Sometimes, Turtles Just Ain’t Enough
Every Thursday evening, I come home from another productive day at iPerceptions and look forward to putting my feet up and watching an episode of one of my favorite shows, “The Office”. It should be noted that the British version will always hold a special place in my heart, but I think I can relate more closely with NBC’s American version of the show - could be some sort of cultural relativity issue I suppose. Disclaimer aside (hipsters have deemed that it’s cooler to prefer the British version of the show), last week’s episode got me thinking about our daily pledge here at iPerceptions.
The episode centered around Dunder-Mifflin’s (the fictitious paper company made famous by the show) upper management taking the company into a “younger, sleeker, more modern” reality by building a new, interactive website and equipping the sales team with Blackberries – essentially bringing the company from Web 0.0 to Web 2.0. Intimidated by what he sees as the cold, unfeeling future of technology and isolating nature of the internet, Michael Scott (manager of the quaint Scranton, Pennsylvania branch) rebels against these changes by making personal visits to past clients lost to some of the bigger paper companies, convinced that customer face time and attention to specific needs will win them back. While the clients appreciate and recognize Michael’s attempt at the personal touch, they make it clear that they also require an easy-to-use website to order paper online and cut costs. The personal attention along with the elaborate gift basket Michael brings along to win back their hearts isn’t going to cut it – even if the Turtles go a long way.
What Michael doesn’t realize is that his fear of this impersonal online world is ultimately unfounded – upper management can have the ease of a robust online space without losing touch with what their customers really want. That’s where our pledge comes in. iPerceptions and the iPSI are facilitating a new kind of direct relationship between the customer and the marketing department that has never really existed. We allow the voice of the customer to be heard all the way up the ranks, allowing for the customer to hold the power and be a real catalyst for change. Once upper management has their way and brings Dunder-Mifflin into the Web 2.0 world using customer-centric tools such as the iPSI, Michael Scott won’t need to resort to time-consuming personal visits – gift basket in hand - to lost customers, he’ll just need to listen to what they have to say.
