Why do I get the feeling that the marketers I deal with wear
blindfolds, like kids playing pin the tail on the donkey?
The letter I got from my Volvo dealer last week says it all. His database wanted to be sure
everything was going swimmingly with the wagon I bought a few years ago. But his database (who I’ve never met)
had no way of knowing that I haven’t owned that Volvo in years.
The same week someone from BMW sent a letter wishing me
happy birthday. The BMW is long gone,
too.
I wonder why these geniuses don’t ask some of the sales
people, who sit around waiting to ignore the next person who walks through the
showroom door, to man the phones.
Call customers. Have a
conversation. Build a relationship.
Last week’s mail also brought a ‘personalized’ letter from
an audiologist. Someone had sold
him a list of generation H (hearing aid) types. The letter promised benefits that would “greatly effect (sic) my life”. (When I typed the previous
sentence even my grammar checker caught the mistake),
These letters don’t build relationships. What’s more they really piss me off.
They make the senders look stupid, too. And the underlying premise, that they
can save money giving a human being’s job to a computer, is highly
questionable.
Computers have zero street smarts. They’re great at crunching numbers but not much good at
building relationships. After 50 years of intensive work, the
artificial intelligence community will tell you there’s still no computer that
can recognize you when you walk into the room – much less judge your mood by
your expression, tone of voice, etc. – signs that human beings decode very
well.
People are expensive, I suppose. But so are :30 TV spots, NASCAR sponsorships, Catalog mailings,
Customer Relationship Management applications and other methods designed to win
friends and influence people.
I am not a Luddite.
I’ve been using PC’s for 30
years and I am lost without my Mac. But I find people delegating tasks to computers that defy common sense.
Isn’t it curious that the best internet marketers are also
the ones who best understand how to involve people in the process of dealing
with customers. More about
them in my upcoming series “Heroes of the Internet”