One of the newest ideas to have come out the Web 2.0 need to support itself using advertising has been called Conversational Marketing and while it may have proven to be a bit of a fiasco for Federated Media it has been gaining traction as one of the new buzzwords.

While Jason at webomatica equates it with being nothing more than a band-aid for bad customer service I figure it is nothing more than a smokescreen for doing the same old thing using fancy new terminology.

If companies really gave a shit about my business they wouldn’t make my wallet bleed because something is new and then drop the price 65 days later. Companies wouldn’t make me have to endure stupid ass tech help that is lucky if it can read from a script that makes every attempt to make me look like the idiot. Companies wouldn’t do everything they can to stifle real growth and innovation while lining politician re-election campaigns and trying to defeat things like net neutrality because it threatens their ability to further gouge the consumer.

If companies even for a second thought of us as anything more than gullible idiots to be strung along then they wouldn’t be willingly handing over user information to state police or ethos’ like do no evil would be more than a motto to whip the loyal troops into a frenzy of kool-aid drinking fanboy’s waiting to cash out their options.

As Jason said in his post there was a time when you could walk into almost any store in your neighborhood and be treated like a real human being by people who knew your name and who really cared. Those times; with very rare exceptions, are gone being replaced with WalMart style greeters in big box retail operations staffed by beaten down employees who learned very quickly that caring about the customer isn’t something that you are rewarded for but lying to them and cheating them out of even more money will reap them many rewards.

You want to have a conversation with me as a customer that has any meaning then encourage your employees to give a shit about me the customer again. Reward them for caring about the customer so that we are willing to come back. You want me to believe that you care then how about customer support that can actually speak the native language of the customer rather than farming it out to some third world country where they are lucky if they can even read the script – or even more incredibly novel how about throwing the damn script out and having people who know what the hell they are talking about being there to help.

Just because a company can buy its way into using a NASA airstrip as their own private airfield or you can hire enough lawyers to wallpaper the world with take down notices doesn’t do a damn thing to prove you care about your customers or that having a conversation with them is anything more than some cool Web 2.0 mumbo jumbo.