Web2.0: Dialogue and Corporate Culture

A word on dialogue. Last week’s German OMD online marketing trade fair has, if anything, proven a point: dialogue is tough to get right.

Sure, most of the exhibitors there are trying to sell tech-based feedback channels, such as E-Mail forms or some sort of database marketing as “dialogue”. In the context of Web2.0 – a facet of which which I see as “electronic customer emancipation” – dialogue takes on a different form. Customers want to talk to real people, not databases. They want to be heard. They want to take part in what their favourite brands are doing. They want to be able to express joy or discontent. For instance, where do you call if you are happy and want the company to share your happiness? A call centre?

Call centres don’t count, since they are “channels”, just like a browser. There’s technology, and agents are following database-generated decision trees. Hardly a fruitful conversation with someone responsible. They might even accept your praising call, store it somewhere and let it be forgotten.

What is needed is genuine dialogue. And this is where most corporations don’t get it right. There’s a simple reason, which lies within corporate culture: they don’t talk.

So far, classic marketing involves the marketing department and their (integrated) agency. Sometimes, marketing is really clever – think viral marketing – but the only dialogue that takes part is along a predefined feedback channel or, in case of direct marketing, a mechanism for taking orders. Customers are treated as characterised by internal databases.

Marketing textbooks talk a lot about knowing the customer, from market research via behavioural patterns to segmentation and media optimisation. None or few talk about live and visible communication or public dialogue.

With all the new possibilities at hand which fall under the auspices of Customer Generated Media (CGM), customers – who have always been motivated and emotional – want to talk to the company and be heard and understood.

In this context, how is a company defined? It is not only the marketing department, but any employee involved. In many instances, employees have the technological means, such as an internet-connected workstation, to register their customers’ voices. It’s not only restricted to the marketing department. The channel is there: anyone can talk with the outside world – or receive inbound communication.

Often, the motivation to talk is unsolicited and based on a negative experience: kryptonite, Volkswagen, Land Rover, Dell are a few examples.

The Volkswagen example is particularly suited to illustrate the point of this article: corporations have internal communications, as demonstrated by this unhappy customers’ server traffic, yet are unable to talk to the customer.

What happens in real life is that problems or critical decisions are passed up the ladder until someone – who definitely doesn’t have a clue – takes a decision. Too little, too late, wrong answer.

The bottom line? Corporations must learn that dialogue with customers doesn’t just take place at a single point in a controlled environment anymore. It can – and should – take place anywhere, anytime. It helps to have evangelists, or people that live and breathe their employers’ brand such as Microsoft’s Scoble and Yahoo’s Russell Beattie. Such people can provide a company with a human interface that goes way beyond marketing. It’s an honest dialogue.

It’s not good enough (although it helps) to issue corporate blogging guidelines, or even to introduce corporate blogging. Fragmented Discussion, or the dialogue between employees and the outside world represents a fundamental responsibility shift within corporate culture. Presumably market forces will become powerful enough to enforce this transition, which in the context of workforce emancipation can only be welcomed.

A corporation where any employee is enabled to talk with the outside world – and process the knowledge gained – is too much to expect. But it helps to aim for this. Let your people talk to the outside and with each other.