This is a Red Pill Zone. This site also contains language and opinions that may consign you to the 9th Circle of Hell for reading.
You Have Been Warned
From BL Ochman comes this; Don’t whine about how expensive it is to hire humans to answer customer emails. If it weren’t for customers, you wouldn’t need to come to work.
Source: BL Ochman
Having spent 10 years building simple websites for small businesses like auto junkyards, I can tell you that the successful ones answer their emails as soon as possible. I have mentioned this before, like in the last century.
The PR flacks/marketing gurus and the Social Media Cheerleaders forget this. Most folks don’t want discussions, they want to swap money for stuff.
Peer to Peer
A lot of companies never got the memo that the Internet is a Peer to Peer medium, meaning that anybody with a keyboard, internet access, and a bad attitude has just as much power as a multi million dollar, multi national organization out here. Our cost to publish is less than a round of Golf, and is a hell of a lot faster. Even News organizations haven’t figured out that the 24 hour news cycle has been replaced by the 24 second news cycle. Strictly Commercial
How and what we buy today, is not the result of multi million dollarad campaigns, or clown suit marketing on street corners, but is more likely to be decided by somebody on the web, who posts their opinions about stuff they bought. Just see what happened to the Kryptonite Lock folks.
5 Monkeys Ken Camp has re posted a bit he did back in 05 about Institutional Memory. It illustrates very well the problem of conditioning and ‘We do it this way because we’ve “always done it this way.” ‘, sinkhole of current commercial presentation on the web. This sinkhole is lined with the desperate PR Firms, clutching at the carcass of diminishing ad budgets, re branding themselves as Social Media Life Coaches, Conversational Marketing Guru’s and my personal Favorite, the Social Media Release.
Asumming that you have more brains than a gerbil, understand the difference between Evangelism and Fundamentalism, and haven’t swallowed the Blue Pill, a caveat. Before you pat yourselves on the back so hard you require surgery to repair a torn labrum, remember that we are monkeys too. Think Feldman vs Israel, AP vs Bloggers. What’s a internaut to do?
Fight Back with Doc Searls!
VRM aka Vendor Relationship Management is the latest attempt by Doc Searls to bitchslap companies into realizing what Peer to Peer means. Rather than telling you what I think he is saying, and what I think about it (this will require much more time than I have today) here is Doc his ownself.
In english this means that Google is getting pressure from it’s ad buyers, the stockholders are whining and they can get new employees.
Today’s head lemur tech tip:
Anytime a company makes a statement like this, putting the employees dead last , is a company who has become internally bankrupt. Customers will always try for a better deal, especially if they are not being served, and the company employees cannot show value. Think cell phone and cable companies for the worst of these traits.
Stakeholders/stockholders do not give a shit about either the company or the employees, but are folks leading the management around by the dick, hoping to squeeze a few more pennies out of the stock, before they sell it off.
Any company who does not put their employees first, will fuck them raw and dispose of them at the first sign of independent thought.
Quote of the Day: “Marketing is a Tax You Pay for Being Unremarkable” was the title of a speech by the founder of Geek Squad.
Talk about channeling Seth Godin.
That such a statement requires explanation to marketeers gives you an idea just how bad their industry is going.
The latest gasp by marketeers and PR flacks is the Customer Service is the New Marketing meme. Shiny Happy Marketeers! Sales is not a Service Business.
Companies are in business to make money. They make money by selling you stuff. The company goes to great lengths to provide the cheapest setup to separate you from your money. They don’t make money by holding your hand, listening to your concerns, explaining where their product and your understanding of it go separate ways, which in a lot of cases, boils down to the fact that you are the wrong customer for the product.
Really! Walk into any bookstore or go online. wander into the business section. Look at how many books there are about making Sales. See any books on becoming a Customer Service Representative?
