Doing Business…

Think High-Touch Not High-Tech

If you ever listen to Frank Sinatra, it sounds as if he’s singing directly to you. That was Sinatra’s greatest skill. Connect with people on a human level — touch them, or reach them in a meaningful and personal way — and you have a loyal customer.

That’s the promise of the Web.

In today’s marketplace, there’s a reinvention going on with customers: they are more empowered. Customers know pricing, terms, and margins — it’s all out there in the ‘public domain’.

Technology defines what’s possible, but that’s all it does.

Companies that invested heavily in professional polished websites that failed to engage online with their customers, learned the hard way.

The old rules still apply. Businesses are based on relationships — with customers, employees, suppliers, and vendors. Online and off, those relationships need cultivation and nurturing.

The challenge for business is to create an online experience that builds a relationship with the customer by looking at how they want to interact with you and then create a customer-service model that delivers on the promise.

The dotcom era is well and truly behind us. Business on the Web is finally getting started.

Companies have to ask themselves, who are my customers, what do they value, and how do I give it to them? These questions, not eyeballs, sustain real business on the Web.