Content Planning - June 13th 2022
What have I been thinking/researching about?
As often, I think about experiences. It is core to my being. Not only self-reflection stuff like I am now sitting on the patio and the breeze is swirling around me. Sure, I think about that too but more often it’s experiences we make with others, with friends or with businesses.
I recently saw a tweet where someone had posted that they had called an airline and the automated system informed them “you(sic) will receive a callback between 1.5 and ELEVEN hours from now”. Someone’s response was “insanity”. I think a lot about customer experience in all its forms. I think about what it was like 25 years ago when calling a company for support you might wait 30, 45 or 50 minutes listening to bad wait music. Nowadays, automation is seen in action often providing directions or assisting me to find something I was looking for. On the web and in apps we often get the pop-up in the lower corner asking if I need any asisstance just type my request. First off, these really annoy me. I might have been 1 minute on your page and you, like the annoying salesperson in the clothing store already hassling me. If I bother to write what I am looking for usually it will reply with “i don’t know that but have forwarded your request to a human”. Now I wait, without the hold music, for some unspecified amount of time for the human to connect with me.
This reminds me of email. You send the mail to the Support address and you receive the required “thank you. we try to respond within 2 working days” response. Chat (or messaging) is like email. It is inherently asyncronous, meaning not in real time. Opposite that is a phone call where both parties are talking, more or less, in real time. However, chat has this tit-for-tat kind of exchange where questions and partial answers are given. Email is more a heavy lifting exercise with more detailed information, or perceived answers, are given. I have this picture in my mind of a 3-panel drawing where first email shows a person tossing their question over a wall and not seeing who is on the otherside. The second panel is the phone call which takes place in a jail and the prisoner is on the phone with their visitor. It is real time but still some distance exists. Finally, the chat experience is with two people on trains, different trains, with their phones in their hands and one preparing to disembark from the train unable to look at the screen at that moment and the other has switched to Tik-Toc to fill in the break.
These analogies might not be the best ones but I think about this. Because chat has this back and forth experience, the delays are built into the process. Specialist responds to the customers query with a question for more detail and the customer has become momentarily distracted. The other side is the customer responds and the specialist has 4 other chats running and needs time before getting back to the customer. Both of these experiences bring uncertainty. When you got the specialist on the phone you kinda hoped you had “the specialist” but you were focussed on the process as was the “specialist”. The web, apps, self service, chat, bots are all not going anywhere. They are here to stay. How do we make the experiences (for both sides) more plesant?
That’s what I think about.
This week’s plans:
This week I should be traveling to Zurich for a retirement party. I say “should” as the person involved may have contracted Covid. Update by Tuesday latest. My siblings have started a Strava challenge where we run/walk 100 miles over the next 8 weeks. That will see me less on the bike and more afoot but still to the same antics. After my 3-day bike tour I am happy to spend a few days not in the saddle.
This week’s content:
Tuesday is #WorkFromAnywhere day where I share my working while on the bike in the forrest. Wednesday is an audiogram from my most recent podcast which was such a delight to re-listen to. Thursday I have to complete some research for the locations I visited last week for #WfA as well as a pitch to a tech startup looking to spruce up their internet activities. I will share some insights to my followers as I progress.
Click the image to get my free Content Management Plan PDF
Thank you(s) to:
Captain, Pete, Sis, Hilke for the nice comments and support. Also to all the likes and shares across the platforms. It really helps me to spread the ideas.
Call to action:
If you are reading this and are not connected to me, please consider doing so. I mean, if you really don’t agree or like what I post then maybe it’s fine to ignore this request but even still. If you are subbed THANKS and think if there is someone you know who is starved for something to read. Thank you for being here.
/Andrew