Gauravonomics Blog

Welcome to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my combined feed in a feed reader or by e-mail and you'll never miss a single post. Thanks for visiting!

The Company-Customer Pact is a set of guidelines, or a “social contract’, proposed by the GetSatisfaction team for companies and customers to engage with each other on social media.

Almost all of us are both employees and customers, though we often forget that. By treating each other with respect, trust and transparency in both these roles, we can create constructive public dialogues to resolve customer experience issues and build meaningful long-term business relationships.

This pact is a call for shared responsibility between companies & customers — one that promises that both sides will hold up their end of the bargain to change the game. The document provides a way to opt into a set of shared values. It’s a balanced statement of responsibilities for companies and customers. (Lane Becker at GetSatisfaction)

It’s a little surprising that only 250 odd people have registered at the wiki to support the pact. Part of the reason is that such social contracts have almost an equal number of supporters and naysayers.

Quick Summary: Read about the five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being, and the three laws that govern how brands move between them.

In an earlier post, I had written that, like the Renaissance Chain of Being, there is also a Marketing Chain of Being.

In this post, I’ll explain the five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being, and the three laws that govern how brands move between them.

There are five levels in the Marketing Chain of Being –

1. Commodity Hell, in which brands basically focus on price and channel promotions to sell more (think groceries).
2. Differentiation, in which brands highlight product features and benefits to command a price premium (think automobiles).
3. Engagement, in which brands use service (in both its customer service and conversation meaning) to develop relationships with customers (think Dell).
4. Cultural Currency, in which brands become shared social objects and help customers define their individual and group identities (think Nike+iPod).
5. Meaning, in which brands become the tools that customers use for self-realization or restoration (think Google).

Quick Summary: Read about how engagement is only the middle level in the ‘Marketing Chain of Being’ and how social media and customer service are only tools to create engagement.

The topic of the week in the marketing and public relations blogosphere is whether customer service is the new marketing, so much so that there’s even an upcoming event on the topic.

Most of the posts on the topic have focused on how social media is causing customer service and public relations to merge into each other to form the fabric of a new marketing paradigm.

I’m a brand manager, not a PR practitioner, and I can’t but feel that the above statement is rather simplistic. Yes, customer service is important. Yes, word of mouth is important, and, by association, public relations is important. Yes, good (or bad) customer service is an important factor in creating favorable (or unfavorable) word of mouth. Yes, social media gives customers the tools to amplify word of mouth. Yes, yes, yes and yes. But that’s only part of the story. Let me tell you the real story by going back to my post on the Marketing Chain of Being.