As predicted the Internet has shrunk the world. We Skype, email, tweet, blog and frolic in the cloud, doing business with people we will never meet in places we can’t pronounce. And that’s great. It encourages new ideas, builds bridges and generally leads to Kumbaya singing everywhere. So the whole local thing just doesn’t matter anymore, right? Wrong. It does matter. It really, really matters.
It matters because people don’t really care who they interact with online, as long as they see value. But they can’t abide any form of real or imaginary disrespect. Case in point: Influential new media company wants to have a webinar about something important. They send invites to the Chief Marketing Officers of the largest companies in the world. Then they cheap out and book a toll-free number that works only in the U.S.A. It gets better. On the day of the webinar, as participants are posting messages that the phone number isn’t working, the moderator is ignoring the messages. No apology. No “we’re working on it” no Skype alternative. Just silence.
Another sterling example: I was recently invited to complete an online survey for an international marketing organization. Good corporate citizen that I am, I spent 15 minutes answering questions about my budget, marketing mix and blood type. The second last question wanted my zip code for statistical purposes. Regretably, the form had been set up to accept only US zip codes and the alpha-numeric mystery that is a Canadian postal code was not valid. No zip. No submit. No survey.
So whatever shrinking the world may be doing in the Internet age, I think imposes an even greater requirement on the part of marketers to accommodate customers from places we don’t think we do business. We need to think about stuff like phone numbers that work from everywhere, forms that allow information in formats that we may not have seen before, online stores that calculate in multiple currencies (even if they charge in just one), documentation available in more than one language, call centre reps who speak something other than English.
Remember, taking over the world needs to happen one lonely little postal code at a time.
Here’s a thing to do: go survey your call centre agents about the languages they speak; you will likely find dozens of first, second and third languages available to support your customers and prospects. Heck, you might even find your next ethnic or geographic expansion target right there.
BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams,
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
Or follow me @bizmkter
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