Blogs Connect People to (Gasp) People

From Constantin Basturea’s weblog:

And this is the best part (no offense to marketing consultants!):

"Cultural change is lurking behind the fancy tag-lines of the increasing number of blog-marketing consultants - behind the hype and hiving."

The whole appeal and success of blogs comes from giving people a simple communication tool that allows them to connect to others as people. This brings inside organizations a factor that is subversive — because organizations are not designed to accomodate it. As we know, people (a.k.a. employees) are supposed to have professional (not human) relationships, both inside and outside the corporate walls. - http://blog.basturea.com/archives/2005/02/27/blogging-will-change-organizations-from-inside/

Comments

[kusum choppra]

in the "good ole days" if a customer had a complaint, he went and talked it over with the businessmen or manufacturer.
nowadays, entrepreneurs and corporate types do not like to converse or meet with customers. hence the emergence of a brand new management category "Customer Care Service". these employees are trained to stonewall the customers, rather blugeon them into silent acceptance of whatever the corporate dishes out to them.
practical experieince has shown that the customr care department is the firt to be outsourced to the anonymity of call centres whose employees are almsot totally ignorant of everything except a few standard unhelpful phrases and sentences the purpose of which is that the entire financial burden of the inefficiency of the company must be borne by the customer for having committed the fatal mistake of purchasing the company's wares.
it would be interesting to read this translated into corporate managementese.
kusum choppra

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Ah, yes. I just read a recent Alan Weiss newletter on the subject of non-listeners. To your point, he says:

"There's a new trick among customer service people on the phone these days.

If someone's upset (Why else would they call, to chat about the latest John Irving novel?) they say, "Sorry, I can't talk to you if you're going to take that tone," and they have no compunction about interrupting you to repeat robotic-like instructions. It's as though they should be outraged that you've called them. They are among the great non-listeners, despite the fact that they are paid precisely to, er, listen."

I'm not going to be talking about customer service here - nor do I typically on my regular blog.

But listening, yes, we will talk about listening a lot.