1. Review the media options and explain why each one would be appropriateot appropriate for your project organization to use.  Select two from the appropriate list and explain how the organization can use them to gather information about their customers.

  

1. Describe one way the organization could use mass customization to help personalize a product or service.

In contrast to the one-way media that characterized mass marketing, the future of customer relationships will be interactive. Not "I talk, you listen" but "You talk, I listen," and vice versa, and "We all talk, and everybody can listen in." Likewise, more and more media are "addressable." That means I can send a particular message to a particular individual at a known "address," whether that address is a geographic address on a street, or an e-mail address, or Facebook account, or telephone number, or text address, or a combination of these and other new interactive, addressable media available every day. World Wide Web. The Web has become one of the most effective media to engage a customer in an individual interaction. An enterprise's Web site is a highly customizable platform for collaborating with customers and learning about their individual needs effectively and inexpensively. (We talk more about the Web as a venue for customization in Chapter 10.) Social media. While technically just one aspect of the World Wide Web, the Web sites and online services that have been constructed to allow people simply to create content for other people and to share conversations and comments with others who have similar or intersecting interests-sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn-represent a major change in how consumers acquire information and interact with their environments. The social media phenomenon is complex and rich enough all by itself to require a customer-strategy enterprise to plan deliberate strategies for dealing with social media, in an effort to build and strengthen its customer relationships. Wireless. The increasing proliferation of wireless technology is promising to "unhook" people from the network of cables and wires that used to connect them to the ground, freeing them not just to surf the Web using their iPhones, BlackBerries, and other smart phones but to connect their devices wirelessly to the Internet in coffeeshops, hamburger outlets, universities, airliners, and even many major cities, where ubiquitous WiFi technology has been installed for everybody. It is becoming clear that in the twenty-first century, not just in developed countries but across the whole world, people are going to be connected to the network and able to interact electronically with companies and other people more often than they will be offline. (Indeed, the very term online has now been rendered an archaic usage, much like "dialing" a phone number. Both terms will mystify our grandchildren as much as the word typewriter will.) Voicemail. Enterprises have established voicemail systems for their customers that enable them to phone in a question or comment and leave a message. Voicemail has many different potential dialogue applications. E-mail. Enterprises are using e-mail to write personalized messages to customers about their latest product offerings, sales promotions, customer inquiries, and many other important topics (we discuss more about e-mail later in this chapter). Texting (SMS-Short Message Service) and instant messaging (IM). Texting from a mobile phone and using the instant messaging feature of various e-mail and online services is another mechanism for quick, highly efficient interactions. Although it's a more common business practice outside the United States, marketers can incorporate text-back codes to encourage customers to interact with them wherever they are, at any time-because everyone always has their mobile phone with them. Always.