“If Cluetrain was the shot heard round the world, then this is certainly its echo.”
Those words open the post originally published on The Social Customer in October 2004 by Christopher Carfi. (I uncovered the post while digging through my archive of notes this week – a “socialogical” dig, so to speak.)
The Social Customer Manifesto
- I want to have a say.
- I don’t want to do business with idiots.
- I want to know when something is wrong, and what you’re going to do to fix it.
- I want to help shape things that I’ll find useful.
- I want to connect with others who are working on similar problems.
- I don’t want to be called by another salesperson. Ever. (Unless they have something useful. Then I want it yesterday.)
- I want to buy things on my schedule, not yours. I don’t care if it’s the end of your quarter.
- I want to know your selling process.
- I want to tell you when you’re screwing up. Conversely, I’m happy to tell you the things that you are doing well. I may even tell you what your competitors are doing.
- I want to do business with companies that act in a transparent and ethical manner.
- I want to know what’s next. We’re in partnership…where should we go?
Customers simply aren’t taking it anymore. And if an organization is not opening up to them, and not interacting with them, and not meeting their needs, those customers are going to make sure the organization knows about it. Maybe not today, but soon…and that’s if the organization is lucky. More likely, those same customers will just go away and never come back.
We are eleven years down the road.
Eleven years have passed since Cluetrain first appeared online. Six years since the echo. There is no doubt business is no longer business as usual.
How about your business? Are you saying, “We are going to do things the way we have always done them,” and trying to succeed with emerging technologies?
In my best Dr. Phil voice, “How’s that working for you?“
