As some organisations careen recklessly into the digital future and others are left behind by remaining steeped in the ways of old, thought leaders are coming to realise there is an important middle ground. Most often that's where your customers and clients want you to be, the place where digital and analogue converge - the 'digilogue'. In the digilogue it is understood that digital satisfies a customer's mind while analogue soothes the heart.
Knowing where this place is demands:
- an understanding of the parts of your business that simply cannot be allowed to go digital
- an intimate knowledge of the customer experience, of the touch points that thrill them, that speak to their hearts and not their heads
- an understanding of how your organisation tells its story to its public
- a recognition of the artisanal skill, or customer service, that keeps customers coming back
Consider Apple, then imagine the brand without its experiential retail outlets. Its entire business could be carried out online, and much of it is. But the Apple stores create a vital relationship tool that allows brand supporters to touch, feel and live the brand.
Or consider the feeling of ringing a customer service line only to be sent through a number of computer-operated, voice recognition menus, compared to the feeling of being immediately answered by a competent human being.
Dive into digital 100 per cent and you'll struggle. Stay off the digital wave and you'll disappoint your customers. We expect you to make great coffee at your café, but we also expect an app to tell us how to get there. Every business must know where its middle ground lies, where the old-school artisan meets the efficiency and power of the future. This customised presentation will help your people find where that place is.
Check Yourself
- What do your customers and clients love about your business? What really touches their hearts and makes them come back again and again?
- What comes between your business and its customers, from physical boundaries to processes they must go through before they utilise your services? How can these be simplified digitally?
- What is the story of your business and how do you tell it? How did your business begin? Who are the characters in its past? What does it do well and how did it earn its stripes?
- How often does your business slow down and re-connect with itself, just as a person does when they're on holiday?
What's In It For Me - what will you learn?
Here's what you'll take back to the office:
- How to identify the parts of your business that must remain untouched by digital, and the parts that should be digitised
- How to think globally (digital) and act locally (analogue)
- How to provide unparalleled analogue experiences, the types that kick-start word-of-mouth and social media marketing
- How you can best develop your brand by telling your company's story in a way that connects with our digital minds and analogue hearts, and why this is increasingly vital