Two great posts from Paul Greenberg at the PGreenblog, relating events during and after last week’s CustomerThink conference in Santa Cruz.
Paul writes, eloquently, about “the need to create the collaborative environment and tools to give the customer control over his own experience with the company.” (He also uses the word “betwixt” in the same post, which is reason enough to read it.) This really is the core, isn’t it? The core of relationships, of blogging, of podcasting, of all the different changes that are afoot with respect to social media, all relate to the fact that “control” by a company over a customer’s experience is an illusion. Ultimately, it’s the customer who is going to make the decisions…and the company that gives that flexibility in control to the customer will have an advantage over the one that doesn’t.
He also writes:
“Each person I meet has a story, a dream, an aspiration or twenty, a life, and just a complex sort of goodness and I don’t know, something very attractive about them as human beings. Sometimes I as well as I’m sure every single person reading this and those not reading it, tend to box them in to whatever they ‘do.’ ‘Paul is a CRM expert with a book,’ for example. That’s fine, but don’t you actually want to know more about many of those people?”
So well put. The “positioning,” the “brand,” the “story,” may pique initial interest. But it’s the messy, complex depth and reality of the individuals involved that builds the relationship.