Is Online Always Better?

This is a bit of a digression from the social media/SEO sphere, but I’ve been straight-up ruminating on this since 2008 and want to kvetch about it some.

Forrester Research’s Josh Bernoff, whose book Groundswell (co-authored with Charlene Li) is one that I’ve gifted more than once this year, blogged a few days ago about a bad experience with a Blue Cross Blue Shield robocall soliciting information. Bernoff has some good points about robocalls – they’re invasive, inhuman, and (after a history of misleading robocalls in the past few national elections) they are not inherently trustworthy.

Bernoff suggests that BCBS should email instead.

Here’s where things get tricky. First, BCBS is trying to identify Medicare recipients — many of whom are senior citizens, a majority of whom are not very tech savvy or trusting of email. Second, BCBS reports that the call initiative is converting well. Email is not going to give BCBS the same ROI. Not every BCBS customer has email; not every BCBS customer that has email opted into email from the company; not every BCBS customer that has email that elected to receive email from the company is going to open it – in fact, a good number are going to delete it or relegate it to the spam folder.

I hate to play Luddite’s Advocate here but, in this case, emailing isn’t going to guarantee either of the following:

1. The brand responsible for the email will be more human in its interactions, which is what the customer wants.

2. Increased customer response, which is what the brand wants.

As someone who lives with a foot firmly planted IRL and the other firmly planted in the blogosphere, I understand the attraction of a service I use or a store I shop at or a friend of mine that I like to talk to being online and accessible to me. I’m guilty of being that guy who tries to talk people into Twitter.

I’ve been trying, for instance, to get my comic shop to establish a Web presence for awhile now. The owner, a friend of mine, just doesn’t see how it benefits his small, local business to invest in a site. I don’t think that’s him being wrongheaded or stubborn about Web 2.0 as much as it is me trying to get him to conform to my individual habits.

I think that’s exactly what’s going on with the Blue Cross robocall fiasco. It’s very easy to think that, as a social media strategist, analyst, or what-have-you, that your personal taste is the right answer, but that’s not always the case. Social is a channel for communication and traffic/lead generation, not the entire answer, and neither is online (unless your business is only e-commerce, and in this case it’s not).

As always, ask “Why?” when confronted a compulsion to set up a new outpost or take an existing initiative in a new direction or to a new format. If the answer is that “it’s cool,” or “because the kids love it,” or whatever, then at the very least you need to do some more research (or get an expert opinion – and here’s where I’ll plug the eBiz Insider forums and gently nudge you to subscribe to our blogs).