As a customer, do people know how many business relationships they have? Listing them can be an interesting exercise: the phone company; the supermarket; the doctor; the dentist; the garage; the bank; the gym; the place they buy lunch – almost everybody can rack up at least 20 of these relationships without thinking much about it, and over 50 is common, says Lee Hartman, CEO of Connecto.
Now consider the fact that many of those businesses have multiple digital touch points – e-mail, SMS, Web sites, Twitter, blogs, Facebook, Pinterest and so on. Multiply 50 business relationships by five touch points and that’s 250 message points competing for attention. In the resulting clutter and noise, everybody loses – not just the business, but customers too.
Customers lose out because they do, in fact, want to hear from those they do business with. That’s why they connect on social media and sign up for newsletters. But they’re not getting the right information, at the right time, in the right context. The channels businesses currently use to communicate are flawed.
The problem is one of context. For most, e-mail is mostly about work – or it should be. All too often it’s about prioritisation and productivity. In that context, where people are just trying to clear the decks so they can get some work done, that carefully crafted marketing newsletter ticks by without being opened.
What about social media? Again, the context is wrong. A study by the IBM Institute for Business Analysis found that only 23% of users have used social media to interact with brands – and most cite discounts and specials as the reason for that interaction. As consumers they don’t want insurance companies to entertain them and be friends.
What both businesses and their customers need is a single, dedicated space where they can communicate and engage. As a customer, it benefits a user to have one place where they can store all their account details, access up to date phone numbers, send messages and check special offers – when and where it suits them.
Businesses benefit too from a single connection space: they get customers who are willing to hear from them, information they can use to design personalised special offers and the comfort of knowing their customers will call them when the time comes – not search Google and find their competitors instead.
As the mobile phone is no doubt the future of customer engagement, mobile apps seem like the best platform for this dedicated connection space. A phone is always with the customer, and they may have no objection in principle to companies using it to communicate.
That doesn’t mean a mobile app for every company – who wants to download and manage 50 new apps? What is needed is one app to manage all company-client communication.
People already have Facebook for managing personal relationships and LinkedIn for professional networks – Hartman wants Connecto to be the app that links businesses and their customers in the same way.
Customers lose out because they do, in fact, want to hear from those they do business with. That’s why they connect on social media and sign up for newsletters. But they’re not getting the right information, at the right time, in the right context. The channels businesses currently use to communicate are flawed.
The problem is one of context. For most, e-mail is mostly about work – or it should be. All too often it’s about prioritisation and productivity. In that context, where people are just trying to clear the decks so they can get some work done, that carefully crafted marketing newsletter ticks by without being opened.
What about social media? Again, the context is wrong. A study by the IBM Institute for Business Analysis found that only 23% of users have used social media to interact with brands – and most cite discounts and specials as the reason for that interaction. As consumers they don’t want insurance companies to entertain them and be friends.
What both businesses and their customers need is a single, dedicated space where they can communicate and engage. As a customer, it benefits a user to have one place where they can store all their account details, access up to date phone numbers, send messages and check special offers – when and where it suits them.
Businesses benefit too from a single connection space: they get customers who are willing to hear from them, information they can use to design personalised special offers and the comfort of knowing their customers will call them when the time comes – not search Google and find their competitors instead.
As the mobile phone is no doubt the future of customer engagement, mobile apps seem like the best platform for this dedicated connection space. A phone is always with the customer, and they may have no objection in principle to companies using it to communicate.
That doesn’t mean a mobile app for every company – who wants to download and manage 50 new apps? What is needed is one app to manage all company-client communication.
People already have Facebook for managing personal relationships and LinkedIn for professional networks – Hartman wants Connecto to be the app that links businesses and their customers in the same way.
