We Are Social 2017
Discuss About The Internal & External Communications Market?
Singtel, also known as Singapore Telecommunications Limited is one of the major telecommunications organization which has a combined total customer base of more than 600 million customers from everywhere around the world, nearly in 25 countries (Andzulis, Panagopoulos & Rapp, 2012). The company has its headquarters in 31 Exter road, Singapore and Chua Sock Koong is the CEO of the company. It provides Information technology and network services too and has a net revenue of $16.961 billion SGD, operating income of $5.013 billion SGD and a generated profit of more than $3.871 billion SGD (Singtel.com, 2017). There are more than 25000 employees who have committed themselves fully to the company and few of the subsidiaries include Optus and NCS Pte Ltd in Singapore.
It is one of the major mobile network operators in Singapore and provides services like ISP SingNet, IPTV Singtel TV and other mobile phone networks and telephony services. The company has managed to expand largely outside its home country and has a large number of shares in other regional mobile operators such as Optus, Bharti Airtel, etc. The business organization in Singapore has controlled most of the market shares consisting of 82 percent of the fixed line market, 47 percent of the mobile market and 43 percent of the broadband market (Aral, Dellarocas & Godes, 2013). It is listed as one of the largest companies by market capitalization according to Singapore Exchange. It has also invested good amounts of money in the new companies, which want to innovate its business operations and processes.
Nowadays, everything has become digital, and with the introduction of internet, most of the people in Singapore have become social. More than half of the people of Singapore are habituated with the use of internet, and this has not only created implications for businesses, Government and society but also has improved the speed and efficiency of digital connectivity for changing the lives of millions of people. The Internet has become an integral part of everyday life and its implications are noteworthy, not only in the field of business but also for individuals. According to the Global Digital report, more than half of Singaporeans use social media accounts for surfing the internet on their mobile phones (Berthon et al., 2012). The web traffic is Singapore comes mostly from the mobile phones and most the mobile connections used by the customers are broadband connections. It has become easy for business organisations like Singapore Telecommunications Limited or Singtel to manage internal and external communications through social media and gain the attention of customers by making the services offered by the company available on the web sites. This would attract the attention of customers and influence their buying behaviours too (Bolton et al., 2013).
Advantages and disadvantages of using social networking
Advantages
With more than 2.7 million people using social networking in Singapore, social media marketing is considered as an effective tool for the development of a successful marketing strategy by Singapore Telecommunications Limited. The company has provided a social media marketing campaign for fulfilling the needs and requirements of people as well as engages people from face book, Twitter and other social media web sites (Singtel.com, 2017). This would allow them to become aware of the products and services delivered by the company and ensure providing proper management and support to the customers. Singapore Telecommunications Limited has utilised the social networking for enabling customer service and support, promote an effective digital marketing strategy and manage the online delivery of services too (Chua & Banerjee, 2013). The social media is used as a tool by Singtel for improving the customers’ services and support and furthermore reduce the chances of negativities by monitoring the queries made by customers regarding the services delivered along with the development of a digital platform for supporting, engaging the content and provide good IT solutions as well. The major objectives of using social media are to expand the customer or fan base, maintain the high involvement of customers and manage reliable customer service extension. The strategic intent is to offer the products and services and make them know about those from the internet web sites while surfing through their face book and Twitter accounts (De Vries, Gensler & Leeflang, 2012). It creates good brand values, enhances brand image and identity while the business objectives are to increase the market share, manage cost efficiency, improve the experiences of customers and gain customer insight.
To manage proper internal support through social networking and also enable staffing, training and resourcing, it is important to hire a social media and customer care team who are well aware of handling the business operations with ease. Singapore Telecommunications Limited has managed to obtain more than 44000 likes on face book, and it seemed quite popular in engaging the customers and delivering good quality IT solutions and customers’ support services. To ensure social media success, Singtel has maintained clear aims and objectives, top-level management support, empowering of community managers, management of finance and enabled content to grow communities effectively (Dhume et al., 2012). Most of the customers are active on social media nowadays, and thus Singtel can utilise Face book and Twitter as effective channels to provide customer care services and ensure successful online digital marketing (Singtel.com, 2017). The feedbacks and responses of the customers are posted which allow the company to enhance the services’ efficiency and furthermore check out the negative comments posted by customer too. This would make the company use the negative comments as opportunities to improve the services and enable proper upgrades of the network’s services (Erdo?mu? & Cicek, 2012).
Examples could be where a customer has posted a comment regarding optimization of 3G network upgrades and place schedules of the 3G network through the Facebook app too. The network upgrades were done by Singtel for 15 of the top 20 brands, which had been nominated by customers for an upgrade through the Facebook page (Singtel.com, 2017). Few other advantages of using social networking are worldwide connectivity, manage sharing of information on a real time basis, enhancing brand awareness and identity. Singapore Telecommunications Limited has managed to create a presence on social media by making it easy for customers to remain connected on social and increase brand loyalty and retention of customers too (Friedrichsen, 2013). 70 percent of the Singaporeans who follow the organisation on social media have become loyal to the brand. The business organisation can manage targeted advertisements with real time results and even generate high converting leads through retention of customers, identification of decision makers and opportunities in business. The involvement of social networking as a marketing tool also helps in enhancing the web site traffic, share content at a faster rate to a wide group of audiences, foster good relationships with customers and furthermore monitor the things that competitors are doing (Gensler et al., 2013). Thus, it could be understood that social networking has facilitated the processes of internal and external communication for Singtel, Singapore. The internal communication was also facilitated by allowing team members and employees working the organisation to communicate with each other and remain connected while working on a project as a team. The external communication was established through conversations via social networks, which further helped the organisation create good relationships with the customers (Juris, 2012).
Though there are advantages of using social networking as a marketing tool, there are few disadvantages as well. To manage social media accounts in business, a lot of time and effort is required which may create complexities and create lack of focus in the management of business operations and processes. The information provided by the company remains visible for a very short time period and newer posts that are made soon replace it. The publishing and display of advertising copy are not acceptable in the social networking environment, and so it is necessary to present information as conversations, otherwise, a lot of followers may be lost (Kane et al., 2012). The business organisation Singtel must check the social media accounts managed by the company on a regular basis, because the negative comments posted by the customers could further create a negative mindset about the company on the minds of customers. The posts made by customers regarding services delivery tend to be public, and this could go viral and deteriorate the brand image and identity largely. There could be presence of viruses, malware and hacking, which could result in loss of data and lack of control too (Kaplan, 2012).
Other drawbacks of using social networking as a tool for internal and external communications include inappropriate marketing and social media strategy that can lead to reduced benefits, which can only be overcome with the allocation of additional resources and create a better online presence. Social media is immediate and requires monitoring on a daily basis, because of the negative comments posted or due to risks associated with unwanted and inappropriate behaviours of people on the web site. There could also be negative comments, leaking of information and hacking as well (Kwok & Yu, 2013).
One example could be when Singtel utilised social media to make customers aware that the network is down, which created outrage among customers and there were negative feedbacks and responses regarding the services delivered everywhere. The company decided to inform the customers about the network issues and stated that the company would continue to update with the help of Facebook and Twitter as soon as the inconvenience and network issues would be resolved. One of the responses by customers was:
“How are your customers going to be updated when you post it on Facebook and Twitter – and they cannot get a connection to Internet?” There were other negative comments too, which finally enabled the company to rebrand its marketing approaches by developing a new campaign through Ogilvy and introduced a new logo and slogan too of making every day better (Laroche, Habibi & Richard, 2012). The company improved its customer services by allowing customers to get answers to any queries regarding customers’ services though. Therefore, these are the benefits and drawbacks of using social networking as a tool for managing internal and external communications (Leonardi, Huysman & Steinfield, 2013).
The external communication enables to transmit information, knowledge and data between businesses and other persons present within the external environment such as customers, suppliers, shareholders or investors and the whole society. The social media involvement has helped Singtel to remain connected with the various stakeholders in business, especially the customers. The channels of external communication could be face-to-face communication, print media and by using social networking websites such as face book and Twitter (Sigala, Christou & Gretzel, 2012).
The internal communication has been facilitated with the help of social networking website conversations, which has helped the business organisation’s employees to communicate with each other from different organisational levels and discuss about certain matters for the achievement of organisational goals and objectives with ease and efficiency. On the other hand, the internal communication is established through sending emails to the organisational workers, manage intranet and create network messages which can appear as a popup (Smits & Mogos, 2013). The internal communication of an organisation creates an impact on the external communication and can also engage the employees to perform to their potential and contribute largely. The digital world influences the development of social media and creates a positive impact on the way people communicate with each other within the organisation. The social networking approach has proved to be beneficial for Singtel to enable real time communication and ensure innovative performance management too (Trainor et al., 2014). As most of the customers use mobile phones, so it will be easy for Singtel to communicate with them through social networking web sites and gain their feedbacks and responses, based on which necessary changes and improvements can be done.
Communication is a process of interacting with people through numerous ways. One of such ways that is strongly followed by the people throughout the world is the social media. Social media has become the major way of communicating with friends, family and even unknown people. Social media is frequently used in promotion for companies. SingTel is also partially dependent on the social media for communicating with the existing customers as well as others. However, certain communication theories can be followed for social media communication. Social penetration theory is such a theory that can be effective for the esteemed company (Van Dijck, 2013). The theory presents the relation between two people or a person and an entity built by communicating with each other. The level of relationship goes deeper with the course of time through communication. This particular theory projects the idea that self-disclosure between two communicating entities is mutual, predictable and systematic (Ver?i?, Ver?i? & Sriramesh, 2012).
The above-discussed theory is a simple communication theory but can be applicable for SingTel to enable the same for communities of practice, over the social media. As discussed, social media plays an important role in communicating with the customers for a company. It is found that 7 out of 10 people in Singapore use social media on mobile, which provides SingTel with a vast platform for promoting their brand through social networking sites (Singtel.com, 2017). According to this theory, people using social media will be able to recognize the company through repeated appearance of the same and build a relationship with them. For example, people are unaware of most of the information about the company (Wang, Yu & Wei, 2012). The company only provides the information that can be useful for their business and interesting to the customers to build a relationship with the company. The theory is helpful as it makes the customer fall for the company over the social media, without much assessment. Thus, the social penetration theory is highly effective for the company to execute in their business (Whiting & Williams, 2013).
Another theory that can be effective for SingTel is the social exchange theory. This theory entails the beneficial aspect of the communication for a person, as any person invests on such relationship, which is beneficial to him. The theory projects the idea of exchange for value regarding communication. Similarly, people who find SingTel beneficial over the promotional activities of the company, look forward to building a relationship with them. For example, an employee of SingTel managing the clients over social media encourages them to make a relationship with the company. The clients want their rewards to be maximized and cost to be minimized. The clients want maximum return on their investment on communication for building a relationship with the company (Andzulis, Panagopoulos & Rapp, 2012). By applying this theory, SingTel provides a good beneficial return to their customers, which make them go into a relationship with them. Social media always provides a vast and dependable platform for SingTel, to communicate with the customers worldwide. These theories sometimes can throw a negative impact on the company since the company is incapable of knowing the actual and real feelings and for the particular company through nonverbal communication. However, the theories have been proved effective for external communication with the customers for SingTel (Berthon et al., 2012).
Communities of practice are essential elements for managing growth and development of employees and enable them to learn and support each other. The social media implementation has resulted in easy, low maintenance and cost effective approaches to bring back something new into the community of practice. To establish communities of practice, a proper purpose and structure are required along with appropriate strategic planning for gaining better ROI as well as allows the customers to check where the business goals and objectives are aligned properly or not (Bolton et al., 2013).
Communities of practice not only enhances the internal and external communication processes but also helps in creating a good corporate culture, where openness and transparency of the organisation are considered while developing a social media strategy. Communities of practice utilise various kinds of methods and techniques to communicate internally and externally, and the same happens with the involvement of social media. Singtel does micro blogging and updates status for informing customers about the services and can also determine the attitudes, behaviours and knowledge of the users (Chua & Banerjee, 2013). Selection of right social media tool is not only essential for influencing the involvement of workers and customers but also achieve the organisational goals and objectives with ease and effectiveness. Social media has enabled the organisational members to provide this context and make a community of practice valuable to a wider audience. Social media can also provide community members access to each other regardless of time zone or geographic distance and can even provide near real-time collaboration with easy to use tools that are likely already available to the members (Dhume et al., 2012).
It is recommended for Singtel to enable participation of employees in the community of practice and manage the proper exchange of emails and allow conversations to ensure proper communication. The searching process has improved with the inclusion of social media and resulted in finding random bits of data and information (Singtel.com, 2017). Due to the limitations of resources and lack of organisational efficiency, the social media implementation within the community can help in saving a lot of resources and money and benefit the customers through the betterment of customers’ services as well as the employees working within Singtel. Social media integration can help in the assessment of organisation’s needs and culture along with providing the community of practice to make the organisation perform to its potential and effectively communicate with the customers (Erdo?mu? & Cicek, 2012). Without proper administration and planning, the benefits of social media will not be gained and for business too.
Conclusion
It is often seen that the social networking is used as a tool by many business organisations for promoting external and internal communications as well as enhance brand awareness and identity by creating a good relationship with the customers. Singtel has invested good amounts of money in its social media strategy and is one of the most established brands in Singapore, which has got on the promoted products suite of Twitter. The brand has used the Twitter’s promoted product suite to reduce the negative image of the company on social grounds and enhance the customers’’ services by assisting the customers through providing solutions to their queries and issues regarding services delivered. As most customers access the internet and social networking websites nowadays, the company had managed to establish communications with them for obtaining their feedbacks and responses and manage necessary improvements. Few examples were presented here as well for understanding the communications theory and what necessary approaches could be undertaken by the company to utilize social media as effective communities of practice.
References
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