Back to Conversational Marketing

Before the age of mass communications, business was conducted face-to-face, often ending with a simple handshake. Marketing, on the other hand, is mostly done through a series of processes in which buyers and sellers build credibility through a lot of conversations, sometimes for years. In other words, business is conversation. With the advent of radio and television, conversations with customers were replaced by a series of monologues and messages broadcast to different target groups, which were not targeted to every customer.

Today, technological developments have made it possible to engage in a "message and reply" style of interaction on a large-scale basis, allowing businesses and customers to talk again. Using call centers and direct mail (print and electronic), businesses can talk to customers and get to know them individually.

What's more, technology is helping businesses leverage the knowledge gained during the interaction to enable future one-on-one encounters. Consumers always associate past experiences with consumption behaviors, but companies cannot. For example, how long does it take for a business to sell to customers who already have a credit card?

The quality of a business-customer dialogue is not determined by the ability to have a discussion (eg, through a call center) or a conversation (eg, in a general direct marketing campaign), but by the integration of all aspects of customer contact , and the ability to use the acquired knowledge to set the direction of future communication in advance. For companies, conversations are a relational mechanism - which means shifting core marketing processes from targeted marketing in the age of mass communication to conversational marketing.

Some businesses are already leading the way in conversational marketing, such as Harrah's Casino, which uses loyalty cards with different options to maintain conversations with gamblers, uses data analysis to determine how often gamblers play, and its own service to each individual customer value.

The Inter-Continental Hotels and Resorts company records useful information from their employees' interactions with customers and uses this knowledge to improve the company's customer service. For example, a customer who travels with his daughter will always find a plate of gingerbread that his daughter likes to eat as soon as they arrive in the room, no matter which InterContinental Hotel they stay at.

The Nature of Conversation

Many businesses are ill-prepared for the changes brought about by Conversational Marketing, and they are faced with three key topics:

In order to support true customer conversations, there must be What conversations and interactions take place?

What dialogue style should a company use to meet customer needs while maintaining cost-effective technology?

In order for the conversation to flow, who must participate in the conversation with the customer, both inside and outside the company, and how?

In essence, these are the same questions that people have when they want to be good conversationalists, and companies can improve their conversations as linguists interpret them.

Valuable dialogue requires many seemingly pointless gags, and scholars agree that such tentative jokes are critical to discovering common ground and establishing the basis for a more in-depth dialogue. discuss. The French have long known that the best time to discuss tough questions is near the end of dinner, as they say, "between pears and cheese."

In such a business arrangement, it is necessary to develop the ability and patience to talk to customers about things that may not be related to promoting the product, and to do it ostensibly naturally. It means engaging customers in the sales process in their own way and when — where they can experience products and services, consider options, and decide on preferences.

In the case of General Motors, the company recently announced that it was developing a low-energy radar system that would sound an alarm in the back seat if a child was left alone in a car -- even though the device was available before 2004. Not yet on the market. Auto companies were previously reluctant to disclose similar projects in development, but now they use open dialogue as a way to get feedback and respond to customer concerns in the sales cycle. According to Lawrence D. Burns, GM's vice president of research and development and planning, "Let customers know early on what's possible, and we have an opportunity to understand sooner what might be the best solution. ".

Home Depot trains employees to maintain a dialogue with customers to stay informed about customer program requirements -- not just closing deals, and, to complement sales, the company offers customers free repair classes. Home Depot has been increasing the amount of time employees spend face-to-face with customers of late, with tasks like tally being scheduled outside of business hours, and a call center designed to help customers answer calls outside the sales floor.

Appropriate Style

The key to the success of these examples is sharing resources across the traditional marketing landscape. Sales, product development and marketing, especially promotional activities, are all centered on driving conversations and driving engagement with customers across the board.

Human dialogue ultimately involves overcoming an inherent contradiction: the need for human connection, yet independence and privacy. Lonely people are unhappy, and the more needs and desires collide between people, the more their independence and privacy are at risk.

Successful conversationalists are always good at dancing. They adapt their conversational style to the way others like it. One of the main reasons for not being speculative is that the style doesn't fit.

Likewise, businesses must adopt appropriate conversational styles to maintain a harmonious relationship with their customers. As is often discussed, companies should show concern to customers, such as asking questions and answering. But if the cashier asks the customer's phone number every day, it will be annoying to the customer, and in this case, the customer is more concerned about privacy.

Based on patterns derived from interpersonal communication research, a set of conversational styles derived from two key elements can be identified. The amount of information a business receives from customers indicates familiarity with the customer relationship. Likewise, a business proactively publishes information about itself—from its commitment to protecting the environment to saving internal production costs—indicating the level of intimacy it wants to build with its customers.

Linguists claim that the habitual use of a fixed style in a diverse society is a cure for conversational failure because good communication is reciprocal. Many customers recognize that having information is turning into a power, they hate too much free information, they feel their appetites have been inappropriately whetted, they feel drawn into a relationship that exceeds what they want . Therefore, when the dialogue style goes to the extreme, there will almost certainly be mistakes in misalignment, it will not achieve the intended purpose, and even being too open is risky. The Nike iD, a web-based product that lets customers order shoes online and have their favorite words printed on them, poses a risk for the company: Customers could ask for information that might embarrass Nike . If so, a customer demanded that a political statement against the company be printed on the shoe, and Nike found itself embarrassedly engulfed in an otherwise avoidable national debate.

The Power of Feedback

How can a business choose and adopt an appropriate dialogue style? One is to use the amount of information disclosed by oneself to align with the degree of customer involvement in the product, and the other is to make the amount of customer feedback consistent with the company's customized product service or marketing strategy. Each method relies on certain core technologies and marketing techniques, and each method has advantages over the other in terms of product and service categories for customers. In order to best support the company's conversational style with customers, it's important to choose the right technology.

For example, while technology has made it more economical for companies to get feedback, not every company can benefit greatly from that feedback. Asking for more feedback when products and services aren't profitable means making promises that may not be sustainable.

For example, customizing toothbrushes for each customer is possible, but may not be cost-effective. Toothbrush makers gain just as much from conducting a statistically significant sample analysis as they do from testing expensive techniques and learning about each customer's individual preferences. The use of this type of technology can have some undesirable consequences because it inappropriately raises customer expectations, obtains customer preferences, but fails to satisfy them.

Likewise, customer engagement at the time of purchase will have a significant impact on customers' desire to talk. Engagement is often a function of price, complexity, and affinity, and now customer engagement with many products and services is low, and companies invest heavily without engaging customers in conversations. This is especially true in the internet age, when many people thought that online shoppers would frequent websites where they chatted about pet food, but that's not the case.

Credit card bank Capital One, on the other hand, uses sophisticated technology to predict the nature of customer calls, calculate how customers will respond to new products and services, and then track calls accordingly. The latest development is that some companies predict that customers will be interested in certain products and then launch those products or services before others.

Maintaining a proper conversation style is difficult because it requires long-term consistency. Among the myriad of independent marketing groups, each tasked with building a connection with the customer, continuity is hard to build and even more difficult to maintain unless it is widely recognized and driven by leadership at the level of the brand or CMO. can be established.

Education of employees

Successful conversational marketers see value in having one-on-one conversations with customers, but they also recognize that all these product discussions are really multi-party conversations—participants Numerous, complex sequences, intertwined dialogues and monologues. Customers have discussions with friends, salespeople, and trusted advisors before they actually buy, and their preferences are often dictated by others. Therefore, effective marketing conversations cannot ignore the people who influence the buyer's decision while focusing on the buyer. Marketing textbooks describe these consultants, the media, and "gatekeepers"—those who keep marketers out of customers.

Also don't forget your competitors, who are also trying to have a conversation with your customers, and discussing your product in an open and unrestricted manner in front of your competitors is risky.

Lexus took that risk with its new IS300 sports sedan. Whereas most automakers simply invite potential customers to dealerships for a test drive, Lexus has set up test tracks in major cities, bringing in potential buyers and members of the automotive media to see the IS300 versus two leading rivals Perform a direct impact performance. By bringing a competitor into the conversation, Lexus does take a risk because it's a comparison, but the risk is worth it, expressing the confidence and openness necessary to win sales in a multi-party conversation.

Partners are also often forgotten, and the best marketers rely partly on sharing information with their partners in the conversation, but more on their participation, making them feel completely at ease. For example, Safelite, a glass replacement company, works fully with Liberty Mutual insurance company. When customers call Liberty Mutual to claim auto glass, Safelite will answer the call.

Finally, a company's closest business partners are its employees, and employees' performance in conversations is crucial. An employee's misdirection of customers may become evening news. Companies must educate employees to act in conversational marketing. Take care of your role.

The complexity of managing a multi-party conversation—the number of participants, risk to sales and branding, difficulty in calculating return on investment—makes it an important task to pay close attention to.

Good customer conversations pay off, and they allow businesses to offer better recommendations to customers, which can lead to increased sales—whether through display in sample rooms, stacking in supermarket aisles, or recommendations online, they can also Improve the ability of enterprises to innovate products and services.

Wrong conversations can cost a business a lot, and if the knowledge gained from previous interactions with customers cannot be acquired and applied, businesses can fall prey to inaccurate information --- wrong customer information, such as addresses, etc. , will make customers lose trust in the company. Irrelevant topics, such as trying to talk about sub-optimal travel locations, can make customers feel strayed and lose respect for the company. Finally, inconsistencies in the foreword can also ruin a company's intimacy with its customers.

However, staying close to customers also comes with certain risks. In any conversation, we risk being seen as annoying, talkative, and clumsy, and while businesses can mitigate these risks by focusing on conversational style, the complexity and long-term nature of true conversational marketing creates The situation is not always well controlled. Businesses must accept the fact that mistakes are always inevitable and should sincerely apologize. Taking risks is a must, and with good control, you enter a world of very engaging and lucrative conversations.

About the author: The original text was excerpted with permission from the 2002 first issue of Accenture's publication Outlook. Accenture Registered Copyright 2002. Translated by Deng Jiyi.

Brian Johnson leads Accenture's marketing strategy. He is also a trustee of the Marketing Association and a visiting professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Paul Nunes is a senior fellow at Accenture's Strategic Change Institute and an associate partner at Strategy and Business Architecture Services.