Let's role play for a minute here. Imagine I'm engaged in a phone conversation with a prospect who's not so happy about a marketing email that was sent with a misspelled first name.
Prospect: Hi Megan, thanks for your call, but I'm really put off by the last email I received from Compendium. My name is butchered, yet you still expect me to view a demo of your software?
Megan: Oh no, I'm so sorry, prospect. That's really, really embarassing. I'm looking at your record and it does appear as though your name is mispelled. I'm correcting it in our system as I talk to you... but I also understand this doesn't "undo" what happened. Please accept my apology and if you give me a chance to continue this conversation, I assure you it won't happen again in the future.
Prospect: You're right... it doesn't undo the initial error but I appreciate the prompt follow up and the sincerety. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
As humans, when we're engaged in face-to-face or phone conversation, we can use tone and expression to convey sincerity (or not, I suppose). Consumers expect the same sincere dialogue on social media networks and business blogs.
As an organization, when you chose to engage in social networks or business blogs you must understand and commit to the human dialogue (good and bad) that needs to happen with your audience.
Here's a great example of how one of our clients, Carhartt, is staying a head of the chatter by facilitating online dialogue. They actually have multiple blogs set up specifically for people to submit questions and stories. To make it easy, they use Compendim's Web-to-Post feature to automatically turn the comments generated in a form into a blog post.
As your organization "goes social", make sure you take some time to think about who's at the receiving end... human beings. If you talk to and engage with them as such, you're social strategy will be much, much more sincere.
Prospect: Hi Megan, thanks for your call, but I'm really put off by the last email I received from Compendium. My name is butchered, yet you still expect me to view a demo of your software?
Megan: Oh no, I'm so sorry, prospect. That's really, really embarassing. I'm looking at your record and it does appear as though your name is mispelled. I'm correcting it in our system as I talk to you... but I also understand this doesn't "undo" what happened. Please accept my apology and if you give me a chance to continue this conversation, I assure you it won't happen again in the future.
Prospect: You're right... it doesn't undo the initial error but I appreciate the prompt follow up and the sincerety. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
As humans, when we're engaged in face-to-face or phone conversation, we can use tone and expression to convey sincerity (or not, I suppose). Consumers expect the same sincere dialogue on social media networks and business blogs.
As an organization, when you chose to engage in social networks or business blogs you must understand and commit to the human dialogue (good and bad) that needs to happen with your audience.
Here's a great example of how one of our clients, Carhartt, is staying a head of the chatter by facilitating online dialogue. They actually have multiple blogs set up specifically for people to submit questions and stories. To make it easy, they use Compendim's Web-to-Post feature to automatically turn the comments generated in a form into a blog post.
As your organization "goes social", make sure you take some time to think about who's at the receiving end... human beings. If you talk to and engage with them as such, you're social strategy will be much, much more sincere.








Comments for Human Beings Expect Dialogue Offline... and Online.
Leave a comment