Are we truly engaging with our relationships?

Connecting RelationshipsI had dinner this week with a good friend of mine in Mayfair – London, who has just been appointed a strategy director for a very large software company when we decided to discuss the subject across people relationships and are we truly engaging with our relationships in this much dominated technology age.

We discussed social media and its engagement with relationships and generally agreed that social media is broadly your choice of tools. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google Plus are most popular and important for relationship building through the use of your brand, context, goals, target audience, etc.

One definition that helps pin it down comes from Taylor Ellwood, author of Understanding the Social in Social Media. He writes:

“When I think about engagement in social media, I think of it as an activity where a person is purposefully choosing to interact with other people. S/he is actively interested in participating in the online community and is also actively interested in helping others out. Engagement then really means developing relationships, sustaining them, and consequently creating an environment where people can trust you enough to want to do business with you.”

More and more, individuals are empowering the use of technology and expect to engage with brands when and how they want; organisations are tasked with encouraging and supporting collaboration for employees, and customers, while keeping an unrelenting focus on user experience. How can they do this, while safeguarding the integrity of both the business and the brand?

It’s a complicated challenge to deliver a personalized and valuable experience – one that is challenging brands to metamorphosis to truly engage with their customers and would-be customers through understanding what they want (through analytics), providing them what they want (through valuable content and storytelling), and when and where they want through a consistent omni-channel brand experience (mobile, Web, and physical).

It means putting people at the center, to create open and authentic ways of engaging with individuals instead of segments or categories. This is possible today like at no other time in history because of the convergence of technologies for social, mobile, cloud, and security. This convergence is giving organizations and brands the means to meet people where they are. It is arming them with the data and the expertise required to personalise every human-to-human interaction. And it is giving them the credibility that is the foundation of trust. In fact, 80 percent of individuals are willing to exchange personal information for a personalized offering (IBM 2013 Annual Report, page 21) with brands they trust to keep their information safe.

The wonders of technology are impressive, it’s true, but in order to effectively engage with people we must look back to some of our intrinsic and ancient human qualities: storytelling, substance, empathy, and the value of specialised skills and talents. All of which is made most daunting to brands by the rapidity of the change and the fact that multiple shifts are occurring simultaneously…and the changes will keep coming!

IBM research shows that there are compelling reasons to foster this cooperation. Outperforming enterprises are 54 percent more likely than underperforming enterprises to collaborate extensively with their customers (see Figure 9). In fact, deep collaboration is a universal ambition: nine out of 10 CxOs foresee doing so in the near future (see Figure 10). (Exploring the Inner Circle: Insights from the Global C-Suite Study, IBM Institute of Business Value 2014.)

GHS

Of course, the crucial bridge between the organisation and its customers is the workforce. The ability to engage, develop, recognize, and support employees is essential in the high-stakes battle for customer loyalty. It is these individuals who represent – and effectively are – the organisation’s brand in the market. They interact with customers on a daily basis. It is they who monitor and analyze changes in customer preferences and who develop and maintain the technologies that help connect the physical and digital worlds. This is why a motivated and properly prepared and engaged workforce will be indispensable for success in the customer-activated world.

The exciting future of all of this is that we truly have the opportunity to co-create and innovate as both employees and as customers, allowing us to connect, engage, and collaborate as people – together – to create value and invention.

Fight to end child trafficking!

Love146 LogoOn Saturday 14th June, I was invited to a charity event by one of the charities that I support Love146. They staged a high tea and presentation in the West End of London. Love146 supports Anti-Human Trafficking internationally.

There has been much media focus on the subject recently and positive steps have been taken certainly in the UK to increase security at airports, ports, and train stations to protect innocent children from sexual crimes and trafficking. This is a subject that I feel incredibly passionate about and I support the charity in their projects and fundraising and hope you will join me.

In 2002, the co-founders of Love146 travelled to Southeast Asia on an exploratory trip to decide how they could serve in the fight against child sex trafficking. In one experience, a couple of their co-founders were taken undercover with investigators to a brothel where they saw children being sold for sex.

These children were vacant, shells of what a child should be. There was no light in their eyes, no life left. These children…raped each night… seven, ten, fifteen times every night. They were so young. Thirteen, eleven… it was hard to tell. Sorrow covered their faces with nothingness. Except one girl who wore the number 146. She was looking beyond the glass. She was staring at the founders with a piercing gaze. There was still fighting left in her eyes.…

The experience left the team with emotions that broke them. Because they went in as part of an ongoing, undercover investigation on the particular brothel, they were unable to immediately respond.

But they took her number so that we could learn and they could remember why this all started. It is a number that was pinned to that one girl but represents the millions enslaved.

Model with the number 146Four years ago, Love146 UK recognised the need for a presence in Europe and have since opened an office in the UK with a vision to offer Survivor Care for trafficked and exploited children and young people. There are four stages strategically covered to make sure the highest quality of care and awareness is delivered:

  • Identification
  • Prevention
  • Survivor Care
  • Action

This June, Love146 Europe hosted a Tea Party event in London parallel to supporter hosted tea parties across the UK to raise awareness and share the news of the first home called “Safe Accommodation” due to open in September 2014. They also introduced the European team who are clearly passionate and active abolitionist, but also highly skilled and qualified in their individual fields.

Emotionally impacting, the event opened with a dance piece arranged by the professional dance group ‘Rebirth’ portraying a scene from a brothel with young girls being sold – it mirrored the story of how Love146 was birthed and it brought the audience right to the core of what this charitable organisation is fighting to eradicate.

In 2012, the UK Human Trafficking Centre identified 549 children who were potential victims of human trafficking.  Sixty% of trafficked children go missing from local authority care. Nearly a third that go missing are never found again.

Set up cost for each new ‘Safe Accommodation’ is £77,105 and Love146 Europe depends on financial support from people, community groups, corporate’s, and grants/trusts. They need people us.

Please find more information on their website with options to take action, and  how to donate.

The video shows you the harsh reality and has brief graphic moments.

Their registered address is Love146, PO Box 883, Altrincham. WA15 5ND, United Kingdom

You can contact them by email: info@love146.org.uk

For tax purposes, their Registered Charity number is 1144930

Please join me in this fight to keep children safe!