Business Cards are so Passé
Posted on : 06-14-2009 | By : Frank Eliason | In : Brands, Business, Social Media
Tags: Business Cards, Social CRM
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So this morning I received this email (I edited the email address out but remainder is the same):
From: Martine Paris
Sent: Sun Jun 14 02:03:30 2009
Subject: Plug on Content NOW from TWTRCON
I reviewed the post. It is about the recent TWTRCON event in San Francisco, which was excellent. During my panel discussion on Customer assistance on Twitter, Francine Hardaway chimed it with a fun story of how I helped her with trouble with her Apple router. The story with Francine is one that I will never forget and she will be a friend forever (well doesn’t that sound so teenage like). What basically occurred was our conversation shifted from social media to phone. This does happen at times because the phone can be useful to walk someone through many steps in fixing something. This same thing happens when someone needs assistance via email and more questions are necessary. After we were able to fix things I received a call on my cell and it was a hotel that found her phone. I was able to tweet francine on exactly where she could find her iPhone.
After that story, Dave McClure chimed in to say this story proves social media service is not scalable. This led to a little back and forth regarding the scalability. In my opinion he is incorrect, and we have proven that you can have a multiple people within social media, especially a place like Twitter. Today we have 10 people on Twitter and we are also in many other spaces on the internet. As I discuss in the post “The big question for @comcastcares is: How will they scale?” it is really about the tools that are being developed. My big question for those that do not believe it would scale, what would you recommend companies do, ignoring commentary has not worked?
I know many would respond to that saying that companies need to improve traditional service channels, and I wholeheartedly agree. This is a new time and Customers are more in control and companies must recognize that fact. At the same time I will tell you that there will be a large percentage that will still request help online first. In fact I would guess that most people are like me and google something before calling (in fact a Gartner study shows this is 50% and growing). I can also say that the majority of people that we assist never called, emailed or entered into chat. The other trouble is with many products, like internet, trouble can be with many other devices not controlled by the provider, such as router, computer, or even servers throughout the net that a company does not control. We have to find a way to converge support to help with all these areas, and the web offers perfect solutions for this (I will save this for another post because I am developing a project on this topic).
This brings me back to the purpose of this. In the post in the email it offers a synopsis of the talk and ends with the following statement about me:
“But for all that talk, Dave McClure was right, at the end of the presentation, Frank was not giving out any business cards. So much for accessibility.”
They are right, I did not bring business cards with me. I did respond to the email with the following message:
That is interesting that you felt not having business cards proved that social media efforts were not scalable, yet you were able to contact me via email, could also do the same via Twitter.
Maybe the world has not changed as much as I thought if we are still looking for, even expecting, business cards at an event about Twitter. I think the benefit to Twitter is how close it brings us all together. It make the world a much smaller place. I guess I was wrong about that. Actually the fact was I did not go in the office during the week leading up to the trip and did not want to go in just for business cards. So I do feel bad if anyone that wanted my business card did not get one, so I am offering it here for anyone.
My business card leads with my blog address and my Twitter account and then in the small print you can find my mobile phone number and fax.
Business cards are still great ways to network. Once I pass a card to someone I extend to them both my traditional contact information, as well as the wealth of information that I offer to them freely on my blogsite.
One thing I’ve done is add my Twitter to address to my email signature and my business card. In this way, business cards and social media events do mix better. Ever thought of doing that?
@chadhorenfeldt
This post is right on WRT business cards. The truly amazong things I encounter are two fold:
1-when I meet with new media folks and the first thing is the exchange of business cards.
And-
2-I only need business cards when I don’t have any on me. The moment I put some in my wallet or bag-they will sit for weeks.
I love my business card. I love getting them back. I think business cards are still needed and if you have them setup correctly then your doing it right. My cards have my name, position, both phone numbers, my address, web site and most importantly my twitter address.
I don’t think we’ll ever be beyond business cards is some way. They serve as a reminder and help us remember where we met people.
[...] [...]
Hard copy business cards? What are they? Haven’t even thought about them for years. Only reason I have read this post is because I was so amazed anyone should even consider commenting about their passing…
There will always be a place for traditional networking tools, as there is always going to be a lag in social media learning curve.
What has already changed I’d the realization that not every potential client or customer is a fit for your business model.
Frank, Good Morning
I have huge admiration for what you and your team has done at Comcast.
Your post hits home here, from a couple of angles actually, I have a constant argument with many colleagues within the apartment business that SM is NOT Scalable, “They” who are NOT practicing SM are the largest naysayers. We practice SM at Urbane Apartments, but are quickly criticized or diluted from our peers because we are a Boutique Local Apartment Operator, which we are. Their argument is it works for Urbane because you are small.
However, I say bunk to the whole scale issue. I get there are scalability issues, but the large companies like Comcast, Dell, Home Depot and on and on are figuring it out.
The other issue is business cards. If folks are working regularly on creating their own Long Tail, Google becomes your business card, who needs those crazy little cards anyway. Point is, folks are going to wake up on day and figure out that are years behind the curve and want to buy a “Block of Long Tail” from thier marketing studio, problem is, you can’ buy a Block of Long Tail, you build it one blog at a time, one comment, tweet and posting at a time.
[...] http://www.eliasonfamily.info/blog/?p=500 [...]
If I talk to dozens of people at an event, how do you propose that I remember the twitter name or even full name and company of every single one.
Business cards provide a token that someone can later use to recall the contact information of those they’ve met.
The failure here isn’t that people expected business cards, it’s that your cards don’t contain what you consider to be the most important information. How about you put your twitter ID on your cards?
Business cards are souvenirs and reminders- they contain contact information to follow up later. You are not your business card. Repeat after me…..
What’s great about Frank is that he is always himself, and he is always personal. He’s helped me tremendously, even when I had a weird router issue that was definitely not within the normal scope of things.
To say he isn’t scalable, well, is a fire department scalable? You need enough people to triage the fires and put them out, but I don’t need Frank, personally, every hour of every day. And I only contact him when any of the problems are not being handled through regular channels- then I will jump queue and get a hold of Frank when needed.
What people who argue the “Is it scalable?” thing are trying to say is that they don’t want to let just anybody get great service for their problems, and they can’t see a way to improve customer service across the board- they are willing to settle for good enough over excellence.
[...] the original post: Time to be Frank » Blog Archive » Business Cards are so Passé Categories: Hobbies Tags: all-together- – are-still – close-it-brings – even-expecting – [...]
They may be passe for a small percentage of people who put forth all of their contact information online and make it searchable. Chances are if all I have is someone’s @twittername from a deck I saw at a conference, the following will have to happen- I will have to follow them, and hope that they follow me back so I can DM them, rather than broadcast my request for more info to all of my followers. Then I get a whopping 140 characters to request their phone number or email address, all while trying to sound as professional as possible. Same could be said for Facebook to some extent.
While twitter, Facebook, and the whole range of social networks are great ways to stay in contact, for professional purposes I think when possible an exchange of business card with URLs to one’s preferred social networks are the way to go.
I still like biz cards. I see the card, remember the conversation, the person, the event and the moment. Sort of like a touchstone for each conversation.
My own cards have a list of all my social media profiles on them. No address, an email and my cell phone.
I’ve run into a few situations where people would rather just give me their Twitter ID rather than their business card or email address. That’s kind of presumptuous. Just because I just met you, why would you think I’d want to read your entire lifestream?
I’ve noticed that people who only want to give me their Twitter ID often are the people who have personal conversations on their public Twitter feed.
The reason most people don’t like business cards is that NO ONE EVER FOLLOWS UP.
Probably one in 25 business cards I hand out will someone actually follow up. Conversely, I follow up with every single business card I get and that’s how I’ve grown my social network. Key to success here is buying a business card scanner.
I should mention, I know the title is “Business Cards are so Passé” but I still believe in business cards. I usually carry many. In this situation I did not have them with me, which was a mistake, but that would not provide a reason that social media service is not scalable. It would simply be a mistake.
What I didn’t like about Dave McClure’s comment was that he said I wouldn’t have gotten the service I got if I hadn’t been a celebrity. You came in to serve me without knowing I was a celebrity — you didn’t know me from a bag of apples. And the conversation we got into, which ranged far from the product you supported to the products you don’t to both of our families, produced a permanent friendship.
That friendship came because you were 1)listening 2)authentic 3)effective. Those are all scalable. Perhaps not with a single person, but look at GetSatisfaction and UserVoice. I think Dave’s smart, but I thought that comment was way off the mark.
And I rarely exchange cards anymore, because all my information is readily available through Google.
Everything you need to know about business cards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk&feature=channel_page
I am currently looking for a full time position and I come in contact with hundreds of people at one given event and I have season ticket holders who I can connect with. I have been in my section at the Joe for the past 3 years but until this year I never thought of networking with them.
I waited until the end of the season, the final game 7, and let them know what I was thinking. I am the ONLY one who had business cards on me. So I might have caught them off guard.
I think they have a place and even though you can find people many ways. You still should have a way of contacting someone. I realize we work in the social web and everything and if you are on twitter all you have to do is put the twitter id on your smart phone and off you go.
I agree follow up is great! I still think there is a place for business cards. If you forget them there are companies who provide an electronic version.
My card has my contact information plus a twitter id and blog address.
Sometimes it almost sounds like some people inherently want to believe that great customer service can’t scale – period. It either scales and its bad service, or it is great service, but can’t scale. I’m with you, great customer service can scale.
One of the characteristics of the customer service you are providing (that makes it great), is that you are lining up for your customers instead of having your customers line up for you. That characteristic demonstrates respect for your customer’s time and also communicates value (that they are worth your time and that you are listening to them).
The best part of all this is that it is time efficient for both parties! The customer isn’t sitting there with music on hold or listening to “your call is important to us” and your resources also have greater flexibility in how they handle & process requests.
This definitely scales. And, it is great service. You are pioneering a huge shift in customer service so there will always be folks waiting for you to slip up. The reality is that you are raising the bar for customer service best practices and that will make some people nervous, especially champions of the status quo. Keep pushing! You are doing a great work.
Cheers,
Marcel
[...] post by Frank Eliason on business cards got me thinking a lot about the value of such bits of [...]
Frank,
I agree with most of what you have to say about business cards. The issue is what types of information goes on them IMHO.
For me, I don’t want to include ALL of the information that has been included in the past. Mobile, home, fax, email, etc can all be found (much more up to date) online. My newest cards are simply my name and web address (http://www.twitpic.com/4shdg). This makes for keeping my information fresh and available to everyone.
I don’t see business cards disappearing all together anytime in the near future but I do see a shift in how people use them. Maybe my next ones will include a QR-code or Datamatrix image on them for fast lookup from a mobile phone.
-Jesse