Getting the audience involved, it’s a Must!

It’s easy to see that reaching an audience today with a specific message is very different than it was even 10 years ago. With the rise of the Internet and the dawn of the Digital Age, the way a company communicates a message has changed because the audience has changed. Now, companies are turning to this “audience” of people interacting and participating online to provide feedback for a product or service. So it’s no longer okay to just categorize these people as viewers, listeners or readers. It’s about participation!  In the book Groundswell, authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff discuss the rise of crowdsourcing as a valid method for companies to employ in today’s age. They site two main reasons why this kind of involvement by the audience (or customers) is effective.

• First, customers don’t take very long to tell you what they want! If they interact with a product, they can figure out what’s wrong and suggest how things can be fixed. And with practically everything online, it can be fast!
• Second, if you keep your customers in the loop, innovation happens more quickly, because it’s easier to make continual improvements.

Getting the customer involved is more time-efficient, inexpensive and effective because you’re asking the real people what they think! Let’s look at a real world example that’s listed in Groundswell. A bank in France called Credit Mutuel began an advertising campaign in 2007 centered around the customer. They directed their customers to a website where they could give feedback to the bank. Once there, the customers participated by answering the question “If I were a banker…” They were given two options: make a suggestion or view other people’s suggestions. Once a week, the bank would randomly select one person who made a suggestion and give them a free iPod. And it worked! In came tens of thousands of suggestions, and some of them were very good. One person said, “Create a fictitious account that children could manage on the Internet, so that children get used to managing a bank account.” Another said, “I would explain the fees better to my customers.” This bank hit the jackpot. They got on the level of the customer to get answers! They got the customers involved in the process of change, and because of that, the customers felt more a part of that process, and were more likely to participate. And the bank has made their customers feel like they’re listening, they were willing to take suggestions this time, they’ve shown their customers that this pattern will continue.

This is embracing the groundswell. This is true interactivity. A company gets on the level of its customers and effects true change.