“Yeah I am a cheap bastard sometimes!”

Seriously though, great story about how the social web (and Twitter in particular in this instance) are changing the nature of customer-corporate communications. It’s also a strong voice in support of your post on why you’re more hesitant than ever to give money to packaged software.

Combining your thoughts in both, I find that the most interesting piece of this is that you think you might pay for iPlotz in ADDITION to your existing purchase of Balsamiq. It seems to imply to me that something I’ve believed for a long time is actually happening: As consumers, we’re fairly likely to “overspend” when we personalize a brand and move from feeling like they just want our money to a place where we view them as complex and generally interested in being “my friend” and therefore, worth an investment of my time and money. When we view a company as being well-meaning and full of real people, we give them more leeway and more business, happily.

I’ll expand:

To date, the best way to accomplish brand personalization has been through having employees connect with customers in person (think Starbucks or Nordstrom) and impress upon the customers that the corporation is neither faceless nor evil. Most importantly, these interactions help communicate that the company is focused on making you, the customer, HAPPY. Packaged goods (whether it’s your iPod that craps out 6 months in or your Quickbooks software package) struggle mightily with achieving this type of brand personalization. Now, with services like Twitter and Facebook, the efficacy of search and our increasing willingness to complain out loud, companies can identify us more effectively. They can engage us in conversation and teach us about how they think and how they’re trying to EARN our money, instead of TAKING it.

But, again, the packaged goods companies in this situation are hamstrung, because while they can listen to your complaints, they’re not really in a position to do much about it in order to meet your needs. The service-oriented companies, however (whether it’s Starbucks or Balsamiq) can take another step; they can actually change your experience with them by listening to your complaints/suggestions and doing something about it. Physical service businesses have been capable of doing this for a long time (and amazingly, most of them still stink at it) but digital companies are just beginning to really wake up to this idea. This is where iPlotz and Balsamiq really can show us what the future holds: conversations and personal interactions with customers (existing and potential) can lead to better future products and experiences. The new generation of digital companies all need to understand this and seek to incorporate it into their culture (and man, are they going to need a lot of help with this..). The knowledge that a company is working in this manner, to constantly evolve and improve upon what they’re offering to us in turn, increases our willingness to give them money. When we believe that a company is trying to do right by us, even if they don’t do it all the time, we see the money we give them as more of an investment, rather than a hard cost.

Whoa.. so this has turned into probably the longest comment I’ve ever left, but your 2 posts got me fired up. Might have to take this and move it into my blog as well (which you can of course link to if you choose to mention me on here in the future ).

-Robi