Do Business Well

Most currently available interactive television technologies are nothing to get excited about. They’ve all been variations on the movie-on-demand and pizza-to-go themes. The problem, of course, is that we already have movies on demand: you rent them at the local video shop. And we have pizza to go: just pick up the telephone. But what if the boundary between television and the World Wide Web blurred? What if you really could tell your TV what you were interested in and it would find it for you?

Imagine that you’re watching the news one evening when your interest is piqued by a story about the United States awarding mostfavored-nation trading status to the People’s Republic of China. You want to learn more, so you click on the Tell Me More button on your television screen. Several icons appear superimposed on the images you’re watching. Movie icons (”micons”) display recent related stories from a video library, and there are links to several recent print stories as well. There is a promotion to buy a music CD from a new hot rock group from Beijing and a link to a travel service that specializes in Chinese travel. Click on one of the micons and you can view that story you missed on the Tienanmen Square uprising expanding on the connection between trade status and human rights. The news story on the television pauses and the Tienanmen video clip begins to play. As it unfolds, additional micons and story links appear on the screen, allowing you to dig deeper and learn more. You decide to watch the full story. When it’s over, you return to the original newscast—right where you left off. Back at the mostfavored-nation story, you click on a couple of print story links as well as the travel link, sending the information directly to your email box.

Later that same evening you’re watching one of your favorite shows (with no commercials, of course) when your television tells you that you just reached the “platinum viewer status” for this show. From now on you’ll receive 25 points for every product that you request information about and 2 points for every dollar you spend on those products. As usual, everything in the show is for sale, from the furniture to the music—even the clothes the actors are wearing. Just click on the Tell Me More button and information on the items you’re interested in is automatically emailed to you. One of the items you requested information on was a car. When you check your email you find that your local dealer has delivered something: it’s not an advertisement, though; it’s a calendar for scheduling a test drive and a summary of your lease and trade-in options.

Whether you like it or not, this isn’t some far-fetched science fiction fantasy. MIT’s famous Media Laboratory has performed demonstrations of various forms of tell-me-more televisions for over a decade. The technology and infrastructure for making your computer, cell phone, car, and television a part of the global Internet is either here today or waiting just around the corner. Whether the particular scenarios above appeal to you or not isn’t important. As technology advances, so do the opportunities for interactive customer dialogue. It will take a while for the principles of interactive dialogue to catch on broadly, but it’s not too early to start planning for the future. If you put your customers in the driver’s seat and listen, learn, respect their privacy and focus on service, you’ll win their hearts, their minds, and their loyalty. And by doing so, you’ll be laying the groundwork for becoming a truly engaged organization of the next decade.

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