Your amazingly successful efforts in data collection, standardization, segmentation and automation have removed the human element from your interactions with your customers — remember them? The people who make an emotional, human decision to spend their cash with you and not your competitor.

We’ve all complained about automated phone systems — everything from “press 1 for sales” to advanced voice-recognition — but everyone still uses them. Somewhere along the line, they became cheaper [and therefore "better"] than human operators. They easily hold all the options in their automated brains, and “always” direct calls to the “right department.” I got one yesterday that gave me a dizzying amount of options. I wanted sales. I wanted to make a purchase. And I couldn’t figure out what number to press. I had called the 800-number promoted on the company’s website that said, Call here to make a faster purchase.

People, I’m a marketer. If your marketer customers can’t figure this out, you’re making it too hard.

On each of my four [4!!!] phone calls with the same company, trying to make the same simple purchase, I had to give out my account number and my PIN number. This was not a financial or health care institution. I had no secret data with them, and my purchase certainly wasn’t private in any way. But they refused to make the sale until I’d given them all this identifying information, so that their records would reflect all my purchases together.

Let me stop here to point out a company that does this right. I’ve bought from Lands’ End for more than 20 years. When I call them, which I still do occasionally despite using their website primarily for more than 10 years, they do ask for my catalog number, but if I don’t have my customer number, no one freaks out. They will still sell me stuff.

But what made me angriest about the whole thing yesterday was that the phone rep never, ever went off script. Everything she [I talked to 2 women and 1 man on the 4 calls, and this was one of the women] said started with something like, “In order to serve you better….”

No. It does NOT serve me better to have to tell you all the information I just told the LAST representative I spoke with. It does NOT serve me better to have to wade through more than 20 minutes of data confirmation and gathering on your part in order to buy one product. I understand that as marketers, we want all the data. We want to make sure the customer orders the right product, because they’ll blame us if they order the wrong product. But placing the burden of information-gathering on your customers does not serve them better. At the very least, let’s all write better, more honest scripts, shall we?

The whole scenario made me angrier than I care to admit, but the part that really ticked me off was that the customer service rep kept telling me it was my fault. I was the party in the wrong for being upset at having to repeat all of my data. At having to give them ANY data beyond the truly essential: product, shipping address and credit card number. I was wrong to think that was all I needed for a purchase, and I shouldn’t be so mad about it.

Well, what I’m really mad about is that apparently, someone in corporate America decided it was a good idea to evaluate customer service reps on how well they read scripts, instead of on how well they serve customers.

This woman couldn’t fix that. Bless her heart.

But maybe you can.

Chapter 1, Ideas in Practice on p. 14-15. The Yahoo editors strip out a frighteningly prototypical section of “web” copy and rewrite it the right way. They slash away adjectives, dubious claims and the flotsam that ruins most web writing. The overfluff that people add because they can.

They add bullet points, bold copy and links.

The end result is remarkably shorter than the starting point, and it’s useful, easy to comprehend and directive.

That’s honestly as far as I’ve gotten, but good heavens. If all you read is chapter 1, you’re well on your way to better writing.

I grew up on The Cluetrain Manifesto. I can even still make a great argument for why your information wants to be free, but for most folks, that’s not a real business possibility. But many individuals and businesses just automatically mark all their content — words, images, audio, video — with “All Rights Reserved,” the most restrictive copyright notice out there.

For some content, that makes sense. But often, we use the Internet as a distribution channel because we want people to share our content. Often, we’re not even as interested in whether we make money off the sharing; it’s spreading the word that matters.

When that’s the case, you need to use one of the licensing options offered by Creative Commons.

You’ll notice the Creative Commons logo at the bottom of this blog — a “By-Share Alike” license. I allow my work to be re-used on other sites as long as people give me credit with a link back to this site, and as long as they also allow it to be re-used from their site in the same way.

But Creative Commons offers a wide variety of licenses, even if you don’t want to be as liberal with your content as I do. Other options allow you to limit commercial uses or derivative works of your content.

Creative Commons doesn’t manage the distribution of your content — it simply provides a licensing framework that’s becoming well-accepted online. When you’re managing content online, you can certainly choose to do so with the same restrictions that many people expect for printed or recorded content. But take the time to think through your business goals — and when it makes more sense to allow greater usage of your content, try a Creative Commons licensing option to make your life a little easier.

At Creekmore Consulting, we do quite a bit of work in the health care field, and some of our clients spend a lot of their time thinking about the patient experience. Statistically, it’s something people my age — late 30s — are less likely to have to think about, but it’s been on my mind a lot in the last year for personal reasons as well as professional, since I gave birth to my 1yo daughter last April, to my 11yo’s recent visit to the ER for stitches and now with my dad’s very recent diagnosis and hospitalization.

Any business can give you a great customer experience, from the hardware store to your cell phone provider to the dry cleaner. But we put up with a lot of shoddy service from many of our daily interactions, don’t we? Exceptional customer service is the rarity.

I’m wondering, though, about industries like health care. When every interaction with your customer is potentially intensely personal, how much more important does the customer experience become? What are the downsides of screwing up — not with a medical decision, but with some service aspect of the relationship? Is it worse for the long-term customer relationship if a hospital doesn’t treat its patients and their families with service and caring, than if a restaurant staff is rude to you?

It’s an interesting question to me. It’s awfully easy to stop patronizing a restaurant, isn’t it? But I stuck with the same pediatric practice for 10 years, despite many more incorrect bills than right ones, and a rude staff to boot, because I liked the doctor so much and I really trusted her. When you’re dealing with life and death issues, it just feels like the responsibility to provide exceptional service is higher, but I’m not sure how we measure the results of poor service coupled with excellent medical care.

While I have seen those two incongruent things go hand-in-hand before, I’m glad to report that my dad and our family were delighted with both the caring attention and the medical care he received at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. I do have to wonder if high-quality medical care also tends to reflect in the level of overall patient-centered attitude at a hospital. What do you think?

We’re working on nonprofit, health care and digital media SIGs for the 10-11 year, and we’re focusing on providing real value for our members through the SIGs year-round.

For years, I knew about NAMA but didn’t see the value in the organization. You know there’s no one more enthusiastic than the reformed skeptic, and that’s me. The minute I got involved in a NAMA committee, I began to make contacts that have proved incredibly valuable to me, both personally and professionally.

So the retreat today was a lot of fun, and serving on the board gives me a chance to give back to the marketing community that has meant so much to me.

On an exciting note: This spring I’ve also chaired a task force for NAMA to evaluate and recommend updates to our web presence. We’ll unveil our work toward the end of the summer.

Oh, we’ve got lots of content. We just don’t have it on the website. We just need to put it up there.

Sometimes, it’s even true.

But what happens far more often is that the organization has a lot of information, little to none of it web-ready.

This is not always a popular statement, but information isn’t the same as content. For your web content to be effective, it must be designed and edited specifically for your business purposes, and optimized for web reading to meet your audience’s needs.

Information does not magically become effective web content by the circumstance of appearing on your website.

Another related, unpopular point: People with access to information and Microsoft Word do not automatically become writers.

I think I sound more negative or critical than I intend to do. If it seems like I’m talking straight to you, let me just encourage you by saying that you are not alone. Many, many organizations are dealing with these issues.

Often, we get into a situation like that because we’ve left the content until the end.

Save yourself from the content/information dilemma:

• Craft a strategy for your content with your business goals in mind.
• Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that your information is web-ready.
• Get experienced web writers to work with your topical experts to shape your information into web-ready content.

• Content strategies: The skills conundrum
• Abilities and aptitudes for a content strategist
• The extraordinary world of content strategists

Bailie gives a really nice picture of what you should expect from a content strategist.

I’ve just got another thought to throw out there. There’s no certification for content strategy. No “professional content strategist” exam to take. No college courses. Basically, you say you’re working in content strategy, and voila, you are!

And I think that makes a lot of people nervous. I get it.

But here’s the thing. I’m thinking about all the people that I hire who are certified. Licensed. Bonded. Insured. People who have official, professional credentials.

In no case, ever in my life, have I asked to see those credentials. Now, maybe I’m just a naive consumer. But I think you’ve got to hire a content strategist for the same reasons I’m hiring those other people:

• They make you believe they understand your problem.
• They inspire your trust in their abilities to address the problem.
• They sell you on the value of their services.

That’s it. It comes down to trust for hiring a plumber, an accountant and a content strategist.

How did your college degree prepare you for your content strategy job, especially since it’s highly likely you did not major in content strategy? What path would you recommend to future strategists?

Now, I’ve worked in web content and digital media for the vast majority of my career, but it seems that only recently I’ve begun to get this question. And it really mystifies me.

People, when I went to college, we didn’t even use email.

So no, I didn’t major in content strategy.

But I did spend a lot of my time in and outside the classroom preparing for this career, albeit inadvertently.

Hands-on experience
I was the editor of the student newspaper at Vanderbilt in 1992. It was some of the best professional training I’ve had, right up to the present day. I had to motivate and manage about 100 volunteers total [we had no paid staffers], make a whole lot of quick decisions with imperfect, incomplete information, and I basically spent an entire year making mistake after mistake.

It’s still one of the best things I’ve ever done.

It’s just downright embarrassing to compare the papers we put out in January with the ones we did in the second half of the year. Learn by doing.

So that definitely prepared me for a lot of the editorial experiences I’ve built on ever since. By the mid-1990s, I was knee-deep in web content, and from the beginning, the transition from print felt like drinking from a firehose. [There's a subject for another post for you....]

Your perspective matters
I do think something else from college really did prepare me for this career, though. Vanderbilt gives students a broad, liberal arts education, even if you have a specialized major like engineering. I was a European History major, but it could have been anything, I think. I learned how to think. I continue to use the critical thinking skills I learned in college every single day.

Getting into this field
If I were giving advice to someone today hoping to get into this field, I guess the best thing I could say would be: Start managing content. As much as you can. And read as much as you can about how the field of content strategy is developing. There’s a lot of great work going on, trying to quantify the strategies that make for compelling websites. But it’s still early days, and we need more people to dive in and help to carry the banner for content strategy.

Mark your calendars now for:

Thursday, July 15
5:30-7p
Miro District

If you’re actively working in content strategy, curious about the topic, or just a person who enjoys a fun time with interesting people, this is the event for you.

We’ll talk about how we’d like the meetup to go from here. Several other cities have content strategy meetups, and some of them are very informal affairs, and others are structured learning events. We can do whatever we like with this group!

Please RSVP today on our meetup page.

And while few people seem to favorite this part of our work, most agree that it’s essential to figure out what you’re dealing with in existing content.

But there does seem to be a divide on whether or not it’s necessary to do a full inventory — a quantitative, page-by-page, item-by-item review and catalog of every piece of content you own.

I hate to give you a wishy-washy answer, but I’m going to come down firmly on the “It depends,” side of the fence.

I got dragged into my first quantitative content inventory kicking and screaming several years ago. The site had several thousand documents, and my team and I had managed all of them from creation to expiration — so we knew in our heads exactly what was there. But the client wanted the comprehensive inventory, however redundant it seemed to me.

But [after the pain faded a bit] I can say that the quantitative was worth it. If key decisionmakers don’t know — and want to know — what’s there, you need a quantitative inventory. Even if you can describe what’s there, if you’re making decisions about direction and message and site design, nothing beats a full inventory.

We’re helping a client now with a smaller-scale quantitative inventory. They’re just moving to a real CMS for a new site, and there is some existing content, but it’s not in any one tool. So we all need to know what’s there — thus, a quantitative inventory is in order.

I do think there are places where you only need a qualitative review, though. Let’s say you’re working on a web project with some existing content. If your content is well organized in a good content management system, with great metadata, you may be able to simply do a qualitative audit — we have this kind of product description. Copy runs from X characters-X characters in length. Tone is technical. Etc.

I think this situation is rarer than we’d like to hope, but it’s out there.