Hopper Analytical - Trust

The Customer Wants a Divorce

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:32:45 -0400

"The Break Up" video has been around for about a year, but it's so relevant to what we've been working on with Project VRM, I couldn't resist posting it. Produced by Microsoft (of all people) along with ad agency openhere.be, the short video is a brilliant slam on how the traditional approach to customer outreach is woefully out of touch. It basically runs like an ad for The Cluetrain Manifesto.

The video is by Geert Desager and originally posted at bringtheloveback.com.

Managing the Public Media Relationship

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:46:47 -0400

How can a public radio listener take greater control of their relationship with public media?

This was (more or less) the question posed to a public media-savvy group last week at Harvard’s Berkman Center. Led by Doc Searls, our ad hoc team explored how to equip the public media audience with a VRM tool to better drive their relationship with existing broadcasters, distributors, and shows.

Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) is the reciprocal to Customer Relationship Management (CRM). VRM explores the idea that individuals could create more value if they had better control over their vendor relationships rather than the other way around (my definition). The rise of participatory culture and its subsequent impact on vendors suggests an environment where this is not only possible, but highly desirable for everyone. Perhaps the long-term outcome of VRM will be to facilitate the dissolution of traditional consumer and vendor roles. Identity will be managed by the individual, but value production will happen across a spectrum of participants in a variety of capacities. In this environment, it will be difficult to define the meaningful boundaries of an organization, and what exactly constitutes an employee, vendor, consumer or producer.

A whole new generation of creative consumer has the potential to rediscover public broadcasting and co-opt it for its potential

But why public media?
Well, it feels like a good testing ground for something like VRM. If you are exploring the boundaries between organizations and the public, what better environment than one that is mission-driven to engage and serve the public?

There also seems to be a compelling overlap between what’s going on in participatory culture and what already exists surrounding public broadcasting. A whole new generation of creative consumer has the potential to rediscover public broadcasting and co-opt it for its potential as a non-commercial, open network designed explicitly to serve the public. I would ask, how can we encourage this?

...triggering more questions on engaging with public media in a participatory environment:

If we were to reinvent public radio in an end-to-end environment like the internet, what would it look like? How would it compare to what exists, and what important differences might emerge? What can we do to fill those gaps?
What does the long tail of public media look like? What are the democratized production tools, potential aggregators, and filters that drive demand down the tail?
As a creative consumer, what is it that I want to do with public media? What are my Lego building blocks, and what would motivate me to play?

In trying to answer these questions, one particularly promising idea that emerged was a model for a new type of public radio station - one that is not centered on broadcast. Such a station could have many of the traits of a participatory, web-based environment while leveraging the existing broadcast audience and media. In this way, we would have a transitional strategy of sorts – understood and embraced by traditional participants (both the audience and infrastructure), but able to transcend boundaries by reinventing itself from scratch, online, and with the public itself to steer its direction. These unique characteristics would drive important differences on how to fund, program, create, and manage its media. Without too much wild-eyed thinking, you could imagine an encouraging and experimental mix of user and collaboratively-programmed media, integrated online conversation, multiple device support, and a breadth of media types, alternative funding methods, etc.

Rethinking public media from a new, more participatory direction reveals an opportunity to redefine people-oriented broadcasting. And what’s more people-oriented than public media?

The Historical Role of Trust in Human Interaction

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 12:05:59 -0400

The importance of trust has long been recognized as a key factor in ensuring effective online interactions. To date, the emphasis has been primarily on trust’s role in individual financial transactions. This is not surprising. Online commerce has been one of the key drivers of large-scale adoption of the Internet. Over the past ten years, ecommerce has developed a foothold in fits and starts as users come to accept the Internet as a safe place to transact. Adoption has occurred in part due to significant efforts by players such as Verisign, Epinions, and eBay to develop an infrastructure of trust (i.e. validity, security, and reputation).

As modern humans, we all participate to some degree in a market economy that supports the open exchange of goods and services. This economy has many features that we inherently assume are in place and functioning, such as agreement on the value of money, and the right to seek recourse for being cheated by a seller. These features are necessary for effective and seamless transactions to occur. Imagine the effort required for a buyer to develop a level of trust with a seller without these underlying structures to support trustworthy commerce; structures like consumer-protection laws, financial currencies, and the extension of credit. It is important to recognize that these structures have not always been in place. In fact, for the vast majority of human history, it is likely that commerce was transacted only between people who were quite familiar with one another. Without an underlying market infrastructure for trust, the transaction cost of interacting with strangers was probably too great.

On one hand, it pays to avoid those we don’t trust. On the other hand, an individual or group increases its chances of survival and comfort if it can transact with a wider range of individuals. For example, imagine early farmers with an abundance of crops. By being able to transact with others beyond their neighbors, they could ensure the receipt of food throughout the winter and other goods by which to live. Here we have a dilemma. If the cost of transacting with strangers is high, but the benefit of transacting with a wider range of individuals is also high, what do we do? The answer is that we must develop ways by which to rapidly assess the trustworthiness of others (and instill their trust in us). By reducing the cost associated with developing trustworthiness, we can increase the payoff of transacting with other trustworthy individuals. Since regulated commerce infrastructures did not exist throughout the majority of human development, humans have instead acquired highly sensitive and efficient methods for assessing and developing trust in others.

Imagine what transactions may have looked like for thousands of years before structured commercial markets. Exchanges took place where the value of goods and services was difficult to determine. These exchanges were probably separated in time by weeks and months (here’s some extra zebra meat… please remember me the next time you bag an antelope). Exchanges of information were probably just as important as exchanges of goods and services (don’t trust Dave, he won’t return the favor). These exchanges themselves are critical in developing trustworthiness, and we can begin to recognize the importance of communication – both overt and more subtle cues – towards developing trust and willingness to exchange, interact, and increase the mutual value inherent in doing so.

As we look more closely at the nature of trust in human interaction, we see a broadening definition beyond purely financial transactions. Humans have developed complex social interaction behavior that significantly pre-dates structured commerce. Historically, trust has been a critical part of these social interactions. The methods by which humans assess and develop trustworthiness is embedded in the nature of our communications and our ability to evaluate each other and our surroundings. I won’t attempt to describe these complex trust-oriented communications here - there is a significant body of information and research on the topic – however, it is important to understand that these trust-oriented communications are at the heart of increasing the mutual value inherent in human interaction. We can more rapidly encourage these interactions by facilitating trust-oriented communications, and this yields greater value for all involved.

Through the widespread adoption of commercial markets and later ecommerce, we have shown that trust-inducing structures facilitate increased mutual value of financial transactions. Perhaps the next logical step in increasing value production online is to introduce complex trust-oriented communication in a more generalized interaction space. Looking historically at the development of human social behavior, we can see not only a wide range of value-generating human interactions hinging on trustworthiness, but the complex social mechanics required to yield the unrealized potential of these interactions. If we are able to more effectively introduce these social mechanics online, I believe huge returns in mutual value will result from increasingly meaningful online interactions.