The Customer Experience Labs comments on the Community Pulse about how customers “just want to be heard.” The Community Pulse is a great way for Dell, Inc. customers to be heard and to get their issues out in the open. The post goes on to say “…such a platform creates transparency where an organization has problems, but it is also a way to show that an organization is taking unsatisfied customers serious and is not afraid to show the current state of customer satisfaction.”

Sean McDonald from Dell, Inc. weighs in with this comment:

“One caution to other companies is about control. At Dell we do not want to control what our customers are saying, but instead join customer conversations wherever they occur. We are a better company when customers share their compliments, complaints, and comments.”

Dell has guts, and their commitment to the Pulse confirms they are human, they care, they want to be better.

There are many reasons we love to work with clients like Dell, Inc., not the least of which is that they genuinely want to engage and listen to their brand community. It is not unusual for Dell, Inc. to launch an application like IdeaStorm to take suggestions directly from the mouths of their community members, and then make changes to their company and products based on those suggestions. The next in the lineup of community applications is Community Pulse.

Community Pulse allows anyone to submit their thoughts on Dell’s products and business. Users don’t have to register. Each post is completely anonymous, making the process as simple as possible.

For this application, 160 topics were defined to encourage discussion among users. A user can make a post by choosing one of these topics and then submitting a compliment, comment, or complaint about the topic. The topic cloud on the site then displays each topic based on its general tone (the closer to the top of the page, the more compliments), the amount of people talking about it (the bigger the font, the more posts), and how recently its been discussed (the closer to the left of the page, the more recent the last post), allowing the user (and Dell, Inc.) to view a multidimensional graphic display of what people are saying.

We also built a Google Gadget that displays the topic cloud and latest posts, and allows users to see the tone over time (the pulse) of any topic.

Community Pulse is still in Beta, so feel free to go check it out and tell us what you think by making a post on the site under the “Community Pulse” topic!

Target’s marketing group has become nearly famous for running a unique commercial every month featuring a song from a usually obscure artist. It’s amazing how each commercial will actually fuel the sales of that particular song for a few months afterwards. If you watch on iTunes, you’ll see said song jump to that artist’s “top songs” list in very short time.

This month’s commercial features Dolly Parton’s “More Where That Came From,” which I just love. (Sue me.)

While most of the commercials are nothing more than an exercise in gluttonous exposure with overly ambiguous messaging, I just love this particular one because the song is just perfect for the message of the commercial. Plus, the big dog just kicks ass (he’s at the very beginning of the commercial) and I laugh at it every time. What can I say, except that I’m easily amused.

Eric’s last post was about the rules of the competitive aspects of Productivity Suite, but I wanted to highlight some of the great conversations that are going on in the blog portion of the site. There’s been a lot of great content Productivity Suite this week. Here are some highlights:

Push your Gmail to your iPhone - Eric posts on a hack he found to make his iPhone sync with his email in real time - so he never misses an email.

Fitness At Work: Starting Simple - Ronan posts about starting small and incorporating fitness into your work day.

Long Term Goals and Anime - I (Caitlin) post about some cool things I’ve seen and read lately around setting long term goals, and recap Dan Pink’s new book (written in Manga style) “The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You Will Ever Need.”

Check out the content and let us know what you think!

• 360-degree feedback - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  360 peer review feedback. Here’s a reference on Wikipedia. Wrote one of these a long time ago as a custom application. Tony mentioned to me the parallels between this concept and what we are doing on the Productivity Suite
  (tags: productivity)

The Productivity Suite is an application that was developed within our labs here at RD2. Productivity as it applies in our lives and in our work life has become more and more important, and the Productivity Suite is our attempt at finding a better way for people to become productive in their lives. The application centers around user-submitted blog posts, and also adds a collaborative element where users can submit kudos or offenses of their fellow teammates to encourage productive behavior. If you want to know more read our launch post.

When we started floating ideas around the office for the Productivity Suite there were quite a few people who were hesitant. As the application came together we realized that without a rule set, or some guiding principle that was easy to understand, the experience would be crippled by apprehension. As there will be many people submitting blog posts, and sending each other kudos and offenses, we wanted to be sure that these things were done in the most constructive way possible.

We decided to create a few simple rules that would allow people to get a better understanding of not just the functionality, but how the application was envisioned to be used. The content and atmosphere was key for this application to function, so by adding some helpful content we hope users will feel more comfortable using the site. These rules are located on the Productivity Suite site and are accompanied by helpful screencasts. I thought I should post them here for those interested.

If you have any suggestions for other parts of the site you feel need more explanation, let me know and I will create additional screencasts. Thanks, and enjoy!

Rules of the Productivity Suite:

1. Help spread knowledge
Help spread knowledge by making informative and interesting blog posts that deal with productivity

2. Support your team
Support your team by recognizing their efforts and good habits by giving them compliments (Kudos)

3. Discourage bad habits
Don’t let your friends and peers at work get away with bad habits. Help remind them of their mistakes by submitting an offense

4. Be balanced
If you think you can get away with only submitting offenses, beware. Helping people learn from their mistakes and complimenting others on their hard work is even more important. Keep a balance between offenses and kudos or your points might mysteriously reduce.

5. Don’t be a jerk
It’s a game but don’t abuse the system. Before you post a snarky article, write a sarcastic comment or give someone a ridiculous kudo / offense, ask yourself… is this good for the company?

This afternoon we are launching what we’ve been referring to as “Productivity Suite” - a software product (currently in beta) from our new company called RD2 Labs. Productivity Suite is a productivity application that is unlike anything that has been done before.

There is always a push to be more productive. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in the nonfarm business sector:

• During the first quarter of 2008, productivity (work output per employee per hour) rose 2.6% since the last quarter
• From the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008, output per hour increased 3.3% - the largest four-quarter change in 4 years

Productivity is taking a front seat in business, in technology, and in our busy lives.

Right now the new product is code named “Productivity Suite,” but a new name is going to be assigned soon. The big idea is to ignite awareness in team environments around productivity and spur teams to hold each other to a new level of accountability that is fun and exciting, but also that has very serious consequences on productivity in the work place. This system has a rewards/points system where people can earn points for positive actions in the workplace related to various categories of work productivity. There is a blog at the core of the software that only focuses on content that fits the context of categories such as: meeting productivity, time management, tools for productivity, and so on… The blog sets the guidelines and feeds content dynamically to the application to help employees learn how to be more effective. The goal is to get more out of an 8 hour work day than they have been doing in a 12 hour day…. and to go home and have time to relax.

We all know that cultural change generally happens slowly, but as we have been testing this internally we have seen a significant turn around in the way people think about productivity. This change has happened fast because the change is happening from within the organization - we designed a system in which team members can file an offense or offer a kudo to fellow employees. At first this seems a bit shocking, in concept, but the interface and usability of the application makes it competitive and we have found that the general office culture is quickly shifting to a more productive place. More than ever, our team has been focusing on conducting meetings that start on time, have agendas, focus on objectives, and end when they are supposed to end.

This product may not be for everyone, but it has quickly made an affect on our team and their eagerness to learn how to be more effective. People get points for adding great content to the system that fits the context. They also get dinged if they file too many offenses…. File too many in a row and lose points yourself. This system encourages users to post a balance of positive reinforcement and constructive criticism.

Also, we are building a set of reports (our next beta release) that will help us to understand who’s strong at what category and who needs help in which categories. We will offer training to those who need the help. And, we are tying our reports to utilization and realization in the company so that we can offer real data on potential impacts of this on our bottom line.

We’re really excited about all the hard work the team has done on this project. Check out the RD2 Productivity Suite at http://productivity.rd2inc.com!

RD2 recently worked with StoneGate Senior Care on a content management solution requiring many websites to be deployed within one master website. The challenge, all of them need to have autonomy while using the same system for publishing and maintaining content.

We’ve done this sort of thing before, but for very large companies, developing within “enterprise-class software” rather than leveraging the power of open source. StoneGate wanted to be able to scale beyond 50 websites with one content publishing system. Drupal is a perfect fit – except for one important thing – There was no available mechanism for deploying multiple sites within one system that is managed and maintained from one central source. So, we built one…

Now, StoneGate Senior Care is creating new websites quickly and easily using one system with “single sign-on.” New facility websites will be a popular thing for StoneGate. We received accolades from StoneGate’s marketing communications manager and the VP of StoneGate’s development arm for how easy it is to deploy and manage these websites.

Very soon we (StoneGate Senior Care and RD2, inc.) will be giving back to the Drupal community by making our Multi-Site Management module available for use with any Drupal 5.6 and 5.7 website. We’ve seen some great things happening in this community and very soon we can share more…

Today we are releasing a series of screencasts that introduce the Villages of Jackson Creek web site and the Multi-Site management module. We will be adding more screencasts each week to showcase the many features of Drupal that were implemented and customized for StoneGate.
Many thanks to StoneGate Senior Care for their support and many thanks to Ryan at Slant for a great user interface to make this come together.

With no further ado:

• Villages of Jackson Creek Tour
• Drupal Dashboard
• Introducing Multi-Site Management
• Single Site Setup
• Website Creation