Last week I published a book review of Open Leadership – How Social Technology Can Transofrm the Way You Lead, the latest book of Charlene Li.
In this article I will share some personal practical experiences about the use of social technology and some form of open strategy that was in place at the company.
Introduction of EndNote X3 ”problem”
Since a few years I use Thomson Reuters EndNote to manage my references and easily include these in academic texts and -assignments.
Therefore I bought Thomson EndNot X3 at Surfspot.nl, an online shop for higher education students. It worked perfectly with Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate, especially the integration with Microsoft Word 2007 has been excellent.
Back in May this year I was fortunate to attend the Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 launch event in the Netherlands. Impressed with the new productivity features it didn’t take long for me to install Microsoft Office 2010 Professional on my Lenovo X60 Tablet powered by Windows 7 Ultimate. 
Unfortunatly Thomson EndNote X3 didn’t integrate with Microsoft Office 2010 Professional. Some online research taught me that Thomson Reuters released EndNote X4 that did integrate really well with Microsoft Office 2010 (plus EndNote X4 included other new helpfull features as well).
After contacting the local distributor that provided me with different options, I shared my thoughts about a possible, rather expensive upgrade, on Twitter:
“Thomson Endnote X3 is not compatible with Microsoft Office 2010 ! Endnote X4 is but that requires an upgrade of +/- E100,- #expensive”
Thomson Reuters’ “solution”
A Thomson Reuters’ employee Nancy noticed my tweet and replied to me via the EndNoteNews Twitter account:
“@remoknops When did you purchase EndNote X3?”
“@remoknops Yes – a message was posted via your web site requesting proof of purchase.”
She also left a similar message via the contact form on this website, my personal blog which you can read below:
“I sent you the tweet about your EndNote purchase and possible upgrade for Word 2010 compatibilty. If you could email your proof of purchase, [...]“
Of course I sent the proof of purchase of my EndNote X3 copy, an Adobe PDF scan from the original invoice, to Nancy for approval.
If it was the timeframe in which I bought Thomson EndNote X3 that made me eligible for an upgrade to Thomson EndNote X4, or I was simply lucky to experience a great example of customer satisfaction.
The result
A Thomson Reuters EndNote X4 upgrade that perfectly integrates with Microsoft Office 2010 Professional !
Concluding thoughts and wrap-up
A first I want to thank Nancy (and Thomson Reuters) for contacting me and providing excellent customer service, that has been initiated by the social network Twitter.
“We no longer search for the news, the news finds us. We will no longer search for products or services, they will find us via social media.”
Above you can read one of the final screens of the video introduction of the “Making the Social Connection” session with Tony Krijnen, Daniel van Soest and Charlie Kindel @ DevDays 2010 !“. The described situation certainly holds for the Thomson Endnote X4 customer service example that I have described in this article. So this is an interesting fundamental shift in communication that wasn’t there some years ago !
Let’s recall the four open driven objectives, (1) learn, (2) dialog, (3) support, and (4) innovate, that are integrated into almost every successful strategic plan. If you have a quick look at this example there are certainly a few of these objectives in place.
Furthermore the publication of social media guidelines on the Thomson Reuters website is evidence that an open strategy and use of social technology is integrated in the overall corporate strategy of Thomson Reuters. The leadership part is a little hard to oversee from this side, however you can clearly see that Thomson Reuters is practicing a long the open leadership line of thinking !
