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!