|
I was out to dinner the other night with a very charming and
very bright twenty-something. He spent
much of our meal talking about the next generation of mobile devices, tossing
around terms like “asynchronous communication” and “information saturation”
with authority. He waxed poetic about
the generational divide surrounding personal communication methods.
As he’s barely 20 and is on his second tech start up, he
should know. I was happy for most of the evening to shut up and listen.
When we got to dessert he brought up a more personal subject
– the girl he had just met. And then he
talked with great passion about how he had spent most of the last week
obsessing over her text messages, trying to read into them.
“What about conveying nuance in this new world?” I asked
him.
It’s not that I don’t understand. I get the speed and the convenience of the
new forms of communication. I especially
get the comfort of a transcribed romantic exchange – the reassuring ability to
actually “see” what has been said and what has been left unsaid, to not let
your mind play crazy distorted reality games on your obsessed self. And still…
How did he plan to express what he really believed, what he
really felt?
He wasn’t sure. And so,
oh so gingerly, I pulled out a vintage ap – “The phone,” I suggested gently,
raising my eyebrows “might actually be a killer ap in this particular
situation.”
He looked slightly horrified and blurted, “What if she says something that totally
melts me and I can’t help but respond like a dork?”
Ahhh, but isn’t that the point? To ease his dismay I lapsed into marketing
analogies. We spend a lot of time
talking about the walls that come down in this digital age. We point to crowd sourcing and power shifts and transparency and a new kind of
conversation. There has never been a time when we could get
so absolutely close to our consumers on such a scale. When they could share with us in real time,
co-brand with us even, and we could know them, really know them. It seems inconceivable that this always-on,
two-way communication could do anything but encourage dialogue, and so we rarely
worry about new walls and new distance – the
ways we exert control when there is no control.
I call it the arms length marketing approach. It offers safety, but no real insight.
I’m reminded of recent conversations with a digital group
and an old-fashioned customer feedback group.
The digital group had all kinds of bells and whistles with which to
encourage “dialogue” and a PowerPoint full of hip and witty exchanges to
present to senior management. The consumer feedback group had little sound
bites from phone conversations and even some letters (honest!). The consumers didn’t seem all that witty or
hip in these exchanges, but they were truly passionate about the product. The funny thing is that the phone snippets
and the letters were compelling – honest, real, engaging and revealing – a goldmine
of information for the company although they weren’t wrapped up in the sexy
veneer of high tech baubles. And they
were, predictably, a tougher sell.
But ultimately, it’s not that phone calls are better or worse
than forum posts, that letters are better or worse than emails, that
conversations are better or worse than text messages or even that uncool is
better or worse than cool.
It depends.
The point is that the “Relationship” is the Holy Grail. There are many tools with which to further the
relationship but the strategic goal remains
– connecting in an honest, true way.
The problems usually come when furthering the relationship
demands honesty. When you have to hear
things you’re afraid to hear and risk things that make you feel exposed.
What if you get criticized online? What if you hear the things you’ve been
dreading you might hear? What if you
don’t hear the things you assume?
Will you strike a pose of cool, wired detachment? Post an email box but never call anyone
back?
When digital communication efforts inhibit real
communication, it doesn’t matter how two-way they are or how digital they are.
My young friend can only take the leap – keeping all the
channels open – and hope she’s waiting on the other side.
 |
Teri took the approach that texting or emailing is a "safety" because then you don't have to worry about mistakes. I think it is more a symptom of a go-go-go society we live in where we want faster faster faster.
Although, I do admit that it takes alot less guts to text someone than to call them for the first time. But, I look at it as the same as crossing your fingers you get a voicemail instead of someone's actual voice when you call...now I KNOW everyone does that or has thought about it at one time or another!