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All aboard Cluetrain for customer conversations
Thursday July 02nd 2009. Posted: 09:13
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JP's chapter looks at how people build physical and logical walls between the enterprise and the customer
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BT is one of many organisations - large and small, in every corner of the world - that believes it should put customers at the heart of everything it does.
Today, the internet plays an increasingly important role in helping to achieve that and in improving customer experiences. Social networking sites such as Twitter allow people to share issues as they arise - and allow companies to respond and talk to customers in real time, via human conversations. When it was published a decade ago, The Cluetrain Manifesto set out to show how the internet was changing the way businesses worked. This month, a 10th anniversary edition comes out, with updated sections and new chapters - including one by JP Rangaswami, BT Design managing director and chairman of Ribbit. JP’s chapter looks at the way people build physical and logical walls between the enterprise and the customer - and how “Cluetrain thinking” has been adopted by successful companies eager to connect directly with their customers. Open platforms “We have to learn how to break down those barriers in order to build a more natural conversation between the customer and the company - less stilted and less artificial,” he said. JP - who was working at an investment bank in 1999 when the book was originally published - said he liked what he read. “I was very excited by their focus on the customer experience - and their belief that the future should be built on open platforms and open partnerships,” he said. “Before long I had met some of the authors - including Doc Searls. Last year, Doc got in touch and asked if I would consider writing a chapter on my experiences of adhering to Cluetrain-type values in business.” Doc - one of the four authors of the book and senior editor of the Linux Journal - said the time was right for an update. He is credited with originating the quote "markets are conversations" - which is also the first of the 95 theses on which the book is based that challenge outdated business thinking. “We were looking for real-world confirmation - or denial -of what we were talking about,” he said. Live web “The way we deal with each other in the everyday marketplace is via a set of behaviours we have learnt over thousands of years. The market on the web is only 10-15 years old and it is changing rapidly so it’s not surprising that we are having to develop new behaviours. “One of the most exciting things to have happened - and it’s only in the past three or four years - is the way the live web is branching off from the static web. “While there’ll always be a need for the static web - one of sites and locations such as Google, for example - there’s also a need for a live web which is happening in real time where people want answers now in a current, human way. “It started with blogs and it has moved on with the rise of social networking sites such as Twitter. They are changing the way markets operate more than anything that has happened since the internet began. “Twitter has come along with a way in which customers can manage their relationships with vendors on their terms.” The Cluetrain Manifesto says that, thanks to conversations taking place on websites and message boards and in e-mail and chat rooms, employees and customers alike have found voices that undermine the traditional command-and-control hierarchy that organises most corporate marketing groups. JP said: “We are now seeing a transference of power to the customer. At BT we talk about customer service, platforms and agility and there is a reason why we say customer service first - but we have to do that through platforms and agility.”
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