[asterisk-biz] VoIP 9-1-1 failure - don't let it happen to you

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mroberts1818 at gmail.com wrote:
> Same here. 
>
> Being this is a business list - how would other sales/business/marketing minded people promote their 911 service?  Would you incorporate a real life scenario?  Yes? How would you address the tact aspect?
>
> Your thoughts,
>
>   
My personal thoughts are this:

1) Using the death of a child in marketing of ANY kind is an emotional 
appeal. With emotional appeals, you get emotional responses. That's just 
the way marketing goes. They may be positive emotional responses (people 
linking their compassion to a desire to 'never let it happen again' sort 
of feeling), or they may be negative emotional responses (id est, "How 
could you exploit the death of a child for your financial gain!"). 
Either way, you have to be prepared for that sort of response, and 
market accordingly.

There's a great book called The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: 
Mastering the Art and Discipline of the Business Narrative (Stephen 
Denning) where he discusses the most common reactions to stories of a 
particular theme. In this case, a negative story is often associated 
with teaching a lesson. It is NOT, however, the best approach for 
motivating a person or company to actually proactively change or gear up 
toward a new strategy. For that, you need to present a different KIND of 
supporting story.

When looking for a positive emotional response, you need to give a 
positive emotional stimulus.

2) Build trust.  You can't just simply drop into a mailing list and say, 
"Don't let tragedy happen to you. Trust me to help you avert it."   Who 
are you? Why should I trust you with the averting this tragedy?  Again, 
back to the business narrative, it helps to be able to give a situation 
in which trust in you was well-placed. Even if it's something as simple 
as a customer testimonial or example in which you were able to help 
someone with your services. If you don't have this, you had better start 
getting that information, because people are going to want it. Metrics 
and statistics help, but they only go so far toward assuaging the 
misgivings people may have.

Above all, speak the truth. When you're giving your examples or relating 
your stories, they must be true. Artificial customer testimonials do not 
build trust. If your customers are truly so thankful for your services, 
they will often consent to being a reference and will allow others to 
contact them as such.

3) Don't grab your supporting data fresh from the headlines before all 
the truth and details come out. In this story, for instance, there's no 
mention given as to WHY the 911 call went to the wrong city. In the US, 
that ends up usually being inconvenient, but the E911 call centers are 
generally pretty good at transferring you to a call center close by. Did 
this not happen? Why not? What would have caused the ambulance to take 
so long? Was it actually being DISPATCHED from a city too far away?  
That's a breakdown of the 911 system, not of VoIP.

Clearly the call went through from VoIP to a 911 call center, so the 
provider WAS giving 911 services. It just went to the wrong call center. 
Why? Was this the VoIP provider's fault? The customer for not updating 
location information? The 911 provider's fault for not routing properly?

None of these questions are answered, so we're left with more questions. 
It's not a simple, clear-cut case of a VoIP provider not having 911 
services. It's a case of a provider having 911 services, but they didn't 
work properly. THIS is the most important aspect of this, because it 
creates a scenario in which one distrusts the VoIP 911 provider almost 
immediately out of the gate. How can one expect to sell services when 
one is fostering an automatic distrust in them at the start of the 
marketing appeal?



While this is a mailing list, basic marketing rules still most 
definitely apply.


N.