Yesterday, I had the honor to meet Seth Godin. After a short introduction, Stijn Vercamer told Seth about my book. An interesting and challenging conversation started.
Seth was wondering if the idea of a ongoing dialogue between brands and consumers was feasible. What if your brand receives thousands of messages per day. One of my suggestions was to outsource some of your conversations and questions about your brand to your brand fans and advocates. Stijn added that brands have the right to not-respond to certain questions of consumers (especially if tone of voice is lousy or very emotional).
At a certain point the discussion came to the case of Comcast, where Frank Eliason is responsible for the client dialogue. Seth mentioned that Frank used to answer all Twitter and Facebook messages by himself but today he is working with a team of 11 people who are joining the conversation. Seth’s question was: how far are companies willing to go in order to keep the dialogue up & running. Once it replaces a call center or at least part of a call center, it becomes interesting again for companies to invest in the relationship. At that point of the discussion, Seth had to leave, I’m wondering where it would have taken us if we could have some more time to chat.
What do you think? Anyone with any ideas on the implementation consequences of joining the conversation?
P.S. Thanks @Pietel for the picture
