I just started reading Jeff Jarvis’s new book What Would Google Do and it starts out pretty good- I’ll be reviewing it here when I finish it. However it immediately got me thinking about two things. First, it is virtually impossible to write a book about business and online culture that is not instantly outdated. The ideas out there are being developed, refined and altered in real time because of social media. However a really good book can provide insights into these trends that are not outdated, insights which can be incredibly valuable.
Second, much of the first chapter deals with the now familiar story about Dell’s transformation from a company that did not listen to one that does. It is fitting that Jeff write about this because he is the jogger who first wrote a scathing post about his experience with Dell’s customer service, a post that got picked up by both major media (he is a noted journalist and critic) and the blog world. His post eventually led to major changes within the company.
This got me thinking. Why and when did businesses stop listening to and talking with their customers? I think I have a partial answer. To succeed these days and to grow your business you have to automate and streamline your processes. Customer support, product development and testing, marketing- these are all ripe areas for automation. Taking a phone call and resolving a problem is very time-consuming. Market testing new designs and changing them based on input is costly. Managing huge marketing campaigns requires data-driven systems.
This process automation is usually focused on removing the human element from the process- human to human interaction is costly and inefficient. So we implement CRM systems, automated phone trees, email autoresponders, Help systems and other ways to stop human to human interaction. A culture builds around this automation.

From helping customers to avoiding them: Try contacting Google

This data-driven culture is typically managed by IT and software people. Many of the most successful newer companies were and are started by techies. Techies are notoriously adverse to the human contact parts of doing business, i.e. sales, marketing and customer support. They often believe that technology can eliminate these messy interactions. Ever try to contact Google for instance? I challenge you to find a phone number or email address anywhere on their sites. There may be a few there but I guarantee you won’t get a live human ever.
Part of the reason companies stopped talking to customers is that it was not efficient. A one to one conversation might fix a problem but it only fixed that problem for that person. In theory an automated system captures a solution and a problem and shares it with whomever has the same problem. Unfortunately these automated system designers started being pressured to use these systems to avoid contact with customers rather than to resolve problems. According Jarvis’s book, Dell customer service reps were rewarded for having the least amount of phone time per call. This created an incentive to transfer calls rather resolve problems!

Social media and customer support, market research, product development and marketing

Enter social media. Conversations about brands and products and reputations run rampant. Feedback from users is ubiquitous and immediate. Companies that don’t talk get blasted in very public forums that are global and part of the new ‘permanent record’. That’s why social media is in every headline and infiltrating every level of society.

Companies that get this are just at the beginning. When they realize that social media is not just a thorn in their side that they need to deal with and start understanding what an amazing resource it represents we’ll see a real revolution. Social media interaction will drive product development, market research, customer support and marketing. It will be a recruitment tool. It will replace advertising and conventional publicity. These aren’t predictions, they are observations.