Relationships have changed at every level since the introduction of the internet, even more with the dawn of social media and smartphones. We are now in a time where everyone has a direct link to company customer service. Consumer relationships will never be what they once were before the internet.
Social media has proven to have a marked impact on how businesses advertise, serve customers, and build a client base. The internet has changed the way we do business forever and it will continue to change as technology evolves.
A Direct Line
Gone are the days of customer complaint cards, long phone calls with customer service are also going by the wayside. With a couple of quick clicks and 140 characters, you can communicate directly to a major company that messed up your dinner, your delivery, or your taxi service. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Yelp have provided us with a public forum to broadcast our disdain for poor service. Companies (some quicker than others) have swiftly built their customer service department around quality assurance through digital media. A one to one relationship between companies and clients is on its way back, harking to the days when you knew your butcher (or even had a butcher), you knew his wife, his kids knew your kids, and the community was much tighter knit. Your relationships are now your company’s backbone no matter what business you’re in.
Target Based Marketing
You no longer must depend on paper marketing anymore because of location-based digital marketing. Facebook and Google have given businesses a communication line straight to potential local client’s smartphones. Location-based audience targeting has provided businesses the ability to no longer blindly target audiences with blanket advertisements trying to appeal to everyone. Those ads you see that make you question whether your phone is listening to you are the result of carefully crafted data mining designed to target your interests and to bring relevant content and events directly to your phone.
This is just a little insight into how the internet has changed the game for businesses around the world. The effects of the internet are just starting to show how we do business on a global scale. We are an ever-evolving society adjusting daily to how we relate to one another from a business standpoint. Whether it’s a direct line to the brand that we buy all our clothes from or a company that taxis us, they care about your experience because they’ve seen the impact of utilizing the digital communication tools available to them.
We have carefully crafted our 3R guarantee of Relationships, Reliability, and Results to reflect our efforts to build upon our relationship with the world around us. The internet is a tool for communicating and building relationships and is yet to realize its full potential. To serve better, we are developing tools that will change the game on how we build and manage our relationships.