What do your customers prefer to interact with - people or technology? High tech or high touch? The answer is usually... it depends.

I like how Esurance is tackling this head on, with their trademarked tag line: Technology when you want it. People when you don't. Their value proposition is twofold: 1) tons of discounts, and 2) two ways to get 'em. Since insurance discounts alone is not a market differentiator, they position themselves via the "technology or people" ways to work with them. Here's a link to their ads and campaign, created by Duncan/Channon. 

When should you provide technology as your customer service solution and when should you provide real people? From the customer perspective, it depends how potentially complex or emotional the issue is. For example, if you need to change travel reservations due to a death in family, or deal with medical devices for a sick patient or family member, you want a live customer service rep to help you. Assuming of course your level of  bureaucracy allows your reps to be effective. In contrast, getting a simple update on a due date or balance inquiry, technology will do. 

But most important is how tuned you are into what customers want and need in customer service. Because with both a technology-based customer interface as well as a live human interface, the goal is to understand and solve the customer's problem.

The more customer intimacy, the better the customer service, the happier the customer.

20,000,000 babies are born prematurely every year and 4 million die. That's 450 every hour. 1 every 8 seconds. So begins the pitch from a relatively new nonprofit called Embrace. Their focus is creating affordable technologies for low income communities in the developing world that improve health and save lives. Their mission in their words:

Designed by students in a Stanford class called Entreprenurial Design for Extreme Affordability, the infant warmer you see above costs less than 1% of traditional incubators. And it works where there's no electricity. Here's how it works:

Simplicity is a key factor in successfully designing technology-centric products for poor communities. Which begs the questions: Doesn't simplicity also sell in the U.S. and other "developed" countries? So is there a market for this infant warmer in our hospitals for less sick babies, or for home use which would allow families to transition from hospital to home sooner? Same story for GE's handheld electrocardiogram device (designed for emerging markets) that I blogged about in a prior post. 

From the work we've been doing over the years with medical device companies and their customers, the answer is a resounding YES.

And BTW, Embrace has many partners, but none from the med device industry. I smell opportunity!

Have you noticed how more and more technology is "hands-on?" Touch screens are everywhere- on phones, ATMS, airport terminals- all kinds of computers. When Apple brought out the iPad, I didn't think it met a felt need. But I was only thinking about what what it did, not how it did it. I believe the iPad has caught fire because, like its smaller predecessor (the iTouch), how it works is with pointing, touching, swiping - natural intuitive human movements.

The more that interfacing with products and services uses our natural human gestures, movements, and patterns, the better they will sell. Why: They just make sense to us as human beings.

Let's apply this thinking to more complex things- like medical devices and electronic medical records EMRs. The more complex the issue or problem is, the more intuitively simple the interface with the solution needs to be. In our customer research on a wide range of medical products and health issues, we hear it all the time. Keep it simple. And nothing keeps it simpler than products designed to have people to do what they naturally do anyway. 

Scott Adams (Dilbert's creator) funnily (is that a word??) depicts the distractability that comes with the territory of today's online resources. Check it out.

Do we really get more done with today's technology? As my friend and colleague, the late great Bob Topor said, "Never mistake activity for progress."

E-mail, social media, and the participation enabled by web 2.0 technologies present numerous marketing opportunities for engagement. Let's not overlook the counter-opportunities - that is, online tools to reduce distraction and keep people focused. The ROI pitch? Productivity and progress.

The greatest human lessons are found in the power of presence, says Rabbi David Wolpe of Temple Sinai in LA.

In this case, he's referring to being humanly "present" with other people vs. being technologically present. I think the idea of real presence applies to effective marketing too. How does Facebook and Twitter and even blogging (like this!) affect our presence? In my opinion, these pervasive technologies are great for (re)connecting and sharing information. Which is important for effective marketing. But in no way do they replace being personally present with someone. Because there's something magical about real presence with another person that I believe technology will never supplant. Good marketers know that deep inside we will all want human connection.

When I was in college, I learned the mind-mapping technique as a visual way of taking notes and organizing ideas. The approach was simple: Write down a key idea, draw a circle around it, and use lines to connect it to other relevant key ideas. And we used an ancient technique called "handwriting" to do it! Here'a an example of a fancy hand-drawn health mind-map from Tony Buzan. 

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Next came software that made it "easier" (really?) to draw circles and lines, or at least better looking and more uniform mind maps. The key though was still identifying the concepts and deciding how they cluster and connect. You can probably senses my bias. Before embracing a new technology, I always ask myself - is there a low tech way to get the same results - like mapping concepts by hand.

Now Web 2.0 technology is shining the light on mapping not how we think concepts interrelate, but on how our tagging and clicking demonstrate relationships, like tag clouds for example. Ramping concept mapping up further is Slate's just announced News Dots: "An interactive map of how every story in the news is related, updated daily." 

Bottom line: As human beings, we naturally organize information in ways that saves us processing effort. We like when things cluster together around an idea, story, event, or person. Like good marketing, it's all about relationships. 

Paranormal Activity, a horror movie about a young couple's house haunted by a demonic presence, cost about $15,000 to produce, and brought in $7.9 million last weekend. Paramount Pictures worked with Eventful in San Diego to create a social media buzz, instead of more traditional movie marketing approaches. Eventful's "Demand It" lets us "demand" that performers, movies, or events we want to see come to our town. Enough demand can make it happen.

That's how Paramount decided which cities to show Paranormal Activity in - it was based on demand level generated through social media. Then when they got 1 million demands, they decided to roll out the movie nationwide. From their press release: “From the very beginning, we put this film in the hands of the fans and we trusted them to tell us where and when it should be seen. We couldn’t be more thrilled by their overwhelming support and we are happy to release the film in every town - big and small,” said Rob Moore, Vice Chairman of Paramount Pictures.

I see this as an incredible Web 2.0 resource. It gives a powerful voice to the public and enables companies to respond to what the market wants. And framing it as "Demand It" may lead people to feel more empowered than something like "Request It."

As we shouted and sang in the '60s, "Power to the People!" Who knew the many ways that the internet would deliver on that promise.

There's a new website business called Uplaya by Music Intelligence Solutions with "Hit Song Science" software that predicts what songs will be big hits, then helps with promotion and distribution. The company's CEO sees the algorythm that looks for common patterns of rhythm, harmony, chord progression, length and lyrics, as a way to democratize the music industry, a process he likens to an electronic American ldol (listen to today's NPR interview).

This reminds me of popular singer/songwriter named Michael Bolton who may be best known for singing well-known covers in the 1980s & 90s. Turns out most of his work is original and quite popular, but he was often criticized as a "formula" singer, without much originality. So too are some songwriters critical - or fearful - of an algorythm shaping artistry. It would eliminate innovation and narrow the range of creative possibilities they say. Should artists be driven by what their fans want? Or just sing, write, paint, or create what is in their hearts? My belief is there is a balance. By definition, significant innovation - whether for new products, services, or songs - is something that is hard to evaluate using existing mental templates.

I made the point this way in a Global Marketing seminar I taught last week: Imagine 30 years ago (for a few students, this would have been before they were born... hmm.), someone would have you shown you a small flat box that had a little TV screen and a typewriter built in. They explained to you that with no wires, this "thing" would let you write letters and use spreadsheets, instantly send notes to people anywhere in the world, and just as quickly tap into a worldwide encyclopedia, company directory and shopping network. Could you have even conceived of it? Sure, predictive software is great. And there will always be a place for unscripted creativity that breaks the bounds of what is now known and accepted as good.

One of my computer programs, Word or maybe Safari, just suddenly quit on me, and I got that cute little invitation to submit an error report. It looked something like this:

I have yet to submit one, despite numerous opportunities. Would some guy in a cramped cubicle in India read my error report? Or would a system-generated report be circulated to the error maven? Seems unlikely, that's all. Then I thought, I could be wrong... Maybe I'd get a response like this:

Dear Moshe,

On behalf of Microsoft, I am responding to the error report you submitted 12 minutes ago. I read it carefully and determined that in fact, unknown error #000000000623 did occur which forced MS Word to quit unexpectedly on you for the 54th time this month. And just as you were about to click on Save for your upcoming keynote speech at the White House. Bummer. But don't give up on us. We at Microsoft really care about you, so as a gesture of our appreciation, we will send you an e-certificate citing your toughness and fortitude as a veteran unknown error #000000000623 survivor. You can open it in MS Word, though it has been known to cause occasional system crashes. It is frame-able though.

Sincerely,

Ken

Unknown Error #000000000623 and #000000000624 Technical Specialist III

What a customer service opportunity and brand loyalty opportunity these error communications create!

The Chinese symbol for crisis is composed of two characters. One means danger. The other means opportunity (or some say "crucial point").

That's how I think about allowing cell phone use on airplanes. In a recent blog posting, the NY Times called it "The in-flight menace: Wireless chatter." Personally I agree.

However, from a marketing perspective, domestic airlines could seize the opportunity to differentiate by being the first to allow phones in flight, citing the success of several foreign airlines like Emirates that allow cell phones and other personal wireless devices for making phone calls. They would secure a loyal customer base, at least until it became an industry norm.

Or better, they could stand out - and avoid the danger of customer backlash - by proclaiming their opposition to using cel phones in the air, in line with numerous airline customer surveys. Then brand their action as a demonstration of customer intimacy. But the airlines should not just do nothing while waiting as their national union lobbies Congress for a ban on inflight calls.

I was on a Southwest airline flight earlier this year when they tested internet access, I thought it was great for e-mailing. But I found I could have a phone conversation too in the air via Skype. This I did not like.

Let airlines capitalize on the phone-free "escape" they provide. If not, then hey - offer cell phone and cell phone-free sections, like the old smoking/non-smoking sections. Let freedom ring (sort of)!