It’s Good to See A Familiar Face
One of the ideas that gets thrown around in the social media world is that social media should be personal. Specifically, businesses using social media should be personal. There should be a human, with a human voice and human traits on the other side of the virtual line. There should be the same quirky interests, the same personal responses and the same unique feel that lets you know that you are communicating with more than a robot. As one blogger pointed out, there are a few narrow but distinct lines that distinguish between the mechanical and the human. A professional journal, as he writes, is professional edited and has the human part taken out. Minor grammatical mistakes, the use of colloquial language and some punctuation curiosities are glaringly missing (or excessive, as you’ll probably note in my own writing). That tone can come across on Twitter and Facebook too. People have some sort of Turing sense that helps them know when they’re talking to an AdBot and when there’s a pulse coming from the speaker. Hopefully the same test lets us see how we’re speaking to others. Maybe we could convince ourselves that we really are just robots…
This isn’t to say that coming across as a robot is a bad thing. Frankly, I could get “@Starbucks: half off drip coffee until noon” messages every day and wouldn’t be disappointed. It would, in fact, drive me and my money down the block to purchase that brilliantly bitter brew. Sometimes the robot isn’t a bad thing.
But.
Sometimes it is. I filled out a customer service survey for Starbucks this morning (Conseco Fieldhouse location). You occasionally get them when you purchase drinks there to help track how well each location is doing. As a confession of guilt, I go there a lot. The surveys are random, and I’ve happened to get quite a few due to my consistent visits. Each time I’ve filled out the survey (online) it asks me what my favorite part of that particular visit was. And, each time, I’ve had the same response: the baristas. When I get there, they know what I want and they’re always ready to make it. They always ask first though, because they know sometimes I change it up. Sometimes I want the regular blend instead of the bold. Sometimes I want the most delicious of drinks: the Pumpkin Spice Latté. And they know which of the food offerings I like and ask me if I want one. It’s usually a bagel, toasted with cream cheese. But they also know what to recommend to me, and when they have new offerings they do. When a colleague and I were sad about the lack of Portabella Piadini’s, they started getting them from another store. They couldn’t stock them like normal, so they went out of the way to serve us. They also know our names. They ask us questions and have us try new drinks they want to start selling.
And then I thought about it a little more. Starbucks is expensive. The economy is slow, I’m not making huge dollars and quite frankly life is expensive. But I go anyway. Part of it is wanting to keep going with my colleagues, definitely. But part of it is the experience there. The personal treatment we get is more than enough to keep driving me there instead of the Dunkin at the other corner. Dunkin is cheaper and has coupons all the time, but I won’t go there. It’s not personal. They don’t know me or care to know me. (and I don’t like their coffee at all…) So the personal can be a really good thing.
There’s a place for both worlds.
