• by Tom Hespos , October 24, 2005

Ever written a letter to someone at a corporation with your feedback about a product? A substitute teacher at my high school used to hammer home the importance of knowing how to write a coherent business letter by telling a story about the time he wrote to Johnnie Walker to voice his dissatisfaction with their product, and received an entire case of Scotch whiskey for his trouble. How often do you hear those stories in the Internet age?

I've written many letters to corporations over the years, seeking to express my dissatisfaction or to give praise. Sometimes I received a response. More often, those letters went unanswered. I think it's just because many large corporations simply aren't prepared to offer one-on-one responses to people who have comments concerning their products or services.

In fact, many corporations I've encountered in my marketing travels have gone out of their way to actively discourage such dialogue. I've had interactive programs canceled because they generated too much in the way of customer comments. I've even had marketing folk tell me that they don't want dialogue with their customers, because their most profitable customer is the kind that hands over his monthly fee without taking advantage of the advanced features of the company's service.

In other words, there are clients out there that want to pay us to find people online who will fork over monthly fees without making the slightest bit of ruckus or comment about it. This begs the question--If I could find people who would willingly give me money on a regular basis, in exchange for little or nothing from me, why wouldn't I keep those relationships for myself? I could retire to a tropical island. But I digress...

It's painfully obvious that companies that don't want to converse with their customers cannot hope to preserve relationships with them. Whether a customer is dealing with the simplest red rubber ball or the most complex piece of automotive technology on the market, they'll sometimes have questions that can't be answered by a corporate Web site. A company cannot look at customer dialogue as a liability--something that will take away from profitability. It cannot aim to mass market to a niche audience of folks that will consistently pay for something over and over without asking a question or two. It cannot steer people toward customer service solutions that don't work ("Check the FAQ on our Web site") or use a "one size fits all" approach to customer inquiries (opening a call center to address the top 10 FAQs and little else).

What many marketing folks fail to realize is that every customer touchpoint is the starting point for a potential dialogue. If dialogue isn't a natural next step in the communications process, then something is wrong, not right.

I'd like to see many of these companies that have been traditionally hesitant to engage in conversation with their customers wake up and start an initiative to address consumer inquiries. This dialogue needs to be something that's embraced and not avoided. And if online marketing programs result in more opportunities to converse with customers, that's a good thing--not a problem.