It was a joyous and momentous weekend for the Isaacs family – my daughter Caroline graduated from High School and is moving on to the next chapter in her life. So what does this have to do with Customers and Customer Service? The theme here is communication channels. The best thing about achieving any major family milestone is that it is an excuse to PARTY! And how do you get the word out to your friends and family (“customers”)?



Well, that is an easy one–you need a multi-channel communications approach. My relatives and some of my friends like to get written invitations in the mail. My daughter’s friends think that written invitations are “old school” and a cool novelty item perhaps, but think that they are pretty much useless when it comes to acting as a reminder mechanism, or worst yet, there is no guarantee that the mail will appropriately deliver the invitation to the recipient. (NOTE: This is not a slam at the USPS, they are one of my favorite customers, my comment pertains to the fact that I helped address some of the envelopes.) 

Some of my daughter’s friends only communicate via email, chat and use Facebook. They had to be invited via AIM or a message sent to their Facebook Inbox. Some of Caroline’s friends liked text messaging, so Caroline texted the message to them along with the address to the party. And yes, some of the guests were invited via Twitter Direct Message. In most of these cases the party-goer was able to archive the message for use on the day of the party to remind themselves where to go and when to be there.

So what happens when you use the wrong communications channel to communicate to a party-goer (customer)? Disaster. Here’s an example: I thought I would be cool (read lazy) by sending the invitation messages to my friends on Facebook. Well, guess what? Some of my Facebook friends log into Facebook about twice a year, unbeknownst to me. When I ran into some of my Facebook friends on Sunday, guess what? Unhappy customers! The communication channel I used for these “customers” was the incorrect channel, and therefore, I offended a previously happy friend. But don’t worry, they logged into Facebook right after I told them that their invitation was on Facebook and they got to see all of my other friends and relatives having a great time at the party they missed.

So note to self: make sure you not only have all of communication channels available to you but ensure that you apply them appropriately to your target audience.