A few weeks ago, my book“Kundendialog- Management: Wertstiftende Kundendialoge in Zeiten der digitalen Automation” was published together with Nils Hafner.

And today I had these wooden postcards sent to me and would like to write on them personally in future and send them to my customers and partners by post.

Can customer dialog still be analog in the age of automation?

Are you wondering whether this is a contradiction in terms? First I write a book about the age of automation and how best to manage customer dialog in these times, and then I send out wooden postcards?

No, that’s exactly what we need to learn first in the age of automation. We need to understand our customers and customer dialogs and learn which dialogs can be automated. Once we have understood this, we define the channels of automation and automate everything that is possible while retaining human customer contact where necessary. Incidentally, this quote comes from my article on Humans and AI – examples of successful collaboration.

How does the book Kundendialog- Management help me to find and implement my dialog strategy?

In our book, Nils Hafner, some well-known guest authors and I show you step by step how to find your customer dialog strategy for your company and how you can then implement it successfully in practice. Naturally, the focus is on the customer. But it is also about processes, organizations, employees and ultimately the choice of the right technology.

What does good strategic customer dialog management look like?

In the first article, Nils Hafner presents an approach for evaluating customer dialogs according to their relevance for customers and companies and deriving measures from this evaluation. The result of the evaluation of dialogue types in the value-irritant matrix is a clustering according to the basic strategies “Avoid”, “Simplify”, “Exploit” and “Automate”. The automation decision, which many companies make opportunistically today, is thus systematized. However, the impact of these strategies on the entire organization should not be underestimated. In order to successfully master these effects, it is worth reading the other chapters of the book.

What are the four building blocks of a people-centered culture and how do we achieve them?

In the second article, Gregorio Uglioni presents “The ingredients for a healthy breakfast”. By a healthy breakfast, the guest author means a positive, healthy and inspiring people-centered culture that is crucial to the company’s success. It consists of employee-centricity, customer-centricity, leadership and observation of the environment.

WhileGregorio focuses primarily on the entire organization, Dominik Georgi and Jan-Erik Baars delve deeper into the topic of customer centricity in the third chapter. The Customer Centricity Score and the Customer Impact Score play a decisive role here.

Read the book to find out how you can bring the culture of healthy breakfasts into your company and how you can even measure it.

What are all customer dialogs?

Many people still think that the term “customer dialog” only refers to a telephone call or an e-mail exchange with the customer. But the term “customer dialogs” is much broader.

Customer dialogs in marketing

In our book, you will learn from professors such as Claudia Bünte and Ralf Kreutzer what customer dialog looks like in marketing. Topics such as artificial intelligence, marketing automation and conversational automation already play a major role today and will become increasingly important in the future.

Customer dialogs in service

Of course, a large number of customer dialogs still occur in customer service. Guest authors, such as Harald Henn, show how modern contact centers are structured today. Increased customer requirements and the strategic realignment of contact centers require new organizational models, adapted control processes and an IT landscape that includes digitalization concepts and is geared towards the strategic goals of the customer experience strategy. Not forgetting controlling, i.e. the measurement of important key figures in customer dialog and the derivation of improvement measures.

All of these topics are covered in detail in the reference book Customer Dialogue Management and you will receive specific recommendations for action. Incidentally, most of the articles are illustrated with practical examples.

How are companies preparing for the future of customer dialog?

It is to be expected that technological developments relating to artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) will lead to more and more automation. It is important to gain the trust of customers for automation and it is also becoming increasingly important to know how AI and LLMs work and how they can be used. Both topics are covered in detail in the book by the authors Sophie Hundertmark, Nils Hafner, Anna V. Rozumowski, Marc K. Peter and others.

Do we still need analog dialogs?

Now back to the contradiction at the beginning of this article. In my opinion, it is no contradiction at all to continue sending postcards, even if they are made of wood. Rather, it is about finding the right customers and customer dialogs where sending wooden postcards brings added value compared to automated dialogs.

I assume that personal and human skills, as well as personal experiences, will lead to ever greater wow effects and differentiating features in the future. While topics relating to conversational automation and marketing automation will become increasingly commoditized in the coming years (see CEX Trend Radar 2024), we can secure a competitive advantage through the clever use of wooden postcards.

Where can I buy wooden postcards for customer dialogs?

I met the Holzgruass team at the Young Entrepreneurs Exhibition organized by Young Enterprise Switzerland. The wooden postcards can be ordered online. Corresponding company inquiries or requests for individualization can also be made via the Holzgruass website. At this point, a big thank you to Giulia Caminada and the whole team at Holzgruass.

And if you are interested in our reference book on customer dialog management published by Springer Verlag, you can order it online. For example at Amazon or Orell Füssli.