Talk To Me Not At Me
There is a sweeping trend in brands across the world now where consumers and clients are asking for authenticity. We are sick of talking to machines. We are sick or jargon and cliches, we just want someone to talk to us. You can always tell when someone doesn't know what they are talking about by the endless array of cliches that come down the telephone when someone is talking to you about business. "We are trying to segment our core target demographic with multi-disciplinary platforms that engage the consumer to provide an end to end solution to enhance the experience and lift the margins in our category which in turn will hit our PNL." This sort of jargon puts you to sleep and you know darn well that they have no idea what they are talking about and that they are probably straight out of uni or have read the latest marketing 101 handbook. "We apologise for the delay in this flight,
we will try to make up as much time as we can and we appreciate your patience." Patience, what choice have I got? I hear this every time I get on a Qantas flight. I sit there and have to suck it up. If I say anything, you get thrown off the flight. Patience. We are running out of it, but what choices do we have. "Your call is important to us, you have been placed in the queue, we will be with you shortly." If I was that important you would be taking my call and I would be speaking to somebody in my own country about my issue. All this is leading to brands and companies that are having no conversation at all with their consumers. The leading brands don't do this, the leading companies don't do this and the best leaders don't do this. The best company directors and CEO's I've met, talk it as they see it and talk with me and not at me. The best brands that do engage in a real conversation
with their customers talk with them, not at them and solve their problems without the jargon and fluffing and smoke screens that just end up frustrating us. When you're talking with people, save the jargon, tell it as it is, keep it simple, save words and trust me, you will solve the age old problem that still comes up in every team meeting which is, how do we solve our communications issues?
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