“It’s good to talk“, said Bob Hoskins in the British Telecom (BT) campaign of the mid 1990s.

Here we had the largest telco in the UK encouraging folks to talk more to each other. Great advice, as things do tend to happen when people have conversations. Shame they couldn’t apply some of this thinking in their own back yard instead of throwing dollars at “solutions” that prevented conversations. A decade on and we’ve been paid back with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Auto Attendant technology, technological gatekeepers to the  conversation. I haven’t witnessed such a relentless investment in technology, in spite of consumer needs, since the amphibious car.

And so, for this reason only,  I wasn’t expecting much when Karen Ganschow (Telstra’s Executive Director of Relationship Marketing) took the stage at the iMedia Summit to talk about customer relationship management. I couldn’t have been more wrong, ADMA’s Direct Marketer of the Year, Karen gave a frank, insightful presentation on Telstra’s strategies for using social media to listen to their market and facilitate conversations. For example  four Telstra staff:- Jase, Scott, Tristam & Paul power a twitter help desk @telstra and @bigpondteam that allows customers to request help without having to “press 3 for greenfields”. As Scott makes it his personal mission to sort out your problem, so a twitter conversation ensues and you get a feeling that the company (or at least Scott) is trying to help you. Just because it’s not over the phone (or face-to-face) doesn’t mean it’s not a conversation and Telstra’s strategic use of social media is making a very big company seem small and caring again.

So it is “good to talk” but it’s also good to listen and social media provides the  opportunity for business to do both and  resurrect the art of conversation. And, like I said, things do tend to happen when people have conversations.