Clear message

Other things I'm thinking about

• Its never really fashionable to praise railway companies. They make commuters like you and me late, miserable and charge a handsome premium for doing so.One thing that Southern Rail do well though, is to use Twitter as a customer service channel. I have been commuting on their lines almost every day for the past three years, and when they joined Twitter officially, I thought they were, frankly, bonkers.The tirade of abuse that appeared in my timeline each day, aimed at Southern, was phenomenal. I was sure they would be overwhelmed with angry and less than constructive messages. In fact, they have handled it really well and I have been quietly impressed for some time.There seems to be someone at the other end 24/7. There is personality, regular updates, apologies, suggestions for alternative routes and commitment to feed back comments and complaints.Don't take my word for it. Test them with a tweet.I would love to know if they have measured the impact on customer satisfaction or levels of traditional correspondence. 
• I admit it. I've become one of those people who have started to resent email as a medium for collaboration. Lately my timeline has been full of blog posts with titles like 'the 10 email habits of FTSE 100 CEOs' or 'the business owner who only checks his inbox once a week'. Meanwhile my inbox has been full of unsolicited spam, open ended requests, and, worst of all, conversations. I prefer phone calls, DM, Yammer, Facebook messages etc. But for now I am bound to my inbox. 
• If you are interested in: people's stories communities clever ways to tell a story online ...then you should definitely watch the Pine Point documentary. It is fabulous and only takes ten minutes.