Calling is so…last century.
We are all, apparently, turning into hermits. But well-connected hermits. At great detriment to our interpersonal skills, which are not so hot to begin with, people are choosing to communicate more through text and email than a phone-call or an actual face-to-face conversation. In a study conducted by the Pew Institute, the number of text messages sent in the U.S. ALONE, shot from 14 billion in 2000 to 188 billion in 2010. And that was five years ago. Now, we send over 193,000 messages a second, only counting SMS texts! This non-verbal communication trend started and rose with the advent of the Internet Age. Way back in 1995, the internet was used by just 44 million people, worldwide. Now, in 2015, there are more than 3 billion people on the internet. That’s almost half the world population using these doo-dads. As the internet spreads, actual vocal communication by phone continues to trend downward.
Email is still the number-one form of non-verbal communication, with 188,000,000 (yes, that’s billions) emails sent every day. That makes sense because at work we frequently have to communicate with people that are not physically there; or with people that are not our “friends”, real or of the facebook variety. Taking the time to call and chat, or even just have a quick work-related conversation is a little bothersome, and well, time-consuming. Oddly enough, about 80% of Millennials (probably close to the most hermity segment of the population) believe that face-to-face conversations at work are the best and most important way to communicate. That doesn’t mean, however, that they like to talk to people on the phone. In fact, 32% of people (Millennial aged and older) would rather text than talk on the phone. And 51% of teens prefer digital communication to the real thing! Too bad for them, because adolescence is a key formative period for learning interpersonal communication, as well as learning to pick up on non-verbal cues…socially AWKWARD.
Communication through social media, such as Facebook messages, Tweets, or even apps like Snapchat is also on the rise. With 74% of people polled in the UK stating that they use social media to communicate with others daily. A whopping 43% of 18-24 year-olds believe that texting is equally meaningful as having a real phone conversation (I know it isn’t a majority, but it is still a lot of people). Even in the 65 and older age-group, texting edged out calling 4.7 to 3.8 (texts received over phone calls a day)! The trend continues to grow. Will we soon be in the same place and prefer texting instead of talking to someone sitting right in front of us? The HORROR!
And you may not have gotten the Stevie Wonder reference in the title, but trust me, it’s good.
Become the company you would love to recommend. Maybe that’s like saying “build it, and they will come”, who knows? And whatever your business is, stick to your guns! (That is, stick with what you are about and don’t try to pander to everyone.) If you don’t know what your unique desirable selling quality (or your value proposition) is, then how will your clientele know? If your business is all about fashion, fashion the heck out of it. Do you and your company support veterans? Be all you can be! Figure out what differentiates your company from all the others so that you can clearly communicate its value to current and potential customers. Create a unique experience to go along with your business. Be vocal about what you do, and be good at it. People will take notice and recommend you for it.
Age was an important factor in how respondents answered: Millenials (born approximately between 1980-2000) are the most likely to push for social responsibility, with more than half of the total number of respondents within that age-group stating they would be more likely to pay extra for sustainable products. Less than half that number of Gen-X’ers (from 35-49 year olds) responded equally, and only 25% of the Baby Boomers (ages 50-64) said the same. The future is coming, and apparently Millenials are the ones that think this stuff isn’t optional.
The children’s squeezable applesauce pouch company GoGo SqueeZ have created themselves quite the predicament. It all began with a Facebook comment in July, 2014 from an outraged mother claiming her child consumed spoiled product causing him to be sick and emitted to the ER for treatment. How did GoGo SqueeZ resolve this issue? They hit the ‘DELETE’ button, which resulted in quite the opposite of a resolution. The mother saw that her post had been discarded and the incident blew up across Facebook groups and ‘mommy blogs’ alike. The original post was posted again, again, and again calling out the company for ignoring a serious issue. By deleting this post GoGo SqueeZ not only tried to ignore the issue, but also made themselves look guilty. These posts looked like this:
This initial post has been copy and pasted to the GoGo SqueeZ Facebook page hundreds if not thousands of times since July of 2014, along with many other complaints of rotten products.
GoGo SqueeZ has been backpedaling since July trying to satisfy unhappy consumers angered by them deleting the original comment that started it all. So here we are 7 months later and the negative posts keep coming and the company keeps referring back to a July statement about the incident: “During this past holiday week there has been a lot of discussion on our Facebook page regarding a report of finding mold in a container of our