Voor sommige mensen is de klant soms gewoon lastig. Als zij lekker aan het werk zijn moet een klant ze niet storen met triviale zaken als vragen of verzoeken. Er wordt gezucht, gesteund en soms erger. Er wordt gezegd dat mensen er niet zijn, omdat dit interne stuk eerst af moet. Voor mij is het een ergernis. Uiteindelijk is het de klant die de organisatie bestaansrecht geeft.
Vorige week heb ik daarover in een twitter discussie een uitspraak gedaan die Jacqueline Fackeldey heeft aangegrepen om een hele goede en terechte blogpost te schrijven. Heel herkenbaar en goed om te lezen. Een aanrader.
Mijn tweet - met dank aan Jacqueline Fackeldey voor de screenshot.
Ahhhh, the good old days. The days in which every company was there for its own good and was solely focussed on making as much profit as possible. The time when marketing was push and all you needed to do was broadcast the positives of your product as much and as loud as possible. The good old days. The days when you could be a marketing executive and mainly be concerned about the way your suit looked so people would admire you and your success. Your full page adds oozed smugness and glorious satisfaction based on your product. The glorydays of the P’s of marketing.
Snap out of it. There is no more use in trying to find the perfect five P’s to get the largest group of average customers for your product as there is use in going the manual for your dial telephone as a guidline for using your PDA. The average customer does not exist. And these days it shows more than ever. And as a brand, you need to be aware of this. In fact, you need to be aware that whatever you are doing, whoever you are and whatever you are making, you are a brand. And a brand needs to appeal to people. Not to the masses, but to the person.
Do you know your customers? Do you know who they are? Do you know what they are interested in? Do you know what they care about? Do you know what makes them tick? Lets face it, in todays world just sending them a nicely formulated mass mail message with their name on it will not make it happen. And you don’t have to. Todays technology can help you learn so much about your customers. Enough that will enable you to relate to them and dialogue with them, not just talk to them.
Of course it is. After all, don’t we all want more? More impact? More status? More listeners? Look more important? And the only way to do that, is to get higher numbers. So we stack up the numbers on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Hyves, Netlog, Ning and whatever your favorite social network is called. And we claim it as succes. “10 ways to get 10,000 extra friends/followers/connections” is something I have seen in my mailbox often over the last couple of weeks. “How I gained 10,000 friends and earned 8K more over the last two weeks”. It is the stuff of peoples’ dreams apparently. And lets face it, it sounds attractive. But how attractive is it, really?
Well, it isn’t. And that is why there is a new trend. Kicking all those contacts that you have not spoken to in the last month and limiting yourself to that intimite circle of friends that really know you well. That solves it all. And you don’t have the trouble of having to follow any other people either. It really relieves your information intake and you can feel much less troubled by all these people you need to catch up with. Or does it?
To be honest, my take on the whole thing is different. Yes, I love to have people follow me. But the main reason for that is that I can follow them. It puts me in the position where I can start building a relationship with them. Even though that might be a bit much to ask with the 1616 people I am currently following on twitter and the 1063 that are following me. But when I do switch on Twitter, it is because I want to catch up with my friends. It is because I want to be in that relationship where we can share what we are doing and what we are about. And that is what social media should be about in my opinion. Sharing relationships. And the numbers? The numbers are all personal. If you can keep up with 20,000 then you could. If you feel you should stick to 50, that is fine too. As long as you remember that the way in which you can handle the relationships is what dictates your numbers.
Today I was right on top of the news. Quite literally. The Cost Engineering offices are in a building in Zwijndrecht which houses more companies. One of these companies is the ABN AMRO bank. This morning it was robbed. It was surreal. Guys smashing the bank window with hammers and shooting at a female police officer. I have to admit that I was on the phone on the other side of the building at the time, but my colleagues were only too happy to bring me up to speed. After that, I followed what happened as it happened. With the help of storytlr.com I turned what I shared into a small story for you to read. And I love the way it has turned out.
As you will all have heard, Obama won the elections on the 4th of November. If nothing else, what I liked about his approach was his use of social media. He really was working on gathering people around him to carry his ideas further and communicate them to their friends. By using the established networks such as Facebook (2.5 million followers), LinkedIn (500+ contacts) and twitter (119,486 followers) but also by building the my.barackobama.com site. A great approach. And a great example of leading a tribe to influence the world. However, the question I am left with is this. Will Barack keep it up? Will we hear from him next week, next month or in April when he has been in office for four months. Will we still be able to contact him this way and will he still share with his followers what he is doing. Or will the site be hushed and will we wake up to the fact that it has been a great marketing effort to push the name and push the man. I sincerely hope not, because we have had a great taste of what social media are able to do when they are a part of your complete approach to reaching your potential tribe. Lets keep that up @barackobama and lets keep on talking. It might even be a bit more personal to my taste as you see with @MaximeVerhagen the Dutch minister of foreign affairs. But at least @barackobama, lets stay in touch. Can I hear your “Yes we can!” on that?
