The Globe: How French Innovators Are Putting the “Social” Back in Social Networking

Reprint: R1010L

Media entrepreneur Kramer looks at three French companies that use low-tech ways to better connect with customers.

Luxury-goods maker Boucheron hosts intimate dinners with a small number of key customers; Nespresso’s French subsidiary is making big investments in telephone call centers—despite the fact that most orders come through other channels—and training staff members to spend more time talking to customers; and Vente-Privee treats its key suppliers like customers, forging personal connections with them.

Kramer argues that even in an era when so many companies are obsessed with social networking and trying to amass millions of followers on Twitter and Facebook, the deepest relationships between businesses and customers continue to be formed offline, where they are better able to engage in true dialogue.