Social customer care: The socialisation of communication channels
I was working with a colleague - @PdeRobert – a few months back to try and show how social customer care channels have evolved, and we came up with the following graphic:
After revisiting it recently here are some of my observations:
- The means by which customers communicate with companies has changed.
- Both a multichannel (ie. phone, online, store) and a multiplatform (ie. blog, microblog, video) world now exist. Think of the Conversation Prism and the role played by smartphones and apps.
- Options don’t disappear, they continue to sit alongside each other. This results in the rich variety of options that exist, some of which are literally at the end of our fingertips now. We may replace one channel with another, but this is perhaps due to changing the technology we use.
- Communication has been freed up in both time and space. It is not fixed to a physical object that sits in one location. I can communicate at anytime and from anywhere.
- Technology has resulted in the possibility of more complex types of communication. Even at this still rudimentary level of evolution, Augmented Reality shows all of us the possibility of something new and different.
- As we move outwards, so the role of the company fundamentally changes from creator to participant. Historically, the company has created the means by which its customers communicated with them. Without a postal address, telephone number, fax number, email address a customer could not communicate with a company. Over the last few years, the means of self expression has been democratised through social media and smartphones/apps.
- As we move outwards, so communication moves from a closed transaction between company and customer to an open interaction between people, of which the company is just one part of the conversation (if at all).
- Communication is no longer a single linear action. Apps empower me to distribute my query or my complaint to a multitude of destinations.
However, what I dwelt on a few nights ago was how channels of communication have over time moved from the physical to the virtual. In a sense, the handshake has been replaced by the ‘@’ symbol. A world in reverse, where we spend an increasing amount of time in our virtual worlds. Our IRL experiences (‘in real life’) re-inforcing, perhaps reminding us, of the nostalgia of a time long since past.
In this virtual world, physical proximity has been replaced by a different type of proximity that promotes, perhaps indulges, spontaneity and impulsiveness. The ‘throw-away experience’, in a sense. The ability to discern becomes paramount for companies.
And in this increasingly virtual world, the desire for a greater sense of being human, the need for a more personal touch, becomes all too powerful. In that brief moment, I want you to feel my pain, my excitement, my anger, my frustration. I don’t want you to simply listen to me. I want you to hear me. To empathise with me.
In this increasingly virtual world, this sense of physical loss is replaced by the need to underpin the empty space with some kind of emotional connection or re-affirmation. I don’t just want you to listen to me or hear me, I want you to remember me. I want you to acknowledge, in that brief moment, that I exist, that my problem is important.
And all too often I will be left disappointed. But that, perhaps, is the trade-off in our increasingly virtual world.
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Added 25th February 2011: I posted the following question on Quora on 14th February 2011: As methods of communication become more virtual will ‘in real life’ experiences take on more importance? I received a great answer from Dan Lovejoy, with a couple of links:
YouTube video he created: Real/Life
Media Naturalness Theory (Wikipedia)
Guy,
I think the graph is really cool and the visual representation is well done. Do you think as people explore the right side of the graphic they will miss the ‘real world’ experience?
Bill
Outstanding post, Guy!
For me it’s not just social customer care, but it’s social customer engagement. We only have to look to the increase use of open innovation by many companies to see how it’s becoming a real community experience. Look to MyStarbucksIdea.com for a great example of this.
Like Bill, I like your graphic. Stories, letters and friends haven’t gone away; they are just surrounding by the massive volume of additional channels to engage.
Lastly, your post brings up an important social and psychological dynamic as technology and our use of it evolves: how do we each go from feeling like a voice amongst millions, disembodied and virtual, to the feeling of being seen and experienced as a person amongst a community? And that’s the question we should all be experimenting to answer.
Hi Bill, Marc
Many thanks for the kind words about the post. My writing at the best of times is fairly random, and occasionally some get closer to the mark than others. What I love about the comments are how they add and become part of the overall post, and take it in a direction that you hadn’t thought of.
I do think that as people move right they will want for an ‘IRL’ experience at some point. However, this might depend on what it is. Perhaps the greater the complexity of the need or greater sense of frustration at an issue, the greater the requirement for some ‘physical’ contact, whether that is speaking to someone on the phone or going into a store. I think the role of ‘psychology’ should not be underestimated as a driver for ‘irl’ experience. It’s the idea of being treated as a person that is key. What is the challenge is understanding at what point a person needs to feel like or re-affirm that they are a person?
Thanks again for taking the time to read through and comment – appreciated as always.
guy
Hi Guy,
I concur with Marc and Bill that it’s a great post and agree with you that there will be a balance to be struck about delivering a yearning for an IRL as we move to the right. Strikes me that we may need to think about being more fluid in how we deliver that IRL perhaps a return to drop-ins, office hours, customer visits, organising customer events etc as a may of increasing that personal contact. If that is true, what I wonder is what will be the catalyst for such behaviour for business?
I wrote this quite quickly before packing for a weekend in the Lakes so I hope it makes sense.
Adrian
Guy,
I like the evolutionary chart although of course it is less of a ‘migration from’ than an ‘ever increasing’ mix. That said fax is looking pretty niche these days! – but still there till digital signatures take hold mainstream.
As far as the rest of your post is concerned I will be ‘au contraire’ The proportion of customers that are so far extended into a virtualised lifestyle that they experience yearning for the real thing like someone who has lost a limb yet can still ‘feel’, is way too Buck Rogers 31st century in my experience.
Most folk still complain they can’t get a decent mobile signal and Twitter participation is not yet into double figures for the population at large.
Stay with us seer! Most of us are yet to turn the first corner!
You’re right about the increased demand for recognition. Multiple potential channels and increased connectivity in general carry a raised expectation of personal validity. Organisations need to recognise that prompt and fulsome existential acknowledgement is probably of equal importance to the complaint itself: people are usually very reasonable about accepting a simple remedy to a genuie mistake; they will be completely unreasonable – or, indeed, reasonably furious – if they feel ignored or patronised.
LOVE this graphic and the explanation! Makes something that sometimes seems complicated look so much easier.
I’ve shared with various people – hope it brings you some traffic