Photo via http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabine01/
For a few years now, I’ve been telling a story that starts with the phrase “suspend disbelief”. The story is intended to help illustrate the power of having a dialogue rather than a monologue with customers. These days there’s really little belief to suspend, as the story is unfolding for real, yet surprisingly, I meet people who think its lesson doesn’t apply to them. I of course think they’re wrong. So here goes…
Suspend disbelief. Imagine two politicians waiting to engage with a gathering crowd, a majority with cell phones. The first politician stands up on a soapbox and addressing the crowd says, “In an effort to be completely transparent, please text, tweet or email your comments, ideas or questions to the screen behind me and I’ll do my best to address you all. Of course we have to moderate messages to ensure nothing defamatory or illegal is displayed, but other than that, let it rip. Let’s start a dialogue…” Several minutes later, after a passionate dialogue with the crowd, the first politician sits down, and the second politician walks over to the screen, turns it off, then faces the crowd and starts his monologue.
Whatever we think about the first politician’s potential exposure to “negative voices” our knee-jerk reaction to the second politician is “He must be hiding something. Why doesn’t he want hear us. What’s he afraid of?”
I’m surprised that today, so many businesses will say they understand the importance of a dialogue with their customers but they still insist on metaphorically turning their screens off. In a society where increasingly, every screen is connected, every screen is a channel and an opportunity for a two way conversation. User generated content - negative or positive - can be an opportunity to learn from, retain or acquire customers.
Some good examples of companies using multiple channels to have a dialogue with their customers and encourage user generated feedback include Whole Foods’ Twitter page and Ford’s TheFordStory.
With some excellent and simple moderation and curation tools and services, (some purpose built real time moderation and curation tools are provided by LocaModa here) there is no excuse for any company not to engage in a dialogue with their customers via multiple screens - those screens can be Facebook, Twitter, blogs and yes, digital out of home screens in locations such as bars, cafes, colleges, stadiums, restaurants.
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