Category: conversation management

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PRWeek: Podcasts Open New Doors For Customer Relationships

Keith O’Brien gets it right in this article: Podcasting: Podcasts open new doors for customer relationships. Jason Calacanis has a great quote:

“I think it’s a great channel for companies to go direct to the consumer. I love JetBlue, and if they had a travel show that incorporated where it goes, what you can find at its destinations, and travel tips, I would certainly download it. If you’re a Flash designer and could listen to a podcast each week on Flash design produced by Macromedia, that would be of high value, as well. Just like blogs can engage customers in a conversation, [podcasts] can, as well.”

Additionally, although I normally try to avoid The Mouse at all costs, Disney’s Duncan Wardle also makes a good point:

“Say a single mother from San Francisco is thinking of coming to Disneyland. When she’s planning her trip, what if she listened to a podcast of a single mother talking about what’s good and [bad] at Disneyland? Right now, consumers are in the marketing mix, as they should be. There’s a huge change of focus where you will not be marketing at consumers; you will be marketing with them.”

http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story_free.cfm?ID=239677&site=3

(disclosure: I was interviewed for the article)

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All Aboard!

The Cluetrain gains another passenger in Chris Selland. Selland writes:

“I’m changing my mission statement – and evolving the focus of this blog. Yes I’ll still write about the Siebels, Oracles and SAPs when and where it makes sense (and where either I have something important – or fun – to say (hopefully both)), but I’m turning my attention to what is – in my mind – much more important.

Ironically, this brings me back to the point of a book I truly hated – The Cluetrain Manifesto. As I was speaking with Paul, I realized that what I hated so much about the book wasn’t that it was wrong – what I really disliked was the arrogant, condescending, ‘all big companies are stupid’ attitude of the authors. (As an aside, if this bugged you as much as it bugged me, you’ll love the Gluetrain).

But the primary point of Cluetrain was that customers are increasingly less interested in being ‘managed’ by companies, and much more interested in speaking with each other. To this point, I must tip my hat to the Cluetrain authors (as much as it hurts to do so) – they had it right. The problem with the book (other than the attitude) was that they were at least 5 years early. In 2005, however, customers are supported by a technology and social infrastructure that isn’t just facilitating change – it’s hastening it.“ (emphasis added)

Excerpted from a much longer post that deserves a full read.

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Thinking About The Customer

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.

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Lie La Lie

Asking only workman’s wages
I come looking for a job
But I get no offers,
Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there
Lie la lie
Lie la lie lie lie la lie, lie la lie
– Simon and Garfunkel, The Boxer

Indulge me in this hypothetical situation. Someone you’ve never met before, with whom you have no prior relationship, comes up to you and says “Hi, I’m going to lie to you, and you should pay me for the privilege.” What would you do? What would you say?

I’m betting you’d put your hand on your wallet (in order to make sure it’s still there), and you’d tell them to take a hike.

That’s the same kind of squicky feeling I get the more I hear about the new Seth Godin book, All Marketers Are Liars. The most troubling quote I’ve seen so far from the book:

“Tell a story that is memorable and remarkable and worth listening to. Seduce your customers, because that’s exactly what they want you to do. That requires ruthless selectivity and creative storytelling—in other words, lying.”

I am continually stunned by this unbelievable disrespect for customers (who, by the way, Godin continues to refer to as consumers). Mindless automatons we must all be, interested only in entertainment, yearning for fanciful yarns that induce us to shell out cash. This assumes all customers are homogeneous with respect to a need and that a great “story” will be the trigger that induces them to buy. I just don’t think this is the situation.

Although Godin seems to find “case studies” (term used loosely) and has retrofit them to fit his needs, the trend is going the other way. Away from homogeneity. Out into the long tail. The trend is toward uniqueness and connections and relationships. It’s not about finding the best common self-deception that consumers (errg, I get the willies just typing that word) have, and trying to mimic it.

Good customers, thinking customers, create their own connections, and their own histories. Customers engaged in a community create their own stories, based on shared experiences.

Say you do follow the “liars” advice, and create a great story to catch a market. When that “story” changes to catch the next fad (as it must), what happens to the customer who bought into the original façade? What is your response? “Screw ’em, time to ship more product, time to come up with a new story and catch the next big thing.” How will that customer feel when the façade is pulled back, when he or she gets to roll around to the back of the lot, and sees that the town was two-dimensional? How long will that relationship last?

I guess I’m not the only one who has a dissenting opinion on this, um, story. Publisher’s Weekly had this to say:

“Readers will likely find the book’s practical advice as rudderless as its ethical principles.”

In the “liars” world, how do you measure success? The “liars” approach forces one to measure success from the seller’s point of view. For focusing on the customer’s actual results immediately breaks the illusion.

Others talking:

Tom Guarriello: “But, am I the only one who thinks that this “lying” business muddies more than it clarifies?”

Johnnie Moore: “An awful lot of storytelling is done after the event. Stories rationalise action.”

Peter Caputa: “…the Marketing Messiah for scribbling oft-borrowed common sense marketing lessons down in story form.”

Ed Brenegar: “So, what then is at the crux of this interaction? It is the relationship between two people. Or one person and a lot of individuals collectively. We are not telling stories in the aether. We are telling them in a specific social, physical, relational, personal context.”

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Finding The Conversations

Johnnie Moore’s blog rocks, and it’s one of 100+ that I have read through my aggregator in the past. But I rarely read it anymore. Why? Because there’s something better.

What’s better than his blog? Finding the conversations that he’s hosting.

This is because, although his blog is here, he publishes the feed for just his comments. This is where the good stuff is happening. This is where the conversations are happening. (n.b. have shamelessley stolen this idea, and if’n you’re interested the comments feed for The Social Customer Manifesto is here).

Subscribing to just the comments is a double-edged sword. On one hand, there may be insights that are missed in the “regular” blog posts. But as long as there are a good number of readers/lurkers to a regular blog, and some small number of those folks choose to start a conversation in the comments, there is an almost built-in filtering mechanism that is put in place…the posts that generate the most comments are the “high value” ones that pop up, and are the ones that get read. (By the way, Wilco is amazing. Buy all their records. Now. And Lane‘s too, while you’re at it.)

Here’s a link to how to do this yourself in Moveable Type or Typepad (thanks, Johnnie for pointing this out). It’s pretty straightforward, but you need to be comfortable mucking with the templates. Drop me a note…or a comment…if you’re not able to get it to work.

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Hierarchy, Subverted

Was reading the recent post by Cynthia Price on the GM Fastlane blog. (hat tip: nevon)

Down in the comments were two items that stood out:

Mary Freund: “Dear Mr.Lutz: I am a G.M. employee. I work in Doraville , GA. Please put a hybrid engine in our product!!!”

Clarence Erickson: “As a GM employee I have noticed that sometimes the dealers don’t treat even me right. My wife also had a few rough visits where I had to intervene…Perhaps we should work on this a little more. They do tend to treat people like sheep at times and there is the leftover perception from the bygone days that the dealer service department will work you over every time.”

Things I’d love to know the answer to:

1) How many (5? 15?) organizational levels exist within GM between the execs doing the blogging (Cynthia Price and Bob Lutz) and the internal GM folks (Mary and Clarence) who are using this public forum to give the execs direct feedback?

2) How long would it take for that feedback to be shared upward using pre-existing internal communications mechanisms?

3) What would be the likelyhood of a response using the internal mechanisms in the pre-blog days? And if there was a response, how long would it take to get to get back to Mary and Clarence?

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Internal, External Business Conversations

Hugh writes a great post about why business blogs can help organizations improve customer connections. (Updated to later illustrate that the concept is relevant in intra-organizational discussions as well.) The metaphor is that there is a membrane that surrounds every organization, and that membrane impedes real information flow and, with it, learning. The nugget:

Hugh: “The more porous your membrane (“x”), the easier it is for the internal conversation to inform the external conversation, and vice versa.”

In other words, if there is alignment, or “equilibrium,” between what’s happening inside the organization and what’s happening in the customer base, both sets of stakeholders will be better off. Customers will be getting what they want, and organizations will have happy customers. And, presumably, reasonable profits.

This triggered four thoughts:

  • The theory above sounds a lot like this.
  • For this to work, it can’t just be “conversation,” it has be the RIGHT conversation.
  • There is a flow to this. Flow 1 is “out to in.”
  • There is a second flow to this. Flow 2 is “in to out.”

So, first off, this sounds a lot like thermodynamics. I had to go look up the thermo stuff to put this post together, and then it made my head hurt (again, like it did mumblysomethingsomething years ago, the first time I saw it in school), so I closed that page quickly. But, I think a way to characterize this model is through paraphrasing that law into something like this:

“Insight spontaneously disperses from being localized to becoming spread out if it is not hindered.”

Insight is good. Knowledge is good. Knowledge of real customer needs can help an organization do the right thing for the market. Knowledge of what a supplier is doing can help a customer make better decisions.

Another way of putting this…communication in this way changes the game from being zero-sum to being collaborative. Things tend toward zero-sum when information is withheld, and power and manipulation come into play. This changes that.

Moving onto the second point above, the idea of “conversation” needs some clarity. We’ve come to use the word “conversation” as shorthand for “folks who ‘get it,’ and want to work collaboratively, and want to share information, etc.” However, all conversations are not the same. More importantly, all conversations are not equal.

For this model to work, some conversational structure may need to be in place. If customers are clamoring for something (let’s say, a fad-ish feature in a product that may have long-term detrimental effects), the company can react in two ways. In the first case, the company can listen to those customers blindly, and deliver exactly what they want. In the second case, the company could try to explain some of the shortcomings of following that approach, and try to reach a middle ground where both parties agree, that results in a longer-term positive outcome for both sides.

Both cases reach equilibrium, but they are certainly not equal conversations.

Which brings us to points three and four above, the flows. There will be an increasingly strong “out-to-in” flow if a company is not meeting the current needs of its customers. If there is a flood of feedback going across that membrane from out-to-in, and nothing is being done about it, there is a sure bet that at some point in the future that organization will be in trouble. However, if that out-to-in flow is moderate and steady and is responded to with an equal in-to-out flow of information about how the company is responding, you can bet the company is marching ahead in step with where its customers are going.

The “in-to-out” flow, on the other hand, is a quite interesting one. Assuming the in-to-out flow is information-rich (and not a flood of the same-ol’-B.S.), the company is providing some insight and novel ideas to the marketplace. This is good. However, similar to the example above, if this flow gets too strong, the company may be outrunning its customers, and providing products or services that require change the market can’t yet absorb or isn’t ready for yet (see the Apple Newton for an example). In this case, the company should take a step back and perhaps slow down a notch and listen to what’s coming back in from the outside.

Food for thought.

Others commenting on this:

Lee LeFever
BlogSpotting (Heather Green)
Fredrik Wackå
Scoble

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Cerado Launches Business Blogging Practice

It appears that there must be some sort of as-of-yet undocumented “conservation of blogging” law. (Did you read that as “conversation of blogging,” the first time through? I did, and I wrote the thing. Funny how much power the word “conversation” has in this context.)

Rick Bruner has retired from Business Blog Consulting. Rick’s work in this area has been nothing short of impressive, and he states that “I think the mission of the blog has to a certain extent been accomplished.” For Rick and his blog, maybe. For the broad market, absolutely not. The work’s just beginning.

Through this blog, I’ve been writing about the customer-facing aspects of business blogging for a long time. Been thinking about it for longer. Been doing it through this forum, and sometimes here, and over here as well. Throughout this process, have been helping others get blogs up and running, in an ad-hoc manner. And now, it’s time to formalize things a bit.

With that long-winded intro (yes, I know I’m totally burying the lede here, but the context is important), it’s time to announce that Cerado has launched a formal practice around business blogging. This practice assists organizations in getting right the strategy, implementation, training, technology, execution, and continuous improvement metrics that are needed to use blogs as a tool to connect more closely with customers. Additionally, effective blogging often results in particularly strong SEO. This constitutes even more reason for businesses to embrace blogging. Due to the many positives of doing this, many businesses are looking to set up a blog on their site.

Aiding us in this effort will be Lisa Stone, who set up this blog network, and also set up this one, and who blogs over here (and here, and here), and who was instrumental in starting this as well.

This is going to be fun.

It’s been a blast figuring out the right ways to apply the rapidly emerging capabilities (both technical and social) of the blogosphere in the business context. (Things like applying the underlying concepts of podcasting behind the firewall are a particularly salient example of this.) And we’re continually figuring out new ways to bring the customer conversation into the enterprise, in an effort to connect customers and organizations more closely together.

This evolution is another step along this journey. And we’re excited to be taking it.

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BusinessWeek Business Blogging Cover Story Nails It

The cover story of the current issue of BusinessWeek sums it up well: “Blogs Will Change Your Business.”

Reading through the article, the one quote that resonated (and continues to do so) was this one: “Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later.” It definitely feels like we’re at the inflection point; about to hit Geoffrey Moore’s chasm with respect to business blogging.

A couple of interesting tidbits:

Tidbit 1 – BW has launched blogspotting.net, their own actual, honest-to-goodness blog to cover the emerging area of blogs and business. To Heather, Steve, and the rest of the BW team…nice job!

Tidbit 2 – They also did a nice job pulling together a quick list of things to consider when launching a business blogging initiative. (Unfortunately, BW buried the link in a place requiring serious excavation in order to find it.) The highlights:

  • Train Your Bloggers
  • Be Careful with Fake Blogs
  • Track Blogs
  • PR Truly Means Public Relations
  • Be Transparent
  • Rethink Your Corporate Secrets

Boilers are stoked. Pressure is right. It’s time for this train to leave the station.

Although the quote noted above is spot on, the customer angle, and the “how are people really addressing business blogging” aspects were glossed over a bit in the article. (However, considering the article’s breadth, that’s understandable.) That being said, still would have like to have seen more case studies, and more examples of the different ways organizations are using blogs to connect with customers.