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I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers

marshallhaas.com

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Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers

#71

Post by rspeele »

This post might have been less profoundly slimy had it not proudly reeled off emails from customers who actually did take time out of their day to write their replies, thinking that some form of person-to-person communication had already been established.

Look at all these suckers who took the bait! Just think what automatic catfishing could do for your business!

Now, if only you could automate the second layer and keep that Awesome Customer Engagement going, all without the pesky time sink of human involvement. Just do a sentiment analysis on the email the customer sent and send them the appropriate response video -- either "Wow Andrew, thanks so much for your reply Andrew! It's always great to hear from our favorite customers like you Andrew!" or "Andrew, I'm so sorry to hear that you aren't completely satisfied. Andrew, I'm putting you directly in touch with Jen, who leads our Andrew Satisfaction department. Just give her a call at 555-123-4567 and follow the prompts to indicate whether this is about a return, a new order, or the status of an existing order."

Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers

#73

Post by rvnx »

rvnx wrote: post #62
rebuilder wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it that scary. It's a gimmick. It will maybe work once or twice, but how many of these "hey firstname" videos do you think people will watch before catching on? Sure, it's going to improve a lot, but since the first iteration of automated, personalized video messaging is so low-effort, I actually think people will just be inoculated against the whole idea. As in, don't watch the videos at all.

Hey $HN_NICKNAME, Your opinion is very important to me and I would like to take a moment to tell you personally how much I care about whatever you say. I'd be available for a call between 1am and 11pm if you want to discuss one amazing opportunity. Lisa - VP of Deceptive Marketing.

Attn: rebuilder

Hey rebuilder,

Sorry for spelling up your name incorrectly, we probably had a computer problem over here.

I have recorded a video just for you to apologize.

https://share.synthesia.io/e07bf638-1385-4c92-9970-940a0ebe7...

Lisa - VP of mass-emailing.

Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers

#74

Post by rland »

soheil wrote: post #45
fishtoaster wrote: post #9

This seems at least a little unethical. At the very least, I would think worse of a company that sent a video to me that seemed personalized, but later turned out to be mass-produced. He has an ethics section in the article, but doesn't doesn't go very deep and (unsurprisingly) concludes that his own actions were perfectly fine. The root of the problem is why customers respond well to these videos: they're surprised…

You're throwing him under the bus because this is a pretty recent phenomenon. Before email became so "personalized" I'd never get an email mentioning me by name and if I did it was from people who I knew personally. This all changed once marketers starting using "Hey $firstname," now I have no idea if this is from someone who knows me personally or from someone has my name in a massive db. The fact that there is no d…

This makes me feel the same way that those "on purpose casual" marketing emails make me feel.

"Tired of your awful insurance. Like ugh, us too! Insurance can be like, so heckin lame sometimes. Let me let you know about [INSURANCE BRAND] ... "

That stuff is absolutely psychotic and is an instant red flag. Just say "Buy this insurance, it's cheap and has features x y z w" and be done with it. I'm not your bff.

This is kind of an aside, but I feel like fast food companies have really taken over this area. Wendy's posting on twitter like "feelin heckin smol right now. normalize self care." NO! Give me McDonalds -- they show a huge picture of the burger with big text that says "Eat This Burger Now" or whatever. That's all I want from you people!

/rant

Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers

#75

Post by zepearl »

> During our 60 day experiment, inside that window of time we had a split of customers that received a video, and those that didn't.

>* - Of those that didn't receive a personalized video from me, only 3.75% purchased from us again in those 60 days.*

>* - Of those that received a personalized video from me, 7.02% purchased from us again in those 60 days.*

On one hand this is in my opinion a bit narrow-minded/short-term. Let's see what happens once people understand that the video wasn't personal (that they were tricked to think that it was?) + once a few more companies start doing the same thing.

On the other hand, I can believe that having videos which mention your name (let's be a visionary: let's imagine that e.g. Facebook's user profiles or similar stuff can be used, therefore that even some funny/happy comments can be added to the video mentioning e.g. some of your favourite things like stuff you like to eat/read/do or your favourite color etc...) can be somehow more entertaining or at least more "engaging" (as it's currently one of the most favourite buzzwords used in the Internet) compared to plain old-style videos.

But: that reminds me of the few times when I was sitting in a room (or I was in a conference call) and there was another person that had the same name as mine => each-single-time that that person's name was mentioned (same as mine) I got stressed (suddenly having to pay attention) and after 1-2 hours I was tired even if I actually didn't have to interact at all => I can think that such strategy, involving ~personalized videos, might have the same effect, meaning that people can only focus on few things that try to get their attention before starting to feel tired.

BTW.: I noticed just now, for the first time since years, that the comments-window can be resized :P I now do feel quite stupid, but I still feel like celebrating, hehe. Until today I wrote all my comments in the window having its default size, which is quite tiny... :D

Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers

#76

Post by actually_a_dog »

Ataraxy wrote: post #32
fishtoaster wrote: post #9

This seems at least a little unethical. At the very least, I would think worse of a company that sent a video to me that seemed personalized, but later turned out to be mass-produced. He has an ethics section in the article, but doesn't doesn't go very deep and (unsurprisingly) concludes that his own actions were perfectly fine. The root of the problem is why customers respond well to these videos: they're surprised…

Devils advocate on Since all advertising is the practice of psychological manipulation how is this particularly different? Is all advertising unethical? Even if the process is automated, if the end result is to evoke a nice sentiment in someone, is that really a bad thing? Wouldn't the ethics really come into play in using such tech to rip people off in a variety of ways rather than to merely say thank you for your p…

> Since all advertising is the practice of psychological manipulation how is this particularly different? Is all advertising unethical?

Do you mean "is psychologically manipulating people to buy shit they neither need nor want" ethical? Because that's largely how modern advertising operates.

Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers

#77

Post by burkaman »

Ataraxy wrote: post #70
burkaman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at all the responses this guy got from his videos. Reading them, do you really think those people understood how the video was made and just enjoyed the novelty? "I am amazed by the customer service...It makes me very happy that the team is so invested" "I can't imagine how much effort must go into doing this" "This is the first time in my life that I receive a personalized video from the founder of a company" "…

What you see is a sub selection of positive responses intentionally picked out to paint a narrative and ultimately market the product. I actually find the act of doing that far more manipulative than automated thank you videos.

Fair enough, I can't disagree with you there.

Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers

#78

Post by drewzero1 »

rutierut wrote: post #5

I'm a big fan of Marshall but this is just so clueless. People appreciate the video *because of the cost* that... that's the thing! This is not genuine, at. all. >If I was a retail store owner greeting customers at the entrance and someone came to me and offered to place a clone to do the same job, so I could be productive in the back, would I take that offer? Yes. No you wouldn't. Because a creepy clone at the entra…

I agree. If I was a retail store owner, I would absolutely not want a clone to greet people. It betrays my customers trust, one of the last things you want to do in retail customer service.

Instead I would probably hire someone to greet people, if I felt that was what I needed to make my customers feel welcome. (Or maybe I'd have a sign with my name and picture on it and a message to customers, or maybe I'd train existing employees to greet customers while working. Normal retail customer service.)

Going a step farther, if I had that employee pretend to be me, and then customers found out they were not, I would at the very least lose some customers and probably get the reputation that I try to trick people. This is a really neat trick (for now) with the new technology, but like handwriting fonts on junk mail it doesn't play well once people figure it out.

Re: I sent over 10k personal thank you videos to my customers

#80

Post by Ataraxy »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #76
Ataraxy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devils advocate on Since all advertising is the practice of psychological manipulation how is this particularly different? Is all advertising unethical? Even if the process is automated, if the end result is to evoke a nice sentiment in someone, is that really a bad thing? Wouldn't the ethics really come into play in using such tech to rip people off in a variety of ways rather than to merely say thank you for your p…

> Since all advertising is the practice of psychological manipulation how is this particularly different? Is all advertising unethical? Do you mean "is psychologically manipulating people to buy shit they neither need nor want" ethical? Because that's largely how modern advertising operates.

Yes, that indeed was more or less my point.
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