A Last Note on the Carphone Warehouse Incident

If you need the history — I had a big problem with the company (blogged here), which was resolved the day after I wrote a post about it on this site (blogged here).

A lot of people might see this as a victory for blogs and bloggers. I’d agree, sure. But, on reflec­tion, I think it’s more of a victory for Carphone Warehouse.

It’s easy for anyone to set up a blog, and give them­selves a platform on which to rant and rave about whoever is annoying them this week. OK, it takes a bit longer to estab­lish any read­er­ship and authority, and being a decent-​​ish writer helps, as well. However, any old fool, given some determ­in­a­tion, has the chance to do that, on a purely hobbyist basis. As I think I have suf­fi­ciently proven.

What’s harder than setting up a blog, is for big organ­isa­tions with estab­lished systems, hier­archies and hide-​​bound tra­di­tion to change. To move from a position where “it’s not this depart­ment”, “you need to speak to X about that” and “sorry, there’s no one avail­able right now.” To get to the position where an indi­vidual within that organ­isa­tion can say, “I can see what you’re saying. I’ll sort it out now.” Not only that, but they’re polling for your opinions and ready to inter­vene where they can be helpful. That would be an enormous culture shock for most large organisations.

My negative exper­i­ence using the tra­di­tional lines of com­mu­nic­a­tion, which I per­sisted with due to a mis­guided sense of moral decency, versus the guerilla efforts that even­tu­ally achieved results, speaks volumes. When the latter worked, it saved portions of C/W’s repu­ta­tion in some ways, not to mention my rela­tion­ship with the company. But again, it was the company’s response, not my rudeness (as my nana might have per­ceived it — and she still oversees my con­science), that got the result.

Technology and social media, in par­tic­ular, are allowing these trans­itions to happen within even the largest organ­isa­tions. But it’s hap­pening on uneven levels and with unequal levels of sat­is­fac­tion when it comes to people’s exper­i­ence. The future is spead unevenly, like William Gibson said. The overall movement is positive, though.

Sometimes that’s because it’s on an outlaw level, outside the tra­di­tional hier­archies, and the bosses don’t even know about it. Often, it’s on a project basis or through an external agency. Sometimes, it’s indi­vidual cham­pions injecting change into organ­isa­tions, because they actually care about the company or organ­isa­tion they work for. Less commonly, it’s estab­lished by enlightened managers. When the instig­ators (I still have the C/​W hold music in my head) — whatever their methods — achieve real results for the company and create more trust, faith and humanity, the message will spread, inside and outside the company. When they get it right, the impact on the bottom line can be enormous.

Many of us end up hating the large organ­isa­tions we’re forced to deal with; creating mech­an­isms to rehab­il­itate those rela­tion­ships is crucial. Personal pub­lishing plat­forms and indi­viduals empowered to engage with them are the way to take this forward.

That organ­isa­tions as large as C/​W are allowing that to happen is extremely heart­ening. Facilitating that, of course, requires organ­isa­tions to allow for extreme trust, 20% time or flexible working hours, mobile tech­no­logy, and a real­isa­tion that your repu­ta­tion belongs with your cus­tomers, not the mar­keting department.

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Possibly related:

• How Carphone Warehouse Regained My Trust
• Goodbye, Carphone Warehouse, You Lied and Cheated
• Carphone Warehouse — just trying to help out