Of recent, we as a blogging team, agreed to focus more on actual E2.0 implementations and related adoption issues. I’m now insisting on diverging from that.

We repeatedly mention that 2.0 is not about the technology. If that’s truly the case, then the advice should not be about the adoption of the same technologies for which this is not about (bear with me…at some point there ARE technologies involved, but it’s focusing on those technologies and not on the REST of the stuff that goes on where failure begins).

Let’s talk about examples I’ve come across in the past 30 minutes, where companies are not applying the principles of 2.0 thinking, in all the everyday little things that go on. While these examples may be more Web 2.0 in focus, the analogies can readily be transferred to Enterprise 2.0 scenarios. Exercising related 2.0 thinking at all levels, makes the actions second nature — hopefully, enough that we can stop focusing on the topic at all (that’s the goal).

Amazon and TD Ameritrade Send Relationship Spam

I’ve been a customer of Amazon long enough to remember the annual Christmas gifts and letters that we got from them as customers. Clearly, Amazon led the way in many 2.0 principles and practices even before we codified the term and the focus (shortening the distance to done = 1-click ordering). But Amazon has gotten big and lazy in their attention to detail (which is likely to happen when dealing with the volumes of relationships and touchpoints they have stewardship over). Amazon is not alone in this. In the same 30 minutes I had interactions with two companies (remember, EVERY interaction is a critical point for which relationship equity can be added upon) and they both failed at exactly the same thing: dead end emails.

As I pointed out in my response to TD Ameritrade (which will likely not find its way to any human eyes, and if it does it will be promptly ignored as ‘noise’ — understanding the value of noise is a topic I’ve covered in the past), sending an email which is asking/prompting for action, or even might incidentally be the impetus for action, is a PRIME opportunity for investing in a little relationship equity — furthering the relationship by adding to the interaction. Let me repeat that last part again: “furthering the relationship by adding to the interaction” — think of expanding the relationship chain in the ways many businesses look to expand their strategic focus along a supply chain (clearly the latter is of less value without the former). Replace this notion with what in 1.0 was referred to as stickiness (stickiness is dead).

I got an email from both Amazon and TD Ameritrade. Amazon wrote to tell me that another book I had just posted, had sold and that I needed to fulfill the order. How does Amazon “further the relationship by adding to the interaction”? — by word and not by deed.

“1. Go to your Seller Account by clicking “Your Account” at the top of any Amazon.com page, then clicking “Your Seller Account” on the right side of the page, under Marketplace.”

Instead of reading those instructions (which are relevant and great for mobile and JAWS), I could be clicking on a link that would DO all of that for me — and shorten the distance to done (I went to their site and quickly pointed this out to them — even though I had to invest considerably more of my precious time — which they’d already eaten into, to give them valuable feedback…which again, will likely fall on the machine room floor). It’s an email: “Luke, Use the Force.”

TD Ameritrade regularly sends confirmations of trades by email (something I signed up for in lieu of the paper version — never mind that the email contains NONE of the detail the paper version does). But there’s a significant distinction here — this is an institutional account. I’m not initiating the trades — my personal advisor is. So the most relevant scenario to be initiated by this receipt of an email is that I likely would like to see what it is that has been transacted on my behalf. [insert silence]…TD Ameritrade sends the emails, but treats them like spam. I just delete them. Why? I can never remember HOW to get to my account, I’m not in it enough (my advisor is). The email could easily shorten that distance for me. But, it does not.

Suddenly, I feel like a revivalist and have the urge to say, “Brothers and Sisters…” — we have to start with the little things. It’s actually less about transparency (although that is important) than it is first about sincerity. Where’s the sincerety in sending out a message that is not designed to BE a conversation?

2.0 IS first and foremost the means by which to converse — one with another (even vicariously). Can we start there and then add the other stuff? Seriously, at the top of your E2.0 initiative ‘list’, should be assessing the reality and start fixing that first. In doing so, you will learn so much more about what’s truly relevant to be done, for real 2.0 success.

Learn first to ‘apply’ 2.0. Exercise the craft as an apprentice and earn your way into mastery.