Blog 4 - Informal Formality

When discussing the improvement of customer satisfaction through the use of social technology, telecoms are about the last organization to come to mind. The stereotypical "faceless, money-hungry, infuriating" communication giants that we can't avoid seems to go out the window once you take a look at Telstra's Exchange. Established in 2009, Exchange.telstra.com.au is Telstra's multifaceted blog, a platform in which the various parts of the company can post articles - and more importantly - where users can provide comments, ask questions and even post their own threads. 

Now featuring three main sections (plus an "all" page), consisting of a Technology Hub, Telstra news and Community [news], Exchange is a platform which allows the telecom giant to personalise itself in a professional manner which allows clearer channels of communication.

One of the big levers for Improvement in an organization using Social Technology, as established by McKinsey (2012),  is to established customer care via these social platforms. Telstra's blog allows the company to speak on a more informal and personal level about the issues that are important to them, and can convey news and information in a more local sense, rather than having to maintain their national profile.

Sharing the load through having a variety of posters also allows Telstra to humanise itself and better improve upon it's content delivery, and the site is full of links to their other support means, as well as featuring "Help" posts every so often.

By posting about their own products and services, Telstra is also able to derive customer insights and generate sales leads, in their own yard - so to speak. While return channel feedback on their blog is somewhat lacking, the occasional response does appear to give quality discussion.

While the blog isn't used in an inter-organizational sense, it does foster the publishing of posts by a wide variety of it's team, and appears to encourage people to write about their strength areas.

Overall, Telstra's Exchange blog is a powerful tool which allows a corporate giant to humanise itself, gaining a personal understanding of people as well as detailing it's customers on the going-ons around Australia in a more informal way not commonly seen by big companies.