I had an eye-opening experience the other night and it reminded me how important it is to open up real conversation with your customers. It’s so exciting how tools like Qik and Seesmic are encouraging this.
I saw this tweet from Kathy Sierra, which piqued my interest to go see what was Gary Vaynerchuk was up to on Seesmic. Gary Vaynerchuk and Kevin Rose (digg) where doing an impromptu Q&A where you could ask them questions using Seesmic.
So I thought I’d have a go and shoot them a question (about Grand Theft Auto IV, of course):
I was really fun to get a reply almost instantaneously:
What is so amazing about this interaction is that it was personal and fun. That just isn’t possible over email or even the phone. They were in Las Vegas and I was in Shockerwick and we connected. It increased my loyalty to Kevin and Gary because they took time to interact with me - and that’s the value of that personal exchange. Amazing.
How do you all think this is changing the way we interact with our customers, fans and friends?