Operational Publicy

Jeff Jarvis was nearly marooned due to the recent storm in the Northeast, but thi sled him to a new insight about the powerful opportunities for business through operational publicy: simply publishing what used to be private.

- Jeff Jarvis, Operaitonal Transparency

I am in Tampa waiting to fly back home to New Jersey and, thanks to the snowicane but rather than sitting in the usual information vacuum to which airlines subject us, I am watching as Continental shows us the status of the flights that were supposed to bring our jet in from LA to Cleveland to Newark to Tampa. I saw the flight to Cleveland canceled, then the one to Newark canceled, and I figured we were doomed when I saw the aircraft number for my flight erased. But then I saw us assigned a new jet, one that flew into Tampa from Houston last night.

That’s simply amazing. Continental is practicing operational transparency. It opened up information is [it] already has to us, the customers, so we can be informed and empowered. This way, I’m not cursing the airline and its employees. I’m well aware that our flight might be canceled and that’s entirely out of Continental’s control, so I wouldn’t blame them. But every time this has happened in the past, I hated being in the dark; I hated being lied to by airlines; I simply want more information. And now an airline is giving it to me. Bravo for Continental.

What information does your company have that you can and should share with your customers?

Jeff published a link to Continental Airlines Flight Status and Information page, which does not show the page as he saw it. I wish he had created a screen capture, instead.

But even without the eye candy, the idea is striking. How much of a transformation can be ushered in simply by exposing information to people that matters to them given the situation. And I am not talking about trivial examples, like waiting on hold when calling a customer support line and being told ‘average wait time is under 5 minutes.’

Consider consumer examples, like the current status of your car repair after a collision.

Or at a local governmental level, a personal example: I would have liked to have known when the county was planning to plow my street after the recent snowmageddon. As it was, I walked out one morning to take my mother to a doctor’s appointment, and the plows came down the street and blocked my driveway with almost 4 feet of slushy, heavy snow. It took 20 minutes to clear a path for the cat, and they came around again, and would have plowed me in a second time if I hadn’t asked them to wait long enought to get the car — and my mother — out. If they published the schedule — even in real-time, based on where the trucks were — I would have left a few minutes early and avoided this hassle.

On a business basis, imagine the level of publicy in your internal processes for partners and clients: shouldn’t things be as open as UPS shipping status? Or as Continental’s flight status information?

Some industries seems to thrive on this sort of publicy, like street food vendors, or at least the best ones. They are constantly alerting their customers about where they are headed, what’s on the menu, and when they plan to arrive.

Businesses should simply aspire to be as public as @Schnitzeltruck.