Truth & Marketing

In 1999, I wrote the paper: “Evolution of Telephony In Global Marketing – Past, Present & Beyond Y2K.  It was first presented at the Pan Pacific Direct Marketing Conference in June of 1999, in Sydney Australia.  Subsequently this paper was presented in the USA, New Zealand, Thailand, Latin America and China.

In the paper, I discussed defining moments in long-distance communications from 2000 BC to the time the paper was written.  I covered the latest growth figures of national and international customer support centres.  I looked at the shifting focus onto technology and away from the customer, how measurements were based on areas meant to increase usage of telecom services.

I asked questions like “who IS responsible for the customer and the effects of outsourcing and off-shoring on the issues of Best in Class, in that overall customer contact satisfaction results were dropping year after year.

My key question was one on everyone’s mind at the time and was if the Internet would kill the phone.  My answer then, as now is a resounding, “No!” with an average increase in call volume of 30% or more in most contact centres, regardless of where or who or how they are answered.

Many wonderful references to reality are cited in the above video and thank you Malcolm Auld for this, hopefully eye-opening presentation for most organisations drifting further away from the customer and closer into the easy realm of technology bits and bytes.

Some issues that were missed in Malcolm’s presentation, that I focused on in my paper as well are (and I will simply quote from the original paper.  Please know the statistics have only grown more powerful for this argument over time:

-      In 1995 the total world population stood at 5,994,063,711 – half of whom have never even seen a phone and wouldn’t have a clue about the Net

-      30% live on less than the equivalent of USA one dollar a day

-      Only 20% of the countries/populations are considered highly developed

-      Only 19% have access to any health care

-      Only 30% have access to safe drinking water

-      20% of the global workforce presently has no job (the highest since the Great Depression) [yes there was doom and gloom in 1999 too!]

Yet large corporations and small to medium sized companies were spending around $85 billion (projected to be $203 billion by 2002) to develop their presence on the Internet.

Organisations making money through the Internet, like in Malcolm’s paper were similar in those days, and included:

-      Researchers monitoring activities, producing and selling reports about the Net and e-commerce (Jupiter, Forrester, Gartner Group, etc., as much as doubling in size annually!) [and they all seem to still be with us.]

-      Consultants to companies trying to better understand, integrate and set up profitable Net capabilities

-      People who build Websites

-      Agencies who sell Web-based advertising without offering results

-      Direct response marketers with DM Web sites (actually, 40%-50% of all direct marketers using the Net are profitable. [wonder what that statistic is like today]  They would naturally KNOW how to work the system best because they understand direct marketing.  It’s no wonder the Net is increasingly being considered a new ‘print’ media for direct marketing.)

-      Finally, direct marketing experts making the Net work for others!

I wrote of warnings and constraints, including:

·         Available and suitable technology and infrastructure

·         Privacy

·         Trade associations & awards

·         Support staff increases needed to support this new “world”

·         Lack of education (customers, staff, management & boards of directors)

·         Lack of wise, sensible and effective management

·         Lack of dedicated and trainable enthusiastic staff

·         And the reluctance of many to use these new tools (and I’m not talking about over 50 year olds here alone, but the startling impatience and focus on pennies saved of the Gen XYZ?s

I ended with my predictions and expanded on this when I wrote my book (The Customer Response Management Handbook, published by McGraw Hill internationally, including being translated into Chinese.

So you can only imagine how thrilled I was to watch this video about a counter argument of how, today, social media is taking over the world!  What will they think of next...perhaps people talking with one another face-to-face!

Social Media in Business?

Oh I love this discussion and got a bit carried away!  Perhaps what’s missing is the user/customer/person on the street’s perspective – it’s what’s missing in most organisations today for all the lip service paid to “customer sensitivity and service”, at the end of the day what wins is cost cutting/staff cutting.  And for this the latest hero is seen to be more technology.

Those we market to with new technology tools should have options and be “ready, willing and able”, as well as, informed of these changes in a language that is sensitive to their “culture”.  All the generations have unique requirements btw (‘by the way’ for those who may not know that acronym – and many still do not!).

Customer options for service by channel (channel management) was not teamed up with insightful and responsive pricing that would lead customer behaviours rather than penalise them for not complying (antagonistic approach – do it my way or you die!) combined with effective preparation of the end users and appropriate metrics. 

How we offer new tools to our customers (whether simple e-mail communication or full on “you must manage your investments on line and never call us” options to more sophisticated tools) is the “ready” part of the formula.  This results in “willing”.  The “able” part is the most difficult in the lightening speed changes we are witnessing today as we try to invent new and faster (not necessarily better, more effective and useful) ways to push the customer away to manage work we used to manage for them (service).  All generations have unique requirements, that is what we were to have learned by direct marketing!

Therefore, I agree with Derek that age should NOT be a factor, but since the invention of the video player/recorder, the over 50s have been dispensed with as if their splayed fingers and poor eye sight, were never meant to be capable of reading directions written by someone who was not in touch with real people or with pressing and holding the tiny buttons.  ((what over 50s learned from this is to keep a ready stable of “friends” under twelve to manage what should not have been a barrier in the first place!)

Early memories of technological failure still makes some shudder and resist pressing more buttons.  Those of us who would lead others into using new technologies always struggle with, what I call the “Woops Factor”.  This comes from the continual reminders in films, magazine articles and TV exposes that with one touch of a button, all relevant records can be obliterated, as can our identities.

We are told to guard our passwords and never write them down, for instance, yet international standard password conventions are nonexistent, so writing passwords down is mandatory not voluntary unless you are born an idiot savant.

Strangely enough, this morning I was offered the opportunity to submit some insurance details directly on line, yet the technology had a glitch and no decipherable instructions, leaving me no choice other than to dial up a customer support line and wait for 37 minutes to find out that, yes indeed, it was not working and they would have it up and running another day. 

On another site, still today, I needed the answer to a question about a format for some material I’m submitting for electronic publishing of my book.  My question was simple and the knowledge database did not cover this information.  I was repeatedly sent back to a “knowledge database” by a persistent bot who would NOT respond to a number of intuitive key words.  I then sent an email to the organisation which was immediately answered by another bot who told me I had to refer to this same be-all-and-end-all knowledge database.

Fad managers (whatever their age) offer the latest and greatest tools because they either need to be seen to make a difference or to make their mark (like a canine marking new territory). 

Someone over 50 is just as likely to push “bleeding edge technology” through the pipeline because it seems/is seen to be politically correct and the technical sales rep told them of far reaching cost saving and how they could cut more staff.  They may have even attended a nifty seminar that urged them to “act younger than their age and be bold with social media”. 

Yet when they install and foist these new tools on the customer, they’re long gone to the next greener pasture and the customer and other business colleagues are left trying to manage with technology that is inadequate for the task or was not promoted and offered in a humane way. 

I loved the video you put up Rum, for it shows what I believe is the true power of social media.  People are lonely and it offers a way to bridge the gap in this dangerous world.  Social media is about one person connecting with another.  E-Harmony, one of the more popular dating sites, has been running an insightful ad with some implied answers.

The push back to new these new social technologies comes because of fear of not knowing how to use them, but more profound is the imagined isolation apart from face-to-face contact.  We all have this desire to connect, to engage. 

“It is one of our deepest yearnings.  But connect with what?  With whom?  This is actually a trio of desires that vary in strength from person to person and from time to time:  1. The desire to connect with ourselves – to know ourselves better; 2. The desire to connect with each other – to communicate; 3. The desire to connect with the natural world”, as Hugh Mackay says in his book, What Makes Us Tick?: 

I love using social media because I have seen how they can result in all three of these burning desires. 

Conclusion/Recommendation:  Carefully consider whether using social media technology is appropriate for business.  Customers do want to deal one-on-one with businesses for business, yet they no longer buy/believe that anyone in a business is a friend!  I think it may backfire as painfully as CRM has!

If you decide social media technologies are an area to explore for your business, do your homework (seminars, books, articles, those who are experiencing the results of attempts with new technologies) then look closely at the end user and their needs.  Ensure sensible and culturally/generationally sensitive communication and training precedes launching (stable/robust) technology, finally mange and measure it with meaningful metrics that are tied to your vision and mission. 

Management Dilemma

Today, people are working harder than ever, especially in non face-to-face customer support centres.  People and organisations are reshaping.  They are still re engineering.  They are reinventing wheels.  They are attempting to improve quality...sometimes.  They work to reduce cycle times. 

But in a seeming paradox, these organisations are not maintaining a competitive edge.  In many/most organisations today, people are watching helplessly as traditional market leadership positions erode. 

Some become gripped in a death spiral of cost cutting in which real solutions are increasingly elusive and downsizing replaces common sense strategy.  The turnover in the ranks of Fortune 500 companies continues to accelerate, standing today at one third ever decade and rising.  The same pointless churning is found everywhere:  in the private sector, in government, in not-for-profits. 

You cannot build a winning organisation by simply adapting, trying to accommodate what is going on around you.  To win, you have to get out front -- and stay there !

Embracing speed, quality, or cost cutting as a strategy is tantamount to saying that you're going to run faster and faster, better and better, leaner and leaner -- forever!  And that is just impossible.  You cannot run faster and faster forever.  You can fine-tune your engine, you can surge, you can stretch capacity -- there are many ways of improving performance, but they ALL have limits. 

At some point, neither speed nor quality is a sustainable competitive advantage.  Cost cutting as an end in itself is worst of all because it merely forces the old engine to labour harder and harder.  To be effective, change must be substantive -- it must add value and contribute to the long-run health of the organisation. 

When unaccompanied by real change, cost cutting is all pain and little gain.

Introduction

When I wrote my first book, I addressed how and why contact centre operations differ from other business operations:  primarily because staff activities are concentrated, monitored, micromanaged and more reactive within “close quarters”, human behaviour is the key to improvements. 

The cycle  of focus with our business:

• has shifted off the customer
• onto the staff member
• and now onto cutting costs and time to benefit “stake/ shareholders”. 

The result?  Shrinking profits, distancing of customers and the loss of their loyalty.

In working on my studies in Behaviour Economics, I see a natural application of these principles within the non face-to-face world.  Behavioural economics draws on aspects of both psychology and economics: 

·         Economics assumes our ability for perfect reasoning as humans (called rationality), is the foundation for economic theory, predictions and recommendations. 

·         Psychology reminds us human behaviour is not controllable and sometimes not even influenced; yet can be temporarily modified, certainly observed, researched, measured and sometimes predicted. 

Over our lifetimes we’re exposed to a “common understanding” of how the economy “works”.  We’re sure we’re capable of making the right decisions for ourselves...and because of “collective wisdom”, any necessary course correction to ensure overall stability, will be made by the majority. 

The truth is we’re far less rational than assumed, yet our behaviours are neither random or senseless.  We have a systematic way to make decisions and these decisions can be observed, measured and predicted. 

With this in mind, the goal of this blog is to stimulate your thinking (with research examples) so you can fundamentally consider and leverage what actually motivates you, your staff and your customers  to behave in certain ways; then use this wisdom for your own business advantage. 

In the future weeks, we will consider values such as uncertainty, procrastination, fairness, mistakes, little thiefts, loyalty, etc.  Join me on this adventure and be sure to add your own comments and observations for all of us to benefit from.