Engagement Requires Participation
Engagement. Relevance. Authenticity. Transparency. Transformation.
Which of these current goals for business’ websites are answered through server-based information?
In getting close to customers of numerous businesses, I’m once again struck by the apparent inability of business to understand and apply anything other than the lowest common denominator in their attempts to sell more to customers. That goes for B2B and B2G companies too! Don’t think you get off the hook just because your sales process involves committees and purchasing agents on the buyers’ side of the equation. Your differences from the hyper-competitive world of direct consumer sales are often used as excuses for not looking to the future of where your own customer will be. In so doing, you put yourself at risk for having any future with your customers, just the same as a B2C company.
But I digress. What I am talking about is the compunction in the business world to adopt tactical implementations without a strategic focus.
The terms laid out at the start of this post are touted by business as the new goals they need to adopt in relation to their customers to succeed or in the current economic condition – survive, in the future. Anyone following the massive growth of social networking combined with the attitude shift in green quickly understands why this is occurring.
In the 90’s, throughout all of our research, we heard concerns from consumer and business alike that the rise of the internet would create a majority population which never saw the natural light of day (you know, that thing called the sun). This new phenomenon of tethering yourself to an individualized, personalized machine was deemed to be the end of human community and interface.
In study after study we heard the common complaint among individuals that something as simple as gathering together to discuss pretty much anything would soon become a lost art. Technology, viral marketing and the entrepreneurial spirit once again have made that concern non-existent. Today, our children have more friends and acquaintances online through their Facebook accounts and we as professionals have more contacts through our LinkedIn accounts than we could have imagined.
IF you want, you can now take up your entire day in meaningful(?) discussions with people around the world you have never met and probably never will meet. What once was a concern can now become a distraction. With mobile technology of wireless access and iPhone capability, this can be done WHILE enjoying the great outdoors so even exposure to that big burning light in the sky is no longer a concern!
This mobility of access combined with fully-functioning interactive communication tools, what we call “arms-length relationship facilitation,” creates a new intersection of humans and technology that is catching the majority of businesses by surprise. This “arms-length relationship facilitation” requires a deeper understanding and relationship with people. In the case of business, with their customers – who happen to be peopleJ
Everything is connected
While we may not know or understand everything, make no mistake that “everything” is connected. I’m not just talking about people being connected to each other in ways we have never seen before. That’s just an outcome. I’m talking about our current ability to understand the root connections which comprise the causality between thoughts and actions, in the case of business, with their customer.
Whether we see it or not, there is a cause and effect for everything that occurs. The scientific theory of chaos is a prime example of what I am referring to.
In studying and evaluating the natural order in the universe, scientists continue to derive relationships that stretch the imagination of the human mind to the point of incredulousness (remember the butterfly effect postulation?). When I read their findings in the world of chaos theory, I believe it was misnamed. A far better title is “order theory.” If there is a relationship they have not found between certain events, give it a couple of years of study and they usually will find it.
This has direct bearing to what we are facing in the current business world. Humans react to technology by following a continually revising set of pattern rules. These “rules” can be deduced through direct and indirect feedback and business can, and should, respond accordingly in order to meet the rising expectations, needs and requirements of their consumptive audience. One current capsulation of this concept is the theories put forth in the book “The Wisdom of Crowds.” This book’s theories are constantly cited as support reference for much of the serious data crunching that is taking place for and within companies.
The whole reason real-time predictive analytics works, used most notably by Amazon and Google, is because we as humans react to patterns of thought, concept, design and function in predictable manners. Simply because you do not know the shape of the pattern a person is responding to does not mean the pattern is not causing the response. It simply means you have not uncovered the causal relationship yet.
In the old days, about ten years ago, a business executive could rightly say, “we don’t know why such-and-such is happening, we’re just happy our consumer is responding in the manner that best suits our business goals.” Today, in the online world (and eventually the entire digital world of mobile and televised content), not only is there no excuse for thinking this way, there’s no excuse for not actively, meaningfully, and positively impacting your customer contact.
Then, why a disconnect, why is business not acting on this?
One reason. Businesses fail to understand their key to future survival, let alone growth, will be their ability to gather information from the right audience, analyze it correctly and shape strategic direction from it. The implementation, or tactics, SHOULD be the no-brainer part of the process.
Today, this equation is operationally backwards in all but a few companies. Need proof? Ask your executive management what their strategic goals are for their website(s). After the long pause, the deer-in-the-headlight looks between members of executive staff reaching painful levels; someone will blurt out the obvious corporate statements. Then the argument, or discussion, starts.
Here’s the fact of the future: Online is nothing more than a training ground for the customers of the future! Websites are nothing more than an opportunity for business to embrace, learn and position for survival and growth with the customer of the future!
It really is that simple. Yet, the thought process given toward a company’s website relationship with the company’s target audience has barely crept past 1997 levels.
In discussions with another research agency considering entering the world of online surveying tools, executives were quizzing me regarding capabilities they could build into the tool. According to their intensive market reviews of current methods and tools available in the world today, they had found none that offered the combination needed by companies.
They were more than slightly surprised to learn we had developed seamlessly integrated capabilities critical to measuring the entirety of customer experience success® back in the 90’s (Refer to Equation and Metrician posts for background). Their client base, consisting largely of Fortune 500 companies are only now beginning to understand the need for tools, products and services developed in the 90’s for creating a better online customer experience.
Engaging in order to create engagement
So, the answer to the original question of: engagement, relevance, authenticity, transparency and transformation – which are answered through server-based information? None.
That’s right. None!
I know this flies in the face of current attempts by some to devise convoluted equations back-ending server-based information such as page views, time spent, bounce rates, etc, into engagement metrics for business. These attempts are not surprising. They are examples of the information industry trying to provide a least common denominator response to business needs.
In reality, back-ending engagement, relevance, etc, metrics from server-based information is like estimating how to positively influence a batter’s capabilities from a pitching machine’s output in baseball. For the non-sports reader, I apologize for using sports analogies but this one seems to fit the current environment.
Server-based data tells you what the servers or machines are doing. Just like you can know how many pitches a pitching machine throws, the speed of each pitch, the trajectory of each pitch and, in conjunction, you can even know how many balls the batter hit at each speed and trajectory.
Yet, can you draw up a strategic, predictive plan as to how successful that batter is from this information? Of course not, you need more mission critical information.
Analyzing pitching machine output and response tells you nothing about why the response from the batter occurred, analogous to your customer responding to your website or online interaction. If your business depends on understanding and responding to your customer and you are attempting to get at that with only server-based information, you’re estimating with the output part of the equation, not the input. Unfortunately, the output side is the least important half of the equation.
Add to this example, the variances and errors which occur using cookies, the primary driver of server-based information, and it is easily apparent that, while interesting and helpful guidance, server-based information has severe strategic bias and weakness.
I’m not saying this type of information does not have its use. If you are not at a minimum using Google’s Website Optimizer to understand how to better your site experience, even if you are a small company, please email me (john@arthurgroupinc.com). Yes, we will charge you to implement tests you should be doing. But to have such tools available and not use them to optimize tactical website components borders on fiduciary negligence. Analysis of server-based data, when activated within a testing environment such as Google’s Website Optimizer, is extremely powerful. In my humble opinion, this should be the minimum used by everyone who has a site.
To get at the strategically powerful factors of engagement, relevance, etc, requires a two-way conversation in order to be deduced as to a company’s performance relative to these factors. A simple example illustrates why server-based data alone is not sufficient. This from intranet work we did for a major firm.
The inherent assumptions made were; the more time spent with the application and the more pages being viewed; the more successful the application was in meeting the needs of the user. Simple key performance indicator (KPI) right?
Can handle that one in your sleep using basic server-based tools.
One problem – the entire assumption was incorrect. In truth, there were serious errors occurring at the end-user’s level which were NOT captured by any of the myriad of server-based data at which the company was looking. This resulted in increased time spent and increased page views, not because of positive engagement with the site, but rather because it was the only option for users completing the necessary actions required of them. The end-user hated the interaction, hated the application, and cursed the internal department handling the application.
Using our direct interaction protocol, where we actually “talked” to their users, we learned a number of things that totally changed the strategic direction of this intranet, its tactical implementation, and most importantly, its success among users. We found much more than the serious recurring error, it just happened to be the obvious showstopper for the success of this particular intranet.
We now are in a long-term relationship with this company continuously metering end-user’s response to the intranet on variables which provide a direct relation to the investment made in this technology. All because we discovered and proved you have to do more than infer pitching machine output to strategic results.
By the way, what we employed was not the current “voice of the customer” tactics offered through some research vendors. These approaches, while helpful, again do not go deep enough in providing information which is meaningful, statistically viable and ‘relevant’ to a business’ ROI equation.
Why is this so difficult?
Why are human relationships of any kind so difficult? This level of involvement requires getting directly involved with your customer or end-user; not an easy or common thing to do. It can get messy and be difficult to interpret unless you know what you are doing.
To the vast majority of business leaders, they do not do this well, they are awkward when doing it and they typically do not listen very well IF they do engage with their customer or end-user. It’s so much easier to infer how things are going through the route of the least common denominator – let the analysis of the machine data tell you all you need to do – seems to be today’s mantra.
Hmmm, haven’t we heard this story before? Oh yes, the auditors of a company’s financial records used to say the same thing about P&L and Balance Sheet information. Weren’t they the only thing needed to guide the company? Time and circumstances have mightily changed that perception.
So should business relegate themselves to being driven by less then optimum information? Absolutely not!
But at some point, you have to actually “communicate” with your customer or end-user to derive mission critical, meaningful, statistically reliable information for strategic decision-making. In order to know if your customers are engaged, YOU have to participate.
Perfecting the Customer Experience 
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