Does social customer care exist or is it simply ‘lipstick on a pig’?!

I’ve been running a LinkedIn group – where social media meets customer service – for the last four or five years, and someone recently posed the question:

What is your take on the fact that so many airlines offer social customer service during regular business hours only 9-5? Is it a matter of them not seeing the value in making it a fully operational channel, is it cost or just that the majority don’t get it?

The question got me thinking about social customer care and its relationship with what one might term traditional customer service. The bit I was particularly interested in was the reference to ‘regular business hours only 9-5’. The question I asked myself was this: Does social customer care really exist, or is it simply customer service with a social layer on top?

What do I mean by – social layer on top?

Do organisations design their social customer care proposition with the unique characteristics of social in mind or do they simply apply a traditional customer service approach to the social channels? For example, when I think about a resolution, do I think about how that resolution could be delivered via Twitter with the specific characteristics of Twitter in mind (ie. 140 characters in public) OR do I think about how that resolution could be delivered simply using Twitter as a delivery mechanism (ie. somehow reduce my existing customer service resolution to 140 characters OR Tweet the customer an email address OR point the customer to a web page etc).

In my mind we are still simply paying lip service to social customer care. The majority of companies are simply applying existing resolutions to social channels without any real thought about the characteristics of the social channel at hand. However, there are some exceptions that have emerged over the past few years: BestBuy’s #Twelpforce, O2’s #Tweetserve and Amazon’s Mayday.

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17.03.14: Mayday is not social!

Thanks to the ever-watchful and erudite @martinhw for pointing out that Mayday is not social! Quite right, and I agree with you, but I included it, more as an example of how Amazon thought about the resolution and the outcome they wanted with the customer and the channel in mind. Mayday has an elegant symmetry about it and points to a type of customer service/engagement that is native and intuitive to the product itself; the resolution mechanism is part of the product design, not as is often the case an adjunct to it or an afterthought.

I believe we will start to see a different type of customer service emerge. A type of customer service that is far more organic, serendipitous and spontaneous, less tied to a knowledge base, less tied to a department and more tied to the moment and the point(s) of delivery. Perhaps one where the customer plays a far greater part, and I don’t just mean throwing some content on to a web site and calling it ‘self service’.

Social Customer Care: What does #Tweetserve tell us about the future of digital customer service?

I read with interest about O2’s launch of #TweetServe – O2 launch #TweetServe – Customer Service via Twitter. #TweetServe is described as “a new way for customers to find out a range of account information, without having to phone Customer Service.”

It’s good to see organisations inching those boundaries forward. The last few months have seen Natwest experimenting with Vine videos and Google launch Helpouts, together with the use of Promoted Tweets as a complaint mechanic. But do these types of advancements, mark in the words of Jay Patel (CEO, IMImobile): “a step forward to the next generation of digital customer services?”

I’m not so sure.

Yes, it is undoubtedly a step forward, but if this is what the next generation of digital customer services looks like, then perhaps we are further away than we might think. I can’t help but ask myself why it’s taken any company this long to develop any kind of Twitter-based service beyond the standard Tweet and respond model.

#Tweetserve reminds me a little of #Twelpforce (or at least the spirit of #Twelpforce), but perhaps more of a second cousin, at least once removed. I remember when #Twelpforce was launched, and still think back with a sense of excitement and anticipation about it. Nostalgia can be a cruel mistress, however. But don’t get me wrong. I will be the first to congratulate O2 on launching #Tweetserve: any organisation that takes bold steps (well, any steps) deserves to be recognised.

I like the use of #hashtags – #charges, #data, #handsets, #android, #text etc. For such a simple mechanic, I think hashtags are undervalued and underused. Hashtags provide a common language across different platforms, as well as the interplay between online and offline. They have the potential to act as ‘social objects’ binding people together. But I’m also wondering when #complaint, #broken, #faulty, #refund, #poorservice … will be added to this lexicon.

Perhaps I should look at this in another way and ask the following question: What does #Tweetserve tell us about the future of digital customer services? I’m still not sure. In some ways I feel that #Tweetserve is trying to cast off, break free from the straightjacket of the last few decades of customer service, but can’t quite do so. #Tweetserve is still built on the solid foundations of a very linear and structured type of customer service, despite its social trappings. I would imagine its metrics are very traditional as well, dominated by operational efficiencies, perhaps with an element of engagement thrown in; I hope I’m wrong. I also sense an uneasy friction exists between marketing, sales and customer service, the choice of #hashtags reflect this. Perhaps, I’m reading too much into it?

I feel mean-spirited, and perhaps on one level I am. But that is not because I don’t want #Tweetserve to succeed. I desperately want organisations to succeed. But I also want organisations to free themselves. To push beyond. To recognise the innate nature and inherent characteristics of the platforms they use. To break free from the structures that have dominated and dictated the way in which they have engaged with customers and employees. Use social as social.

Now if you had said that an organisation had decided to adopt more of a Snapchat-type service approach, characterised by temporariness and impermanence, that really would be pushing and breaking through boundaries. For that would cast true shadows over an organisation’s entire service framework.

 

 

Social customer care: Ephemerality and impermanence

I’ve been thinking about the idea of impermanence for awhile now as it pertains to social customer care. Tenuous perhaps, but this train of thought, this idea of – impermanence – has been sitting at the back of my mind, nagging away; I can’t seem to shift it. This nagging thought can be directly attributable to a number of posts written by Nathan Jurgenson, Snapchat’s in-house researcher.

He writes in Pics and It Didn’t Happen [The New Inquiry]: “What would the various social-media sites look like if ephemerality was the default and permanence, at most, an option?”

The thought intrigued me. What would social customer care look like if we pushed it to an extreme and applied the same sense of ephemerality to it? Here are my initial and somewhat unstructured thoughts.

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The customer service model as we know it is built on permanence and through this permanence comes consistency and efficiency: the cornerstones of our modern day service experience. Organisations can provide the same experience, the same resolution time and time again, over and over again. Resolutions can be commoditised, packaged up, shipped out. This works because the organisation controls the systems of delivery.

But what happens not if, but when, customers refute the assumption of permanence? What happens when ‘temporary‘ becomes the norm. What happens when ‘temporary’ defines the characteristic of the solution or experience at hand? The solution is experienced once by its chosen audience, and then gone. This impermanence or temporariness of the experience determines how that service is provided (if at all), how the resolution is constructed, the tools required to create, curate, deliver it, and ultimately experience it. What happens if the chosen audience only has 10 seconds to view it, understand it… and then never to be seen again. How do you design a service or an experience that is ultimately self-deleting?

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The service model that we know, built around permanence, is self-fulfilling. The knowledge base re-inforces this notion of permanence. Adds credibility to it. Substantiates it. It gives organisations a sense of security and importance.

This sense of permanence, however, makes it difficult to re-invent, renew, re-invigorate. It makes it difficult to question the past. It makes it problematic to move forwards, to create new experiences. We feel the weight of it bearing down on us.

In his post, The Liquid Self, Jurgenson writes:

“My worry here is that today’s dominant social media is too often premised on the idea (and ideal) of having one, true, unchanging, stable self and as such fails to accommodate playfulness and revision. It has been built around the logic of highly structured boxes and categories, most with quantifiers that numerically rank every facet of our content, and this grid-patterned data-capture machine simply does not comfortably accommodate the reality that humans are fluid, changing, and messy in ways both tragic and wonderful.”

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But what would happen if we turned our back on this sense of permanence? What would happen if we rejected the burden of having to create something durable and lasting? What would happen if we could disentangle ourselves from equating authenticity with permanence? The knowledge base as the sacred source of truth. This isn’t about being forgetful either.

What if we accepted the elusive nature of impermanence? Accepted that the context of the knowledge base should not be the sole determinant of authenticity. The service experience like some kind of convenience food, consumed in the moment, experienced in the moment, resolved in the moment? Isn’t that enough?

The temporariness of the experience makes it by default personalised and contextual. This sense of personalisation is heightened by the fact that the audience for whom it is created is chosen. The choice is deliberate, intentional; in many ways this sense of impermanence is far more restrictive than our current service model. The fact that the experience will shortly be gone raises the level of acuity through a heightened sense of urgency.

The irony of this, however, is that in creating ‘disposable experiences’, it may actually force organisations to redefine, reconsider, rethink what truly needs to be permanent in the eyes of their customers. In the act of creating experiences that are impermanent, organisations perhaps, create value by default in those things that are then considered to be permanent. Without this, permanence becomes a playground for the mundane, the routine, the complacent. In this context, apps like Snapchat should not be instantly dismissed, but rather heeded as a warning to what the future of customer service might hold.

Social customer care: What happens when you let your customers design their customer service?

This question stems from a response Lyle Fong gave to Ray Wang in an interview back in 2011. In the interview, Lyle posed the question: “What happens when we treat customers as part of the company?”

Seems a simple enough question. So, playing on this theme I pose another question in this way: “What happens when you let your customers design their customer service?”

What does this mean for you? For your customers? For your existing customer service? What does this mean for all the systems you have in place? What does it mean for your agents? What does it mean for your knowledge base? What does it mean..?

What would happen if you asked your customers to design the service that they want to receive?

What would happen if you asked your customers to decide where to put the touchpoints?

What would happen if you let your customers use your systems, or decide which systems you should provide?

What would happen if…?

Imagine. Imagine if you only built the customer service that your customers needed

Imagine if you only designed that bit of customer service for where your customers needed it

Imagine if…

But actually, the point is not in the asking of the question, although that reflects a boldness that the majority of organisations simply do not possess. The point is neither in the imagining. The point is in recognising that your customers are doing this to some degree anyway already.

Are they doing this because they can? Are they doing this because of the current service they receive? Are they doing this in spite of you?

It doesn’t really matter what the reasons are.

The point is that your customers are doing this. They’re doing it because they can. They don’t need to ask your permission anymore…

The point is that companies like Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Vine, even Snapchat, are helping your customers simply do this without you. They are helping your customers create a type of customer service that is on the fly, reusable, personal, local, always available, scalable. A customer service of intimacy that meets their needs when they need it.

There is no operational efficiency involved. No AHT involved. No business case to make. And yet it is the most responsive, efficient and personalised customer service that exists.

Perhaps it’s worth asking the question: What happens when you let your customers design their customer service? Because in the end it’s their customer service. Isn’t it?

Social customer care and identical people

I want my agents to be the same

I want my agents to say the same thing, time and time again, over and over again

I want my agents to think the same

I want my agents to give the same experience time and time again

I want my agents to conform

 

Same, bland, mundane, impersonal

Is that what your customers want?

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Social customer care challenges the same. It challenges being identical

It challenges the processes and systems that make your agents the same

It challenges the way you have thought up to now

It challenges you to think differently

It challenges you to do things differently

It challenges you to be different

It challenges you to be you

It challenges you

It demands that you be you

But do you know who you are? What are you hiding behind?

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Social customer care demands that you turn your back on uniformity. It demands that you undo, unlearn, dismantle

It demands that you confront the unfamiliar, the forgotten, the overlooked

It demands that you relearn, re-do, rebuild

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We have the most powerful engagement and publishing tools at our disposal that we have ever had

They are not going away

It is not a fad. Get over it

Your customers are leading the way, and so too can your agents if you only let them

But do you dare or do you hide behind operational efficiency?

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Do you dare let your agents speak the same language as your customers?

Your customers are getting on their own camels, creating their own marketplaces … do you even know what I am talking about?!

Social Customer Care: Who wins at the margins of customer service

The following is a post I recently wrote for CMIQ [a division of IQPC] as part of Customer Service Week.

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I’ve read a few articles recently about Millennials, Generation C (that’s ‘Connected’ for those not in the know) and the rise of digital self-service, and on a personal level I’ve been thinking about the social network as the mechanism for delivering customer service itself.

I also had an interesting conversation with a colleague of mine last week about social customer care. ‘What is it? What is social customer care?’ he asked me. ‘I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t get it.’

Both these things got me thinking about customer service and how organizations provide it or will provide it in years to come. It got me thinking about winning and losing at customer service. Would customers win, would organizations lose in the emerging customer service paradigm? Would customers lose and organizations win? Would no one win? Would everyone win? Would anyone care about winning? Did I care? Was it about winning or losing anyway, or simply getting the answer I needed at that moment in time. Was it about winning in the shortest amount of time, or was it about convenience? Convenience to agents, customers, me?

When organizations talk about winning at customer service, are they talking about the same thing as their customers? Do customers even talk about winning at customer service, or do they simply want their complaint heard, their issue resolved, their question answered?

When organizations talk about winning at customer service or social customer care, are they simply talking about the efficiency of their customer service channels? Has operational efficiency become a proxy for success?

In terms of Millennials and Gen C, if I had to generalize then it seemed to me that however we do it now, however customer service or social customer care is provided now, is not the way it will be. Our version of customer service is linear and synchronous, time bounded, fixed and physical (although increasingly less so). It is very operational in nature, functional and transactional, predictable and impersonal, as humourless and soulless as the waiting muzak we invariably listen to. Formulaic.

But things are changing. Customer service is changing. That is inevitable. Social customer care has given us a brief glimpse of something different. Something that is more intimate, more immediate, more tangible, more human, even humane perhaps.

Customer service is shifting from taking place at destination points, hidden from view, behind high walls, destination points owned by organizations in favor of places of common interest, places, common places, known places, open places, accessible to all. Places owned by no one and everyone. Places where collective knowledge resides. What The Cluetrain Manifesto refers to as the marketplace. Here, in these marketplaces, where organizations have gotten off their camels, a different type of customer service is emerging. Asynchronous, serendipitous, collaborative, shared, open, participative…

Here, the organization and customer come together as equals. Here, customer service has moved outwards, to organizational margins. To margins the organization was only ever aware of at best, ignorant, willingly ignorant, intentionally ignorant of at worst.

But here at the margins a flourishing economy is at work. Organizations are having to learn, decipher a new lexicon, a lexicon of sharing, a lexicon that is non-hierarchical. Here, organizations are having to unlearn the old ways… untangle them, separate them, move beyond them. Recognize that the ‘old ways’ even exist.

This is not about forgetting the old ways, however. It’s not about turning our collective back on them. It’s about understanding and accepting that this is where we have got to. But that the time has come to get to another place, another way point.

Here in these open spaces, where knowledge is freely traded, the desire to share one’s knowledge, the desire to help becomes a powerful currency. A currency traded on open and accessible networks. The more one trades, the more one helps, the more interconnected one’s network becomes. But this is a fragile network, apathy never far away. The threat of the hierarchy ever present.

But we have to be careful at the margins. We have to be careful that we – you and me – do not adopt organizational thinking. Do not mistrust. We have to be careful that we do not abuse or misuse the open spaces. We have to be careful. We have to be careful that we do not become hoarders of knowledge. We have to be mindful that as our network grows we do not forget and climb back onto that camel. History has a habit of repeating itself. This is a fragile place, but for now it seems tempting and alluring.

In this place we have to be careful we do not forget. In this open place, customer service is not about winning or losing. It is not an Erlang Formula reduced to a channel reduced to a solution reduced to customer satisfaction. In this place to help, because I want to, because I can, is enough. In this place, in the parlance of the ‘old ways’: to help is to win.

Social Customer Care: Will Google make a play?

I’ve been wondering for some time now why Google [not really sure which bit of Google to link to???] hasn’t made more of a play in the social customer care space.

I seem to start most of my posts with–I’ve been wondering … or–I’ve been reading …

I remember writing a post in 2011 [What’s the role of Google in your customer service?] asking the same question and making the observation then that for many people Google was their first port of call when something goes wrong with their washing machine, laptop or lawnmower. I put forward the question then, and to some degree I’m still asking it (perhaps a little tongue in cheek): Why don’t companies simply put a Google search box on their Help homepage?

But perhaps now I’m turning the question on to Google themselves and asking them: Why haven’t you made more of a play in the social customer care space?

If Google chose to make sense of all those search queries people asked around products, or when they use combinations of words such as ‘broken / fix + [product name] + product type’ and instead of simply showing entries for people or companies that might fix such products, actually offered a set of really practical and relevant results that included manuals and videos [YouTube], product information, people who have had similar issues, information in forums [fora?], grouped that information together in some way, allowed the results to show ratings and reviews, and alongside a directory of people who could provide solutions to those problems, together with phone numbers, offer the option for people to get in touch with each other via Google Hangouts to help each other out, then that might really become quite a powerful alternative to either ringing a company up or visiting their website.

Google has the opportunity and ability to make the links and bring them together in such a meaningful way, and in so doing, keep all of us on their web site that little bit longer. Perhaps it’s just a matter of time…

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10 minutes after publishing this post: Just remembered why I was thinking about Google as a player in the social customer care space. It was off the back of coming across this upcoming session – Keeping up with the Customer – Digital Service – by Jeremy Morris at the Call Centre Conference in London, 2nd & 3rd October.

Social customer care: How many Vine videos is a lost bag worth?

Over the last day or so I’ve been reading a number of different posts about @HVSVN and his purchase of a Promoted Tweet to complain about the service he received from British Airways.

Last week I read about @NatWest_Help and their use of Vine videos.

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Both of these things have got me thinking about social customer care, and customer service more broadly. Or perhaps I should qualify it by replacing ‘customer service’ or ‘social customer care’ with ‘customer experience’ or ‘customer interaction’. I’ve noticed that whenever we talk about customer service now, it very quickly becomes interchangeable with customer experience. Maybe it’s all just about ‘communication’?

As I was thinking about these two things, some questions came to mind.

• What do either of these examples tell us about the approach that customers and organisations will take when engaging with each other in the coming years?
• How will customers express their satisfaction or displeasure?
• What do these things tell us about the continuing relevance of today’s metrics?
• When we look at the use of Vine or the purchase of Promoted Tweets to complain, how will organisations account for these types of interactions in their metrics? What is it that they will actually measure?
• Will not responding become a measure? And if so, of what?
• Will organisations recognise the effort someone puts in to the way in which they interact with them? Is a complaint via Vine worth more or less, in terms of the effort expended by a customer, than a complaint via a Promoted Tweet or YouTube or Facebook? Does it matter? Do you only compare like for like ie. Vine with YouTube, Tweet with Facebook comment? How many Tweets equate to a Vine video equate to a Facebook comment equate to…?
• If a customer RTs, is that more or less meaningful or impactful than Joe Public RTing? Does being more or less meaningful or impactful depend on who is in your network?
• In the same way that an organisation tries to understand the ‘strength’ or ‘impact’ or ‘reach’ (I’m trying not to use either of the ‘k’ words there) of a customer, what happens when customers themselves start to truly not only understand the power they wield individually and collectively, but also understand how to use it?
• What happens when customers themselves start to create and share their own leaderboards indexing brands in a way that is meaningful to them?

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In the end, how much of this really matters, as long as the customers lost baggage is found or their broken guitar fixed?

Is social customer care the catastrophe?

I was reading a very interesting post by Harold Jarche a moment ago – The Social Imperative. In the post, Jarche writes: “The fundamental lesson that Sopolski came back with was that “textbook social systems that are engraved in stone” can be changed in one single generation.” In this instance, a catastrophe – the spread of tuberculosis (which wiped out all the alpha males within a troop of baboons) – became the trigger for the ensuing change – a troop that was ‘much less aggressive and more social’.

So what I’m wondering to myself is whether we are currently in that ‘one single generation’ that will see a fundamental shift take place in the way customer service is provided. Is social customer care the ‘catastrophe’? Not social customer care in terms of the technology – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc – but social customer care as a mindset, a philosophy, a way of doing, a way of thinking. Social customer care as a key that helps to unlock the ability for companies to actually deliver on the many promises they made in the name of customer centricity,

I know there are those who say social customer care isn’t working, but to me, that’s interpreting social customer care within the constricting paradigm of customer service as we know it. Social customer care represents something that can be different, is different. It affords companies the opportunity to willingly disrupt their ‘systems that are engraved in stone’. It affords companies the opportunity to be bold. [Do they dare?]

It is also a warning: if companies choose not to do so in this ‘one single generation’, others will do it on your behalf. In fact, they have already started…

Social customer care & Metrics: Who are they helping?

I read an article the other day  by Neil Davey (Editor, MyCustomer) – Measuring the Effectiveness of Social Customer Service. I’m always interested in anything to do with social customer care ROI, metrics and KPIs.

In the post Neil kindly included something I had said at some point about measures: ‘A lot has previously revolved around process efficiency – how quickly calls are answered – they’re not about the experience or resolving an issue.’

As I read through the different types of metrics, how they should be interpreted, and how they relate to ROI, I was struck by one thought: who do these measures benefit?

I put together a quick table drawing the different metrics, categories and ROI together. The image is a bit blurry, but if you click on the table you can see where I take the different metrics, categories and ROI from in the original article.

The next column is ‘Company benefit’, followed by ‘Customer benefit’, followed lastly by ‘Will this resolve the customer’s issue’.

Two observations:

a) Quality is one of the categories that Walter Van Norden (Telus) proposes. Interestingly, there are no metrics for Quality.

b) It is obvious from the last three columns – columns that I have added – that these metrics only benefit the company. They address issues of process efficiency and customer satisfaction, but do not actually address whether or not a customers issue has been resolved.

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In the article, I went on to say:

A lot of the metrics reflect that focus on processes, and this is an outdated way to look at something. You still need to understand the processes but now experiential metrics are more important. So now you should see a different type of metric, in addition to the process metrics, that put the resolution or the issue first. You still need to understand the processes but now you need more experiential type of metrics coming in…’

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I wrote a post the other day about a response to a Tweet I came across from @NHSDirect – @NHSDirect and empathy? Or is it me?The post got me thinking about empathy and tone of voice, and it was one of the first times that I started to realise and think about the importance of tone of voice.

Is this one of the emerging metrics we need to start thinking about in terms of social customer care? I’m wondering what some of the others are? Is this more about working through the convergence of marketing, PR and customer service metrics? No matter what, I’m wondering whether we’ll still end up overlooking measuring whether a customer’s issue has been resolved…

A thought on social customer care & 21st century ‘fluencies’ #socialcustcare #custserv

I came across a post by Tony Reeves on his blog – Techtrees – a moment ago – Global Fluency and 21st Century Skills. What interested me was the model he had adapted from elsewhere, which I have copied below (I hope you don’t mind?).

The fact that he had taken and adapted someone else’s model reminds me of Wikinomics and the idea of ‘a shared canvas where every splash of paint contributed by one user provides a richer tapestry for the next user to modify or build on’. I love, that’s a strong word to use in connection with the internet, the idea that in this age when we start to create, when we start to write, the idea of the ‘shared canvas’ is built into the very fabric of what we are creating. To think otherwise is naive. We create for others to build on, to create something new, to take something and refresh it, add a different perspective, sometimes to even make it better.

But back to Reeves’ adapted model.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reeves went on to write: Business and the global economy need workers, managers and leaders who can organise information and work collaboratively to find rapid solutions to complex problems.

This got me thinking about the skills needed for social customer care, or indeed, using Reeves’ terminology – ’21st century interaction skillset’. I’m slowly moving away from the phrase ‘customer service’. Someone yesterday mentioned it’s all customer experience anyway. I’m using the phrase ‘customer interaction’: ‘interaction’ as a placeholder (interaction is an ugly sounding word, but you understand what I’m talking about), and actually I’m also wondering whether we need the word ‘customer’ either. I think it was Lyle Fong (Lithium) who said in an interview with Ray Wang (Constellation Group): What happens when we treat customers as part of the company? I’m not sure yet what’s coming next, what ‘customer service’ will look like, but I do feel the underlying model is changing.

I’m thinking less about service as a fixed entity: fixed set of people, fixed location, fixed time period, fixed resolutions. I’m thinking about all the different interactions that could take place by all the different people that could participate. I’m thinking about something that is more fluid, flexible, ‘on the fly’.

So what I’m wondering is whether at a time when the way organisations have provided ‘customer service’ is so obviously shifting and changing, to what degree these same organisations are thinking about the different skills, literacies and, to use Reeves’ word (albeit in a slightly adapted way) ‘fluencies’ required for 21st century ‘customer service’.

Social customer care: Make your own spaces!

I was reading a great post the other day by Steve Collis (@steve_collis) – Facebook is the East India Company. The idea that really resonated with me was:

“Now we have information technology, we are able to create new spaces. It is as if, rather than sailing to new countries to conquer and exploit them, we now create new spaces, to conquer and exploit them.”

Companies now have the opportunity to create these “new spaces”, these “new geometries. New lands”, in a way they have never had before. The notion that companies can simply ‘create new spaces’ (almost at will) is an incredibly powerful and far-reaching one, just as is the thought that each one of us, whether employee, customer or bystander can do so as well.

But, these new lands, these new spaces, require different ways of thinking, different ‘literacies’, gestures and currencies to converse with each other, to exchange ideas, to pursue serendipity; to ultimately take leaps of faith.

The irony is that at the very moment we have the power to create, to conquer, to exploit, we lack the conviction to do so. We revert to type and seek refuge (perhaps subterfuge) and comfort in discussions about privacy, ownership and value. Sooner or later, even these old chestnuts will require us to learn a new or different set of literacies to be able to talk about them.