I recently read The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk.  It’s a good read and one I’d recommend to anyone who wants to better understand the influence social media platforms like facebook and twitter are having on businesses.  He will definitely make you rethink twitter as a one-on-one communication tool and not a “broadcast” platform.

Vaynerchuk describes how companies are leveraging these new tools to deliver a mass-personal experience.  These companies are once again leveraging technology to raise the customer service bar the implications of which are similar to the experience I described last week with Dell Computers in the late 90’s.  The companies that “get it” and leverage these new capabilities will pull ahead.  Those that don’t may not survive.  As Gary points out in the book, if you don’t think it can happen quickly just look at Blockbuster and how sticking their head-in-the-sand led to a quick demise to Netflix.

I had the chance to see Gary speak at SXSW earlier this year.  Watch this clip to get a good idea of his style and gist of the idea behind the book.  He’s definitely a dynamic speaker and passionate about his thesis.  I left his talk questioning in my own mind whether or not it was feasible to think you could communicate on a personal level with every one of your customers.  Basically, does it scale?  I applied the math to my own company, ArchVision and decided there is no reason you can’t.  

Here’s the quick math for ArchVision… 10 employees x 2,000 hours per year = 20,000 man-hours.  Imagine spending 5 minutes a quarter talking directly to every customer.  That means we could theoretically cover 240,000 customer interactions per year!  I wish we had that many customers!  Could we interact with 5,000 customers for 5 minutes each quarter?  The answer is yes, it’s just a matter of priorities.

Read it.  You’ll rethink the importance of social media to your business.