Most of the organisations in the CCA network are really challenged with sorting out which communication channels to use for which service offering to ensure appropriate brand alignment and of course great customer experience.

We all know that customers expect us to have a range of options from Facebook to phone; but they seem stubbornly loyal to traditional channels for significant volumes of transactions.

Like many I was fascinated to watch the news coverage of the election of the new Pope - an event watched by millions was of course communicated by smoke signal so to speak - a tradition lasting a couple of millennia. Clearly the crowd were keen to participate in this tradition and seemed elated with the process. Yet the Pontif was apparently also tweeting soon after his address (ok possibly not him personally!)  A couple of thoughts struck me - the first being tremendous loyalty despite the very public challenges that the church has experienced. Are we too quick to assume that customers will desert our brands when things go wrong? Does this effect the strategies we implement to recover from poor press coverage? The results from several sectors show that customers tend to stick with companies and in fact want to see things get better - provided communication channels are open and helpful.

The second thought was that as a customer base we have expectations about the way things should be done and how we want our services delivered. It is a brave organisation that ignores customer preferences thinking they know better - rather they need to work twice as hard to ensure that they have the right recipe with the right quantities to meet the needs of connected and mobile customers.

So it's not always out with the old, but rather being agile enough to blend a perfect communications cocktail for the range of complexities that we all face.