A dialogue-centered approach

At the beginning of the third semester at COS, we were introduced to a very interesting subject, Strategic Organizational Communication with professor Peter Winkler. One of the most interesting parts for me was when we talked about Dialog-Centric Communication.

Historically, this approach was used in 1990 and 2000. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305120984462 ) This approach sees users (or in our case, followers on social media) as collaborators and facilitators of interaction, and PR as a major source of engagement for the business in its digital environment.

In 2002 Kent and Taylor identified five principles of a dialogic orientation: mutuality, propinquity, empathy, risk, and commitment.

• Mutuality is defined as a collaborative approach and mutual equality.
• In dialogue propinquity, stakeholders and the public are consulted on relevant matters
• Empathy refers to the atmosphere of support and trust that must exist in order for dialogue to be successful.
• Risk means that businesses participate in dialogue to take relational risks.
• And commitment is defined by three characteristics — genuineness, authenticity, and commitment

In this article, I will show you some real-life examples for each of the 5 principles.

Mutuality — McDonald’s

Twitter’s communication strategy emphasizes the friend next door concept. McDonald’s casually engages with its community by tweeting. One of their Tweets said “if you were the person who ran the McDonald’s account for a day, what would you tweet” followed by “if it’s good maybe I’ll post it tmrw”. They use very casual language, which is typical of the platform. Another tweet says “it’s 3 am what’s ur McDonald’s order” followed by “who scheduled this post for 3 am”. Their aim is to talk to their target audience at eye level and start a conversation. They even answer the comments under each tweet.

There are of course promotional Tweets about upcoming products, but they are disguised as a funny Tweet that seems to be more like a casual conversation than product promotion. However, one thing that is noteworthy is that the Twitter page does not really answer negative comments. They tend to reply to funny or positive comments but seem to ignore the rest. This is not ideal, because a dialog also includes negative comments as well. This is something the community has noticed and commented on as well. But overall the page feels more like a private account rather than a company’s page. On Twitter, this is especially important as the platform mostly focused on text rather than images or videos like Instagram or Facebook. Additionally, Twitter is a discussion-based platform and here dialog-centric communication is more important than on other platforms. McDonald’s has figured out how to make the most out of their Twitter with usually a few thousand replies on each Tweet.

Propinquity —Spotify

Spotify, as one of the leading music streaming services, is tasked with providing the best customer service. According to Dan Gingiss, chief experience officer of Winning Customer Experience, Spotify is “really protective of the tone of voice,” which is something it monitors often. Before being considered for social media customer service at Spotify, candidates should take multiple writing tests and submit good scores from their email work.

Its Twitter support account, @SpotifyCares, has a timely response rate and updates its followers with information about common issues. Spotify even has a separate account, @SpotifyStatus, that updates followers on the current status of the service. Followers, therefore, have multiple places to go if they need assistance.

Empathy —Just Spices

A company that does a very good job in community building and thus follows a dialogue-centric communication via Social Media is the brand Just Spices (a german e-commerce company that offers a wide range of natural herbs/mixed spices for cooking/baking etc.). How do they do it? As soon as a customer makes their first purchase in the online shop, they are invited to join a private Facebook group named “Cooking with Just Spices”. Members of this group can ask questions concerning order processes, cooking ideas, or simply share recipes — not just raffles, promotions, recipes, or questionnaires that Just Spices provides. As a result, Just Spices is able to reach out directly to their customers as well as give them a chance to interact and help each other within the group whenever a question cannot immediately be answered. As a result, the service goes beyond customer service to act as a much more personal and intimate, empathetic platform (the social media group counts about 27.000 members).

Risk — Facebook and Heiniken cases

Several weeks ago, Facebook experienced an outage lasting about 6 hours, with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp going down, and the company losing around $65 million as a result of the outage.

Unfortunately, this is one of the recent examples, which lacks dialogic engagement — risk and empathy for the users — and provides only limited explanations, raising questions for the audience. In contrast, Twitter used the situation to have a dialogue with all its users, using compassion and humor to welcome the online crowd that migrated to its platform after Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram were unavailable for hours.

A brilliant example of taking the risk of dialogic engagement was Heiniken’s response to a drunk driver who crashed into the Amsterdam office, smashing the facade. Heineken took the opportunity to share a vital message while repairing the facade by displaying a sign — never drink when you drive, which resonated with social media users and bystanders alike. Here is a simple but effective way of creating a dialogic engagement!

Commitment — Nike

Several big brands strive to provide the best care and support to their customers. As a lot of users are on social media platforms, a few brands have shifted their support communication away from chatbots, emails, and phone numbers to social media channels.

Nike, for example, recognizes how important customer service is, especially in online social media. That’s why it created a dedicated Twitter account just for replying to customer inquiries and issues: @NikeService. Nike Service is focused on all things customer service, making it easier for customers to reach out when they have a problem or a question. As with other companies with great social media customer service, Nike Support is quite active and quick to respond. If you look at the account’s Twitter feed, you’ll see replies every few minutes. With this, customers can be sure they can trust Nike to help them when they need it.

In conclusion, after all those examples I believe that dialogic engagement is a necessary foundation for social movements to work towards a fully functioning society.

That said:

• Businesses need to understand communities and how to interact with them.
• Engaging with customers has become more popular over the last decade.
• A business’s goal today must be to be at eye level with its customers, to be inclusive, and to cover topics that are relevant.

Yes, it’s not an easy task, but is very helpful in today’s social media world!