The Empathy Economy

I am reading The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk and it is really hitting home. How we treat customers is how we will be treated as a company in many cases. In an age where everyone needs content to post AND has an opinion, acting in a callous manner can have a significant impact. 

This morning, Seth Godin had a great post on his blog about empathy. In his summary he noted that you don't have to wear pantyhose to be a brand manager for a pantyhose company and that's important to note. What we do have to do is understand our customers and understand their journey - the process they go through from educating themselves to engaging with your brand to ordering and finally becoming an advocate.

In the past, we used to say that if no satisfy your customer, they will love you for life and maybe tell a few people. But do something bad, and they will complain to 13 people. We know today, that people are most influenced not by tv ads, direct mail pieces or web banners, but by their friends, those they trust. And now, their ability to tell those friends has become exponential through social media.

Understanding your customer, walking in their shoes, and guiding them through their conversion paths is the differentiate yourself in this new Empathy Economy.

Summit all up

These last two weeks have seen me participating in two "Summit" conferences. One for TE and our distributors and one with Adobe and their partners. In the first, I was a presenter and host and in the other, I was a customer and participant. I'll try to sum it all up (sorry).

The differences and similarities between the two were interesting. The biggest difference was in size. Adobe had over 4,000 people in attendance and it felt like that many in support roles. At the TE event, there were less than a few hundred with only a small crew of support staff. Both conferences had breakout sessions with product reviews and announcements. But the general sessions were different - TE had TE presenters while Adobe effectively used internal and external thought leaders including Arianna Huffington and Biz Stone.

The biggest difference was the role I played. While I did host my team for dinners and events, I also had the honor of sitting on a customer panel and taped a customer testimonial video. I also had a quote in a press release. There was a lot of buzz from the show on social media networks and in the news but I could not find much on TE that week. We are missing an opportunity. While the retun on investment should be a focus, we need to leverage the assets and resources we have to extend our reach and message better outside the summit.