The New Rules of Customer Engagement

First of all, are there really new rules of engagement? 

According to talk in the business media these days, there are.  According to the discussion at The Surge Group's last High Voltage Business Breakfast in Victoria, these so called 'new rules' are just the same old rules.

It seems that much of the media discussion stems from the recent book,  The New Rules of Engagement, by Michael McQueen.  Now this book is really about the new rules of engagement in relation to Generation Y-ers (those just coming of age and entering the workforce), but it seems the business media has extended this to apply it to the 'economic meltdown' and the need for business to relate to consumers in a whole new way. 

The discussion with Victoria's business owners makes clear that while one always has to evolve how one engages with customers, the engagement is still all about building relationship and as technology continues to change the way we interact, it is still about interaction.  It has always been the rule in marketing that if you can create two-way dialogue, you are more likely to make the sale. 

A couple of points stood out from the breakfast conversation:

• While the hamster wheel of progress is speeding up and the pressure to build networks online grows, face to face is still a powerful way to engage.
• The online world presents new and exciting (and almost instantaneous) ways to gain feedback from the marketplace and engage people in conversation.
• However, now there is a tremendous opportunity to be ahead of the customer in designing what they will need.  What do you know that they may not be thinking of?  How can you integrate that into shaping your product/service offerings?
• Education is a key element of the new business model - with the easy access to abundant information, just providing information no longer has value.  The key is to make sense of the information, to be the 'sober second thought' for consumers.
• This raises the point, though:  should education be revenue producing or a free value-added?
• Regardless, people can smell a sales pitch, so honest and valuable offerings will go a long way to building and maintaining trust.  Maintaining a consistent image, from web, to social online networking, to in-person, will also build trust.

So what are these 'new rules'? According to McQueen, who postulates eight paradigm shifts in his book, some of these new rules are:

• Respect for people not position
• Communication should be unbroken and instantaneous
• Relationship is more important than role
• Outcomes are more important than process
• There is a desire for regular feedback

These sound like the same old rules to me. What do you think?