Tuesday, February 08, 2005

it started one summer evening while dabbling on the web. reading "wired", i came across an article that mentioned "the cluetrain manifesto". curious about it, i linked to the site and downloaded the pdf file. after only a quick read of the 95 Thesis, it was obvious to me that the premise of the document could have a profound effect upon business. my belief in the profoundness is based upon my previous 4 years of experience as a customer service manager. while often stating that we wanted to know our customer's better and have more meaningful interactions, we really hadn't gotten any closer to them. even with customer surveys, CRM tools and creation of customer communication portals, we still weren't having conversations. we asked questions, they answered questions, but we still weren't communicating. we weren't acutally having a conversation. we were only talking at each other. after reading Cluetrain, i realized that our language with a customer was not really conducive to conversation. during our survey, we asked questions that would drive metrics. we didn't really ask them what they needed; we asked them to rate us relative to other companies. instead of asking, "how can we help you succeed?", we were asking, "how do we make you feel on a scale of 1 to 5?" hardly, something that a normal person would say to someone they genuinely cared for. "gee, dear what do you rate our relationship, 1 to 5, with 5 being exceptional." somehow, i don't think anyone would stay in a relationship like that very long. so, after reading Cluetrain and seeing how we attempted to converse with customers, i knew there had to be something out there to facilitate honest, marketplace, 2 way communication. it took a couple more weeks of web surfing before i stumbled across articles on blogging. 11:18:41 PM

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