Humanizing the Internet

It's not the biggest pipe, the fastest access, or the cheapest service that counts. ISPs that put the "Big E" at the heart of their marketing plan may successfully face down large, fast, and free rivals.

by Ken Robbins

Ken Robbins is President and Chief Executive Officer of affinitypages.com, which creates and operates ISPs for niche groups. Affinitypages.com currently operates a national Internet service catering to one million online inventors and 750,000 home-schoolers in the U.S.

Empathy: The action of understanding, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another.

In the summer of 1986, at the age of 22, I was sitting in my car listening to a cassette tape by Tom Hopkins, the famous real estate sales trainer.

Hopkins was detailing all the different techniques and tactics for getting more customers and closing more sales when all of a sudden he paused and said, "You'll really begin to sell more when you acquire the big "E," or empathy. When the customer knows that you understand their situation and who they are, they will love you, buy from you and send their friends to you."

Fast-forward to the year 2000. I am listening in to inbound sales and tech-support calls for dial-up Internet access. Although the calls invariably start out with "I'm having a problem with…" or "I'm calling off an ad I saw in…" almost without exception, the caller mentions something about a benefit they are trying to achieve in the end.

Listen. . .
I do not mean that customers want their dial-up networking panel to have the proper IP address! They say things like: "I was trying to research…" or "I just wanted to e-mail to my Mom," and " I was in the middle of buying…" or "Your ad mentions filtering and I have two kids who…"

While listening to these calls I remembered Hopkins admonition about the big "E." These folks, our customers, almost always want the person on the other end of the phone to understand their plight and the benefit they're trying to achieve. It's not just the act of getting connected to the Internet.

But is Hopkins right? Do people really matter, or is it just price of the dial-up service that makes them believe they have a right to form human bonds with their service providers?

They cannot kill the music
For the past year analysts and free Internet service providers have been singing a new theme.

The theme is that dial-up Internet access is "commoditized." Although the word doesn't really exist as a verb, the connotation is that connecting to the Internet is so readily available today that dial-up access has become a generic service. In a so-called commoditized market, price is the only factor that impacts which provider a consumer will choose.

The trends seems to be confirmed by the astounding, meteoric rise of the freebies like NetZero and Bluelight.com, and now even ATT with its new i495 hybrid plan offering unlimited access for just $5 per month, along with advertisements.

On the stock boards of the free Internet service providers, every investor asserts confidently, "Why would anyone PAY for access in today's market?"

Why, indeed?

I'll tell you why, because people do not pay for 56K v.90K access. Access speeds may, in fact, be a commodity, but human empathy is not.

Listen and learn
Customers pay to get personally relevant information from the Internet and connect with other people. They pay to have someone understand what they want and who they are. Consumers choose a service because it speaks to them in some way. They pay because they do not want to feel like a commodity!

I've arrived at the conclusion that every customer we have and every customer we want to have has some passion, need, or benefit they want to experience.

Grandchildren want to send pictures to their Grandmother to make her feel good. Travelers want to find a great buy on an airline ticket and save some money. Parents want to protect their kids from seeing smut, while giving them the advantage of a better educational tool. Customers may simply want to feel like part of a community or an online interested group.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of examples about how people fulfill their desires and what makes them feel like a relevant, unique individual among the 10,000 Yahoo! chat rooms, the 70 sports car club racing Web sites, and the list of 12,000 stock and investment sites available to them.

When we show our customers that we understand the benefit they are trying to receive, that's when they really start to connect with their Internet service provider. Perhaps it's just niche marketing, but after listening to those calls I know a few things are certain.

Let your customers teach you
No one really cares about 25 MB of personal Web space or our around-the-clock technical support. Customers to not get giddy when a provider offers them seven POP3 mailboxes.

But I do hear customers perk up and respond when they hear that their home-schooled kids won't get Web access to Playboy.com.

Consider for a moment how we all plan to grow our business and keep our customers. Let's set modem ratios, business plans, value-added services, and advertising schemes aside, for the moment.

If we just focus on putting first things, first for our clients we will

1. Create an Internet service that is personally relevant to each individual user
2. Let our customers know that we understand the issues which are of paramount importance to them, and
3. Treat customers with respect, care, and courtesy on the telephone.

No free ISP or other program can take them away from us.

If I can provide these three benefits to my clients, I have no concerns whatsoever about the likes of free ISPs and the big-generic brands of Internet access eroding by customer base.

Personal, individualized service with a dose of personal empathy will never become a commodity. The three customer-oriented facets of providing online services with a human touch are vital.

They remain the ultimate shield against competitors.

—End