It's not often you'll find a topless woman on my blog but I came across this and thought it spoke volumes about the faux world we inhabit. A world where that which is valued, adored or desired exists, in the main, within an electronically manipulated or created reality.
'Vanity, vanity - all is vanity,' says the preacher in Ecclesiastes One.
We create desires (in sexual, fashion, product and self-perception) that can never be fulfilled and then invent ways to salve our sadness that mar God's image in us and make us uglier than we ever were :-(
Now who do you think wins with this situation (the good guy or the bad bloke)?
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 December 2013
Friday, 15 November 2013
Pew-Fodder, Brothers or Liabilities?
I was, once again, greatly taken up by Charles Simeon and the fact that he saw those who went out and did the stuff as brothers rather than his Curates or clergy. The problem is that as we (the Church) progress (in a temporal sense) we appear also to be diminishing in a number of areas and you know what? I think I know why ... Our problems coalesce into the sadness that is 'Sustainability' - that awful word which translates into a desperate attempt to cut our cloth according to our means and is in reality a contraction of Church as we read from the Book of spreadsheets!
If we look at what we can afford we will never have a thriving Church because we start off at square one but limiting that which we, and therefore by inference God, can do. We decide that church (here meaning 'local' body of believers) cannot afford to have ........ and therefore we see to it that they don't have it. And then we bemoan the fact that numbers dwindle and congratulate ourselves on our shrewd management skills in that we identified their weaknesses long before anyone else!
Of course we will never know whether our actions brought what might have been an otherwise stable structure tumbling or merely made the right decisions. How clever we are in that we have used sound management techniques and good fiscal management to build the Church. But then again, we're not building it are we?
One of the wonderful expressions the Bible has given the English language is that of 'casting our bread upon the waters' - stunning words from Ecclesiastes 11 that mean ... Mean what exactly? Let's have a bit of a think:
'Cast your bread upon the water, and you will find it.'
Chucking your Hovis onto the water is a sure path to having inedible bread. Of course it might be a reference to feeding ducks or have as its source the wisdom of an early Jewish Baker! So what does it mean?
It means that if you use what you have generously with those who might not, on the surface, appear to have a cat in Hell's chance of repaying you then it will reap volumes in returns! God tells us that we are to build the Kingdom of heaven, not become financially astute businessmen and women. Now this doesn't mean that we are to be profligate or foolhardy either - but we live to different rules and dance to a different tune!
Our church members are family, not independent revenue streams.
Our churches are family gatherings, not 'cashpoints'.
We are called to be courageous and missionally-minded and this means believing in the product we market. After all, if any business behaved as we do as Church none of us would be at all surprised when they folded.
If you want to be successful then you need to have a good product - we do!
If you want to be successful then you need a great sales team - generally we don't!
If you want to be successful then you need product placement - our sales force hide it!
If you want to be successful then you have outlets that are welcoming, attractive and you have plenty of them!
I think one of the big problems is that we are trying to build and maintain Church as if we are businessmen and we're not - we're Saints! We are risk averse where God is calling us to be risk takers. Leaders see their church members as pew-fodder whilst they, in return, see themselves as anything other than the sales team and this makes them liabilities!
We need to break the circle and see them as brothers (and sisters) and one of the easy ways of doing this is to grab them - even if it means one-at-a-time, and take them out and teach them to witness, to share and be part of the marketing g team God calls them to be. We need to live as exemplars and drag them with us - encouraging them to 'do as we do' - and then WE ARE BROTHERS.
What's that Reverend? You do t do that?
Balancing the books is something you might be applauded for doing - winning the lost, discipling them and sharing with them in the missional calling we have - now that Prophetic and profitable ;-)
Your choice my friends - where you going to lay up your treasures?
If we look at what we can afford we will never have a thriving Church because we start off at square one but limiting that which we, and therefore by inference God, can do. We decide that church (here meaning 'local' body of believers) cannot afford to have ........ and therefore we see to it that they don't have it. And then we bemoan the fact that numbers dwindle and congratulate ourselves on our shrewd management skills in that we identified their weaknesses long before anyone else!
Of course we will never know whether our actions brought what might have been an otherwise stable structure tumbling or merely made the right decisions. How clever we are in that we have used sound management techniques and good fiscal management to build the Church. But then again, we're not building it are we?
One of the wonderful expressions the Bible has given the English language is that of 'casting our bread upon the waters' - stunning words from Ecclesiastes 11 that mean ... Mean what exactly? Let's have a bit of a think:
'Cast your bread upon the water, and you will find it.'
Chucking your Hovis onto the water is a sure path to having inedible bread. Of course it might be a reference to feeding ducks or have as its source the wisdom of an early Jewish Baker! So what does it mean?
It means that if you use what you have generously with those who might not, on the surface, appear to have a cat in Hell's chance of repaying you then it will reap volumes in returns! God tells us that we are to build the Kingdom of heaven, not become financially astute businessmen and women. Now this doesn't mean that we are to be profligate or foolhardy either - but we live to different rules and dance to a different tune!
Our church members are family, not independent revenue streams.
Our churches are family gatherings, not 'cashpoints'.
We are called to be courageous and missionally-minded and this means believing in the product we market. After all, if any business behaved as we do as Church none of us would be at all surprised when they folded.
If you want to be successful then you need to have a good product - we do!
If you want to be successful then you need a great sales team - generally we don't!
If you want to be successful then you need product placement - our sales force hide it!
If you want to be successful then you have outlets that are welcoming, attractive and you have plenty of them!
I think one of the big problems is that we are trying to build and maintain Church as if we are businessmen and we're not - we're Saints! We are risk averse where God is calling us to be risk takers. Leaders see their church members as pew-fodder whilst they, in return, see themselves as anything other than the sales team and this makes them liabilities!
We need to break the circle and see them as brothers (and sisters) and one of the easy ways of doing this is to grab them - even if it means one-at-a-time, and take them out and teach them to witness, to share and be part of the marketing g team God calls them to be. We need to live as exemplars and drag them with us - encouraging them to 'do as we do' - and then WE ARE BROTHERS.
What's that Reverend? You do t do that?
Balancing the books is something you might be applauded for doing - winning the lost, discipling them and sharing with them in the missional calling we have - now that Prophetic and profitable ;-)
Your choice my friends - where you going to lay up your treasures?
Tuesday, 27 August 2013
What if Church did its Customer Services like ...
Vodafone?
Last week we took delivery of a new phone only to discover that it wasn't working and so I rang and having been put through to a techie I explained that it had a problem (appeared to be a NAND gate issue apparently). The result was that I was told that a new device would be dispatched at some rate of knots to resolve this issue.
We waited a couple of days and I rang Customer Services who assured me that it had left and was with the delivery people, so I smiled and waited - and it never came. But the weekend did and so we waited until today (when a silver 'returns bag' arrived - so I dispatched the duff handset as per instructions) and rang again.
'The order has been cancelled,' was the response I received when I contacted someone to find out what was going on, 'Because you sent it back in the seven day 'cooling off' period!'
So I explained that I hadn't sent it off because I'd rejected it (shh, it's alright phone, we does love you really) but because it was broken. 'Well you can't have another one until you return it,' they said.
So I pleaded miserably (and I can be a really miserable pleader) that we needed one and were just a little upset at this fourth account (and assessment) of the situation I was in. I told them I wanted someone from Customer Services to call me back - they (of course) never did - to resolve this issue.
A little later I contacted Vodafone using their chat system and received pleas of impotence, a complete runaround and when asked to have the issue escalated was told that that took two to three days! Now who runs customer services like that? I told them that this was unacceptable in today's current culture and was passed up to someone who portrayed themselves as a line manager. He was a total waste of space and was stealing oxygen from people who could have made better use of it.
His Customer-facing approach was this: 'There is no negotiation - there are no options, you have to do it our way!' I demanded that he escalate the issue but all I got were his protestations of impotency and limited options (I have the whole chat message saved and will have to publish it one day - it's a gleaming example of everything that really shouldn't be found in a customer support environment).
Eventually I wished him Namaste and left feeling that my future with Vodafone was indeed dim and limited. Four scenarios with no service, little feeling of being cared for and a sense of diminished worth (was the customer really king once?) - not a great advert' for the company at all.
The automated telephone system was even less help and yet amazingly, dialling the wrong option, I chanced across a Scottish voice that was warm, friendly and helpful. They went off and looked and called me back and explained the problems that had resulted in my problems and it's Tony rather than the bunch of impotency that exists somewhere at the end of the wire some five hours East of me that will probably keep me with them!
And it struck me that this was a great parallel with some of the encounters that people have had with the Church. There are those encounters where we meet the 'I have no options' people who are limited and limiting - who bring about such niggardly and sterile encounters that make the Church look so bad.
The people who, like those who produced the four differing scenarios (plus a really dodgy attempt and portraying the same option three different ways in a hope I would think I had been cared for or listened to and accept one of them) in the hope that it would make me go away! You know them I'm sure. They're the people who mirror those often found in a Church setting; those people who are happy to agree to differ as long as they can have it their own way.
The people who are skilled at making issues disappear by pretending that they have and rejoice in the ability to be absent when the situations they've helped cause need to be addressed. This is a real problem in any customer-facing environment this is, for you move the issue on to someone else and whilst you're living in peace with all, they have to fight the issue and the reaction to having been duped!
What I needed was someone to own the problem and give me the information I needed regarding it and its resolution.
Someone who would tell me the truth (even if I didn't want to hear it) and would lead me along the path to resolution.
Someone who would listen and dialogue rather than stick their fingers in their ears and pretend they were offering something along the lines of support.
You know what?
If Vodafone, or the Church, did that it would have so many people wanting to be in relationship with it - and that's the lesson to be learned from this engagement today for me:
It's no good telling people you care when you patently don't.
It's no good having people to talk to if they don't actually listen.
It's no good listening if you're not prepared to escalate the issue up the chain (w in Church it's called 'prayer' in Vodafone it appears to be called 'wishful thinking')
How's the Customer Services where you worship?
(If you answer 'poor' then I think you might need to look in the mirror and have a word with that member of the team before you engage with the others ;-))
Namaste
Last week we took delivery of a new phone only to discover that it wasn't working and so I rang and having been put through to a techie I explained that it had a problem (appeared to be a NAND gate issue apparently). The result was that I was told that a new device would be dispatched at some rate of knots to resolve this issue.
We waited a couple of days and I rang Customer Services who assured me that it had left and was with the delivery people, so I smiled and waited - and it never came. But the weekend did and so we waited until today (when a silver 'returns bag' arrived - so I dispatched the duff handset as per instructions) and rang again.
'The order has been cancelled,' was the response I received when I contacted someone to find out what was going on, 'Because you sent it back in the seven day 'cooling off' period!'
So I explained that I hadn't sent it off because I'd rejected it (shh, it's alright phone, we does love you really) but because it was broken. 'Well you can't have another one until you return it,' they said.
So I pleaded miserably (and I can be a really miserable pleader) that we needed one and were just a little upset at this fourth account (and assessment) of the situation I was in. I told them I wanted someone from Customer Services to call me back - they (of course) never did - to resolve this issue.
A little later I contacted Vodafone using their chat system and received pleas of impotence, a complete runaround and when asked to have the issue escalated was told that that took two to three days! Now who runs customer services like that? I told them that this was unacceptable in today's current culture and was passed up to someone who portrayed themselves as a line manager. He was a total waste of space and was stealing oxygen from people who could have made better use of it.
His Customer-facing approach was this: 'There is no negotiation - there are no options, you have to do it our way!' I demanded that he escalate the issue but all I got were his protestations of impotency and limited options (I have the whole chat message saved and will have to publish it one day - it's a gleaming example of everything that really shouldn't be found in a customer support environment).
Eventually I wished him Namaste and left feeling that my future with Vodafone was indeed dim and limited. Four scenarios with no service, little feeling of being cared for and a sense of diminished worth (was the customer really king once?) - not a great advert' for the company at all.
The automated telephone system was even less help and yet amazingly, dialling the wrong option, I chanced across a Scottish voice that was warm, friendly and helpful. They went off and looked and called me back and explained the problems that had resulted in my problems and it's Tony rather than the bunch of impotency that exists somewhere at the end of the wire some five hours East of me that will probably keep me with them!
And it struck me that this was a great parallel with some of the encounters that people have had with the Church. There are those encounters where we meet the 'I have no options' people who are limited and limiting - who bring about such niggardly and sterile encounters that make the Church look so bad.
The people who, like those who produced the four differing scenarios (plus a really dodgy attempt and portraying the same option three different ways in a hope I would think I had been cared for or listened to and accept one of them) in the hope that it would make me go away! You know them I'm sure. They're the people who mirror those often found in a Church setting; those people who are happy to agree to differ as long as they can have it their own way.
The people who are skilled at making issues disappear by pretending that they have and rejoice in the ability to be absent when the situations they've helped cause need to be addressed. This is a real problem in any customer-facing environment this is, for you move the issue on to someone else and whilst you're living in peace with all, they have to fight the issue and the reaction to having been duped!
What I needed was someone to own the problem and give me the information I needed regarding it and its resolution.
Someone who would tell me the truth (even if I didn't want to hear it) and would lead me along the path to resolution.
Someone who would listen and dialogue rather than stick their fingers in their ears and pretend they were offering something along the lines of support.
You know what?
If Vodafone, or the Church, did that it would have so many people wanting to be in relationship with it - and that's the lesson to be learned from this engagement today for me:
It's no good telling people you care when you patently don't.
It's no good having people to talk to if they don't actually listen.
It's no good listening if you're not prepared to escalate the issue up the chain (w in Church it's called 'prayer' in Vodafone it appears to be called 'wishful thinking')
How's the Customer Services where you worship?
(If you answer 'poor' then I think you might need to look in the mirror and have a word with that member of the team before you engage with the others ;-))
Namaste
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