using web tools and social bookmarking
Two of my charity chums, charities which I work with and try to inspire are sharing my passion for learning and making life easier with the use of free web technologies and appliactions to collaborate and save time & money during these credit crunch times.


In this post we will cover the use of Diigo, and in a future blog post we will cover Twiddla with Skype. Stay tuned, and I do hope you enjoy this post.


Using Diigo to share sector discoveries, insights, and great resources - tap into the collective power of soical bookmakring and web annotation
How many people have you met in conferences, events and in other face-to-face circumstances who tell you about great resources on the web that could have helped your project? - If, only, if only you knew?

If only the information of this resource had done a Hudini, and broke free from the confines of your favorites (on your browser) or the silo of your inbox. So many links waiting to help you!

This is where Diigo comes in. Diigo allows you to save, annotate and share the web - on the web! people can search and discover what you want to share! as simple as that. Take a look at the video and I'll see you in a moment.

What do you think?
Check-out the bookmarking screenshots on diigo for a fab review

Don't ask what you can do for diigo but what diigo can do for you
You saw how quickly you can expand your efforts by tapping into "communities of common interests", create/join groups, track keywords and phrases related to your interests and share. Go ahead, join us in diigo and let us share our journey of discovery.

This video only scratches the surface of what diigo allows you to do and connect to
There's much more, stay tuned! - and why not join our family learning and sharing group?


Resource(s)

Diigo website
http://www.diigo.com

Diigo - bookmarking screen shots
http://help.diigo.com/How-To_Guide/Bookmarking

Diigo help - screenshots - everything u need to know
http://help.diigo.com/

Diigo - presentations on slideshare
http://tinyurl.com/diigopresents

Diigo in Education wiki
http://tinyurl.com/diigo-ed-wiki

Diigo toolbar for firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2792

Diigo intro video
http://tinyurl.com/diigoquick

Charity Chums Group (new- as of this post)
http://groups.diigo.com/groups/charity-chums

Existing Accelerated Family Learning Group
http://tinyurl.com/willdiigogroup

NCVO connect scheme
http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/?id=7278

Crowdsourcing with the arts council artjobs mailing list

This post is dedicated to Julian Miller from the Gorilla Organization
I met Jilllian at the Third Sector PR and Communications network event in London Last Thursday 19th of Feb. Someone was asking about the impact of working with bloggers, and what was the ratio of effort and related outcome/benefit of engaging. The question was posed by someone who worked in PR/Comms. As an evangelist and fan of virtual volunteer and philanthropist collaboration with artists and creatives I mentioned that getting people involved - crowd sourcing gave positive results.

I met Jillian at the pub bar when she heard me asking the bar maid to tease a Colombian from Cali to mention the word "Barranquilla". She heard the rolled 'r' and repeated it back to me which got the conversation going. Jillian's organization, gorillas, works to help to ensure the well being of gorillas. in Congo. If you can adopt a gorilla and donate.

How the arts council artsjob mailing list can help you connect and co-develop great visual communications
Whilst doing my usual volunteering - prior to working in the sector, I assisted Survivors of Depression in Transition to reach out and transform the group's creative writing into a calendar.
The power of the group's words were re-interpreted into corresponding images by volunteer artists. The result was a fantastic calendar that was laid out, digitally printed, and sold at the venue - Sheffield's winter gardens. In addition the artists were asked if they wished to donate their artwork as originals or digital prints, to help the charity fund-raise. They did. Their artwork was also exhibited nest to the poetry. This happened in the last quarter of 2007.

You too can get artists to help your charity and help them too - here's the sweet recipe
1. go to the arts council website
2. subscribe to the arts council arts job mailing list
3. check out the postings relating to requests for volunteering
4. get a feel for how briefs/appeals are put together
5. write a brief
6. send it out and be ready to receive ;o)

Things to think about (brief, managing artists,managing contributions/content)

1. are the contributions going to end in print or just on the web? - this has an impact on resolution and dimensions.
   
2. have you told your contributors explicitly enough that you want them to donate their work?
   
3. can you get a written ok from contributors to continue printing their work - to help you with fundraising after the event? - if you choose to.
4. have you thought about the fact that you could make that content more flexible and redeploy it in printing on demand products? (no sunk costs, see article here)
5. have you thought about getting an agreement with the artists so that you can use their work in things such as mugs, mouse pads, umbrellas, t-shirts? (printing on demand)
6. have you thought about showcasing your artists/contributors in your publications/website? - they have given their time to make a difference!
7. are you going to ask them for samples of their work to see if it fits with your values or will you visit their portfolios online?
8. will they send you a low-rez version (if the project is visual) and did you make sure they were aware of final dimensions and resolution?
9. have you got a friendly printer that will do digital printing and low runs? - if you choose not to go with printing on demand.
   
10. have you got colleagues who will help you decide which donated work you will include
11. has the brief included a short and sweet backgrounder that links to the collaborators values , appeals to their philanthropist values and also demonstrates how they will benefit too?
    

My experience has shown that as long as you are open, clear and speak from the heart of what you want and why you wish to collaborate - all will go well. Remember some budding collaborators who want to be involved will be doing so for various reasons. If the heart warming feeling can be supplemented by additional benefits where the body of work is recognized, appreciated and showcased to many, all the better.

I leave you with a quick video I prepared for you that has been sped up to quickly show the calendar that was made for Survivors of Depression in Transition.




Crowdsourcing and Arts Council Arts Job mailing list from william doust on Vimeo.

This is a video showing a calendar that was developed thanks to the collaboration of virtual volunteers who were recruited via England's arts council jobs mailing list.



All of the fab artwork was printed onto a calendar that was sold during mental health week in 2007. The artwork was exhibited and auctioned in Sheffield's contemporary winter gardens - right next to the city's gallery and creative industries.



Thanks to all those who participated.

wikis to use for-ever with no strings?

One of the guys from pbwiki.com emailed me today and said that they are launching free wikis in two weeks! Surprise, shock and horror ;-O I found out about these guys (pbwiki.com) accidentally when I went to sign-up for a bloggers event that is taking place in London, very, very soon - for those in the charity sector. The event is being run by the fab gang from charitycomms - see the group on facebook! - share, learn, and join the conversation! So...sign up to the event was via pbwiki.com - so, i setup an account in order to add myself to the list. After I couldn't help but have a nosy round. In the sales blurb bit, I saw nothing about charities! - so I dropped them an email and they said thy are to launch a new free service in two weeks! - don't believe me? check out the email they sent (minus personal details).



Wikis are fab - cos they free up knowledge that is locked up in emails, systems, and laptops Information wants to be free and wants to be your helpful friend...but it can't be, when it is caged up in office systems that are not very accessible to remote workers..or when it is in laptops or swimming in a sea of webmail - even with mail search it's a blimmin nightmare!

That's right those of us on the coal face of delivering services to other charities sometimes duplicate efforts
Wikis (wikipedia definition of a wiki) provide an editorial platofrm where we can share knowledge. What ever we want it to be: funding sources, grants, case-studies, best practises, tools, tips, etc. The perfect web platform for remote collaboration. This is where wikis come in to rescue us. If you are not to comfortable with technology, then check out the fab and accessible video from the nice people at common craft who explain everything in plain english ;D

Common Craft's Wikis in Plain English...

Resources/References Wikipedia's definition of what a wiki is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

Benefits & pitfalls of wikis
http://tinyurl.com/dm96qw

Wikis at work: benefits & practices
http://tinyurl.com/b8jh9c

Wikis in higher education: teaching and learning with
http://tinyurl.com/crubfd

Just three major employee benefits?
http://tinyurl.com/bby786

wiki software - wikipedia compilation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_software

free wikis for life - comin soon pwiki.com
http://pbwiki.com/

Build Upon one anothers work - The Creative Commons way

Share your creativity - enable people anywhere to re-use from your work, learn and recreate...or find licensed work to enrich your creations
In a recent post I discussed the licensing of the Outcomes star under creative commons. In this article I examine the more creative areas for your projects.

All of us in the non-profit/charity sector are looking to spread our message in as economic a manner with a greater impact. If you have to do the marketing and need to look for content for your next campaign, why not give and take?

Share your creative wealth and Set your work free to grow some legs & let it travel new routes with creative commons refined copyright license approach, or even find licensed work that you can integrate into your project to really make it fly!!!

It's free and you won't need to hire expensive lawyers, hurrah!

You select the flavour of the license via a click through process and voila, you get a link to the page with the corresponding icon, like the one I recently acquired at the top right hand corner of this page. If you are farming creative snippets go straight to the search section to find the type of media or content that is available. But before you do that find out more by watching the video and checking out the licenses below .

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uTjpghGjjfo



Six types of Creative Commons licenses:
(read below or go straight to the summary page -
http://creativecommons.org/license/)

1.Attribution
(Gents toilet like icon):
All creative commons licences require attribution, this means that others may share your work as long as the credit you.

2. Attribution ShareAlike
(Gents toilet like icon & circular arrow to left):
Adds to attribution the condition that any derivative works fall under the same license conditions as the original.

3. Attribution no Derivatives
(Gents toilet like icon & an equals sign):
Adds to attribution the condition that no derivative works can be made from the work. In other words, you could include and build upon the work without altering the original. Say you can a 'diagram' or 'chart' within a report as long as you attributed the work.

4. Attribution Noncommercial
(Gents toilet like icon & $ with a stripe):
Adds to attribution the condition that those reusing the work cannot do so in terms of profiting commercially from the work. The interested parties may have to contact the license holder to re-negotiate the license and work something out.

5. Attribution Noncommercial ShareAlike
(Gents toilet like icon, $ with a stripe & circular arrow to left ):
Adds to attribution the condition that those reusing the work cannot do so in terms of profiting commercially from the work and that the new work that has built upon has to be released under the same licensing conditions if the party interested in the work is to use it.

6. Attribution Noncommercial No derivatives
(Gents toilet like icon, $ with a stripe & an equals sign)
Adds to attribution the conditions that those reusing the work cannot do so in terms of profiting commercially from the work and that no derivative works can be made from the work. In other words, you could include and build upon the work without altering the original. Say you can a 'diagram' or 'chart' within a report as long as you attributed the work. And on top of that those reusing the work cannot do so in terms of profiting commercially from the work.

You can see as you go down the licenses the levels of restriction that you can
apply.

There are literally millions of people already sharing their work to be remixed.Check out the video about the general creative commons licenses.

Farming for content to use in a project?...well -you can search for it

If you are farming for content and looking to remix or be rmixed, then search the creative commons website. The CC search engine searches various platforms that have integrated CC licensing for their contributors to release works under the CC license.

If music is your thing (hey you fantastic guitarist from Rod/zio) go to ccmixter.
If it can be made to work for the music industry, as some artists are embracing,imagine what it could do for you? Check out the video, it even includes shorts snippets to video licensing.

http://www.youtube.com/v/1e2WMlL6jlI&hl=en&fs=1

What about a primer on the whole thing ?- watch the video

http://www.youtube.com/v/tBnJBKnibyc&hl=en&fs=1

You can also see a videos about creative commons in the following languages:

Spanish
http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=OUo3KMkOETY
[for my friend Carlos Lopez G & his victory over HIV]

Portuguese (brasilian)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=w9xPRFCk63Y
[for the talented brasilian guitarist from Rodzio - Northampton]

Apologies for the bias but these additional languages are for my native fellow south & Central Americans.

Reference(s) Resource(s)

Creative Commons website
http://creativecommons.org/

Harvard Business School Revisiting Customer Contributions to Business Success

Why would you want to pay for a 12pp. article on customer/consumer collaboration with the development of products and services when you can tap into these minds on the web for free?

I So after having finished an article on 'conversations-engagment-trust' that weaved in elements of collaboration and co-development I go into London Waterloo today to find the October issue of Harvard Business Review having an article titled, 'The Contribution Revolution: Letting Volunteers Build Your Business' - and the price in sterling? It's like bying a whole book!!!!






(HBR: web image & mobile photo...notice the layout difference in the editions)


Can't we work out a model of how collaboration works out by 'creating our own frankenstein' and learning from others for free?

Get your own - Open publication

http://issuu.com/williamdoust/docs/wisdomofcrowds

Even the McDaddy of economics of distributed and open innovation, Dr. Eric von Hippel, has his books for free on his website as well as his research papers on the subject. Others have posted models which are easily available, as well as lovely PDFs...see below! Well, I can always strive to do my bit for the 'open spirit' ;-)

Before you explore the resources I leave you with the thoughts of Clay Sharky

Models, References & Useful Resources - for free!!!

What does 'crowdsourcing' mean for business innovation?http://ideaflow.corante.com/archives/2006/06/05/what_does_crowdsourcing_mean_for_business_innovation.php

The FLIRT Model of Crowdsourcing - The Updated Model and Background

http://www.samiviitamaki.com/2007/05/06/the-flirt-model-of-crowdsourcing-the-updated-model-and-background/

Overcoming Mass Confusion: Collaborative Customer Co-Design in Online Communities

http://userinnovation.mit.edu/papers/Piller_etal_JCMC_2005_collaborative_co-design.pdf

The Contribution Revolution: Letting Volunteers Build Your Business - Harvard business review -October 2008 Issue 12p.

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=R0810C

Geeks in Toyland - how lego tapped into passionate consumers to innovate

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.02/lego.html

The Power Of Us - Mass collaboration on the Internet is shaking up business http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938601.htm

Cambrian House, Home of Crowdsourcing

www.cambrianhouse.com/idea/idea-promoter/ideas-id/0IyWUff/

Scoble on Fast Company TV - Using croes to preduct outcomes - predictify

http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/using-crowds-predict-outcomes-predictify

Faces in the Crowd: Brett Snider

http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/advertising/

Eric von Hippel - wikipedia entry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_von_Hippel

Eric von Hippel - free papers

http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/papers.htm

Eric von Hippel - free books

http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds Vs Blink...The aggregate & averaging of opinion to model accurate predictions Vs the think slicing instictive discrimination of the individual

http://www.slate.com/id/2111894/entry/2112065/

Gladwell - author of Blink

http://www.gladwell.com/blink/

Ross Mayfield...Participation Ladder

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ross/470424239/sizes/m/

Ross Mayfield...Power Law of Participation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ross/171420476/sizes/m/

P.S Forrester has got a couple more that you can google to satisfy your curiosity

Engagment and trust - unerstanding the conditions - opensource way

PDFs that are available for free also sketch out an architecture of trust & engagement - it starts with a conversation
Information Communiation technologies are ever growing new tentacles and new ways to attempt to strike conversations. These intended interactions are directed at leading invididuals into an unerstanding of how organisations and companies can transform people's lives. Ofcourse, you always have the dark side. Where conversations don'e really exist - rather, monologues, as the case has been for mass media marketing. The fantastic viral video, the break up, couldn't put this more poignantly.

But how do we look at conversations & trust (before we get to the PDFs)?

Connecting Values & Connecting with people - loving people and how you can connect them?
love is the killer App by Tim Sanders (wikipedia), resonates with my philosophy. Really caring and being passionate about what you do, and seeing that what you do can help make a difference to others is a fantastic way to live. I always look at being a conduit. This is one of my main callings, to be a conduit so as to connecting people with other people and resources to help them transform their lives. 'Love is the Killer App' validates those human qualities that go beyond the ego and looks at making an interpersonal difference that ripples along to touch other invididuals, just like in the movie 'pay it forward' (sorry for this plug, only £2.99 at amazon).

As some of the chinese wise men have said over the centuries, a good conversationalist and a good conversation is about genuinely listening twice as much as you talk.

Can we idealise the type of people we wish to converse with?
I love talking to a variety of people. One type are those, who are modest people who love to be, think and do - driven from their hearts and values. This short sentence forms part of the type of emotional DNA snippet (eDNA) element or sequence that interests me. These are just a few qualities/characteristics. The more of the charactersitics I put together, the better the picture I obtain with that particular type. There are others who are growth led and want to learn from every opportunity that comes along. Putting together these unusual suspects, you can see how quickly you can build a unique group of individuals. These are called, Personas (wikipedia) link.

I will sign-post personas, and a non-profit model which I initiated and which I will co-develop. So you can see the importance of who you want to talk with!

Enough 'type talk' look, learn, and hopefully you will share with me and we can start helping out together

What follows are previews and linkt to the freely available PDFs that have been uploaded to issuu

Democratisation of publishing - content & its impact on the attention and digital landscape

Get your own - Open publication

Wemedia link
http://issuu.com/williamdoust/docs/wemedia_audiencecommunityparticipation

The 'Trust Economy' in a turbulent time, is more essential to undersand than ever

Get your own - Open publication

Trust economy link
http://issuu.com/williamdoust/docs/trusteconomynetwork


Citizen - Innovator, how citizen knowledge is helping create wealth & revenues

Get your own - Open publication

citizen innovator link
http://issuu.com/williamdoust/docs/userengamenetinnovation

cocreation - let your customers give you a hand with envisioning the future

Get your own - Open publication

co-creation link
http://issuu.com/williamdoust/docs/cocreation

open source marketing - bringing your customers into your marketing efforts

Get your own - Open publication

open source marketing link
http://issuu.com/williamdoust/docs/opensourcemktg

How the above leads to engagement of the digital/real life consumer - check out the customer engagement report by Cscape

Get your own - Open publication

link to Cscape customer engagement report
http://issuu.com/williamdoust/docs/digitalconsumer

What are your principles and do they stack-up? and how do you fair against the 95 theses of the landmark manifesto - cluetrain (only 8pp)
http://issuu.com/williamdoust/docs/cluetrainmanifesto