Putting the customer back in focus

The world of social media seems to be dividing up into two groups: Those who do and those who don’t.

Those who do are happy to be out there, presenting themselves, promoting themselves, adding this new medium to their portfolio of communication. They leverage perceived risk with opportunity.

Those who don’t prefer to remain cyberspace-anonymous, worry about misrepresenting themselves, prefer traditional means of communication, resist with all their might.

Perhaps they even resist against better judgement. Perhaps they realise they might be missing out on opportunity, but are too afraid of what might happen if it found them. Perhaps they prefer to keep the flexibility of being a chameleon – changing colours depending on the stakeholder. Perhaps it’s the worry that there might still be skeletons in their closet they forgot to get rid of. Perhaps it’s the concern that a customer could easily locate them and make direct contact.

Whatever the reason, it seems to me that this is an ostrich tactic which can only do more harm than good in the long run.

The modern, post-millennium world is not shaped by the internet, it has created the internet with all benefits that come with it. It has grown out of a personal and business need for a new medium where people could be connected and have insight into transparent, factual information.

This is proven by its staggering growth figures, still continuing today.

CRM has had to grow with it. Cyberspace has changed the way customers experience a product or service. Customers are better informed and more demanding, they focus on facts rather than promises and perception. They want self-service, on-line tracking, chat, instant messaging, environmental information, transparency and facts.

This goes hand in hand with a well defined, functioning cyberspace presence, to deliver part of and complement the customer experience. This stretches beyond having a company profile on the internet. It requires organisations to construct the opposite of cyberspace-anonymity.

Cyberspace identity.