LinkedOut
The personalised touch
It’s the sheer banality of it all that gets to me.
I have “one new message on LinkedIn”. Same email for several days now. It might be a friend, or somebody from the past, but mainly to stop it coming I go to LinkedIn.
My new message begins: “Hi William, Identifying angles to neutralise competitive advantages are a key part of delivering market-winning strategies.”
Uh huh. Great. Thanks for letting me know.
From somebody I don’t know (in case that needs saying).
I got a message on Thursday from a woman reading from a script, then another call at the same time yesterday, Friday, from the same woman reading from the same script.
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I know it was the same script because I listened to the two messages one after the other.
I tried to return the call, but got a recording — hung up. I’m going to do that from now on.
Oh, and I’m being chased by (1) a company that wants me to provide feedback — latest message: “We’re still waiting for your feedback…” — and (2) a bank — latest message: “It looks like you haven’t read our message about…”
e-blah, e-blah, e-blah
Did we foresee that all the banks, all the companies, all the utilities, all the absolutely [expletive deleted] everybody everywhere would do e-commerce, e-marketing, social media, et cetera, in exactly the same way all the time? Constantly? In exactly the same voice?
All of them?
This is Artificial Stupidity, I know, ha ha, but people made it happen. It’s not the algorithms’ fault.
Have we numbed ourselves to the point where we’re incapable of realising that the commercial opportunity is not for another app, nor for a more sophisticated messaging or call-management system, but for a company, or even a call centre, where actual real people actually pick up the phone?
Or is that no longer possible?
What have we done to ourselves?
