I admit I'm a bit fed up with the ongoing talk about how youtube (and others) allow users to generate their own content; how it is now possible that "the consumer" (to call him or her in that ugly way) take even the distribution of their artistic work into their own hands; how a new generation of tools and/or distribution channels has changed the way the media operate.
It's not that I don't agree to the fact that these things are happening. What disturbs me is the superficiality of the analysis. So let me share my bit of thought on this subject here - that'll be a rather long bit of thought, but maybe you care. As every thought, by the way, this is work in development, and I'm far from sure if I am "right" (in case such a thing even exists) or "wrong" (ditto). I'm throwing thoughts around, though, as every good citizen.
It's not that I don't agree to the fact that these things are happening. What disturbs me is the superficiality of the analysis. So let me share my bit of thought on this subject here - that'll be a rather long bit of thought, but maybe you care. As every thought, by the way, this is work in development, and I'm far from sure if I am "right" (in case such a thing even exists) or "wrong" (ditto). I'm throwing thoughts around, though, as every good citizen.
There was and is much talk about how client service will improve and become more individualized thanks to efficient database-driven ways to store and analyze data, thanks to the Internet, thanks to computerization.
I think it's all just words. The main benefit is that it's easier to send me customized offers, thus to sell me goods. That's what individualization and accurate data is used for most of all. I don't have the impression that I as a consumer benefit the least bit in terms of client service.
Rather the opposite: I store and update my data myself, I basically clean up the databases of companies for them. It sure is nice to receive more customized offers that suit my taste and preferences - but I don't think that really goes under "client service". Client service is what you get if you have a problem, a complaint, a difficult question, something specific that you'd like the company to pay attention to, that requires targeted action from their side.
And in my opinion, as well as to my experience in the recent years, this is rather getting worse than better. Because I ceased being a customer: I now am a piece of data. I am processed and stored and moved mostly automatically (or by myself). I match certain queries, or I don't. Ironically, it seems to me that the individualization of data leads to a total loss of individual attention: That's the kind of attention that people my age remember, from the times when you could actually call a company rather than a call center, and a real person would take care of your question, try to answer it, maybe even call you back, whatever. Now it's almost impossible to get hold of anyone in a company, let alone a client service or customer care department. The people I can contact are call center agents, who in most cases have little to no clue about anything but simple standard questions. The requests that normally would make me call a company can't really be handled by the call center agent, because they apparently aren't part of the list of possible requests he or she had been trained for.
Many companies won't answer any e-mail requests, or do so only after weeks. Many don't publish any phone numbers aside from the ones that lead you straight to a call center. Recent examples in my experience include airBaltic (the only number they publish is a paid 0900 number; and going to their physical office is just not really an option for me); or Turkish Airlines (who hasn't answered a rather difficult question I asked by e-mail for ten days now, let alone confirmed that they had received my mail - despite that it went to a specific customer care address).
So what do I get from that so-called individualization? A total loss of individual customer care. I can call a company at any time of the day to ask them questions for which I can find out the answers myself (on their website, in the user manual, or by looking them up on google). But I have nobody anymore who can or would answer more difficult requests.
It's probably about maths in the end. Possessing huge amounts of data on clients (as most companies do now) leaves them completely unable to process or handle this data. What they are forced to do is generalize based on mathematical analysis of the data they possess. Percentages of clients doing A, percentages doing B, offering C because of query result D.
And as the consumer, your individual needs disappear among a vast sea of data that makes it impossible to perceive you as the person you are, and instead reduces you to statistics. And while statistics are nice and useful to handle big amounts of data, they unfortunately are almost inevitably useless when dealing with individuals.
Just like the average person on the world probably has about 1,98 feet and some 1,5 children, but you'll rather rarely meet someone who actually has exactly that amount.
I think it's all just words. The main benefit is that it's easier to send me customized offers, thus to sell me goods. That's what individualization and accurate data is used for most of all. I don't have the impression that I as a consumer benefit the least bit in terms of client service.
Rather the opposite: I store and update my data myself, I basically clean up the databases of companies for them. It sure is nice to receive more customized offers that suit my taste and preferences - but I don't think that really goes under "client service". Client service is what you get if you have a problem, a complaint, a difficult question, something specific that you'd like the company to pay attention to, that requires targeted action from their side.
And in my opinion, as well as to my experience in the recent years, this is rather getting worse than better. Because I ceased being a customer: I now am a piece of data. I am processed and stored and moved mostly automatically (or by myself). I match certain queries, or I don't. Ironically, it seems to me that the individualization of data leads to a total loss of individual attention: That's the kind of attention that people my age remember, from the times when you could actually call a company rather than a call center, and a real person would take care of your question, try to answer it, maybe even call you back, whatever. Now it's almost impossible to get hold of anyone in a company, let alone a client service or customer care department. The people I can contact are call center agents, who in most cases have little to no clue about anything but simple standard questions. The requests that normally would make me call a company can't really be handled by the call center agent, because they apparently aren't part of the list of possible requests he or she had been trained for.
Many companies won't answer any e-mail requests, or do so only after weeks. Many don't publish any phone numbers aside from the ones that lead you straight to a call center. Recent examples in my experience include airBaltic (the only number they publish is a paid 0900 number; and going to their physical office is just not really an option for me); or Turkish Airlines (who hasn't answered a rather difficult question I asked by e-mail for ten days now, let alone confirmed that they had received my mail - despite that it went to a specific customer care address).
So what do I get from that so-called individualization? A total loss of individual customer care. I can call a company at any time of the day to ask them questions for which I can find out the answers myself (on their website, in the user manual, or by looking them up on google). But I have nobody anymore who can or would answer more difficult requests.
It's probably about maths in the end. Possessing huge amounts of data on clients (as most companies do now) leaves them completely unable to process or handle this data. What they are forced to do is generalize based on mathematical analysis of the data they possess. Percentages of clients doing A, percentages doing B, offering C because of query result D.
And as the consumer, your individual needs disappear among a vast sea of data that makes it impossible to perceive you as the person you are, and instead reduces you to statistics. And while statistics are nice and useful to handle big amounts of data, they unfortunately are almost inevitably useless when dealing with individuals.
Just like the average person on the world probably has about 1,98 feet and some 1,5 children, but you'll rather rarely meet someone who actually has exactly that amount.
Did you know they used to send ice across the ocean on boats, to sell what's left at the destination?
I didn't.
I didn't.
That one is probably meant serious, and if taken seriously rather unimpressive. But if it's treated as fun, it makes a nice toy to play around with: The Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer.
Fooling around with it for a short while, here's what I've learnt so far:
- Audi's "Vorsprung durch Technik" scores 0 (not surprisingly as the engine doesn't understand German, and can't be taught to understand common conceptions or cliches that influence our perception)
- Camel's recent "Discover More" scores 0, too (despite that the engine supposedly understands the words here, and that I personally would think that the word 'discover' should impress you, at least if you're a programmed engine)
- Carlsberg's "Probably the Best Beer in the World": Scores 57.14% on both "Intellectual" and "Empathetic"
- Guinness' "Good things come to those who wait": 28.57% on "Spiritual"
- Heineken's "Refreshes the parts other beers can't reach": 42.86% on "Empathetic"
- Kodak's classic "You press the button, we do the rest": 37.50% on "Spiritual"
- Listerine's "Kills 92 per cent of the germs that cause bad breath": 9.09% on "Neutral"
- Mastercard's "There are things money can't buy For everything else there's Mastercard": 36.36% on both "Intellectual" and "Empathetic"
- Microsoft's "Where do you want to go today?": 71.43% on "Spiritual" (oho!)
- Sony's old "It's a Sony": 33.33% on "Intellectual"
Fooling around with it for a short while, here's what I've learnt so far:
- Audi's "Vorsprung durch Technik" scores 0 (not surprisingly as the engine doesn't understand German, and can't be taught to understand common conceptions or cliches that influence our perception)
- Camel's recent "Discover More" scores 0, too (despite that the engine supposedly understands the words here, and that I personally would think that the word 'discover' should impress you, at least if you're a programmed engine)
- Carlsberg's "Probably the Best Beer in the World": Scores 57.14% on both "Intellectual" and "Empathetic"
- Guinness' "Good things come to those who wait": 28.57% on "Spiritual"
- Heineken's "Refreshes the parts other beers can't reach": 42.86% on "Empathetic"
- Kodak's classic "You press the button, we do the rest": 37.50% on "Spiritual"
- Listerine's "Kills 92 per cent of the germs that cause bad breath": 9.09% on "Neutral"
- Mastercard's "There are things money can't buy For everything else there's Mastercard": 36.36% on both "Intellectual" and "Empathetic"
- Microsoft's "Where do you want to go today?": 71.43% on "Spiritual" (oho!)
- Sony's old "It's a Sony": 33.33% on "Intellectual"
We participated in a pitch for some state organisation, for a campaign to promote something like gender equality.
We did a brillant job. I so love it. A marvellous job. It's such an amazingly great campaign.
And as it usually goes in such cases, we lost. I don't know yet what our competitors came up with, but I'm absolutely sure it wasn't better: It sure wasn't a better campaign, it sure won't deliver better results than what we proposed would have. Hey, I said it, we did a brillant job.
So if anyone needs a campaign to promote the equality between genders: We got one. It suits about every European country, and I think that most others as well (as far as I can judge that).
You can use it for free, under the conditions that a) it gets realized, and b) we get our part of the credits.
Seriously: It's great.
We did a brillant job. I so love it. A marvellous job. It's such an amazingly great campaign.
And as it usually goes in such cases, we lost. I don't know yet what our competitors came up with, but I'm absolutely sure it wasn't better: It sure wasn't a better campaign, it sure won't deliver better results than what we proposed would have. Hey, I said it, we did a brillant job.
So if anyone needs a campaign to promote the equality between genders: We got one. It suits about every European country, and I think that most others as well (as far as I can judge that).
You can use it for free, under the conditions that a) it gets realized, and b) we get our part of the credits.
Seriously: It's great.