Finding a home for a fledgling CS team

[Lisa Moore]

Hello everyone:

I have what might be classed as a ‘good problem’ - I’m heading up a small content strategy team in a financial services company here in the UK. CS is new to this business – they’d relied on external agencies a bit in the past but had never really embraced CS in any meaningful way. They’re now starting to see the benefits, especially now the discipline has become more embedded in the business (we’ve been there 9 months).

So, while people are no longer asking ‘why do we need CS?’ they are starting to ask, ‘who should own it?’ Like I say, it’s a good problem to have :)

Ultimately, I don’t really care – one line manager is much the same as the next. My real concern is that I want to position the CS team in a way that allows us to make an impact across the business and add value across the content lifecycle (both online and offline). However, I’m not convinced we can do this if we’re siloed away in ‘digital marketing’ (yes, I know – there are two marketing departments) or a ‘digital services’ team (where we are now).

There is a customer experience team but traditionally, they’ve dealt with business-as-usual content. The end-to-end concept would be fairly new – not insurmountable, just a change to how they’re used to working...

My instinct says that the CX team is a better home, but I just thought it would be worth checking in here to see if anyone has gone through something similar and had any insights to share :)

Thanks in advance! - Lisa


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Lisa M. Moore
Content strategy consultant
Writebyte Ltd
Mobile: + 44 (0) 7787 555 210
LinkedIn: uk.linkedin.com/in/writebyte


 

[Melanie Seibert]

Hi Lisa,

I can relate. I encountered this problem at a past job. I was on the digital marketing team, but felt that CS really belonged on its own team in the UX department, focusing on the entire customer lifecycle (not just new customer acquisition/conversion). So I side with you.

The good thing is that, even if you don't get your way, you can still partner with the CX folks to create a more holistic view of content. No matter how you slice it, the potential for silos is always there - if you land with CX, you could become siloed off from digital marketing and digital services, which would also be less than optimal. 

So my thinking is that no matter where you end up, you'll need to make a continued effort to collaborate across the organization. Which I'm sure you already knew. :)

Good luck!

Melanie

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[Malcolm Davison]

Hi Lisa,

I presume your CX near the end of your posting was a miss key for CS and not meant to be 'customer experience' as you initially referred to 'content strategy team'.

It's difficult to get a complete picture of the scale of the content output from your posting. Where a company is a heavy creator of content, it's more usual that content production is a distributed practice. Centralising this will cause bottlenecks and can cause ill-feeling. The department that is best briefed should also be doing the writing, and they can also respond more rapidly to local changes.

In truth this isn't CS but old fashioned content production, although it is good if content writers are trained in CS principles. But in many organisations that is expecting way too much. And if they can write well that's an achievement in itself! I have trained staff at most of the leading financial institutions in the UK at one time or another plus a number abroad. My training has always been broader than just writing and taken aboard what we are now calling CS. In my view every writer needs to be creating the content strategically with the user in mind.

I have seen many examples of centralised content production going badly wrong. Not that it would be circumspect to name them.

But certainly there shouldn't be duplication of 'identical' content, and there should be an agreed publisher - which hopefully can mutually be agreed between operational departments. 

Even with distributed production there will still need to be a centralised CS, looking after the corporate needs, maintaining standards and monitoring content publication and channels. It could also be the arbiter of which department publishes what.

regards

Malcolm Davison

[Lisa Moore]

Thanks all!

@Tony – I know, I can’t complain too much :) Still, I suspect I may encounter a bit of “so-and-so has org chart space – let’s stick ‘em there!” But hopefully, I will have a chance to weigh in at some point, even if my opinion gets discounted.

@Malcolm – You won’t have to work too hard to figure our who I mean ;) But actually, my CX was meant to be ‘customer experience’, not a typo for CS! I was saying that the customer experience team might be our best home, given the options.

As for the scale, it’s still a print-led business – lots of brochures, ATL marketing campaigns, etc. The website is generally viewed as an afterthought, at least in terms of non-Internet banking content.

Just to make life interesting, there are two content production teams – one for the public-facing sites and one for the secure banking sites. And there is already plenty of ill-feeling between them! Then there’s a myriad of third-party agencies, producing copy for both print and digital, to varying quality, usually erring on the poor side, and none of them aware of what the other is doing.

There is an internal copy team, but they are focused on internet banking copy. When I joined, I couldn’t understand why they needed 10-plus people to write labels on form fields. After a bit of digging, I found out that they spend 5% of their time writing, 95% managing stakeholder sign-off (15 revisions not uncommon). In the real world, you’d get by with one, maybe two people. But add in all the bureaucracy and compliance challenges, and yes, 10 people seems barely enough :) I know some of them and they are extremely sharp and more than able to think about content strategically, but sadly they’ve been ground down to the point of apathy.

I cannot bring myself to speak about content duplication – the wounds are still too fresh ;)

@Melanie – There is also a UX team, but they’re with us at the moment, in the digital services area. While CS and UX are soul mates, I do feel CS can (should?!) go beyond “just” digital interactions. We support digital projects, absolutely, but we can do more...

Your point about making the effort to collaborate is well made – I do know that, yes, and have been trying to do it where I can, but it’s always good to see it played back in writing :) One of the many reasons I value this group’s insights so much!

Thanks again! -- Lisa

On 09/04/2014 15:40, "Malcolm Davison" <in...@writingfortheweb.co.uk> wrote:

Hi Lisa,

I presume your CX near the end of your posting was a miss key for CS and not meant to be 'customer experience' as you initially referred to 'content strategy team'.

It's difficult to get a complete picture of the scale of the content output from your posting. Where a company is a heavy creator of content, it's more usual that content production is a distributed practice. Centralising this will cause bottlenecks and can cause ill-feeling. The department that is best briefed should also be doing the writing, and they can also respond more rapidly to local changes.

In truth this isn't CS but old fashioned content production, although it is good if content writers are trained in CS principles. But in many organisations that is expecting way too much. And if they can write well that's an achievement in itself! I have trained staff at most of the leading financial institutions in the UK at one time or another plus a number abroad. My training has always been broader than just writing and taken aboard what we are now calling CS. In my view every writer needs to be creating the content strategically with the user in mind.

I have seen many examples of centralised content production going badly wrong. Not that it would be circumspect to name them.

But certainly there shouldn't be duplication of 'identical' content, and there should be an agreed publisher - which hopefully can mutually be agreed between operational departments.

Even with distributed production there will still need to be a centralised CS, looking after the corporate needs, maintaining standards and monitoring content publication and channels. It could also be the arbiter of which department publishes what.

regards

Malcolm Davison

On 9 Apr 2014, at 14:40, Lisa Moore <li...@writebyte.com> wrote:

Finding a home for a fledgling CS team

[Rahel Anne Bailie]

There are places where no one wants to own CS, and there are places where everyone wants to own CS. My feeling is that you need to be in a place where the department has a leader with some corporate gravitas, and the [exec / sponsor] isn't going to try to clip the team's wings to do whatever the flavour du jour is. For what it's worth, the last few projects I've worked on were in Marketing, Offer, and on an independent project team that reported into Shared Services.

Rahel

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Rahel Anne Bailie, Content Strategy / Content Management / Content Design
Intentional Design Inc. - Content strategies for business impact 
Co-producer: Content Strategy Workshops
Co-editor: The Language of Content Strategy - in stores now
Co-author: Content Strategy: Connecting the dots between business, brand, and benefits

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[Rohn Jay Miller]

Lisa:

CX or Marketing would be my impulse if you must live somewhere.  I think more important to your end-to-end success is that you create a visible, sponsored governance process that is responsible for the long-term success of your mission.  By sponnsored, I mean sponsored by the CEO and clearly delegated to a small group of managers who report to her/him.  If you can't get the CEO get the COO, and so on.  The importance of governance is that the end to end issues become apparent quickly--CMS, workflow, branded content standards--and the governance committee has to steer these issues to successful resolutions.  (Hence, "steering committee")  

I would also ask how your big corporate reports and events are created.  Whom do they report to, for the annual report, events, major speeches?  These need to be married with marketing, sales materials, in-store fixtures.  All of these have some content elements that need to come from a coherent, authentic place.

Best of luck, and please post about your future challenges / successes

Cheers--RJ

[Lisa Moore]

Rahel and RJ - thank you, both!

If there was a single marketing team, I wouldn't mind finding a home there, but with two separate ones, it makes things a bit tricky. I'd rather not choose sides in that way until they synch up a bit more. And wouldn't it be nice to think CS might be able to help bridge that gap? A girl can dream :)

Speaking of bridging gaps, RJ, a 'content steering committee' is an excellent idea. The word 'governance' is a bit charged but they love their steering committees! And it would be a nice way to build some bridges between the warring content factions... I mean teams :)

Looking at the corporate comms side of things is another excellent angle. And yes, am definitely keeping notes that will turn into something some day - but this is a long game and feels a a bit premature to draw any conclusions just yet!

Thanks again, everyone!

-- Lisa

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[carrieHD]

I agree with Rahel. Find the department leader who has the best chance of getting the concept of CS adopted across the company. Because it's not just digital. Doesn't every print piece point to the website? They've got to match - that's part of what content strategy does. This conundrum very much makes the case for having a Chief Content Officer at large organizations - and marketing, communications, and other departments live within that realm. But, that's for another day and doesn't solve your problem. So fight for wherever you think you'll be able to do the most amount of good and get the best support and sponsorship.

Good luck!

Carrie

[Rick Yagodich]

I'll agree with almost everything Carrie said… except that the top CCO  should be communications, with marketing, content, etc under that.

 - R

[Matt Moore]

Hi,

Everyone with Thing wants a Chief Thing Officer (Content, Customer, Experience, Marketing, Learning, Knowledge, Finance, Operations, People, etc). Most people with a Thing won't end up getting one. You can really only have 6-12 Chief Thing Officers.

To echo some earlier comments, if you don't fit with any one tribe, it's less important which tribe you sit with than whether the person you report to cares about your Thing - and you can find a way of aligning your KPIs to theirs. With 2 additional comments.

1. This person may well move and be replaced by someone that doesn't give a damn about your Thing.

2. Most orgs have a restructure every 18 mths. Frustrated with this departmental configuration? Don't worry, there'll be another one along in a minute.

Regards,

Matt Moore

+61 423 784 504

Sent from my iPhone

[Hilary Marsh]

I'd like to second what Rahel, Carrie, and Rick said!

Good luck, Lisa!

[Tony Chung]

I'm seeing a trend where CS is less about marketing, development, and digital communications, and about people and processes. To that end I like the approach of CS within CX, instead of locking it into a specific business unit.

But I also agree with Rahel, Carrie, and others who highlight visibility and evangelism of the efforts to encourage adoption. Otherwise the whole thing is a lost cause.

-Tony